When we arrived at El Refugio today and got our orientation to the property and the programs, John told us about Shoeless. It’s something that El Refugio does/teaches about being aware of Gods presence as Moses did in Exodus 3. When God told him to remove his shoes, it wasn’t that the ground on which he stood had suddenly become holy. It was that Moses was becoming aware of it.
Today was a long day of orientations and solo time. A couple of people even said they didn’t think we would do a debrief tonight. And the debrief we did was not the one we planned. But full of hotdogs and cuy, we launched into what began as a simple recap of our day.
What continues to amaze me about Sabbath time at El Refugio is how seriously the teams take it. With this and most teams, we are about halfway through our time on the ground when we go to the property. So the group should be tired. But they’re not disengaged. And as scary as three hours walking around the mountain and listening to God might seem to some, people really do it. So that’s a huge amount of time to process not just what they’ve seen today or this week, but to really begin listening for what they are supposed to do with all of this post-field.
This meant our “simple recap” of the day of and of solo time quickly became 18 of us sitting around the campfire crying our eyes out as we processed where we were and where God was bringing us. Several years ago there was a joke during Quito Quest training that a “successful” debrief meant crying. This is certainly not necessarily the case, but the whole group being able to go to that deep a place emotionally is one of the possible side effects of doing solo time and debrief with the correct attitude. It wasn’t successful because we cried. But we were crying because it was successful.
The issues and the discoveries and the celebrations that came about through that time aren’t things that should be written in a (relatively) public forum like this. Suffice it to say that there were issues worked through. There were discoveries. There were celebrations. There was support. And there was God’s presence. Which is, of course, there all the time. It’s just that we became aware.
