Monday, July 12, 2004
Making progress
One of my young parishioners approached me last weekend with the question: when was I going to have the children's choir retreat like I promised?
Our accompanist was out on vacation, and I wasn't feeling very musical one day last winter. So when the kids came for choir, we went on a "pilgrimage" through the church, stopping at various locations to pray and sing. Strange children: they liked the organ loft best of all.
We have half days of school when classes resume in mid-August, so it looks like the Children's Music Retreat is a go for one of those afternoons, once the committee is assembled. I can keep their attention for seventy-five minutes, so three or four hours should be no problem, right?
I've lost a lot of patience for VBS's. In Virginia, the DRE and I cannibalized a canned VBS shtick and added all sorts of things: morning chapel, hot lunches, an all-day format for a week, electives in liturgy planning, visits from the rabbi's wife and daughter to teach folk dancing, field trips to the synagogue, other churches and battered women's shelters. And lest you think it was all work, the kids also had an afternoon at the parish pool, plus a family picnic followed by evening prayer the final night. Faith Camp was a huge success, but perhaps a bit beyond this year's means at my present parish.
I'm convinced the hope of the future of Catholicism is not in some idealistic perfect catechesis, but in appealing to the religious imagination of children. Young people I know lap up the opportunity to explore and express their faith when given the right conditions.
