Cups

Our team had our discussion of Can You Drink the Cup last night. As seems to be usual of Nouwen's books, it was short but deep... and I definitely didn't read through it slowly enough.

After talking about it, Kristin had each of us journal about what our cup is for Kolkata, and then share our journaling with the group. It's a pretty open question of who we are, what God has for us here, what we brought into the trip, etc. I pretty much sat their for half of the time not sure what to write, and then decided to write about the feelings about community that I brought into this trip. I think I came into this trip with more specific ideas about community than anyone else on the team. I have certainly had to do some adjusting as I realized that not everyone shared my visions about community.

After that, Kristin gave each of us a gift. They were all cups to use as symbols to remember what we read, talked, and shared about. We used the cups to toast each other. This basically meant an affirmation time. It was amazing to realize how much we have already seen of each other in just two weeks. I wrote down what people said about me in my journal. I find that sort of thing to be an invaluable weapon when Satan starts speaking lies to me about my value on the team. I later compared that list with the same sort of list that I brought out of LAUP. There were certainly some similarities, but a lot of differences too. I wonder how much of that is how I've actually changed in the past six months, and how much is just the differences in people and surroundings that bring out different sides of me. In any case, it was really good to hear what everyone said about each other.

The next book our team will be reading is Learning to Love People You Don't Like. We will be discussing it as a team next Saturday.