WE ARE: Buddy Baker-Smith, Robyn Churchill, Jennifer Hogue, Sara Hubner, Eileen Johnson, Richard Lindo, Wendyl Ross (our Supreme Kitchen Goddess), Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Craig Simenson, Laura Street, and myself. Wow, huh? I want to especially welcome Laura and Craig who are new staffers to NEYM Retreats, and Jennifer who is doing her first JHYM Retreat (huge thank you’s to daughter Phoebe here!!). Thank you for joining us!

AND AS OF TODAY, WE HAVE 37 JH’ers (1 brand new to retreats and 3 more first timers in JHYM) registered to join us (with 5 more on a waiting list).

Such blessings!
The JHYM Retreat program’s goal is to provide a safe and trusting community in which we seek to find that of God in ourselves and in each other. Our charge, as ministers of the Spirit, is to help our young people create a sanctuary. What I appreciate more as the years go on, is just how rare and astounding a “safe and trusting spiritual community” truly is for young teens. What we “do”, with the Grace of God, is provide them with an experience in building a spiritually grounded community that they then take with them, and hopefully build on, for years and decades and a lifetime to come.

Timelines

Arrival: I will be arriving around 4:30pm. Registration is at 7pm, and the JH’ers arrive en masse at that time. If one or two of you could join me by 6:30, and most of the rest of you by 7:00, we will be in fine shape. We share a light supper and then aim to start the evening’s program around 8:30.

Please let me know your E.T.A. Thanks!

Wrap-up: Sunday Morning Worship is at 10:00, followed by lunch, cleanup and goodbyes. If everyone on staff can stay until 1:00, we will all be able to get on the road before 1:30. If you need to leave earlier than this for any reason, please let me know. (I already know Robyn needs to leave Saturday evening.)

DIRECTIONS TO Wellesley Meeting ARE ON OUR WEBSITE.

Our Theme: Smiling and Breathing: A Bread Retreat

Yeast is the miraculous life that gives rise to bread – literally breathing space and light into dough – but it depends on the attentiveness of the baker to help it transform into a beautiful loaf. Good bread needs fresh ingredients and care, but it also takes time and space – we have to stop touching it and worrying over it so that it can become. Patience, warmth, trust, and knowledge of the process are all required in their measures.

So, too, are these same aspects helpful in nurturing the Light within us. Every breath we exhale sends a small bit of us out into the world – adding a tiny measure of light or dark around us. Thich Nhat Han teaches that smiling and breathing are two of the most important things we can pay attention to in our days. Throughout Friends’ history, the spiritual disciplines of gratitude and of sitting each day in Silence have been considered essential for being faithful to the measure of Light one is given. It is in being faithful to the small things in our days that we grow in love, truth, grace and Light – trusting that this will add to the Light and hope in our world.

I am not a master bread maker, but as you can probably tell, the process is profoundly like worship for me, rich in symbolism, wisdom, and nourishment. It has been one of my main ways of praying, a constant source of peace and joy, and a central part of my spiritual journey for about 25 years.

I hope to share the rhythms and Openings that happen within me each time I make bread: from the moment I stand with my hands on the counter in silence; to the prayers and peace that rise up for myself and others while I knead; to waiting and watching; to sitting by the oven; to holding the warm loaf in my hands and giving thanks. My hope and prayer is that we can create a day of bread baking in which we are both bakers and loaves ourselves – leavened and shaped by the Spirit – full of joy and gratitude.

In and around the bread, we will consider what we need in order to be more faithful to the Spirit, how paying attention to our breathing and prayer can be helpful, and what it might mean to hold things more lightly within. We will also relax and simply enjoy the blessing that being in each other’s company truly is.

This is a pretty extraordinary one-day baking project, with all of the mixing and kneading happening Saturday morning, and then rising, shaping and baking going on until at least mid-afternoon. We will go through close to 75 pounds of flour (including the pound or two on the floor), and end up with over 60 loaves – every one of which will be known (and labeled) by the two hands creating it. As Kevin Lee will attest, it is a photographer’s delight. It is also a testimony to the miraculous abilities of yeast and to the good hearts and humor that our Staffers (especially dear Wendyl) embody. Thank you for being with us!

One last note: The last time we did a bread retreat with JHYM was literally 5 years ago at Wellesley Meeting. That was the year JHYM Retreats didn’t have set coordinators, and several of us each took a retreat to lead. I was co-leading the JYM Retreat program with Kevin back then, and had absolutely no inclination to be involved with JHYM any more than that one weekend. But the Spirit and the Bread both rose strongly that weekend, and it was on the drive home that I felt the first leadings to step into the coordinator’s role in JHYM. It has been an extraordinarily rich and fruitful journey since then, not always graceful, but always grace-filled. Mindful of the uncertainty around my role in this program next year, I am very aware of this anniversary and the vantage point coming round to it provides me. My heart is full of gratitude to all of the JH’ers, families, staffers, YPC members, Kevin Lee, supportive Friends, and most especially to God for the bounties over this time.

SMALL GROUPS

Small Groups will meet 3 times over the course of the weekend: Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday evening. We will be divided into 4 small groups – with 9-10 JH’ers and 2-3 staffers for each group. You’ll be in the same small group for the weekend, hopefully providing an opportunity for community within community. The feedback about our small groups continues to be overwhelmingly positive, which is a huge affirmation to you, dear staffers.

Friday Evening’s small group will be an opportunity for everyone to teach a short lesson on ways that they successfully relax.

Saturday Morning’s small group will focus on worship – what it is, what works, what doesn’t.

Saturday Evening’s small group will be an experiential time praying in color. Long time staffer Sara Hubner, who has been working with this technique herself, has written the staff notes for this. Thank you, Sara!

Details and suggestions will be emailed ASAP and will be in your staff notebooks when you arrive on Friday evening.

Saturday Afternoon Workshops

This is a time for us to all really relax and/or play. Workshops will run an hour and a half or so. JH’ers will make first and second choices, and we’ll do our best to fulfill everyone’s requests. By this time in the school year, the JH’ers are pretty weary (even with the school vacation week just prior to it), and they thrive on this afternoon in community.

At this point, here is my thinking. (But DO let me know if your “assignment” won’t work for you! I am flexible!)

Knitting and Card Games led by Karen and Sara

Group Games led by Richard and Craig

Wellesley College Greenhouse Tour led by Buddy and Jennifer

Scavenger Hunt led by Robyn and Laura

Bread baking, continued led by Gretchen

Sharing music and stories

At the end of our evening program Saturday night, we’ll share stories and music. Not a full-blown coffeehouse, mind you…

The Quiet Room

For several years now, JHYM Retreats has had a Quiet Room available throughout the retreat for JH’ers who need a break. It’s become a lovely haven – and, no, staffers, you can’t all be people of presence there all weekend, but I do encourage you to stop by and help to nurture and preserve the space. We will use the nursery on the 2^nd floor for this retreat.

“FREE TIME”

Junior Highers want free time, but most of them want it with structure so that they can be in community. This is my mantra: “free time” is not staff free time. All of us on staff need to initiate group games (Apples to Apples, Egyptian War, JYM Ball, Graveyard Tag), inspire craft projects, encourage the creation of new Who’s Who Book pages, and engage stragglers into the mix in any ways we feel led – or the young people themselves lead. With JH’ers, it can be especially important to gently, continually nurture inclusivity. Please consider your gifts and leadings – and go for it!

Staff Assignments

Retreat Nurse: Robyn

Craft Table Elder: Karen and Sara

Name Tag Czar: Craig

Photographers & Roving Staffers: Buddy and Robyn

Free Time Staff Elder: Richard

Gretchen’s Bread-baking Assistants: Jennifer and Laura

Workshop Coordinator: Eileen

Registrar: Gretchen

Supreme Kitchen Goddess: Wendyl Ross

Final note: Do know, dear Friends, my gratitude and love for each of you.

Gretchen Baker-Smith, JHYM Retreat leader

508-997-0940 (h) * hellogretchen@gmail.com * 508-287-6441 (cell)