our annual YNS (young notorious sinners) meeting is over, and i’m sitting in a starbucks in reno, waiting four hours for my flight. this year was equally wonderful, but very different than previous years. the place we met — a rental house up on a hill overlooking lake tahoe — was gorgeous, if not a bit pricey. but the stunning view of the lake…

and the perfect meeting space…

combined with actually having enough beds for the nine of us, really made it a great place to stay. it had a huge open kitchen as part of the great room, and we cooked all our meals together (well, toben did most of the cooking, but we were nearby), which i’m finding more and more and more is such a key element of spiritual community.

it was different this year in that many of us were in a really good space, and there were very fews tears (last year almost everyone was crying at one point during their sharing time). there were a few significant things, and some great input from guys who are committed to each other, and give advice in that relational context. i had a small blow up with one of the other guys at one point, and it called for some intense dialogue and processing to go on. both of our feelings got pretty hurt in the process, and it uncovered some more issues he and i will need to process more in the future — but it was still good to have these things uncovered, rather than remain silent and hidden (or unknown).

personally, i have some more reflection to do. i feel like i stumbled onto a sometimes-good-sometimes-bad new insight about myself: that i have a strong tendancy to try to control people, and specifically, to control (or manage) the emotions of groups i have responsibility for. i’ll blog about this soon, as i expect it will be helpful for me to process it in words, not just thoughts.