For the last full day of E.Y.E. I woke up at 6:45am headed to breakfast and then since I enjoyed it so much headed for the labyrinth. This time I got to walk it completely alone, so I decided to play some music (Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo was all I had that fit). It was just as calming as the day before, in fact I realized that I had it wrong yesterday. The wobbles that I mistook for obstacles are not really obstacles; rather each time I wobble I step from the path ever so slightly to regain my balance, so its like each time I come across an obstacle on my journey I step off the path slightly looking for a way to regain balance and meaning of my experience. In reality I only ever really achieve balance and meaning from being on the path and moving forward towards my goal, no matter how disconcerting the journey might sometimes be.
We had another Keynote Speaker at 9am from Ecuador who spoke about short term mission. She talked about the need to let go of our Intellectual, Cultural, & Spiritual Prejudices before embarking on short term mission. She also spoke of the importance of giving and receiving as well as being prepared but being careful not to make it "all about me".
We again met with our small reflection groups until lunch and then we had free time until 1pm. We had an afternoon of workshops, but this time there was really only one workshop that interested me. At 1:15pm I attended the workshop titled "Prayer Through Art." It was a little disappointing, I think because there were soooo many people who went. The concept was really cool, we started off by listening to a story and then forming groups to create a collage to represent how we felt (I didn't care very much for this part) and then we worked individually to create works of art to express how we were feeling. We could finger paint, color, watercolor, or make things using a Salt Dough-recipe below.
I had signed up to chalice at the service being held today at the start of E.Y.E. but practice wasn't until 4:30pm; since there were no other workshops that interested me I headed to the Info Desk to see who was around. I ended up sitting at the Info Desk until the start of practice because the people who were sitting there when I got there kept having to leave to deal with things, and since I had spent a fair amount of time sitting there yesterday I just sort of sat down and answered the myriad of questions being asked.
Chalice practice was fairly straight forward. We were given the option of working with a Bishop we knew and since my Bishop had left this morning I decided to work with the Bishop of Easton whom I had gotten to know during our journey up in the van.
I wound up eating dinner at 5:30pm-practice ran over-outside with basically everyone else who was there (burgers and chips style dinner). Episcolympics started at 6:15pm and I headed over to support MD who was running the Cup event. The service was set to begin at 8:30pm but I headed over early so I could be sure I was in my special seat before the craziness started since there were two processions for that service (one came from the Habitat House the other came from the Episcolympics). The Bishop of Minnesota presided, we got to watch the footage of him blessing the Habitat House-yes he stood on the roof-and then the President of the House of Deputies gave a fascinating sermon about how we are all ministers in the Church.
My chalicing experience at E.Y.E. was by far the most exciting one yet. The Bishop and I were confused about where to go-don't ask-when we got there I had no "wine", they started communion and then rushed to find me someone who could give me "wine", I ran out of "wine" halfway through and had to wait for them to find an acolyte who could give me more, all in all we were the last station serving communion ergo the last pair to return to the stage (something I try not to think about too hard).
We had Ben & Jerry's after the service and then tried to get 700+ kids calm enough to sleep-almost wanted to kill whoever thought to give the already wound up teenagers more sugar and then telling them to go to bed. We finally succeeded and I packed a little before crashing.
Salt Dough
2 Cups Flour
1 Cup Salt
~1 Cup Colored Water
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