Once you live in community, it might seem silly to go off for a weekend all together. But just think about how much fun it is to go off with the family to the beach or a mountain cabin for a weekend. The same can be true for the community.
Coho Corvalis made it a priority to go on a weekend retreat this year. For Daybreak, we’ve gone away on two weekend retreats while we’ve been forming and they have been amazing. A fabulous time to build our bonds. For the last two years, we’ve had the retreats in September. This year we’ll be starting to move-in (!) so we’re planning an on-site retreat. Hopefully, we’ll go back to away retreats like Corvalis next year.
When planning the retreats, the retreat team asked the community what we were interested in doing and how structured we wanted out time to be. Typical of us, we wanted some organized and structured time together but also wanted lots of flexibility and free time. I think the teams did a great job finding that balance. And as a group we valued the organized activities intended to support building our bonds and the opportunity to create those bonds just by being together.
Our first retreat in 2007 was at Lost Valley Education Center. It was great staying in a well-established intentional community. Our second retreat in 2008 was at Cedar Ridge Retreat Center. Both had ample room for us and the basic (or not so basic) facilities we valued. The Lost Valley community prepared fabulous vegetarian fare for us and Cedar Ridge gave both omnivores and vegetarians a choice. Since food is a cornerstone of our community, our meals together throughout the weekend we’re important to us. And we didn’t have to cook! Although we did help with the major clean up at Lost Valley. Part of our community time.
The retreat teams scheduled some specific activities each day for the whole community. These often included fun (or heartfelt) get-to-know each other activities: ‘line’ games where the community strung itself from east to west based on where you were born, or strung itself from one to ? based on how many places you had lived; a personal sharing time; an hysterical ‘build-a-story’ time; sing-alongs, and more. And offered a number of optional activities that were offered or requested by community members such as, bocce ball, a knitting class, volleyball, a napkin-ring decorating session, or a permaculture tour. And on our second retreat, we discovered that we were really into games. Particulary board or card games. So besides going for walks around the properties, hanging out by the great room fireplace, chatting on a deck, or just reading a book, we played lots of games. We often had multiple games going at once all in the same room. Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, Scrabble, double solitaire, Scattergories, and more.
Oh, and we laughed. A lot!
