Friends, I just sat back and realized how long it's been since I posted to City Pastor. Since my last post, I've buried my father, spent a week of vacation helping my mother, been to Cape Cod (know to locals simply as "The Cape" as if there were no other), and spent a busy month planning, revising schedules for Sunday School, Catechism studies, and our Wednesday community dinners. I've tried to build excitement about the New England Youth Gathering at Hammonasset park in Connecticut, and spent time working with the commissions and committees that are both in and out of my portfolio. All in all, I'd say the sabbatical of my colleague has been a smooth, but tiring process. Smooth because the many volunteers who have pulled together to keep things running have been simply wonderful. I've been blessed with patient responses as I get up to speed on all the aspects of the parish that were less familiar before the sabbatical.
Right now, we're in the thick of a fantastic Vacation Bible School week. Our grade schoolers are with a team of counselors from Camp Calumet and our preschoolers are with a dedicated group of volunteers and junior counselors. The preschoolers are learning the seasons of the church year, dressing in a new liturgical color each day, making seasonal crafts, and I've been using my biblical storytelling talents to present a seasonal story each day that lifts up the core of the season. Getting ready for each day means coming in an hour early to work with my text and memorize (or refresh) the text in my head since I'm working without any written references. It's been exciting, and the puppets and visual aids that Ruth, our summer intern made for the storytelling time have been excellent.
It will be such a radical change of pace next week when I head to WPI to work on the Campus Religious Center and the 70 energetic bouncing kids are all back at home. Ah, the sound of silence.
