Hopes and Dreams

When I was a bit younger, I loved to go on retreats. We always had guitar music, decent food, and a good dose of feeling like we could live on some sort of compound hearing about God and not working. I guess that pretty much describes a cult, but then I kind of understood the draw.  There were always a few different kinds of people on these retreats. The "super spiritual" people that loved everything we did and held arms and swayed to the out-of-tune guitar songs. You know them, the ones who put all the effort into making their name tags look pretty with some sort of cross or fish placed in plain view and with their name in all 7 colors of the rainbow. Then there are the "seemed to be court-ordered" attendees who didn't like anything we did and obviously came at the request of someone else. Never sang and never participated in group discussions. And lastly there are people like me. Kind of normal, but not quite; otherwise why would they be on this silly retreat.
Anyway, aside from songs and food and talks, there was always the one-upper. The one thing you did on a retreat that was like no other thing anyone else did. Maybe it was a "faith walk" in the middle of the night. Maybe it was a surprise visit from someone like Billy Graham or Amy Grant. Or perhaps it was some secret ceremony where nobody but God and the 47 other people with you would know about. I vote for secret ceremonies.  One of my favorite is when we write down something you want no one to know about.  The writing down is important because they leave you feeling as if someone might read it, probably anonymously.  Instead, they make a big fire outside and we burn them up. Cool.
So one year not so long ago I was leading worship at a retreat for 500 or so people in North Carolina. At a gathering before it started we had a strategic planning meeting with all the leaders. The keynote speaker was concerned with how many seats would be in the room. "If there are 500 people, I don't want 700 seats" said the speaker. I thought, smart man, makes sense. Keep 'em close, promotes unity. The next priest developed a plan for his talk.  His plan included the one-upper. "I would like all the people to write their hopes and dreams on a piece of paper" he says. "What will we do with that paper?" asks another administrative planning-type priest. "Oh, well maybe we could put them in a big basket, and on the last day take them outside and burn them as an offering to God" says the priest who obviously has been on one or two of the secret ceremony retreats. "Great idea" chimes in most of the group gathered there. One-upper solved. A bit of silence passes as they contemplate this great plan before my hero, the smart man, the speaker, clears his throat. "Ahem...." he continues, "So you are saying we should ask people to write down their greatest hopes and dreams, and then have them stand by and watch as their hopes and dreams go up in smoke?" "Umm" comes the reply. "We burn up their hopes and dreams, is that it?" he asks again. As I laughed out loud, I became remotely aware of two things. I was the only one laughing, and - some guys don't like being made to look like fools when planning a retreat, even if it is their fault.