Children help spiritually enrich community

It was a Sunday morning in July at a very busy summer camp, United Methodist Camp Mechuwana in Winthrop, just outside of Augusta.

My middle son and I had driven downstate on Saturday morning to collect my oldest, who had been cooking over campfires for a week on one of the rustic “Outpost” camp experiences.

We did his laundry, got a couple of good meals into him, and took in a Sea Dogs game, complete with fireworks. Then we went back to the now-empty cabins for a good night’s sleep before the next week’s camp was to begin.

On Sunday I was up early. Even though I wasn’t preaching, pastors have a natural rhythm of stress built into their Sundays that can’t be easily extinguished. So it was that I was sitting on a picnic table by lakeside, watching two loons make their morning rounds as the sun came up over the hill that shelters the still, glassy Lower Narrows Pond.

Usually, the early-morning quiet at camp is soothing and awe-inspiring, and it was just so that morning. One of the loons, curious about the strange shape on the beach perhaps, surfaced unexpectedly 20 feet away, and in the morning stillness I could hear him breath out and in before diving again to find something more interesting to look at.

Despite the beauty of that moment, there was a current of “not rightness” that rippled underneath it all.

Finally, it occurred to me that it was late enough that the cathedral-like trees ought to be echoing with the shouts of campers by now, walking bleary-eyed to the bathrooms, toothbrushes in hand, catching a quick shower before breakfast, or posturing for one another at the campfire ring, where cabin groups meet up before walking to the commons.

This being Sunday, however, there were no throngs of hungry teens, no flashing wheelchairs from the special needs campers, no scuffing of sandals in the dirt while making time with a cute redhead who happened to sit next to someone at dinner the night before. There was just quiet, not unlike the disturbing quiet in an elementary school on the first morning of summer vacation.

It made me think about the movement of generations that has been so much discussed lately as a matter of public policy. Among Maine’s 1.3 million residents, the median age as of the 2000 census is 38.6 years (compared with 33.3 years in California or 32.3 years in Texas).

The truth is that we’re older, that our younger generations are joining in the great national mass migration to urban and suburban centers. Some will explore the economic, social or educational implications of such a shift, but is there not also a spiritual dimension to such changes? What does it mean to people of faith when children become a decreased percentage of our population? What does it mean for adults to age without the presence of children to inspire them?

Certainly one of the signs of a healthy church has traditionally been the presence of children, not only because those children will grow up and take their place in the pews as adults, but because children need to be cared for: fed, taught, included, protected and loved. Doing such work shapes adult souls in the compassionate ways of God, keeping spirits young no matter how one’s joints, muscles or back may feel on any given day.

A friend and colleague described recently how her church had commissioned “Sunday grandparents”: men and women, all retirement age and older, who have agreed to sit with and be responsible for the growing numbers of children who come to their church without parents.

It is probably one more example of how the “greatest generation” continues to carry the load for our society, but it is also a marvelous story of a people in mission. Rather than proclaiming that children’s ministry is someone else’s responsibility, that they have “done their time” when it comes to kids, these folks have been inspired by the needs of society’s most vulnerable and stepped up to the plate in ways that are bound to enlarge and bless their souls even in their later years.

Yes, we are older as a state, but thankfully there are still plenty of kids around (23.6 percent of us, to be precise), in whose lives even small expenditures of effort can make a huge difference.

Volunteering at summer camp, reading in a local classroom or library, donating time and money to vacation Bible schools, church schools and after-school programs, and staying vigilant against abusers can all improve the lot of children in our state, without whom our communities would be spiritually impoverished.

My quiet moments by the lake were precious and inspiring, but how great it was just a few hours later to hear the calls and whoops and delighted screams of children at play, to see the placid lake stirred up by their cannonball dives and scissor kicks, and to know that God continues to have need of “old souls” to be in ministry to the young.

The Rev. Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., is a United Methodist pastor in Presque Isle and a brother in the Order of St. Luke. He may be reached via tlbphd@

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