I will confess that this soul exercise was not as...beneficial for me as the letter writing was. I guess that has to do with the fact that I do not "play" a lot, at least not in the typical meaning of the word. my favorite types of games are board games, or games that do not require you to shout or scream, like spoons or games like that. am sure if you know me,that that does not come as a huge surprise. therefore, this soul exercise was a challenging for me. my idea of "play" is reading a good book that I love, or writing on one of my posts, or sending one of my "encouragement" texts or talking with a friend. those are ways I relax. going to see a movie is also another way I relax. writing, movies, friends, and reading are the best ways I relax. I'm going to write about some...games that we played at the SBC Leader Retreat this past weekend, and why I enjoyed them. I do not want to just write about these games to be able to say I did this soul exercise or to check it off,so I will say that I did not play these games for the purpose of doing this soul exercise. doing these games was actually not a choice of mine, but games that the SBC Committee had us play to help us get to know each other.
one of the first games we played at the retreat was a bit uncomfortable for me actually. it is this game where you stand in a circle and say an adjective that describes you that starts with the first letter of your name, like "kicking Kelsi" or "anxious Alex." and you have to do a movement that goes with it. then everyone has to say your adjective name, and do the movement, and the ones for everyone who went before you, and so on. it helps you learn people's names because you remember the adjective. it's also very funny! anyways, it was uncomfortable for me because people saying my name kinda made me uncomfortable, but it was fun and a lot of funny things were done and said, and we laughed a lot.
another game I really enjoyed was this opposites game. we all lined up in a single line, next to our co-leaders. then joseph(comittee member, finance person) would say two things that were "oppsites"(not all were true opposites but choices) and if you went for one you would go to the right side, if you went for the other you would go to the other side, and depending how much more you preferred your choice to the other choice, you would take 1, 2, or 3 steps in that direction. it was meant to show us what we had in common with our co-leaders and get to know them better. it was fun, especially since with the Boston Campaign, there are 3 of us leaders, 2 girls and 1 guy, and a lot of the time me and Emily would be on the same side and Jared would be on the other, which was kinda funny. a lot of things were silly "astros or rangers" or "springer vs Maury"(all but 3 preferred Maury) and some were serious and good to know, like "chaos or order" or "follow the rules VS break the rules" or "time VS quality." one was "avoid conflict VS confront conflict." me and Emily were 3 steps on the side of "avoid" and Jared was 3 steps on the side of "confront" which I found kinda funny. so we will be letting him do the "confrontation" with conflict.it was really helpful in terms of getting to know your co-leader(or leaders in our case) and also in seeing how strong you lean towards one side, or if you could do both so it was a good game.
these games were fun, and I did let down my guard a bit. I laughed a lot and I got to know some really awesome people.
I know I didn't do this soul exercise, but maybe it is...unrealistic for me to expect that every single soul exercise will be right up my alley and awesome for me. maybe we all tend to think like that, that every single spiritual discipline or soul exercise will work for us and make this huge impact in our lives. what do you think?
