June 2008
Motivation:
This service is as close as we’ll get to the middle of the year, so we took the opportunity to have a service which provided a ‘turning point’ – A space where one could reflect on the year that has passed, spend some time with God in a quiet, withdrawn space in the middle of the year, and then think about the rest of the future and move outwards back into the real world.
Environment: The usual. Pitch darkness with only candle light would have been ideal, but we made it as dark as possible. In the middle of the space were a few worship tools (candles, sand, water and stones, paper and pens) for use during the service.
Audio:
As explained later, it was all drawn from the Labyrinth.
The Service:
- Introduction: We introduced people to the motivation for tonight, and encouraged them to just sit, reflect, pray, and engage with the worship tools in the centre if/when they felt like it. No pressure tonight…
- For the rest of the service we used the station reflections from the Labyrinth. These were played over the audio, allowing people time to listen to the reflection, and have about 4-5 minutes at each of the 9 stations or so to think, pray, and interact if so desired. These stations help people put aside the things that might be keeping them from God, spend some time with God in prayer and reflection, and then begin to focus on the world around them as they re-engage and prepare to re-enter the world. (Normally these stations are used as part of the Labyrinth interactive prayer path, but they work well in this context as well).
- With each of the ‘inward’ stations, candles were steady blown out so that by the time the middle reflection, Holy Space, was reached there was only one main candle remaining. Following this, candles were steadily re-lit as the ‘outward’ stations were played.
- At the end, people were free to leave when ready as some ongoing reflective music was played.
Evaluation notes (for future facilitators) – in comments.
June 16, 2008 at 10:57 am
Evaluation comments:
A couple of things we learnt from this:
We’d taken out a few of the reflections, as to run through all of them (as the Labyrinth has them) would have taken over an hour.
The problem was that I felt that this made the journey to Holy Space and then back out into the world too short…. It takes people time to reflect and quieten down, and then re-emerge, so the longer the better.
Also, the space was not dark enough. The best effect would have been achieved if in Holy Space the only light going was the one candle. That way you have experienced the encroaching darkness as you withdraw, and then slowly building the light again as you prepare to re-enter the world.
On a positive note, this is a good service for tiny groups, as due to the use of the CD tracks, it’s fairly safe for only 2-3 people to do. In addition, the facilitator gets to engage a bit more than he/she otherwise might.
June 16, 2008 at 11:08 am
Only my second service, but this is definitely a service worth repeating at some stage. The reflection time was just fine, but if it had gone longer, this would have also been fine too. The Holy Space setting was well achieved too with the tools and candles/music giving serenity.
I do hope this particular model is repeated again some day.
Many thanks, and looking forward to the next one.
July 5, 2008 at 9:08 am
please accept the Arte Y Pico award presented to you at the X facta