I remember high school retreats. At the end of the year, all 300 girls in my class would be sat down in a big room, on a Friday, and told to share our feelings with each other while being supervised by our teachers and nuns. The yearbook described these retreats as times when we “grew closer to Christ and made friendships that would last a lifetime.” I would characterize these retreats as a tentative encouragement to talk about weightier issues amidst an atmosphere of Catholic judgment, foisted upon girls who either couldn’t open up because they knew that no one in the room was equipped to deal with the really heavy stuff or who just simply didn’t care and couldn’t wait to start the weekend. Unlike the boys at our brother school, who came away from Kairos with gushy new bromances and “just so much, like, love, man,” I came away from retreats with a bitter sense that nothing, not relationships, not anything within myself, and certainly not the school’s inflated perception of its success, had changed.
When I came to UP, of course I heard about Encounter. In my mind, though, I imagined the people who went on Encounter as good little Catholics who wore cardigans and encountered Christ because they already knew Christ. They were already BFFs with Jesus, so of course they thought that the experience was wonderful. There would be no room for the questioning, the conflicted, the hurt, the angry, the broken-hearted, or the sick. Encounter only seemed special because the people who went on Encounter were already perfect. Just like how, in high school, anyone who “grew closer to Christ and made friendships that would last a lifetime” was probably already close to Christ and had bunches of perfect friends.
At the prompting of some friends, who assured me that Encounter would not be the bogus I imagined it would be, I decided to go.
Boy, am I glad that I did.
Stuff gets real at Encounter. If you’re there, you are expected to do some serious emotional and spiritual work. There is no pretending that everything is perfect. Instead, on Encounter we share what is most broken about us. Relationships are formed through honesty and realizing that other people, people you may never have met except on Encounter, have stories similar to your own. You get taken out of your own head and discover that some people have it worse than you think you do, but their courage in facing their own darkness gives you the courage to face your own. No one is better than anyone else. No one is worse than anyone else. On Encounter, you learn that in order to be whole we need each other. It is a beautiful and powerful lesson. It is difficult to write about this experience, because it really is one of those experiences that you had to be there for in order to understand.
So, I would encourage you to go on Encounter, but only if you want to. Everyone who was there wanted to be there, which is a big reason why the retreat was so successful. Don’t go if you don’t want to work. But if you feel like the time is right, or even if you’re just curious, go. You will not be sorry that you did.