One Body in Christ… although some parts could use a shower

The birds start singing around here (in great numbers) at approximately 4:32 AM with great enthusiasm. The rest of the morning’s sleep time is accompanied by the music, and feels more like a nap for a person who is normally a light sleeper.

This fine Thursday morning, we again had two different morning prayer services happening simultaneously; one, in a praise & worship style led by Noelle and Joyce, (with a different twist than the one on Tuesday AM); and the other in the style of Taizé prayer. Since the praise and worship group was using the dining room of the lodge, we celebrated the Taizé prayer in the distant, rustic and weathered Niles cabin. With the forest visible through the windows behind the cross, it was OK to put up with the chilly temperature.

Even after four days of Camp, quite a few campers are showing high energy levels.

Every day at the end of breakfast, we hold some sort of ceremony or competition among the hoppers (table servers for a group for the day). This morning it was a 3-legged race, with the current hopper tied to the next hopper for that group. The competition was… well, I’d like to say something exciting, but the teams were all over the map. Only one pair (Olivia & Rose) came close to catching Jim and Drew, so the winners were quite clear. The pair pictured below were somewhere ahead of the middle of the pack.

In the morning presentation, the focus on being in community and sharing your faith was illustrated with scripture and a skit. The students were then sent out in groups led by YMCA staff to tackle problems that required team-building and group problem-solving. The photos below show some of a freeze-frame game, the goal of which was to move an object unseen. This required confusing and deceiving the YMCA person, who was “it”. Camper Valerie summed it all up in a very insightful quote: “It was better when there was pandemonium.” (The teamwork exercise required coordinated confusion.)

Wild Bill and Larry sang some tunes for and with the students at the end of lunchtime. Monday, they were songs about food. Tuesday, the songs were about friends. (Wednesday’s different, so guess what? We did something different that day.) Today’s songs were “oldies”. Here’s a shot of Wild Bill getting the students to make animal noises for the song “My Little Rooster”.

One of the afternoon workshops was on clown ministry… and the evidence was visible as balloon animals the students were taught how to make. A ministry of bringing smiles, at the very least.

Fr. Bill Zink joined us for our evening Mass and spoke during the homily about community. Is a sincere Christian community possible? He instructed that we just look at ourselves here… evidence that real community is possible. Here we are, from a variety of different parishes and cities, very different people from each other in many ways. Yet, here we are joined together in a community of faith and respect by our love for Christ. We are church. Or, as Fr. Bill said it, “Church ‘R’ Us”.

The evening activity was the variety/talent show. We had the gamut: in addition to playing instruments and reading poetry, there was also singing, dancing and comedy, and a couple that were combinations of singing/dancing/comedy rolled into one. Not only that, we had our own house band to play during the transition times of the show. Too cool.

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