Hazelnut Reflections

Camp

So I had the opportunity to hang out overnight at our diocesan camp out at St. Crispin's earlier in the week. I was invited to come out and see what happens and to celebrate Eucharist on Wednesday evening. It was a session of 3rd through 5th graders, and to complete the continuing theme of everybody knows everybody in the Episcopal Church, there was a former parishioner of mine attending the camp. Not to mention a few parishioners from my husband's parish as well. ("Hey, you're our priest's wife!" "Yep, and I'm a priest too." Education about clergy couples continues).

The Wednesday evening communion service is at the pool. In fact, the clergy are in the pool. The kids and staff all sit around the edges, dangling their feet in the water, and the other priest and I were in the pool. They have stoles set aside for just this purpose (light unlined cotton) and a floating altar. It is a measure of how much God's grace is operating that I said yes to standing in my bathing suit at the center of everyone's attention. (I did wear canoeing shorts over the suit and that helped a lot).

So the other priest was doing the readings and I was looking around and I saw this shape at the bottom of the pool. Hmm. One half of my brain kept paying attention to the liturgy (this is a priestly skill that comes with ordination lol) and the other half started this little monologue. "What is that down there? Is that a scorpion? It really looks like a scorpion. It is the perfect shape of a scorpion. I remember scorpions from Arizona. Do we have scorpions in Oklahoma? I bet we have scorpions in Oklahoma..." and so forth. It didn't seem to be moving. A more rational person would have pointed out to herself in said monologue that a scorpion at the very bottom of four feet of water would have to be dead. But the lizard part of my brain was saying "run away! run away!"

At the peace, I pointed this out to my male counterpart. Now I am not the world's most squeamish person, and am usually pretty willing to engage in bug squishing (see earlier posts about smooshing grasshoppers as proof.) But scorpions? I was just as happy when he volunteered to go down and get it (he found it distracting as well) and handed it off to one of the counselors to dispose of (other tasks as assigned).

On a hot day an evening celebration of Eucharist at the pool (followed by the whole community jumping into the pool) was very refreshing and re-creative. Scorpions and all.

posted by Emily @ 8:11 AM