Retreat Topics Wanted

As I send my 6 year old daughter on the bus off to First Grade this morning in the cool late summer air, I recognize the need for my attention to swiftly shift from the post summer camp reflection to the intensive pre-retreat fall planning. Columbus Day, LaPorte and Almont Winter retreat are all on the horizon and it's time to start getting busy doing all the work necessary to make these great events happen. That means all the usual tasks involving finding staff, managing budgets, helping with travel, setting the menu and all the other details that go with pulling a teen retreat together. It also means getting flyers sent out to announce the retreat. But before I can do that - I need to lock down the topic for each of these retreats. This is where you come in. This is your chance to help me and also get answers to questions that may be stirring inside your head. What do you want to learn about? Please let me know your thoughts and ideas. You can email them to me, call me or respond with a comment to this post. I want to know what you are interested in and I will try to either make your topic the next retreat theme or will otherwise work what you suggest into the program. Thank you so much for your input. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully seeing you this fall.

His Love Endures Forever

The August edition of the Chaplain's Corner by Pastor Dave, SCYL Chaplain (the third in a trilogy of truth, good and love)

We have looked at truth as pointing the way to good; we have looked at good as being truth expressed from the heart; our subject today is love. Love is the object of religion. Teaching the ways of love is what all Christianity is about. God is love itself. And religion is about a person’s relationship with God. When we let God into our hearts, we are letting love into our hearts. We only love truly when God is in us.

Love that motivates us to do anything. And when we are involved with what we love, we are in delight, enjoyment, and blessedness. So when we speak of love, we are also speaking of what gives us our delights and enjoyments. Take away our delights, and we will not want to do anything. Since love is what gives us our sense of delight, everything we enjoy is a reflection of love. So loving is doing and it is also giving and receiving love in an interpersonal way. So we are not abusing the word when we say that we love working on cars, or playing the piano, or preparing balance sheets for businesses. And we all recognize that when we are showing care and compassion for others in an interpersonal way we are also loving.

Consider the story in Luke 7:1-15. In it a so-called sinful woman shows her love for Jesus by washing Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with perfume. The Pharisee in this story is concerned with ritual purity, and would have refused the woman’s expressions of love. He thinks to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39). But what kind of woman is she? She is a woman brimming over with love. And it is this love that makes her other failings of no account. Sin is whatever blocks love, and this woman is filled with love for Jesus. Therefore Jesus can say, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much” (7:47).

I would ask you to take this story to heart. It seems to me to capture the nature of religious life. We have two people involved in a loving relationship. We have the woman showing love and we have Jesus accepting love. So we are called to give love and to become vulnerable enough to receive love from others. So in this Gospel story we have love in both its dynamics—giving and receiving. And we are taught to both give and receive. So may it be said of us, as Jesus says to the woman, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much.”

The Joy of Almont and Fryeburg Summer Camps

Almont Summer Camp is over now. It was an exhausting and beautiful experience. And, as you can see and hear from the video, it ROCKED! The large teen group (close to 20) made Almont so much more fun! 10 new people (9 teens, one adult) were initiated into the Survivors (the Almont teen group). The weather was perfect for most of the week and despite the vicious mosquitoes, we were able to spend much of our time outdoors. With around 120 campers most days, this was critical to maintaining camp spirit. The camp theme was King David. Chapels, lectures and classes were filled with interesting and intriguing discussions about his life.

Now Fryeburg Assembly is in the second week and the teen group here has also steadily increased. From the brief visits I have made, the teens are having a great time. The Saco river is open for swimming after being closed for high water most of the first week of camp. The first week theme was 40 days and 40 years and the second week is Path of Spiritual Growth Through Daily Life. I hope to visit more as Fryeburg camp approaches it's conclusion on August 16th.

Cody, Nina and Holly are three teens that were able to attend both Almont and Fryeburg camps this year. It's great to visit with them and get their opinions on the two experiences. They are very different camps, but also have much in common. Both offer an amazing opportunity to live in community with people of all ages seeking to learn, grow and play together in an environment of love to God and your fellow neighbor. I hope that all of you who were not able to attend either Almont or Fryeburg can visit one (or both!) of these camps next year and experience the excitement, energy and joy of summer church camp.

I hope to get a post on Paulhaven too, as although I have not attended for quite a few years now, I know what an incredible place and camp that is as well.

Off to Almont Summer Camp

Tomorrow I depart for Almont Summer Camp with my daughter Ava and teens Nina and Holly. This is my 45th consecutive year. We will be driving to Rochester, NY for an overnight with my cousins, then continue on to Almont to arrive sometime late Friday afternoon. I then pickup my wife Shelley and other daughter Zsa Zsa from the airport in Detroit on Saturday morning. This is an exhausting but extremely satisfying time of year for me. It is work and vacation, which is difficult to do. The busy camp days teaching the 7th - 9th grade class, trying to spend time with the teen group (called the Survivors) and playing with my family (immediate and extended) along with all the great conversations with friends wears you out. But spiritually, it is the most fulfilling week of my year. Church twice a day, lectures, class and wonderful discussions lead to a real time of enlightenment. I love Almont and am so happy to be introducing the summer camp to these two teens from Maine. I'm sure Nina and Holly will have great times with all of their SCYL friends. I'm also sure that they will share their experience with all of you, either here on this blog, in Clear Blue Sky or in person. But most of all, I hope they find the camp to be as meaningful and inspiring as I do and that they want to return year after year.

The Good of Life

The July edition of the Chaplain's Corner by Pastor Dave, SCYL Chaplain (the second in a trilogy of truth, good and love)

Almost every Christian sect talks about the need to be born again. This is Biblical, because Jesus says that we need to be reborn to enter the kingdom of God. For many Christians, this all happens in an instant when one accepts Christ as one’s personal savior. But for Swedenborg, actual personality change takes place. One’s ideas grow, and one’s actual emotions change, and a person’s motivations and intentions change. This cannot take place in an instant—that is if the change and growth is real. For Swedenborg, the process of rebirth begins in infancy and continues even to the very last days of life here, and even continually ever after in the next life.

Spiritual rebirth, then, is a lifelong process. It starts by our learning truth and doctrine from church, personal study, and experience. This stage in spiritual growth is especially evident in youth and early adulthood. Then, a person is delighted as he or she learns knowledge. Knowledge as an end in itself is the primary goal in this period of life. Later in life, one wants to learn about life and how to live better. At that stage, knowledge is acquired with the goal of living a better life. Truth tells us how to act and we are essentially doing truth, when we do good from what we know.

But there finally comes a time when we are doing good from a love for good. At this point, truth takes a secondary role. When we are so completely accustomed to doing good from practice and habit that it is second nature to us, we then act from our heart, not our head. We feel what it is to be good, and we do good because our heart tells us what it is to do good. This is a very advanced stage in spiritual growth. It comes late in life. Confucius describes this process almost identically with the way Swedenborg describes it. In The Analects of Confucius, we find,

The Master said, At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven. At sixty, I heard them with docile ear. At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right (Confucius, Analects, Book II, no. 4).

Heaven and Hell

At the end of Convention this year churches, groups and Associations put on short performances summarizing a work by Swedenborg. The SCYL was responsible for Heaven and Hell. Janice (lyrics/vocals) and Ethan (music/guitar) wrote an incredible original song about the afterlife and other members of the SCYL performed a skit to go with the song (starring Cody awakening in the afterlife; Nina as punk rock God; Rachel, Celie and Alice in a heavenly community; and Holly and Sam in a hellish community). Here are Janice's lyrics to the song and the video of the SCYL performance of Heaven and Hell.

I Will See You Soon

[Chorus]
No matter no matter who you've left behind.
They will join another time.
Say I will see you soon.

We are as we are.
Unchanged the same remains.
We are who we are.
Where we are is where we are.

Look at their insides.
Glowing with generosity.
Dazzling dancer won't you dance for no other.
Every pour sweats of beauty.
No they don't stray.

Chorus

In the darkness those who rebel.
Satisfied to be unsatisfied.
We wouldn't think they were happy but they are happy.
Happy to be unsatisfied.
They have a fight to fight
Revenge for their losses.
Vengeance for their pride.

Their was a little boy his heart filled with joyful sadness sick
and couldn't get out of bed.
He looked at his mother as she stroked his head.
Closed his eyes and was taken towards the sky.
Between two worlds he saw a whole new way of life.
Before him all his options.
A day in a new world another in the next.
Now he walks that path.

There was a little bit of everything there.
There was a little bit of everything.
There was.
Take this take that.
I love you I hate you thank you.
Which do you love.

Darkness and light both shine just as bright.
Morally which is in the right.
Which do you wish upon.
Which do you belong.

Chorus

I know I'm a little confused.
I know that this is something that I couldn't choose.
I know which I belong.
But do I fit.
This big question remains which do I have to take.
One day I'll break the struggle.
One day I'll be sure I touched the sky.

The most beautiful place within me.
Is where I will be.
This is my tranquility.
This is where I'm supposed to be.
So I say.

Chorus
Say I'll see you soon.

Convention 2009!

Wow. What can I say. These 5 days in Seattle were perhaps the best experience I have had with the SCYL teens since I began my position as youth director 8 years ago. Just an amazing time, with an amazing group. The talent, maturity and enthusiasm was remarkable. Fun outings, meaningful worship and accepting community. What more can I add? You teens were incredible at Convention. Thank you, each and every one of you for just being who you are!

Here's my memorable moments in no particular order (you can comment or email me with your own).

• The boat song and all Steve Mason did to help us write and perform it
• Rachel at the zoo - just so much excitement and joy
• The care you all took to try to help Jake in his wheelchair
• Disc at the Quad
• Listening to Ethan strum the guitar and solo (his disc throwing isn't bad either ;-0 )
• The pool table and the fish that Alex scares
• Seeing Mt. Rainier on the last day and watching the sunset color it red and orange
• The candid lunch discussion I had with some of the teens at the Ram
• The scary chain wall basement garage nightmare on elm st. thingy
• Riding planes with the teens. It makes delays so much more fun!
• Colors of the Wind trio - Nina, Celie and Alice
  
• Janice rocks - everything she does is golden. House of the Rising Sun, Heaven and Hell song she wrote and performed with Ethan's great guitar rhythm, "I will follow you into the dark" with Nina was raw and moving as always
• The EMP - my drum solo, hand drumming
• Watching the teen girl's fountain play to MJ's music
• The EMP security guard struggles to record Nina's hair color on the accident report
  
• Riding the buses and helping the deaf group find their way to UW
• The Limo ride to UW
• The heartfelt response and respect that so many adults shared with the teens
• Seeing Jake and Sam vote in the Presidential election
• Holly's quiet leadership and grace
  
• Cody on the bass
• Alex taking charge and stepping up whenever needed
• All the love, gifts and beauty that you shared with each other in community