Following on from yesterday’s post, we are now at the end of the first full day of Enneagram exploration with our new group.
Many of them have never been to a monastery before, so there’s been a lot of curiosity about the mechanics of a monastic community: what and where do they eat, are there monastic offices (services) to which the public are not allowed, do they always wear the habit, what happens if someone wants to leave?
In asking these questions in small groups around the mealtables, our Enneagram group have themselves been drawing together, feeding on their curiosity as well as their lunch and supper. The community-building has been helped by the human instinct to chat over washing the dishes: not the reason we ask guests to wash up after themselves, but a welcome by-product!
So all these small groups coming together in a domestic setting are building into a larger cohesive whole, talking and listening together during our teaching sessions and in the chapel during the monastic offices; then reflecting on what they have found out, and keeping silence together in the guest houses overnight.
Today people have been both more and less careful of each other. More because getting to know people in an open and fairly intense environment means individual personalities are emerging, and vulnerabilities are easier to sense. Less because people are losing the polite veneer and nervousness of the first evening and are being more natural and forthright.
There is a lot of laughter, which is great at binding people together.
So we await Day Three…
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