International Easter Rally: Part 8 - Hummus, Castles and Potatoes

I awoke Tuesday morning to warm sunshine. What a beautiful week of weather. Every day sunnier and warmer then the one before.

Breakfast was wonderful. It opened with lots of coffee, then a hearty English breakfast featuring a new delight - potato waffles. These little squares of yumminess look just like waffles but are potato cakes with holes all the way through. I loved them and SCYL President Holly looked great through them too!

The UK teens led worship this morning. I loved the Bob Marley guitar prelude and the friendship service that they presented. Verses from Proverbs 27:1-14,17 were passed out to the group during worship and read. Songs about friendship were played. It was a very touching experience.

I led the morning session. I presented the four loves; love of self, love of worldly things, love of the neighbor and love of the Lord. Then I talked about how love combines with wisdom to drive useful actions. I mentioned how this concept of love, wisdom and use or in applied terms, desire, knowledge and works, applies to any intention or good. And then I explained that when a love becomes your ruling love or most important passion, it can take you to heaven or become corrupted and pull you into hell. I asked the group for a suggested ruling love and told them it could be anything at all. Cody spoke up and exclaimed, "Hummus!". I answered, "Okay. Fine. Let's use hummus as our love. Let's see how deep love for hummus, combines with profound wisdom and knowledge about hummus, to bring forth a meaningful (and tasty) action. We'll see how our hummus can end up being heavenly or hellish love depending on our intention and use." Then we went through and discussed love, wisdom, heaven, hell and community in terms of hummus. I'm not sure any of us will ever again be able to dip a pita chip into hummus in quite the same nonchalant way. It was fun and I hope it was enlightening and interesting to some of the teens in the group. We did not have a morning after-session workshop as we all needed to quickly pack up our belongings for the day and get ready to go to Warwick Castle!

We gathered outside in the late morning and loaded into vehicles for the one hour drive to the castle. We were all grateful that Andy Leather was able to borrow the large school van from the high school where he teaches. The large van allowed us to transport everyone. We arrived at Warwick Castle around noon, entered the grounds and gathered on the lawn outside the castle to eat our picnic lunch. I couldn't help but think of how peasants, princesses and knights, several hundreds of year ago sat out on this very field outside the castle ramparts and probably ate picnic lunches very much like ours. After lunch, everyone was set off to explore the castle on their own or in small groups. It was a glorious, warm, sunny day and it was great to just have free time to wander around the inner court, traverse the castle halls and passageways, and climb the spiral stairs of the towers. There were demonstrations of battling knights, birds of prey and the Arthurian tale of the sword in the stone. Kings, queens, princesses and peasants were in period costume milling around the castle chatting with visitors throughout the day. The whole afternoon was a delight and after a last stop at the gift shop for a chain mace to take home to my children, we loaded back into the cars and bus to head back to Purley for supper.

In the evening session we gathered to discuss what it feels like to be in a community or organization. We looked at qualities that define the members of a group and how people on the inside and outside of that group might view the members differently. We discussed Swedenborg's concept of how a society becomes more perfect as it is diverse yet united (Divine Providence 4.4).

The Tuesday night activity was a game Steve created called Lost Potato. Two teams crept out into the darkening dusk and collected hidden potatoes to deliver to their home base while sneaking around, running and dodging opposing team players attempting to steal away their potato treasure. When time was called, the team with the most potatoes at their base won. It was spud fun for all!

Abby, an exceedingly pleasant and intelligent teen from England, organized a beautiful vespers service in the chapel to close the evening. We all retired for the night feeling tired and fulfilled after a splendid day of new insight and discovery.