Autumn Reunion Weekend Report: Living Stones

Report on ‘Living Stones’ at Penmaenmawr - 1st-3rd Nov 2019

I had been looking forward to the "living Stones" autumn weekend at Penmaenmawr for a while - a new venue for me in the beautiful Welsh countryside.

When the date came round, my start to the weekend was unpromising. My train was delayed, and as I pulled my wheelie case up the hill from the station in the pouring rain I felt a bit bedraggled. Would the weekend live up to my hopes?

Fortunately, as I walked into the Noddfa Centre, it truly felt like a place of refuge, which is the English translation of its Welsh name. I joined the second half of the mass in the beautiful chapel and then sat down with the rest of the group to a lovely home cooked dinner in expectation of the first session.

The title of the weekend, "living Stones" had been intriguing. In the first session our wonderful chair, Anne Dixon, explained how we were going to explore and deepen our faith by looking at various metaphors - starting with Jesus as ‘the cornerstone’ and we as ‘the living stones’ called to build the spiritual temple. Over the course of the weekend we descended into the underworld (where we found both buried treasure and things that are meant to be hidden away forever), before journeying on to emerge into the sunny uplands at the end of the weekend to build the heavenly Jerusalem. 

We were treated to stimulating illustrated talks and scripture readings on these topics, as well as being challenged to some group work (which apparently some of us had requested!). I had not been one of those, and at first I thought I might have preferred to stay safely in the comfort of the lovely surroundings, letting the talks wash over me, and muse over them in my own time. But the group sessions turned out to be great fun.

We filled a jam jar as a time capsule to be opened in centuries to come by people coming after us, to try to tell them what our lives had been all about, and warn them of the toxic things our current geological age had buried deep into the ground. In true biblical fashion, the centuries flew by in about half an hour, when we had equal pleasure in the challenge of trying to interpret the messages other groups had been trying to send us. This demonstrated that even without the challenge of having to decipher a long lost script or language, the task required some meticulous working out. One group had with admirable foresight written out the central message in several languages and alphabets.

Another group exercise was to create a picture (whether in words or materials) of our heavenly Jerusalem. This again tested our powers of imagination, allowed participants to share their stories, and produced remarkable results. 

The Noddfa Centre itself is a wonderfully welcoming and comfortable old house, immaculately maintained, and with lovely views over the sea when the weather allows. On the first morning I could see some trees against a grey background from my bedroom window, which seemed ok, but nothing spectacular. Later on, however, when the clouds had lifted, what a change. There was the blue sea and impressive cloud formations above.

A moment of true magic (or much more accurately, a moment illustrating the mysterious working of God) came on the Sunday: we had put all the things we wanted forgiveness for in our lives onto a stone and stored it away safely in a series of boxes (in the style of Russian dolls). Just as we put the final lid onto the last box the sun came out and shone on the tree in front of the window, making it shine out like pure gold! The timing couldn't have been better to fit in with our theme and gave the occasion that extra special feeling down my spine – a feeling of being carried into the power of God.

We were blessed with beautiful masses, presided over by our excellent chaplain, Tim Redmond, for which the Noddfa community, who made us very welcome at the centre and provided excellent food, joined us. There was also a prayerful lectio divina one evening and some good singing. Malcolm was a very efficient organiser and kept the bar well stocked. He complemented the theme of the weekend with his special "Archbishop" cocktail, made with Stone's Ginger Wine! 

Apart from the weather (it rained again as I left for the station on the Sunday) the weekend couldn't have been better. 

By Carola Geist-Divver