For
a dozen years while I was serving in West Virginia I led the Senior High Camp
at the Peterkin Conference Center. Every year my staff and I spent about ten
days with around 100 high school students teaching them some basic principles
of daily Christian living. It was always an exhausting but also exhilarating
experience and certainly a privilege.
One
year our theme was “Community”. As a way of introducing that theme to the
campers, my staff and I, the night before the camp began, put together a 1000-piece
jigsaw puzzle. As I recall, it was a large forest scene. Once we had the puzzle
together, we divided it into ten sections and placed the pieces into envelopes,
one for each small group of campers we had formed. Each of us led a small group
of about nine or ten.
The
next morning when the program began, we gathered in the pavilion and separated
into our groups. The task for each group was to put together the pieces they
found in their envelope. When all the groups had finished, one person from ach
group took the completed puzzle section to the center of the gathering. Then
those gathered put together the completed puzzle.
The
initial point we wanted to make by this exercise was that it takes many pieces
fitted together to make community. Each piece is important and each piece is
joined to others. What turned out to be rather providential for us was that one
piece in the center of the puzzle turned up missing. – the point being that until that piece was
found and put into place, the community would not be whole. The next day the
piece was found and the completed puzzle was kept in a special place and each
day we began our sessions gathered around that puzzle.
At
the end of the camp at the traditional closing campfire we gave each camper a
reminder of what we had been talking and reflecting about over those ten days.
What we did was take the puzzle apart, glue sections, about four pieces,
together, glue a piece of yarn to it and made a necklace. As we moved from the
comfier to the closing Eucharist, we placed a necklace over the head of each
camper.
My
staff and I each received one as well. I still have mine thirty years later. It
is not only a fond memory of that camp long ago, but it still a reminder to me
of what it means to be a part of a community, a reminder that each of us is an
essential part, that the community is less, is not whole, when we are not part
of it, for whatever reason we may not be a part.
Living
in community is often puzzling, no pun intended. We often wonder what our part
is, how valuable we are, whether anyone in the community would miss us if we
were not there, did not take a part, whether they would even care – all kinds
of puzzling questions to ponder. In any community – family, church, workplace,
neighborhood, etc. – we are all part of the puzzle, an essential, important and
vital part. We are tied, connected, to one another and must be if the
communities to which we belong are to survive and grow. We must never forget
that. I hope those campers from long ago have not. I know I have not and trust
I never will.
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