M&Ms

The M&M’s exercise consists of giving each of a small group of people a subject to talk about, depending on which colour sweet they draw from a bag: Brown: something you fear (it doesn't have to be personal) Green: something you hope for Red: a gift you have to offer Yellow: a show, film or exhibition you have seen Orange: a place you have visited Blue: a person who has particularly influenced your life. I am not going to explain too carefully exactly what I mean by each of these topics, because the precise interpretation is not important -- the purpose of the exercise is just to give people something to talk about, so they will tell stories. But it helps to give an example. This one is for yellow: "Last night I saw a real live dragon. I am not joking -- it was a Green Water Dragon at Kew Gardens. They had a special late-night opening for "locals", for which I just about qualified, mainly to allow us to see the exhibition of glass installations, most of which can be found among the plants in the greenhouses. My favourite installation was hanging from the ceiling of the Temperate House -- a large cluster of glass leaf shapes in flame colours. I was just in time to see it catch the evening sun. "But even after that, the best thing I saw on my visit was the dragon. I have never seen anything before that looked so alive." That is the first part of the exercise. We were not able to do the second part at the Grace service, but we have done it at a Gracelet meeting: A large drawing of a tree is required, and some leaves cut from green and brown paper and fruit cut from red paper. This is the point at which you discover the reason for the choice of colours. Each participant takes a leaf or fruit to represent each hope, fear or gift they mentioned, and any others they may have thought of, writes something on them if they want to, and puts them on the tree. The leader glues down the green and red shapes, but does not put any glue on the brown leaves. When the tree is complete, the leader prays, to dedicate everyone's hopes and gifts to God. Then the leader picks up the tree and allows all the brown leaves to fall off.