I remember going to Kairos almost 20 years ago. I was a senior at a Catholic High School, and an atheist. It was the last all out attempt by Catholicism to bring me into the fold. It only pushed me away further. Here is everything I remember from my experience: the “secrets” and parts I believe were blatant psychological manipulation.
If you don’t want to reveal the Kairos Secrets before you go then don’t read this. Personally, I think it’s more fun to know what happens ahead of time. True, if you go in blank you might feel better after the retreat. But it’s a fake feeling, it won’t last, and it’s because people manipulated you.
While I disagree intellectually with the entire premise of Kairos, I have come to look back on my retreat as bittersweet. Kairos was the last time I was required to pretend I was religious. Over the years prior I had perfected my own clever impersonation of a “good Catholic”, he was pious, faithful, and hilariously subversive. During confessions I would fabricate convoluted sins just to see what the priest would ask me to do “for penance”. My religious essays were works of exotic fiction to test the limits of my teachers, such as the time I wrote about worshiping my friend because he was very tall. The Kairos retreat was the last great defiant act of this personality I had worked so hard on. No one, until now, knew all the details of my performance.
It has been 13 years since I’ve been on the retreat. I’m writing these posts both to help me remember and to share with other people what to expect during Kairos. I found then, and still find today, that there is little information on what exactly goes on during the retreat. This is in part due to the deeply secretive nature of Kairos. There are supposedly “secrets” you find out during Kairos that you are not supposed to tell anyone because it will ruin the experience for them. I disagree, if you are looking for information because you think Kairos is a cult then knowing this information will help you prepare and see the manipulation for what it is. Your experience may be different from mine. Individual groups are personalized to some extent. The women seemed to have a different experience than what I went through with the men. They said there wasn’t any yelling but I’m not sure what else was different.
There was a strong shroud of secrecy around Kairos before I went. People who had already gone would simply say to the ones who had not: “It’s going to be great” or “You’re in for a real treat.” Nobody would share anything about what actually happens. This created a rumor mill of speculation on what went on during the four-day long retreat. One rumor was that you would be forced into sharing your darkest secrets until you cry. The worst suspicion was the “Naked Mass” where everyone would have to take off their clothes in some sort of weird Jesus loving orgy. This misinformation campaign by those who had already gone was unusually effective. I couldn’t find anyone returning from Kairos who would break character and reveal the truth.
The people returning immediately after Kairos made me even more nervous. People said Kairos was a life changing event, and the students returning supported that claim completely. My peers would return different. They would appear happier, always smiling like Mormon missionaries do in that fake sort of way. Some would talk to me with an openness I would not be expecting. People I never talked to before would greet me in the halls, or ask strange questions such as what I thought of the afterlife. After a few weeks many returned more or less to normal, others did not. It made me wonder what could possibly cause them to change into different people. I am still not sure.
I spent much of my free time ahead of the retreat researching what was going to happen on the internet, mostly coming up empty handed. Instead, I found information on brainwashing and how to resist it. While I was fairly sure of myself at that young age, there was a sense of self-doubt. What if I came back changed? What if they were somehow able to dig into my psyche and change fundamental parts of my personality like they had with so many others? For this reason, I chose the last available Kairos session, along with a number of my closest friends as support.
I went to the ministry office one morning to turn in my request form, signed by my parents, for Kairos. There I found the Smug Head of Ministry. He asked, almost reading my mind, if I chose the last date because of other obligations or because I didn’t want to go. I replied, “A little of both” even though it was entirely the latter. Without looking up at me he issued a dismissive “OK” and I left. I wasn’t looking forward to 4 intimate days of sharing “secrets” with him. That was the beginning of my Kairos adventure. Behind the scenes the head minister and his lackeys would start looking through my life, finding who I’m friends with, what I’m doing. They wanted to make my “Kairos Experience” personal.
There were a few things they told us ahead of the retreat. It was 4 days. We would leave on a bus after school on Thursday and return late on Sunday. No electronic devices were allowed, including cell phones. No clocks or other time keeping devices were permitted either. From those who had already gone and returned, we knew the experience could change us.
The bus took me and around 30 other male students in my grade to a monastery about an hour drive away. I remember getting off the bus, it was dark and cold, the leaders of our retreat were out in a line to welcome us into the old dusty-looking building. They introduced themselves and directed us where to go next. They never gave us forewarning on what was happening. It was always go here, sit there, write this, think about that. The first evening wasn’t very eventful from what I remember. We had dinner, there were some talks about Jesus, probably some praying. It was boring and not life changing in the slightest.
Each day of the retreat had a theme to go along with it. The first day is “Doubt the first”. The theme generally fits with that day’s talks. I don’t remember any of the talks on the first day other than they were incredibly boring. They give you a notebook and various leaders share pre-approved stories of their lives.
The leaders were students from our grade who had already gone through Kairos and “changed”. There were also adult leaders who were our teachers or the Smug Head of Ministry. They would all take turns with written stories that we had to pay attention to. Occasionally they would say “I feel this is important and you should write it down”. Then you scribble down whatever meaningless platitude they shared. Most of the stories were about them not living up to expectations or struggling with their faith. You are completely cut off from the rest of the world while in Kairos so at this point you have nothing to do other than listen and write in your notebook. Sometimes they played Christian inspired music such as U2.
The food was okay. It was basic food that the monks that lived there knew how to cook. I think it was mostly pasta or things like that. It was fine with the only noticeable effect of making everyone bloated and gassy. I’m not sure why, but this was a shared complaint of everyone I asked. After each meal some people were asked to assist the monks with cleaning up. I never did this. Also, someone had to volunteer to carry a crucifix around to the various rooms you visited. I also never did that. During some meals we were asked to move around to other tables. The point of the retreat was to keep us off balance and away from your group of friends.
In between the lengthy and incredibly dull talks by the Kairos leaders, we split off into smaller groups of people. There we had our own leader, a fellow student who already went to Kairos once before. In these smaller groups we talked about our relationship with god and maybe other things about our life. The goal there was to make us open up about ourselves to strangers. They were careful to keep us away from our friends, I wasn’t that familiar with anyone in my small group. I remember one of the earlier discussions we talked about was how we felt god personally in our lives. I talked about nature, I always liked nature.
In our small groups we also worked on our own talks that we individually presented to the whole “class”. They were essays we wrote about our lives fitting some sort of theme. I remember I wrote about my grandparents, my sister, and my mother. Most of it was lies because I couldn’t think of anything to fit the theme and I wasn’t going to play their game. I remember one essay was supposed be about something I wish was better about my life and I had a terrible time with it because my life was pretty sweet.
The structure of our own talks were pretty loose and we were welcome to include improvisation and, to the joy of many fellow students, expletives. This created a cascading effect where talks gradually became more profane. The talks were also designed for us to “pour our heart out”. For the first two days they were pretty tame and, as previously mentioned, gouge your eyes out boring. During one of my talk preparations my group leader asked to go through my notes with me to find an idea of what I could write about, this was embarrassing since I had been writing nothing but “I feel this is important and I should write it down” repeatedly for the past couple days. Kairos is a fast way to feel cabin fever.
The last place we spent time in was the break room. This was just a regular room with snacks. The break room was adjacent to a dedicated smoking room, which was ridiculous. If we smoked at school we would have been expelled immediately, but on Kairos we could go to flavor country every couple hours! The first time we found the smoking room almost everyone went in it to be “cool”. Was it hypocritical to let students smoke on Kairos? Maybe, but I think it fed into the secretive mystique. This was a place young men were not used to, seemingly free of the usual rules we had to obey. Kairos was liberating us to feel like we could be ourselves, to curse, to smoke, or even cry in front of our peers.
I knew we didn’t get enough time to sleep the previous night since I had smuggled in a watch. It was less than a 7 hour gap from when they let us return to our rooms until the leaders knocked on our doors early in the morning. Many young men probably got much less sleep due to the unusual situation we were in. We were allowed time for showers and breakfast. The theme for the second day: Cry the second.
The day was, for the most part, a continuation of boredom: talks, discussions, Jesus, the usual. I suspect the dullness was intentional. After being on Kairos for two days, we were lulled into a sense of complacency. We were beginning to think this was going to be another regular religious retreat only with more swearing and smoking. We thought we could all leave this place on the fourth day without anything changing. Then the shouting began.
We hadn’t heard much from the Smug Head of Ministry yet. Most of the time we only saw him, and the other adult leaders, in the back with their heads down and their eyes closed, almost as if they were napping. The SHoM woke up and came to the head of the room in the late afternoon on the 2nd day. His talk had more levity and was certainly more entertaining than the previous talks. He told us about how he first asked his now wife out, how terribly nervous he was. It was funny, he was putting on an act. Then he went into a story about his aging father.
His father was getting old and cranky and was having trouble with daily tasks. He couldn’t go to the bathroom easily on his own so he had a catheter and urinary bag. At one point, SHoM and his father were getting into a heated argument about something. Then they started physically hitting each other. The punch line was that SHoM accidentally got hit by the “Piss Bag” which exploded and drenched him with urine. We, the immature high school boys, found this story predictably hilarious. Indeed, that was his intention all along. I call this the Piss Bag point because it was the start of the Kairos people don’t want you to know about. The story itself might have been completely false, I don’t know, but it served the purpose of bringing us up so he could knock us down.
He yelled at us, maybe for an hour or so. Who were we to laugh at his misfortune? We were living our lives as terrible people full of sin and lust. He picked out individual men, and mocked them openly about how sad and pitiful they were. How we all wear masks to hide our true inner selves. It was exciting! My peer’s silent stares of awe told me how effective this part of Kairos was. I could see the cracks forming and I was eager to see who was ready to fall apart. It didn’t take long.
After this point the talks changed, a little less boring, more personal, and darker. We had to give our own talks on how we were imperfect and let others down. I, of course, fabricated my story since I wasn’t going to get pulled down into this mess. But the stories my fellow students told were a mix of heartbreaking, bragging, too much information, and lazy.
I remember the first real sob story someone told was about how he was going to kill himself with a shotgun but decided not to at the last minute because of his sister. It was so ridiculous I still barely believe it. Others shared their own dumb stories on how sad and miserable their lives were. Some were using this opportunity to express how much regret they had over getting laid, always careful to include how regular they were at it. A few apparently were heavily involved in dealing drugs. And many were unexciting, but I could see the impact Kairos was having. The floodgates were opening up and the boxes of tissues placed conspicuously on every table were finally getting some use.
We had a short nap during the night and then day 3 arrived: Trust the Third. After the trauma of the previous evening this day felt different. We were no longer sure of ourselves and we knew Kairos was going in a new direction and we didn’t know what will happen next. This was the day we were going to rebuild ourselves.
During one of the talks, a student leader went around and gave everyone a compliment on something good we did for someone else. This was related to the research the Kairos leaders did on us before the retreat. I remember mine was “Driving my sister home from school”, which didn’t make any sense since my sister moved away and was in college by the time I got my license. Even things outside my control were somehow also subverted.
The biggest secret of Kairos, that nobody will ever talk about, is the letters. After the day we got yelled at and made to feel like terrible people, the Kairos leaders wanted us to feel good again. One of the adult Kairos leaders brought out a stack of letters to the front where he slowly read through them all. Each letter was written by one of our parents before the retreat. The letters were about how special we were and how proud our parents were of our accomplishments. I knew about this ahead of time since I had written a letter to myself.
After I signed up for Kairos, the school mailed a letter to my parents with instructions on what to do for the retreat and to mail in personalized letters for me. My forward thinking parents were happy to share these instructions with me and let me write my own submission.
My letter entirely consisted of inside jokes only me and my friends would understand. I made references to one of my friend’s cat, and to video games we would play at our LAN parties. There wasn’t an ounce of truth to any of it, and it was utterly hilarious if you were in the know. One of my friends later told me his mouth was bleeding from biting down so hard trying not to laugh when my letter was read aloud. It was a very somber moment, and I threw a bomb in it without any of the Kairos leaders ever finding out. For me, a genuine letter from my parents would have been a disappointment by comparison.
After this we were sent back to our rooms for “prayer”. In reality, it was to find even more letters on our private desks. These were from other students who had already gone to Kairos. Since all of my closest friends were at the same Kairos as me, almost all of the letters said the same thing: “Hey, I don’t really know you that well but maybe we could talk after you get back from the wonderful Kairos retreat!”. Yeah right.
Around this point we were into full crazy Kairos mode. Men were crying openly right in front of me. I was learning way too much about my fellow students. It was all feel good crap with compliments and hugging. I’m not the hugging type.
The strangest event for me was I believe on the last day. Live the fourth. We were sent into our small groups. There were about six of us sitting in our own private room. The lights were off, and candles were everywhere. Our group leader took out a wooden crucifix and said that whoever was holding it was talking directly to god. When we held it we could say whatever we want (out loud of course) and god would hear it. Then he started passing it around. At first I thought this was one of those typical prayers where we say something nice and then pass Jesus along. It quickly took a turn for the weird. People were using the crucifix to talk to their dead relatives. I made up a dead aunt to fit in, but I couldn’t keep it going. Once people started crying I was done and didn’t touch wooden Jesus again. Here I was, near the end of the weirdest 4 days of my life, sitting in a dark candle-lit room, while everyone, including the football team’s star quarterback sitting next to me, was bawling their eyes out. I was the only one not moved. Some of them were even nudging me to comfort the quarterback who was taking it especially hard. I didn’t. I’m glad the room was dark, so my fellow students couldn’t see my disgust. Kairos was working. I felt nothing.
I had been through Kairos and it did not affect me. There were the secret letters, the shouting, the repeated attempts to get us to open up. At the end I was the same as when I started, only exhausted.
The bus ride back to the school leads to the final Kairos secret. All our parents were there waiting for us in the chapel. I knew about this from the letter they mailed my parents. We each had to go up in front of everyone and say nice things about how great Kairos was and how much we love our parents. I made some more crap up and went home where I slept for 16 hours.
There are a few things I reflect upon from my experience. First, Kairos is easily classified as a process of brainwashing. Every facet of the retreat was designed to put us in a particular state, which required 4 days to reach the conclusion. The boring first 2 days led us into a sense of security which was brought down by the yelling. Then we were built back up by the secret letters. The manipulation is easily evident to anyone paying attention.
The sleep deprivation was likewise critical to lubricate the process. By the third day I was so tired I was finding it difficult to function or remember basic things that had just happened. I know for a fact they didn’t give us enough sleep each night since I had smuggled in a watch. That all of the “secrets” happened late at night also feeds the theory that they wanted the biggest impact while we were at our weakest and most vulnerable. Everything was designed to make us feel a certain way. Just reading what I wrote happened makes it difficult to understand how effective Kairos is when the “secrets” hardly seem that significant. You really need to endure Kairos for four days to understand why it is so effective at manipulation.
They even told us at the end not to share the “secrets” with anyone who hasn’t gone on Kairos yet. The rumors are important to make the participants on edge before they even reach Kairos. And the truth that most of the men will be sobbing uncontrollably for the last 2 days after being shouted at is almost too ridiculous to believe. Even some of my close friends after Kairos had bought in and wouldn’t tell anyone what really happens at kairos. I told anyone who asked.
Kairos is a manipulation of natural human responses to make you think god is having some sort of impact on your life, instead of the truth that the adults know the exact buttons to press to make you feel that way. From an intellectual point of view Kairos is wrong and should never be put on impressionable young adults.
At the same time, Kairos was some of the most fun I will likely ever have in my life. Granted, it was fun because of my careful subversion. To me, I will remembered it fondly. Sure I didn’t really share anything with my friends, or get closer to anyone, and many would argue I didn’t even get the true Kairos experience. But I learned who I was. When everyone else was falling into the emotional pit, I was the rock. I spotted the “piss bag” point for what it was. I knew what those letters were trying to make me feel. And I didn’t let anyone change me. I came back from Kairos and I told the people who hadn’t gone the truth: It’s boring, exhausting, and kind of sucks.
And now, many years later, I am a full adult and “living the 4th”, whatever that means. I’m free of nearly every obligation: work, school, and pretending I’m someone I’m not. If someone tomorrow asked me if I wanted to go on a religious retreat, I would say, “No thank you, I am happily an atheist.” and that would be the end of it. I wouldn’t get any satisfaction from volunteering for something unpleasant only so I could subvert it. For this reason I miss my days in Catholic School. When I’m now at the point in my life when I can do literally anything I want with my time, I begin to look back pleasantly at the times when I couldn’t. In that regard, those four days I was nearly brainwashed on the Kairos retreat really weren’t that bad.
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