The Great Summer Spiritual Explore

I’ve been invited, no more like strongly nudged by circumstances to take a close look at how I personally view and engage worship and summer Christian Education experiences. In this experience I have found both great blessing and great discomfort. The blessing has been in the freedom I have found in doing the not expected and getting creative. The discomfort from my own awareness of my inner reaction being the classic but that’s not what’s expected/done/how I grew up doing things mantra. What quickly followed was the wave of clergy-mommy guilt.

The old that’s not what’s expected and guilt stuff came on strong just as summer hit and I realized this clergy parent was not sending her daughter to church camp or VBS.  Yes I know – OH THE SHAME OF IT! The reality was that our summer schedules were just not aligning right. Also my daughter really, REALLY wanted to go to the familiar county parks and rec day camp she attended last year and had so much fun at. I honored her choice, because it was her choice to make. We could have done a VBS, but wisdom and child choice once again prevailed and we let her choose to not go and keep the summer schedule much simpler. 

Then hit the guilt – what good clergy mom lets her kid skip all the summer Christian formation experiences available?! A wise mentor stepped in and set me straight saying so what – do it differently, do it yourself at home. What freedom in those words. And so began our journey together figuring out what Christian formation topics she wanted to explore in the living, breathing community of the world she engages on a daily basis.  VBS became not just a one week adventure, but a summer long daily exploration.

As our summer formation began our church also changed where it was meeting, the day and the time.  We have temporarily combined with another congregation of a different denomination helping them start an alternative worship. With this has come a worship experience that is different from her norm. Some things are the same and yet some things are very different to accommodate the traditions of the congregation our church is partnering with.  All of this put together, I am finding, is very good.

I have been blessed to be forced to put aside my personal and perceived public expectations and create something that has become life giving for my family.  We have become freer to say no to things that just complicate the schedule.  We have become freer to say yes to serving and mission opportunities that we are excited about. Life has slowed down enough that I feel room to sit down and read, study and discuss the bible with my child giving her space to ask her own questions and give voice to her own thoughts.

Being in a combined faith community has opened me up to experiencing new faith traditions, to helping my daughter to see that there is more than one way to experience and do worship. I am excited about what this summer holds for us spiritually and where the journey might take us.  So like Winnie the Pooh, we are going on an explore, not knowing exactly where we are headed, but trusting blessing is waiting at the end and that God is present in this entire adventure.

Coming into the Family of God

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that I was participating in a discipleship class with my daughter. Only I was not leading the class, I was present as my daughter’s mentor. Each day we had a bit of reading and discussion from the book we were using, “Baptism Ahead.” We met for five weeks with a two other kids and their parents. This has been a wonderful journey to be on with C. I am humbled to admit that it was not only C that learned on this journey. I discovered that I too had much to learn. I had to learn to step back and let her guide me and by doing so we went to some amazing unintended places off the curriculum path discussing about diversity of our world and the image of God as male and female, to name a couple. I was blessed to hear some of her deepest thoughts and wonderings. I was also blessed to rediscover some of the simpler, pure, faith filled answers that can come only from the eyes and heart of a child. More than once in this time the phrase “and a little child shall lead them” came to mind. This preparation experience was a sacred meeting of the place where my role as mother meets my experience and training as clergy.

Even at the tender age of seven it became very clear that she had a deep understanding of what it means to be disciple and so I was not surprised when she told us that she was ready to accept Christ and be baptized. I found myself appreciating this at an even deeper level having been present to some of her innermost thoughts coming to this decision. What I was not prepared for was the way my soul jumped and sang with joy as she asked me to be the one to baptize her. Our church has a tradition of doing baptisms in a local lake and parents or important mentors being in the water with the baptism candidate and our pastor. We were to get the privilege of being the ones to do the baptizing. Even knowing this would be what would happen, it was nice to have C acknowledge that she wanted me to be an integral part of this sacrament.

Today we celebrated her baptism. Before we went to the lake we sat down as a family to give C a family blessing and equipping. Her Grammie and Boppa, my parents, gave her a Bible, my husband gave her a CD of music familiar to her from worship, and I gave her a cross that had been given to my mom, who gave it to me when I was in need of a cross. We each spoke words of why we were giving her these gifts, these tools for her faith journey. I spoke about how these were more than just gifts, but our way of equipping her for her ongoing path of discipleship.

Even at a young age, she gets the importance of ritual and how important this day is to her. This was deeply evident by her words in the car to the lake. She spoke about how excited she was to gain so many brothers and sisters in Christ. To hear her connect so deeply to this gaining of family gives me pause. To have such words of welcome and belonging being spoken by her reminds me of the many ways church has been family to me. Hearing it from her, nudges me to remember that more intentionally.

Standing in the water listening to the words of baptism I remembered the day my own father, also an American Baptist Pastor, baptized me and marveled at how I was blessed to do the same for my daughter. The ritual of baptism, as we practice it, is simple in and of itself. When you add the layers of family and church tradition, it becomes more than a simple ritual, it becomes a sacrament beautiful and life giving. The baptism began with our pastor speaking the words of baptism, my daughter making her profession of faith and my husband and I laying her back into the water and bringing her up out of the waters with a glowing, smiling face to the celebratory clapping and cheers of her church family who is so important to her. And much like Mary, I cherished all of these things in my heart.

The service concluded with communion. I was blessed to serve my daughter her first communion. I was even more blessed to be the first person she served communion to. To the accompaniment of Amazing Grace I watched her serve our church family communion with her other newly baptized brothers and sisters in the faith. I got teary and my heart grew just a bit more knowing I was once again in that holy place where my motherhood runs smack into my ministry. I am left with no deep theological thoughts, only deep, deep awe at the grace that runs so fully in this place.