Today marks the beginning of Creation Care Camp at our church. The program, a four-day day camp for elementary school children, began last year after a break from summer programs due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A year ago, we were still wearing masks in our building and the children word masks for all indoor activities except snack time. A lot has changed in a year.

This year, the camp is centered around four themes of our congregation’s all church read: “Speak with the Earth and It Will Teach You” by Daniel Cooperrider. Those themes are Rivers, Mountains, Trees, and Clouds. In our camp we are exploring the themes in reverse order due to the availability of themes presenters. Today we start with clouds. The children will participate in a variety of activities including art, music and movement, and theme engagement with special presenters every day. Part of my responsibility will be teaching a yoga position for each day. I’m no expert in yoga, but I do practice poses and sometimes being responsible for the overall program means stepping up to fill in when another leader is not available. One of the things Susan and I have always said to one another is, “We’ll make it work.” And we will.

I’m excited about the week to come. We have 23 children registered and a great cohort of leaders. Our cloud presenter is an active sailor who has a wealth of knowledge about winds, weather and clouds. Our mountain presenter has summited peaks all over the world and has significant technical climbing skills. Our tree presenter is a retired forester who also brings years of experience teaching gardening skills to children. And on our final day, we will have people from a salmon recovery group presenting on river and stream restoration. The team of artists leading the artwork promises wonderful projects. We have an original theme song composed for the week and music leaders who are very experienced with working with children.

And most of all, we have children. Throughout our careers, one of the deep joys of our work has been working with children in the area of faith formation. Forming faith is always a process of developing significant relationships and having the ability to witness children as they grow and mature is a special privilege for us.

Yesterday’s plan was for a kickoff event in our children’s garden. That event was altered slightly to include a celebration of our time as Interim Ministers of Faith Formation. There was a party with sandwiches, cupcakes (with gummy worms on them) and ice cream bars. There were gifts from the congregation and a large basket of cards.

Over supper last night we read the cards. They are deeply meaningful and it was a real treat to have such a variety of hand-written greetings from members of the congregation. We were touched by the words and ideas that were shared.

Among the fun cards were those written by children. We’ve had the opportunity to witness a significant part of the growing of many of them. Two years produce a lot of changes in young ones. Some of those who wrote us cards weren’t able to write a couple of years ago. Now they can express themselves well in words, even if they still employ a bit of creative spelling. We couldn’t help laughing over the card that I’ve used as an illustration for this journal entry. From our point of view, our interim position didn’t involve “many years.” It was only two. But things look different to a young person. And working on weekends is such a part of all of our working lives that we didn’t see it from the perspective of sacrifice, but the sentiment expressed in the card is precious. I haven’t included the signature line in this setting as I make it a practice not to include identifying information of children on social media of any kind.

Among the other joys of our time working at First Congregational Church of Bellingham are the memories that we have. We have had some really fun times teaching and working with children and families. I have especially enjoyed the process of facilitating small groups. A wise teacher once challenged me to write a prayer for each class I taught. His challenge was more than “say a prayer.” He suggested that taking time to write out a prayer forces a teacher to think about the particular class in an important way. Remembering to encourage spiritual growth helps shift the focus from the transfer of information or content to be learned to a more essential part of faith formation. Writing is a discipline with a particular focus. During my time as part of the church staff here, I have continued that practice - a practice that was reinvigorated when I hosted a daily prayer vlog at our congregation in Rapid City. Writing prayers has been an important spiritual discipline for me.

For the next four days, I have plenty of prayers to write. In addition to our Creation Care Camp, I will be meeting with two small groups of adults this week. It is a fitting group of activities and practices for our last week of formal employment before we retire once again.

A week from today we have a scheduled exit interview with the personnel committee of the church. They gave us a list of questions to consider in preparation for that interview. One of the questions is “what would you change if you could?” My first reaction was, “nothing.” I have really appreciated the whole of our time working at the church. What surprises me, however, is that if I could I would change the end date of our time. I would continue with this work. I didn’t know how coming out of retirement would feel, but it was wonderful. I can imagine myself working in such a position for at least another decade. My health is good and meaningful work is a blessing.

That, of course is not an option for us in this work. But after the end of this month, when we’ve had a few days to rest, I know I’ll be open to what might come next. There are no prospects on the horizon at the moment, but I suspect something will turn up.

After all, we are willing to work weekends.