Radio

This past Monday, just as the camp staff was lining up for morning flags, our program director came up to me with a bundle of papers and a merit badge book. “you’re teaching radio this week” he said.

The radio merit badge has nine requirements,ranging from the ability to explain basic safety procedures when working with radios and other electronic devices, up through things like building radios out of basic electronic parts.

This was… Unexpected, I think is the word.

Off to the Mountain

I’m pausing in between other activities of packing the car to write a short entry. My lady and I are packing up to go camping for the weekend. This isn’t back packing like I used to do with the Outdoor Adventures group; it’s camping on a mountainside with about 200 other people for a long weekend of workshops, community-building, and prayer. I’ve done this particular program for most of the last nine years,

Every year that I go, I learn new things about myself and about others. I learn new skills and new strategies. It’s a school for me, but the homework takes most of a year to do, even though I’m only in class for about four days.

Camp Grace

I try to keep camp staff and scouts guessing. So I have a tendency to use this grace when I’m asked to say grace in the dining hall:

let us sing of well-founded Earth,
Mother of all, eldest of all.
She feeds all creatures that are in the world:
All that go on the goodly land,
And all that are in the paths of the sea,
And all that fly — all these are fed of her store.
Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their harvests,
And blessed in their children,
And to you it belongs to give happiness to mortals,
And to take it away.
Freely bestow upon us for this our song,
Substance that cheers the heart. Amen.

In a camp that’s usually crawling with various denominations of Catholics,, Mormons and various Protestant stripes… It’s unusually well-received.

Location:Ashford,United States

Chapel Flags

A lot of folks love, and comment on, the flags in the chapel at JNWebster. Too many kids (and adults!) seem to think there’s one religion, Christianity, usually — and then something loosely termed “everything else”. The flags in the chapel help widen their worlds… But usually within a few hours of seeing the flags, the memory of other voices, other rooms, begins to fade. So I made this video as a reminder of what each individual flag is, and what it represents.

As you’ll see, I forgot that I needed to keep my camera in the same orientation throughout. But for one of my first efforts at such a thing, it’s not that bad.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnkHA7RytqY&feature=youtube_gdata]

Camp staff, complaints, and yoga

There are a number of elderly gentlemen at camp whose company I enjoy and whose elder sense and wise comments I enjoy. But every so often, one of these gentlemen of age 60 or higher makes a comment about their arthritis, or their back pain, or their stiffness, or their physical handicaps.

I do my best to listen politely. The list of aggrieved ailments goes on. Eventually, with some difficulty, the ailing sage forces himself up from his chair and goes off to work… slowly.

I check my watch each time, and observe how I have ten minutes more than they do to get where I need to be.

And then I stand up, face east, and do the sun salutation of my yoga routine. It takes five or ten minutes, and leaves me briefly breathless. But then I run off to my next engagement.

Because the yoga may make me stiff now… but it’s adding to my flexibility every day. And I want to get up from chairs gracefully in twenty years. Not struggling in pain.