Encountering the Text in New Ways

Before we get too far away from the Create in Me retreat, I want to make sure I record our experience with Bible Study, which was different from any we had ever done.  We had as our text Luke 5: 18-25, the story about a paralyzed man lowered through the roof where Jesus was teaching and healing.  We did some Ignatian types of meditation, imagining ourselves as part of the story.

Then we did a different kind of encountering of the text.  We were divided into groups, five to a table.  We listened to our leader read the story again, and we circled words that leapt out at us.  We listened to the story again, discerning the one word that was important.  Each member of the group shared their word, and we put them into an order.  It might have been a sentence that made sense or perhaps not.  Then we were given big sheets of paper and a stick of charcoal and we wrote the words over and over again.

My group's words were:  friend glorifying their faith friend.  My word was "their"--I was interested in faith as a collective action in verse 20:  "When he saw their faith, he said, 'Friend, our sins are forgiven you.'"

Here's the drawing on the first day:

I tried to fill up all the space, but we didn't have to do that.  I was interested in words on top of each other, but we didn't have to do that.  The member of our group that wrote words in a circle on the page ended up with a very different sketch that was also pleasing.  In fact, I liked everyone else's better than mine, but that's not an uncommon feeling for me.

The second day, we did a different interpretation of the story from Mark, and then we returned to our sketches.  We drew some more.  We were trying to be alert to see if shapes emerged, shapes or anything else.  I thought my paper looked like a big mess, so I did some smudging.  I took my finger and wrote the word "Friends" across the smudging.  Here's the result:

I wanted to play with color pastel, but those weren't the instructions.  In the future, I would add color.  I really enjoyed the meditative aspect of the work.  It reminded me of cutting paper, which I can find oddly soothing.

I thought this worked well as a group activity at a creativity retreat.  I wonder how it would work in other settings.  The charcoal can be very messy--a bonus and a drawback, depending on the group.

Did it provide deeper insights?  I'm not sure.  I preferred it to the Ignatian imagining.  But I do confess that today, just six days later, I couldn't remember which words we chose.  I remembered the word "friend" but not the others.

I am trying to come up with something to do with my English 100 class next week.  Maybe we'll try a version of this.  Hmmm.