Savory melt in your mouth feast, our taste buds are alive, flavor bursts forth stories, laughter and tears match the goodness of the meal. Letters received from parents, mentors, and friends; encouraging notes for the next season of life, are ripped open and the words on the page are read aloud for the table of friends to savor and enjoy like a rich dark chocolate. The guests who sit at this dinner party are our seniors in High School and our youth counselor team. A waitress, after hearing our laughter and seeing our heap of emotion, quietly sneaks over with a box of Kleenex. Laughter again erupts from our jolly, emotional, excited, anticipating bunch as we enjoy a savory feast on the ‘Rite of Passage Retreat’ we bring our seniors on every year.
I have found there are many things in life we can celebrate; we just have to create space and a chance to linger. Three years ago I created a ‘Rite of Passage Retreat’ for those students who were graduating from high school as a chance to savor their time in youth group and linger over memories yet a time to encourage and challenge them for the next season of life. As a tradition, I have found the graduating seniors anticipate the arrival of the retreat, yet when we are present and enjoying the three days away, it is a chance to savor our time with them, to linger in the new memories created, and capture a sense of awe.
Savor- in a world buzzing with activity and Chronos Time we have to create space to linger and savor. In our personal lives we need to carve out time to savor (like my friend Ben Pease on his D.A.W.G. days that he wrote about last month – check out the October 11 post on this blog, it’s a good one!). And in our ministries we need to create sanctuaries that give students a chance to breathe and savor and linger in Kairos time.
I pray this coming fall and winter that we create time to savor over dinner parties while dishes sit on counter tops so conversations can continue to flow, that students can find our ministries full of time and space where there is little rush, that they have a stress free place to enjoy relationships with one another, and maybe even a savory meal where waitresses bring over Kleenex boxes.
