Summer Institute Community,
What a week we had at Kenyon College. We all look at SI through the lens of our own experience and expectations, and I hope your week was as full of new relationships and new experiences as mine was.
I loved the sessions on Buddhist meditations and chanting, and used them to calm myself between dealing with the usual problems when 600 people get together for a week away together. As SI ’07 Chair Amy Kent likes to say, “SI is like throwing a weeklong party for 600 of your closest friends.”
Speaking of Amy, wasn’t she amazing. The way she handled everything from broken bones to last-minute announcements she couldn’t read, Amy handled anything that was thrown at her with grace and a laugh. I’m feeling a bit insecure moving into her job, as SI ’08 chair, but as a backpacking mentor advised me many years ago, I’ll do this job one step at a time and eventually we’ll all reach the mountaintop.
Before I talk about what changes there will be at SI 2008, I’d like to linger a little more on SI 2007. The further I am from Summer Institute, the more I realize how good the week was for my soul. During SI ’07 I went from dealing with one problem to the next as did most planning committee members, but along the way I made such close connections with several people I had never known well before.
In Unitarian speak I was in “right relationship” with them, but to me I made friends out of a need to build a support network quickly to keep me sane. From my fellow planning committee members who forged a strong bond to a young adult who was a good listener and helped me work through a couple bad spots, their sage counsel and friendship will stay with me a long time.
And I have to give Alyssa Lamb’s tie-dying afternoon workshop a plug. What a nice break it was to take an old shirt to her workshop and emerge with a piece of art I could wear, and continue to wear back home. I wore one of the shirts I tie-dyed to a weekend book discussion group and it was the hit of the party.
But SI 2007 is now over and we begin planning for SI 2008. The biggest change, which will impact everything from scheduling to programming, is that a newly renovated and expanded Pierce Hall will be open for us. Beginning in March, 2008, Pierce Hall will serve as the main dining center for Kenyon College. It will seat and serve 1,500 diners at a time, with eating areas on two floors. Food service will be handled at multiple feeding stations for easy access and to reduce lines.
Pierce will also feature a new and expanded Pub on the lower level in the area of the old Pierce Pub. The new Pub will have increased seating and a small stage for musicians. In addition to the Pub we will sponsor a non-alcoholic coffee house in Pierce during Pub hours with free coffee and places for conversation, games, and musicians.
We will also have Hanna Hall available to us at SI 2008. Always a favorite with SI families, it was being renovated this years to refinish its floors and spruce the grand old lady up a bit. Ernst and its “food court” will be gone by next summer, literally gone, replaced by a sloping hill, hopefully of grass and not dirt.
The SI Planning Committee is seeking proposals for workshops by Nov. 1. I’ve heard that our ’07 theme speaker, the Venerable Shih Ying-Fa, the abbot of the CloudWater Zendo and founder of the Zen Society of Cleveland, is proposing that he present a workshop based on the formal Chinese and Japanese tea service. (How cool is that? Let alone that the guy has the title “Venerable.” That’s way cool).
I’ve also heard about possible workshops on the art of mosaics and deep-water aerobics (I don’t think you’ll need scuba gear). Your planning committee will meet the second Saturday of every month at the beautiful Akron church to plan a great 2008 SI.
I’ll keep you all updated so you’ll know what to expect. See you at Kenyon in 2008.
Dave Murray
2008 Summer Institute Chair
dmurray08@gmail.com
