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A Julian Reflection by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy Silly me. Looking forward instead of looking back. I write this having just returned from participating in the "parish fun weekend" at Camp Stevens in Julian. Twenty-six adults and children - ranging in age from just turned 3 to just turned 60 (that would be me) - gathered in the pristine beauty of the San Jacinto mountains for a "time away." When I instituted this weekend some years ago, my goal was to encourage parents to consider sending their children to Christian summer camp. As a product of several summers at Camp Claggett in Buckeystown, Maryland - first as a camper and later as a C.I.T. (Counselor-in-Training) and then as a counselor and still later as a "resource staff person," I knew of the great value of Christian formation beyond Sunday morning. It is my suspicion that if young people have a firm foundation of worship, Sunday school, acolyting, Christian summer camp and an occasional service project beyond themselves (see the accompanying piece in this "Ebb and Flow" on "Corazon"), that after they drift away from Church in their later high school and college years, they will come back. They will return when they have children of their own; when their parents die, when they themselves are diagnosed with a dreadful disease - some life changing event or circumstance will send them reaching for an anchor of hope in an indifferent world. They return - if not to this particular parish then to some other oasis of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, seeking that sense of belonging and of being "at home." My goal was prospective. But hear this. During the weekend, we gathered around a campfire to sing songs, to tell stories and to roast s'mores (If you don't know what this is, count yourselves lucky. Suffice it to say that eating more than one can be dangerous). As we sat in the glow of the fire, one of the children asked me to tell "the bloody finger story." I frankly was mystified by this request and allowed as much: "I don't think I told you that story - are you sure it was me?" She replied: "Oh yes, it was when the twins (her younger brother and sister) were four years old." That was two years ago. Another young person asked for the story about the "bloody claw." I remembered that one but declined out of regard for the two 3 year olds in the group (it is bloody). She then proceeded to tell the story herself with a gentle humor that was amazing as the younger children hung on every word and as they sat enraptured in the telling. She told it so much better than could have I. We sang together: "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza" and one of the children told me that when she was feeling a bit sad or lonely, she ran through that song in her head and it cheered her up. The point is simple. These young people are building memories and traditions together with their peers and with their parents that will last a lifetime. Far too often, when we speak of the children in the parish, we say of them that they are the future of the church. What we mean by that is that we will take them seriously when they are adults (when they come back after their rebellion). But if we open our hearts and our imaginations, we'd realize that they are full members now of the Body of Christ, with gifts to give and to receive. Those families who come year after year may be thinking of their children's futures in the church - possibly - but they are more likely celebrating Christ's presence in the community of children - and of adults - now. One of the mom's spent Friday morning in the emergency room as the result of a spider's bite which went south fast. As I spoke with her on the phone as we were leaving that afternoon for Julian, I expressed my regret that her family could not be with us this year; to which she replied: "Oh, we're still coming. We'll drive down instead of riding the bus in case I get ill and then my husband can drive me to the emergency room. This is too important to my daughter to miss it." (A sacrificial and even risky love of a parent for a child.) Some of our children have made friends for now; others may make companions for a lifetime. What a joy and a privilege to see the world as a little child does: the silly gait of a flock of turkeys who stroll through the grounds in the early dawn foraging for food or the still-life stare of a shy deer in the woods or the tantrum of an angry child who five minutes later is laughing. Jesus said that unless we become like such as these little ones, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. I glimpsed in Julian, ever too briefly, what that means as a three and a half year old climbed up into my lap for a snuggle and again, when our children effortlessly composed and read at the closing worship some of the most sensitive of prayers, including one petition that thanked God "for the hope of the camp staff to rebuild again after the terrible fire of last year." (We had been the first group on the grounds after a devastating fire last fall that nearly destroyed the Camp and got to celebrate with firefighters and townspeople, God's mercy and grace in the midst of loss and fear). To build again. To see again. To simply "be" again - such was Julian for me this year. Copyright © 2008 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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