Epistle from Pacific Yearly Meeting Middle School Group, 2009
Close your eyes. Feel the energy pulse, spiraling around the circle. Some energy tingles, chaotic and argumentative, some flows calmly, agreeing and joining in a harmony. This is how we have been this week, sometimes flowing together in a simple harmony, sometimes falling into a dissonance which creates arguments and then subsides into a team of energy with one goal: capturing a flag where we invented new strategies to annoy the other team.
Sometimes we calm ourselves, listening to a story, where we find hidden meaning, disguised under layers of words. We have danced and screamed, ridden in canoes over the pond where the lifeguards were kind and helpful. We learned to trust each other. We have woven rough edges into a piece of fabric: ripped in some places, maybe threadbare around the seams, but we now have a small piece of community.
The middle school program had a fun time all in all.
2 comments:
At the NPYM Annual Session, I overheard two fathers talking at a meal about how to answer the question "What does God look like?"
Does it bother or concern you that, for all the exuberance and wonderful vocabulary, this epistle contains no mention of God, holy presence, the Light, nary a whiff in any formulation of expressions about the Divine?
I've been sitting with this question for a while, RW. Thank you for asking.
Bother or concern me? No, I don't think so. I trust the people involved.
Is the lack of mention of God, the divine, holy presence, the Light, something to pay attention to? Yes.
Since my older son is now in this older group, it may be a nudge for me to be more involved next year.
I taught the younger group last year, and was parenting by myself most of the week this year, so I just volunteered a couple of times and that was my only involvement.
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