Camp Counselors and a Prayer for VBS

We have camp counselors sleeping in our storm ravaged cottage.  One of them was here 2 years ago--I had this moment of staggering loss when I thought about how different everything was 2 years ago before Hurricane Irma came and put almost a foot of water in the cottage where it stood for days.

I feel like I shouldn't feel this loss.  At some point, I may look around and say, "Hey, our main house is better now.  The hurricane damage forced us to get on with what we needed to get done in terms of house renovations."  But it's hard to imagine getting the cottage repairs complete.  I have hopes that at some point I'll look up and say, "Hey, we finally did this."

I say that the cottage is just fine for the counselors.  It's clean, and although the walls are lined with boxes, there's space to sleep and space to sit.  It's better than the tents they might have slept in at other camps.  It's better than the cabins with campers in some ways.

Two years ago, the cottage had a TV.  This year, we haven't replaced the TV yet.  Will we?  My spouse thinks it needs a TV; he worries that counselors will be bored out there.

The camp counselors are here because they're leading our Vacation Bible School.  Let me remember that they're not here for a resort vacation.  I have a vision that their days will exhaust them.  My spouse, as I said, thinks they may get bored or feel pushed away out there.

Last night while I was waiting for them to arrive, I thought about my own family of origin and all the times we had college kids stay with us.  I remember when I was in 5th or 6th grade, a chorale group from a Lutheran college came to give a concert, and students stayed with the various members of our congregation.  It was the first time that I remember hearing about college and feeling like I couldn't wait for that time period.  Before that, as I played with dolls, I imagined the future in terms of a husband and children.

It is also the first day of Vacation Bible School.  Let me compose a prayer for the start of VBS:

Nurturer God, please be with our VBS this week:  the children, the counselors, the other workers, the parents who entrust their children to us.  Let the work be full of good fruit.  Let the play be peaceful.  Let us all have a glimpse of your Kingdom, as it will be, as it can be right now.

Broken but Beautiful

Brokenness surrounds us.

Even when we place our cemeteries away from sight, death haunts the landscape.

But again and again, our sacred texts remind us that brokenness can be transformed into beauty.

Nature reminds us of the transitory nature of life.

Even when we can't see with the full spectrum of light, let us remember the full range of beauty that we can embrace.

A Prayer for a Time of Transition

I began this morning as I usually do by scrolling through my Facebook feed.  I have been trying to start the day differently, getting back to the Liturgy of the Hours, using the prayer books by Phyllis Tickle.  The past year discombobulated my routines.  I need to get back to a better routine.

But I'm not there yet, so back to me this morning scrolling back through my Facebook feed.  I came across a post from a pastor friend who is leaving his position at the national headquarters of the Lutheran church (ELCA) to become bishop of the Southeastern Synod.  He's not only going through a major job change, but also moving from Chicago to Atlanta.

From a distance, I see this all as marvelous and exciting.  This morning, he posted this prayer that he feels he should be praying every hour:

“O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
When things are going well, we need this kind of prayer--and of course, when things aren't going well, we need this prayer.

And it's good to be reminded that everyone has a life that includes good elements and difficult elements, and it can all be scary.  It's good to have a prayer like this one.

Celebrating Independence

Today, while there is still time before cooking, before parades, before fireworks, let us think about the meaning of this holiday that celebrates independence and the birth of the U.S.

If we don't live in a place that has preserved colonial history, or if we live further west, Independence Day may seem a distant holiday. But today is a good day to remember the high stakes that those signers of the Declaration of Independence faced. It's good to remember how much they valued the idea of freedom, even if they didn't extend those freedoms to all.

It's a good day to think about what liberties we hold most valuable. Those signers pledged their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor--what would you pledge?

You might think that the freedom to practice my spiritual faith is most important to me, and I do value that. But having access to information might be even more important to me. If I had to choose my favorite right from the Bill of Rights, it might be freedom of the Press.

I like the ability to read just about anything that comes my way. But maybe the ability to create is even more precious to me. Unlike Chinese artists, I don't have to worry about being arrested and sent to jail.  I am concerned about the poet who was arrested after he read a protest poem, but I'm heartened by the groups that are advocating on his behalf.  I have faith that the Bill of Rights will prevail--faith mixed with a bit of fear that rights will be stripped.  But that fear is a good thing--it shows that people are raising alarms and not just sitting idly by.

I like the freedom of movement we have in this country--granted that's not a freedom that we find enshrined in our founding documents. But the other freedoms lead to that freedom of movement--both physical movement and the movement of our minds.

I like being able to follow the path, wherever it leads. I want to leave some light as I go along to lead a way to others.

Let us also remember those who are not so lucky.  Today let us pray for those who are oppressed by tyranny of any kind. Let us pledge allegiance to our God who sets us free.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, July 7, 2019:


First reading and Psalm
2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30

Alternate First reading and Psalm
Isaiah 66:10-14
Psalm 66:1-9

Second reading
Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16

Gospel
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Whenever I'm part of a church that's trying to figure out how to repair the building, I think of this passage, of this early mission that Jesus gives his followers. He doesn't say, "Go and build a building. Make the sanctuary look like this, and have an education wing with classrooms that your pre-school can use during the week. Make sure to have a kitchen so that you can have pot-luck dinners with ease. Make the bathrooms handicapped accessible, and have one bathroom that's not gender-specified so that transgender people will feel at ease. Have diaper changing stations in both the male and female restrooms. Have this kind of playground equipment."

I've seen many Christians and churches returning to this passage recently, wondering if the early mission of the Church should be our mission. Should we leave our church buildings and go out into our neighborhoods? Perhaps we should abandon our church buildings altogether and meet in bars or coffee shops, all the better to meet the inhabitants of our communities.

Or maybe we should make churches more like the types of Sunday activities that compete with us:  church as brunch!  

Or maybe it's time to stop thinking so much and return to our roots.  We need to deliver the good news that God loves us, that the perfection of creation has begun, the Kingdom is breaking through.  We have many ways to deliver that message. 

I think of this idea each year as I witness Vacation Bible School. I see children who aren't interested in church as grown ups offer it, but who LOVE Vacation Bible School. I know more than one parent who goes from church to church so that the child can repeat the wonderful experience of VBS. I know children who love VBS so much that they bring their closest friends.

What would happen if we felt about our faith the way that children felt about VBS? Would it be easier to go out into our communities to tell people what's going on behind our church walls?

More than once, I've said, why can't we make regular church more like VBS, so that people want to come year round?

Here, too, I see a variety of Christians wrestling with these questions. We will see a variety of answers, as we continue to try to discern how to let our lights shine brightly in the wilderness of the wider world.

Resistance and Self-Care

Like many people, I am quite concerned about the fact that my nation is holding immigrants in substandard facilities.  As I typed that sentence, I thought about how I had sanitized my language.  We can argue about what to call them, but the facts seem clear:  these facilities weren't designed to hold as many people as they're holding, and they were designed for the single men who used to be the primary people who crossed the border illegally.

I have been most concerned about how we're treating children, but it doesn't sound like anyone is being treated humanely in these facilities. 

I could list lots of suggestions for how I would do it if I was in charge, and you've probably seen them floating around, everything from sending children to stay at a Disney resort or sending them to church camps to having more lawyers so that asylum claims can be processed more efficiently to just sending people back to building an impenetrable wall--and you've probably seen other suggestions that are much more cruel.

I am not in charge, and I've not seen much evidence that the people in charge are interested in any ideas that we may have.  I know that the people on the ground are overwhelmed.  As with many of the policies coming from this administration, I'm not convinced we have an overarching policy so much as reactions to situations.

So I've been doing what I always do in these situations where I can't really do much to change the policy.  I've prayed.  It may not do much good.  But I do believe that God has a much larger vision than our human vision, and I also believe that in a universe set up on principals of free will that God can't act unless we ask.

I have also given money to a Lutheran group that walks with unaccompanied minors through their journey in the U.S.  I like this group, but there are many worthy groups. 

I am also working on not shutting down.  I know that the danger of the times we live in, and the fact that I have some protection from the times we live in, is that I might stop seeing what's happening.  I might stop protesting.  I might shut down my heart.  I might turn a blind eye to what's happening because it's not happening to me.

That process of not shutting down takes many forms.  My creative practices help me stay open to the distress but not immersed in the chaos of the emotions.  Last week, I wrote a poem that led to a sonnet.  And yesterday, I decided to try a crown of sonnets.  I wrote a second poem with this first line, which is the last line of sonnet #1:  Or maybe this time we will hold the evil ones at bay.  Sonnet #2 ends with this couplet:  I leave the modern news cycle for reading a bit more slow / The U.S. Constitution, Bonhoeffer, and Thoreau.

I have written most of sonnet #3 in this cycle.  I haven't figured out the last couplet, but once I do that, I plan to write sonnet #4.  Let's see how long I can do this. 

I am also working on creating beauty that has little to do with acts of resistance.  That seems important too.  Yesterday I realized that one of the butterfly plants has caterpillars on it:

I did some research and realized that we should have monarch butterflies if all goes well.  I have such joy--the joy that comes from observing nature in action, which I don't do that often.  It's also the joy of doing simple research to find out information--I couldn't remember the life cycle of the butterfly, and instead of berating myself, I simply looked it up.  I have that joy since childhood, the joy of figuring something out.

It's become clear to me, as I look at not only the state of politics in the U.S. but also at the larger state of the world, that we're going to need to practice resistance for awhile.  It's important to stay observant and engaged, but it's also important to take care of ourselves for the long haul.  Future generations need us to not burn out or tune out or become too disabled to do the work that must be done.

Different Approaches to Camp

We spent part of the time this week-end reclaiming the cottage.  We have needed to do that, but it's a project that's taken on some urgency, since we have some camp counselors coming to run our Vacation Bible School.  They'll arrive on July 7.  My project for the week-end was to make sure they have a place to sleep.

I've been thinking about this phenomenon of sending camp counselors out into the world to bring the camp experience to children who can't get away to camp for any variety of reasons.  I've been wondering why we don't do that for adults.

Of course, it's only been recently that church camps started giving retreat experiences to adults during the non-summer season.  Maybe eventually we'll see counselors who bring the retreat experience to adults who can't get away.

I doubt it because sending counselors out to adults would not be cost effective.  It only takes a few adults to run an adult retreat program.  Having teams that traveled would not be something that most camps would do.

Could there be a career possibility here?  Camps can't do this, but perhaps a different kind of company could do this?  Could it be part of a spiritual director practice?

We spent some time this week-end talking about what to do with the cottage eventually.  I've wondered if people might spend money to come have a monastic retreat.  We offer a cottage that doesn't have a TV or Internet:  imagine how much writing or meditating one could do with no distractions!

I've also thought of having retreat options for different pricing structures:  a session with a spiritual director or a selection of art supplies or a workshop, complete with new people to meet.  Maybe include meals/food for extra money.  Or the retreatant provides the shopping list in advance, and we do the shopping.

It feels like we are a long way away from a time when we can offer anything at all.  But I've been wrong before.  Let's get the place more workable for the camp counselors first.