Fall Follows Summer, oh my . . .

Were you among those from UCM who enjoyed Unicamp, near Wasaga Beach, Ontario, this summer? Or did you venture to another Unitarian Universalist summer institution such as Star Island or Ferry Beach on the New England coast, or Unirondack, near Nyack, NY? Each place has its beauty, traditions, spirit of life and fun! Each exudes that special feel of a dedicated group working together to build a beloved community based on UU principles. Other programs meant to deepen our sense of being UU and to grow lay leadership are CUUL School and the youth equivalent Goldmine -- both very structured, yet also enormously fun! (both programs currently being updated). Beyond the specific UU world there are also wonderful learn-and-share places like the Chatauqua Institution in western New York (with lineal descendants across the continent), or Omega, in the Hudson valley. Of course there are also yoga, fiddle, wilderness, singing and sports camps. Myriad ways in which our ever-inventive fellow humans seek to create an ideal, loving, knowledge-, skills- and growth-promoting environment. At all these grand places, all kinds of people -- from "lions" to "lambs" -- explore dwelling together, coming together for a brief time, briefer than we might in our more permanent homes. Over the decades I have participated in many of these temporary "homes," for longer or shorter spells. Lately I have been struck by how much common ground there is among these summer communities, despite variations of theme, cost or location. Attendees share the summer weather and the desire to foster our best selves, our biggest dreams of new abilities or adventures, and optimal relationships with one another and the natural world. From the time my children were small and into their teens, our family would spend an annual ten days or more at NeeKauNis, a Quaker camp on Georgian Bay in central Ontario. Over that period we experienced different groupings of camp programs like "Family Camp" (predominance of small children), or "Community Camp" (including singles as well as three generation family groups), or camps for pre- or young teens. Often I helped direct one or another -- a mixed bag job, rather like being a D.R.E.! All the camps shared a relaxed pattern to our summer days: some self-created programming, three wonderful meals prepared by a head cook (many years that was me!) with a raft of volunteers, waterfront time to swim, canoe or sail, and every morning after chores, a half hour of meeting for worship. We sat on the hill above Georgian Bay, immersed in nature and silence, and often there was spoken or sung ministry to amplify our joyful sense of community. In my book, The Heron Spirals, I recount one such camp experience: "...watching some little children play quietly nearby, I thought about the way the camp experience nurtures them all, how we all share the parenting. Next, I pondered the question of whether my husband and I had ever fully allowed, let alone truly encouraged, each other to stretch ourselves to be our most whole selves. I thought we seemed to have succeeded with our son and daughter, but hardly ever as partners.      Then I felt a prayer rise in me, that we adults may help each other, and each young one especially, stretch his or her wings fully, that we not inhibit, but enhance one another. I felt this longing very deeply, and wide-winged heron images flooded my mind, almost as if they were surrounding me in Spirit, vividly present although not physically visible." Years later, reading Marriage and Other Acts of Charity by Kate Braestrup, the Unitarian Universalist chaplain and author, I found these words: "Love really has just that one absolute, implacable demand, ...to desire the achievement of wholeness by the beloved." I trust your summer has been rich with your own sense of wholeness, wherever you have spent it! I look forward to working with our children, youth and Religious Education staff and volunteers as we, too, grow in wholeness. P.S. My own summer has had many wonderful heron, "camp" and book moments of wholeness, following all the support this community offered me in June --and before! For copies of The Heron Spirals: A Commonplace Book, please contact me.