Tag: summer camp

A Story About the Holy Spirit

Published on by Adam Thomas3 Comments

Sermon for Sunday, May 24, 2015 || Pentecost B || Romans 8:22-27

astoryabouttheholyspiritToday, on this day of Pentecost, I’d like to tell you a story about the Holy Spirit. It’s going to sound like a story about me, but if I tell it right, you’ll see that the Holy Spirit is the main protagonist of this little tale. The story takes place a stretch down River Road about three miles from the Middle of Nowhere, West Virginia.

The summer before my senior year of college saw me driving down this stretch of River Road toward Peterkin Camp and Conference Center, and my job as counselor. The first day of camp, about a hundred high schoolers descended on the camp, and strangely enough, their enthusiasm and laughter and hugs of reunion were unhindered by the lack of a cell phone tower within 50 miles. Right away I could see their love for the place in their wide expectant eyes as they queued up to turn in medications and decorate nametags. They loved Peterkin because they got to be themselves around other kids who also got to be themselves. Places where teenagers are unafraid of coming out of their shells are few and sacred. Peterkin was one of them.

We shared Eucharist every day of camp, and with each day the volume of our singing increased as the more reticent campers started joining in. By Friday, the passing of the Peace had reached epic proportions because everyone tried to hug everyone else. The service that day included special prayers for healing, and I volunteered to assist with the laying on of hands because I’d never done it before. After communion, I walked to the back of the chapel with the priest Zach and a pair of sisters, Kenan and Leigh. We circled a metal folding chair, and Zach beckoned the first camper towards us. I remember looking down at my hands, seeing the dirty fingernails and calluses cut by guitar strings, and wondering: “What are these supposed to do?”

The boy sat down, and Zach leaned in close. “My parents are divorced and I keep thinking it’s all my fault and I feel sad all the time.” The truth of the boy’s words startled me out of my self-centered musings about my hands. Here was someone hurting profoundly, with his whole world crumbling around him and misplaced shame eating him away. And yet he trusted the four of us to place our hands on him, to whisper words of healing, which would never make everything all better again, but maybe just maybe might allow him to breath with a bit more space and by God’s grace start letting himself off the hook.

As Zach dabbed oil on the boy’s head, I touched his shoulder, lightly, like I was testing a bruise. Doubt gnawed at the back of my mind: how am I qualified even to be standing here, let alone be expected to participate in healing? The self-centered feeling of inadequacy threatened to wash over me again, but then a prayer blossomed in my mind and in my heart, a prayer that I had no hand in writing. I exhaled slowly, and the Holy Spirit carried her words on my breath: “Lord, make him whole, make him holy, make him wholly new.”

This became my breath prayer. As the campers kept coming and coming, the Holy Spirit kept speaking these words through me and I prayed with a fervor I didn’t know I possessed: “Holy Spirit, fill me and flow out of me, down my arms, into my hands, and into these broken, beautiful boys and girls. Make me your conduit. Make me your vessel.”

Their need for healing was so great, these young people in so much pain: depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, eating disorders, the urge to cut themselves, feelings of abandonment, grief, loss… Lord, make her whole, make her holy, make her wholly new.

I kept asking the Holy Spirit to fill me to overflowing so she could spill out my fingertips and the campers could know the healing presence of God. When the service was over, the campers filed toward the dining hall, but we who had manned the three healing stations gathered around the altar and said a final prayer. As I backed away from the altar, I felt a tear moisten my cheek, then another and another. Suddenly, I was crying. I sat down in the second pew and just as suddenly, I was no longer crying. I was weeping. For twenty minutes, my chest heaved and fell, and I knew nothing but my ragged breaths and fat tears…and the truth.

God granted me exactly what the Holy Spirit had prompted me to I asked for – an abundance of that same Spirit, an excess, a proportion so much bigger than was meant for me alone. The tears puddling at my feet were the Holy Spirit spilling out of me. When the tears stopped, I noticed a hand on my back. Leigh, one of the sisters I had partnered with, had stayed behind and sat with me in silence. She had said nothing. She had not tried to hand me a tissue. She had let me weep, alone and yet not alone, laying her hand on me as we had done for the campers. Remembering that act of kindness still brings tears to my eyes.

I tell you this story because it taught me about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit does not come at our beck and call. We come at hers. We would be unable to ask for the Spirit’s help if she were not already helping us in the asking. Paul speaks this truth to the church in Rome: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

At Peterkin, the Holy Spirit made her presence known in my life, and I fervently hope in the lives of the campers as well. That experience was so overwhelming, I expect, because the Spirit knows me well enough to appreciate that I need to be whacked upside the head in order not to misunderstand my role in all of this. But even when the experience doesn’t leave us pooling tears on the chapel floor, the Spirit is still ever present, interceding for us, helping us in our weakness.

Remember when you stood on the beach at dawn, and the first rays of sun turned the ocean to liquid gold, and gratitude unbidden caused you to raise your arms to the heavens? Your prayer of thanks rose from the Holy Spirit prompting you to notice – to see with more than your eyes – God’s glory in creation.

Remember when you had to take your daughter to the emergency room because her stomach flu just wasn’t getting any better? The unimagined patience you showed in the hours of waiting rose from the Holy Spirit speaking peace into your panicked heart.

Remember when your mother died and you never thought you’d take another breath? And then you did. The breath that came when tragedy squeezed all the air from your lungs rose from the Holy Spirit leavening your agonized grief with a dash of hope.

Remember when the Holy Spirit showed you the person in need? Remember when the Holy Spirit stirred you to help? Remember? If you don’t remember something like this in your own life, I challenge you to look again. Ask the Spirit for help in the looking. The Holy Spirit doesn’t come to a lucky few or just to the people who ask for her intercession by name. The Holy Spirit has always been moving through your life like the wind through the trees. And she still is. I wonder what your next memory of the Holy Spirit will be.

5 Years: These Inadequate Hands

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

This June is the 5th anniversary of Wherethewind.com, and we are celebrating by looking back at some of the best of the last five years of this website. Today we have the original “Davies Tale,” the first in a series of autobiographical fiction that I’ve written off and on over the years. I’ve always loved this story. While some of the details were changed, the gist of this story is entirely true. (Originally posted February 4, 2009)

The summer before Davies’s senior year of college, his bishop told him that he was going to work at summer camp. Davies raised a hand to his forehead in salute and said “yessir” without hesitation because he was several steps into The Process to become an Episcopal Priest. The amount of deference he was compelled to show the purple shirt equaled that of what he would show if he had a favor to ask of Don Corleone. This was the summer before the Red Sox won their first world series since 1918; the summer before he started looking over the stacks of polisci books to what his future held; the summer before he got himself into a two-year relationship, which eventually fizzled a few weeks before he planned to ask for her hand in marriage. It was the summer before all the real life stuff that college is so good at ignoring.

A skit at Peterin, the real camp behind Camp Madison. (We fake bishops had corporate sponsorships for our miters.) With the Rev. Siobhan Patterson and the late Rev. Keith Butler.
A skit at Peterin, the real camp behind Camp Madison. (We fake bishops had corporate sponsorships for our miters.) With the Rev. Siobhan Patterson and the late Rev. Keith Butler.

Davies had never been to summer camp as a child, so he didn’t know what to expect as a counselor. Until he googled “James Madison Conference Center,” he also didn’t know the camp was named after a bishop rather than a president. Nor did he know where it was located. As it happens, Madison is three miles down River Road from the no Starbucks town of Lucado, West Virginia. Lucado (pronounced LUCK-a-do) is in the Eastern panhandle of the state. Unless you are already in the Eastern panhandle, a geographical idiosyncrasy of West Virginia (called the Appalachian Mountains) means you pretty much have to leave the state to get to Lucado. A piece of the Potomac, in which Davies once learned to fly fish, gives River Road its name. If you are looking for nowhere on the map, three miles down River Road from Lucado, West Virginia is pretty close by.

Despite Madison’s lack of a cell tower within fifty miles, kids came to the camp. Davies could see their love for the place in their wide, expectant eyes as they queued up to turn in meds and decorate nametags. They loved the camp because it was out-of-doors; they loved it because it broke the monotony of what-do-you-want-to-do-I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do summer vacations; they loved it because they got to be themselves around other kids who also got to be themselves. In his own teenage years, Davies learned that places where teenagers are unafraid of coming out of their shells are few and sacred. Madison is one of them.

Senior high camp was the biggest week of the summer, with over five score hormone bombs flipping off the diving board, sneaking into the woods, crushing on each other, and complaining every day at breakfast because every day unfairly started in the morning. By midweek, Davies was one among many counselors with nerves fraying, ready to throw up his hands. The counselors used a code word to notify each other if they needed to be extracted from the clutches of a clingy/adoring/needy/smelly/nettlesome camper. As the days wore on, alert campers began wondering what “rich brownie candy bars” had to do with a pet rabbit or the athletic physique of that dreamy counselor.

On Friday morning, Davies thought his body was going to go on strike: he had never been so exhausted. But there was just one more day and night and then he could rest, mercifully. The camp shared Eucharist every day, and Friday’s included a special healing service. When the priests asked for counselors to assist with the laying on of hands, Davies volunteered because he had never done it before.

During the opening song, Davies noticed the new campers who were reticent at the beginning of the week singing with everyone else: You are my Prince of Peace and I will live my life for you! With the addition of those new voices, the camp’s volume went from ten to eleven. The peace took just as long as it usually did because, as usual, everyone tried to hug everyone else. They shared Communion, and then the campers settled into their seats for the laying on of hands. The usually boisterous crowd was quiet all of a sudden as if the mystery of God hit them all at once with the least awkward silence imaginable.

Davies walked to the back of the chapel with his priest friend Rick and a pair of sisters, Jennifer and Elise. The first camper stood up and turned towards them. Davies looked at his hands. He turned them over, saw the lines and the fingerprints and the dirt under his nails. What are these supposed to do?

The camper sat in a metal folding chair, and Rick leaned close. The boy had a pimple on his lip, which quivered as he spoke in a stage whisper: “My parents are divorced and I keep thinking it’s all my fault and I feel sad all the time.” Davies kept looking at his hands, his inadequate hands. Rick motioned for Davies and the sisters to touch the camper’s shoulders. Davies reached out one hand tentatively, lightly, like he was testing a bruise on the boy’s arm. Rick touched oil to the camper’s forehead and prayed. Davies found himself mouthing words that sprang unbidden to his lips.

Lord, make him whole, make him holy, make him wholly new.

This became his breath prayer. Over and over again, he breathed these words in and out. God, use my inadequate hands for healing, use my inadequate heart for loving, he prayed. Without thinking of the consequences, he prayed with fervor he didn’t know he possessed: Holy Spirit, fill me and flow out of me, down my arms, into my hands, and into these broken campers who keep coming and coming.

Their need for healing was so great. Who knew such young people could feel such pain: depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, eating disorders, feeling the urge to cut themselves, feelings of abandonment, grief, loss.

Lord, make her whole, make her holy, make her wholly new.

Davies kept whispering this prayer with his fingertips and his breath. He kept asking the Holy Spirit to fill him so the campers could know the healing presence of God. The last camper stood up from the metal folding chair. Davies had forgotten his own exhaustion in the half hour of laying his hands on the campers. They trickled out of the chapel on the way to the dining hall. The counselors and priests who had participated in the healing gathered around the altar for a final prayer. They held hands and prayed. As they let go of each other, Davies felt that little squeeze of his hands from friends on either side.

He backed away from the altar. A tear rolled down his cheek, then another and another. Suddenly, Davies was crying. He sat down in the second pew. Just as suddenly, he was no longer crying—he was bawling, blubbering, sniffling, choking. He had no restraint. His chest heaved, his cheeks reddened. For twenty minutes, he sat with his head in his hands, weeping. As he wept, he felt in his gut and in the soles of his feet the truth: God, you granted me exactly what I asked for—an excess of Spirit, an overflowing of your healing power. The fat tears forming a puddle at his feet were the Holy Spirit spilling out of him. His ragged breath was the Holy Spirit releasing from his body, bringing him back to a level of Spirit that is safe for one human being.

As Davies began to calm, he noticed a hand on his back. Elise had stayed behind and sat silently with him. She had said nothing. She had not tried to hand him a tissue. She had let Davies weep, alone and yet not alone.

He rose to his feet, shakily, drained and full at the same time. They walked across the field to the dining hall. The campers had gone back to their lodges for rest time, and all the grilled cheese was gone. But one of the ladies at the dining hall saw them, fired the griddle back up, and cooked them a pair of sandwiches each. Elise thanked her for this small act of kindness and slid a plate across the table to Davies.

He munched on his grilled cheese for a few minutes. His head pounded with the exertion from crying, but a new feeling a peace was emerging between the throbs. He looked down at his hands again, sticky now with molten cheese. These hands, God? These inadequate hands?

These inadequate hands (Davies Tales #1*)

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

The summer before Davies’s senior year of college, his bishop told him that he was going to work at summer camp. Davies raised a hand to his forehead in salute and said “yessir” without hesitation because he was several steps into The Process to become an Episcopal Priest. The amount of deference he was compelled to show the purple shirt equaled that of what he would show if he had a favor to ask of Don Corleone. This was the summer before the Red Sox won their first world series since 1918; the summer before he started looking over the stacks of polisci books to what his future held; the summer before he got himself into a two-year relationship, which eventually fizzled a few weeks before he planned to ask for her hand in marriage. It was the summer before all the real life stuff that college is so good at ignoring.

Davies had never been to summer camp as a child, so he didn’t know what to expect as a counselor. Until he googled “James Madison Conference Center,” he also didn’t know the camp was named after a bishop rather than a president. Nor did he know where it was located. As it happens, Madison is three miles down River Road from the no Starbucks town of Lucado, West Virginia. Lucado (pronounced LUCK-a-do) is in the Eastern panhandle of the state. Unless you are already in the Eastern panhandle, a geographical idiosyncrasy of West Virginia (called the Appalachian Mountains) means you pretty much have to leave the state to get to Lucado. A piece of the Potomac, in which Davies once learned to fly fish, gives River Road its name. If you are looking for nowhere on the map, three miles down River Road from Lucado, West Virginia is pretty close by.

Despite Madison’s lack of a cell tower within fifty miles, kids came to the camp. Davies could see their love for the place in their wide, expectant eyes as they queued up to turn in meds and decorate nametags. They loved the camp because it was out-of-doors; they loved it because it broke the monotony of what-do-you-want-to-do-I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do summer vacations; they loved it because they got to be themselves around other kids who also got to be themselves. In his own teenage years, Davies learned that places where teenagers are unafraid of coming out of their shells are few and sacred. Madison is one of them.

Senior high camp was the biggest week of the summer, with over five score hormone bombs flipping off the diving board, sneaking into the woods, crushing on each other, and complaining every day at breakfast because every day unfairly started in the morning. By midweek, Davies was one among many counselors with nerves fraying, ready to throw up his hands. The counselors used a code word to notify each other if they needed to be extracted from the clutches of a clingy/adoring/needy/smelly/nettlesome camper. As the days wore on, alert campers began wondering what “rich brownie candy bars” had to do with a pet rabbit or the athletic physique of that dreamy counselor.

On Friday morning, Davies thought his body was going to go on strike: he had never been so exhausted. But there was just one more day and night and then he could rest, mercifully. The camp shared Eucharist every day, and Friday’s included a special healing service. When the priests asked for counselors to assist with the laying on of hands, Davies volunteered because he had never done it before.

During the opening song, Davies noticed the new campers who were reticent at the beginning of the week singing with everyone else: You are my Prince of Peace and I will live my life for you! With the addition of those new voices, the camp’s volume went from ten to eleven. The peace took just as long as it usually did because, as usual, everyone tried to hug everyone else. They shared Communion, and then the campers settled into their seats for the laying on of hands. The usually boisterous crowd was quiet all of a sudden as if the mystery of God hit them all at once with the least awkward silence imaginable.

Davies walked to the back of the chapel with his priest friend Rick and a pair of sisters, Jennifer and Elise. The first camper stood up and turned towards them. Davies looked at his hands. He turned them over, saw the lines and the fingerprints and the dirt under his nails. What are these supposed to do?

The camper sat in a metal folding chair, and Rick leaned close. The boy had a pimple on his lip, which quivered as he spoke in a stage whisper: “My parents are divorced and I keep thinking it’s all my fault and I feel sad all the time.” Davies kept looking at his hands, his inadequate hands. Rick motioned for Davies and the sisters to touch the camper’s shoulders. Davies reached out one hand tentatively, lightly, like he was testing a bruise on the boy’s arm. Rick touched oil to the camper’s forehead and prayed. Davies found himself mouthing words that sprang unbidden to his lips.

Lord, make him whole, make him holy, make him wholly new.

This became his breath prayer. Over and over again, he breathed these words in and out. God, use my inadequate hands for healing, use my inadequate heart for loving, he prayed. Without thinking of the consequences, he prayed with fervor he didn’t know he possessed: Holy Spirit, fill me and flow out of me, down my arms, into my hands, and into these broken campers who keep coming and coming.

Their need for healing was so great. Who knew such young people could feel such pain: depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, eating disorders, feeling the urge to cut themselves, feelings of abandonment, grief, loss.

Lord, make her whole, make her holy, make her wholly new.

Davies kept whispering this prayer with his fingertips and his breath. He kept asking the Holy Spirit to fill him so the campers could know the healing presence of God. The last camper stood up from the metal folding chair. Davies had forgotten his own exhaustion in the half hour of laying his hands on the campers. They trickled out of the chapel on the way to the dining hall. The counselors and priests who had participated in the healing gathered around the altar for a final prayer. They held hands and prayed. As they let go of each other, Davies felt that little squeeze of his hands from friends on either side.

He backed away from the altar. A tear rolled down his cheek, then another and another. Suddenly, Davies was crying. He sat down in the second pew. Just as suddenly, he was no longer crying—he was bawling, blubbering, sniffling, choking. He had no restraint. His chest heaved, his cheeks reddened. For twenty minutes, he sat with his head in his hands, weeping. As he wept, he felt in his gut and in the soles of his feet the truth: God, you granted me exactly what I asked for—an excess of Spirit, an overflowing of your healing power. The fat tears forming a puddle at his feet were the Holy Spirit spilling out of him. His ragged breath was the Holy Spirit releasing from his body, bringing him back to a level of Spirit that is safe for one human being.

As Davies began to calm, he noticed a hand on his back. Elise had stayed behind and sat silently with him. She had said nothing. She had not tried to hand him a tissue. She had let Davies weep, alone and yet not alone.

He rose to his feet, shakily, drained and full at the same time. They walked across the field to the dining hall. The campers had gone back to their lodges for rest time, and all the grilled cheese was gone. But one of the ladies at the dining hall saw them, fired the griddle back up, and cooked them a pair of sandwiches each. Elise thanked her for this small act of kindness and slid a plate across the table to Davies.

He munched on his grilled cheese for a few minutes. His head pounded with the exertion from crying, but a new feeling a peace was emerging between the throbs. He looked down at his hands again, sticky now with molten cheese. These hands, God? These inadequate hands?

Footnotes

* This is the first story in a series I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. Gordon Atkinson’s character “Foy” gave me the inspiration to begin my own series of autobiographical fiction. If you haven’t read the “Foy Stories,” read them because they are incredible. Since Gordon Atkinson originally  referred to “Foy Davis” as simply “Foy,” I didn’t realize the similarity of names until I wrote this footnote! (I hope you don’t mind, Gordon!)