eMatrimony.org

Supporting, Encouraging, and Challenging the WWME Community

  News - Section/Local

Section 13 Gathers for "Earthen Vessels" Enrichment

Jack & Karen Baker

On the weekend of January 20-22, 2006 couples and priests from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Northern California gathered in Seattle, Washington for their annual Community Leadership Enrichment. This year Brother Cyril Dmjevic from the Mount Angel Abbey in St. Benedict, OR and Greg & Jacque Janson past Worldwide Marriage Encounter presenting team and current Retrouvaille presenting team from Vancouver, WA presented the enrichment called Earthen Vessels.

Click for a larger image (JPG, 236KB)
Greg & Jacque Janson and Brother Cyril Dmjevic

Earthen Vessels is a method of seeking honest self awareness and disclosure to develop true intimacy. The concept of Earthen Vessels was developed in 2001 from the concepts of Retrouvaille and Marriage Encounter originally intended for presentation to priests as a way to minister to ministers and has only recently been developed for presentation to couples. Earthen Vessels has a dialogue technique that starts with the Worldwide Marriage Encounter concept of revealing feelings. But, Earthen Vessels dialogue suggests that feelings reveal our needs and these needs should be identified and expressed in the dialogue letter. Earthen Vessels briefly discusses Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to help understand what is meant by “needs”. Also, when we experience needs we have a moral choice to make about what to do about our needs and this brings in our values. Our needs and our values may often be in conflict so when we express our needs it is helpful to also state what choices we have made or plan to make based upon our values. The purpose of the Earthen Vessels dialogue is to have a deeper experience of Jesus in our lives and awareness of ourselves. To help accomplish this goal each Earthen Vessels dialogue includes a response to the following three discipleship questions that Jesus proposed during His lifetime: “Who do you say I am?”, ”Will you also go away?” and “Do you love me?”

The Earthen Vessels dialogue due to the additional concepts obviously takes more time and concentration to develop, write and share than does the Worldwide Marriage Encounter dialogue. For this reason the experience offered by the Earthen Vessels presentation is necessary to gain an understanding of the concepts. It is our opinion for Worldwide Marriage Encounter dialoguers that the Earthen Vessels dialogue should only be attempted after a thorough understanding of identifying and expressing feelings. The Earthen Vessels dialogue is a much deeper dialogue technique that could easily distract from the Worldwide Marriage Encounter concept of sharing feelings that are neither right nor wrong and are therefore a safe place for communication. While Earthen Vessels dialogue extends the vulnerability within the dialogue it leaves open areas for discussion that can stray away from the feelings. With Earthen Vessels dialogue times will be lengthy and if couples were to attempt this on a regular basis could refrain from dialogue because it takes too long. The Worldwide Marriage Encounter 10 & 10 guideline of writing for about ten minutes and dialoguing verbally for a maximum of ten minutes does not allow adequate time for Earthen Vessels dialogue.

Click for a larger image (JPG, 236KB)
Section 13 Enrichment - writing a dialogue letter

The couples and priests who attended the Earthen Vessels Enrichment were grateful to Brother Cyril and Greg & Jacque Janson for their deep vulnerable personal sharings that helped us to comprehend the Earthen Vessels dialogue technique. The enrichment was both rewarding and challenging.

Saturday evening, after dinner, the group divided into three teams for a challenging race to see which group could most quickly pass a lifesaver from a toothpick held in one person's mouth to a toothpick held in the next person's mouth - no hands and no body contact was allowed (well almost no body contact). The evening concluded with a choice of various fun and exciting games.

Click here for a printable version (PDF, 165KB)