The Gift of All Ages

(this is an addendum to my post, "The Gift of Gray Hairs", of a couple of weeks ago).

Before becoming the associate pastor at my current congregation, I was fortunate to serve three small congregations in rural South Dakota.  I was there for about four years, and I never felt that I did anything big or spectacular there (but that's a subject for another post).  But I did some small things, and I learned a lot.

One of the small things that I did while I was there was think of a few "intergenerational events" that we could do as a parish.  I wanted to find activities that got the three churches together; I also wanted to get us out of our age-specific silos sometimes.  So one time the whole parish did a service project together,   youth and seniors and little kids -- we all served a meatball dinner at a place called "The Banquet" in Watertown.  We also once had a fellowship event, an "I Hate Winter" party one Sunday night at the pool in the nearest larger city.  (The "I Hate Winter" party had to be postponed once on account of a blizzard.)

I remember when the group was together at the pool on Sunday night, the lifeguard pulled me aside and said, "What kind of a group is this, anyway?"

"We're a church," I answered.

"I just don't see adults and children playing together very often," she said.

I thought about that for awhile.  In school, and in any number of enrichment events, and even in churches that have large and glitzy children's programs, children are segregated into into age specific groups.  There's a lot of wisdom in this.  Sometimes.  I mean, I know that children of different ages learn in different ways.  But I also have to ask:  if we are talking about faith formation, and if faith formation is important to us, how does that happen?

Certainly, faith formation happens in those age-specific groups where children are all bonding with others in their age group.  But I suspect that there is also a lot of faith formation that only happens when we form bonds with one another beyond our own generation.

Gray hairs are a gift -- that's the truth.  But in truth, in the body of Christ, every age is a gift, and we are meant to sing and pray and serve and play together.

And perhaps, when we do this, once in awhile, someone will even turn to us and say, "What kind of a group are you, anyway?"

day off

Monday we took a short trip to Owatonna, stopped again at "Uncle Tom's Antique Mall" so that I could get a copy of an old book: "How to Take care of your Puppy" written in the 1940's. (It cost $1.00.) Now my dog is no longer a puppy (although people tell me she "looks younger" than 2). Possibly she is not well-behaved. If that is the case, the fault is more with us, and our lack of patience, than it is with her. She's a smart dog. She's always thinking of something to do. Monday afternoon when we came home we let her out in the backyard. She immediately went over to one of the downspouts to see if there were any chipmunks in there. There weren't. But she proceeded to disengage the downspout and drag it all over the yard.

This morning I didn't want to take her for her walk, due to severe lower back/leg pain. So I tried just letting her out in the back yard. At one point she found a ball and we played a few rounds of "fetch." Then I went in to sit down for just a minute or two. When I came back, she was digging a hole in one corner of the backyard. Her paws were BLACK. I was so mad I started to yell "Leave it" and ran toward her (which hurt). She thought that was a pretty fun game.

The other fun game is digging the hole, putting the ball in the hole, and then taking the ball back out of the hole. She'd do that forever. I personally don't get the appeal.

I sense that this dog has a lot more potential than our limited training time allows. But maybe that is just "Mom's pride"? No matter how frustratingly "doglike" she is, I still love her. All I have to do is look her in the eyes. She's always smiling, like she's saying, "Wasn't that fun?" She has no ulterior motives. She's not trying to make us mad, or late for work. She's just trying to have fun. A short trip to "Homestead Pickin' Parlor" is just as much fun as a trip to Duluth, or a trip to the dog park. And of course, for her, every day is a "day off."