Summer Camp

Well, this is shaping up to be a somewhat difficult week. I am at Camp Stoney, where the diocese of Rio Grande holds its summer camps. The camp is a good ministry, but I am reminded once again that I don't really do well with Summer camps. I have never enjoyed silly activities, and while I know that they shouldn't, it just makes me uncomfortable to do goofy songs with hand motions (e.g. a blessing, complete with shark fin hand motions, to the Jaws theme music).
Again, I know that everyone is doing it, and it's just for fun, but I still get embarrassed. It's an introvert thing. Camp was not designed for introverts.
Besides which my ritualist tendencies just make me cringe at worship music like "Drop Kick me Jesus." I might enjoy camping if we were doing actual wilderness activities, but that is not really how summer camp works.

One of the serious challenges is that I am not sure exactly what my position here is - I am not a counselor, but I am about the same age as the counselors and I am not clergy. I think my main job is to observe the ministry being done, and learn what I can from it. I know there will be a lot of times in ministry when I don't know exactly what is expected of me, so this too, is a learning experience.

This week they are doing "Grace Camp."
The ministry of Grace Camp is a good one, and I am glad to get to see it. The kids are almost all from difficult backgrounds, many of them with one or both parents currently incarcerated. They are good kids, and I am glad that they have a place where they can come, and just be told about how much Jesus really does love them. To my surprise, I rather like working with the kids.

I am also trying to keep up with my other work, researching Churches, writing the pastoral care manual for St. James and calling people I need to call.
This Thursday, if all goes well, I shall be meeting with the bishop. I am looking forward to getting to talk with Bishop Michael, and I think it will be a good conversation.

My reading list continues to go well and to grow. I have numerous people telling me about books I should be reading, which makes it difficult to keep up. I have finished The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse 5 and The Celebrant, a novel about the Martyrs of Memphis. The Martyrs were Anglican Nuns and priests who stayed in Memphis in the late 19th century to treat the sick and dying during one of the cities periodic yellow fever outbreaks. This last novel was particularly moving because the Sisters of St. Mary, now reside in my home diocese of Albany.
I am now reading Philip K. Dick's book Valis. PKD was a fascinating writer, but you can tell that he was beyond mere eccentricity and into insanity by the time he wrote Valis. The book is mostly auto-biographical, and what is fascinating is how self aware he seems to have been about his mental illness. He seems to have know that whatever the nature of his religious experiences (which are at the center of the novel), they were mixed with a heavy dose of mental illness, but he does not seem to have been able to sort out what was insanity and what was something more.
For those of you who don't know much about PKD, here is a link to R. Crumb's comic book bio of him. I am not a big fan of Crumb, but this is an entertaining way to get the background on PKD's stories.

I will be writing some more theologically oriented reflections, occasioned by interesting conversations I have had. But those reflections will take a bit more time to formulate, and for now, my time is limited.
Pax Tibi