A message from Lydia Hoffman, Pilgrim Lodge Assistant Camp Director
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:2-8)
This week at Pilgrim Lodge, we have been preparing our beloved camp for the weather and wear of the coming winter season. We have been packing away life jackets, cleaning out the ice cream freezer, tucking away porch rocking chairs, mopping floors, and closing up cabins. The firewood has been stacked, the boats are all on shore, and the songbooks are quietly resting indoors. This is a season of putting away and packing up, of shutting off and shutting down. And yet, in the midst of all the cleaning and the packing, many new projects have emerged. The boardwalk has gained strong new planks, the chapel stairs have new railings, many cabins have received bright new paint, screen doors have been joyfully replaced, and cracked pipes have been carefully sealed.
At the very same time that we have been preparing for the close of winter, we have also been preparing for the opening of spring! Tending to this sacred space requires the many hands and hearts that do this holy work to exist in the now, and the not yet. To tend well to the common space of Pilgrim Lodge, a space that belongs to all who come down the camp road with love in their heart, our work is never truly done. The seasons change, the weather changes, the world changes, we change. The work that is required of us in the summertime is different from what is needed in the fall. The trees and the leaves remind us of this, offering us shade at one moment and teaching us about letting go during another.
Every season looks different at Pilgrim Lodge. Perhaps for you in your life and in your church, and in your community, every season looks different too. Sometimes we hear the call of the loon and the buzz of the cicadas, and other times we hear the silence of a snow fall, or the call of the crows. Sometimes we work hard, and other times we rest and we renew. Sometimes we celebrate, and other times we mourn. Sometimes we sing praises of joy and other times we are silent, while the evergreen trees stand in witness.
Many times, we feel all of these things all at once.
As the world around us changes, as the seasons change, we too are always changing. We are always existing in the now and the not yet. We carry our inner child within us, even as we age. We carry the beliefs we had as a teenager with us even as we come to believe in new and different ways in our adulthood. We cherish communities that once were, while we look to the people who we call family now. We move from one season of life to the next, and we hold and carry with us all that has been and all that is to come.
What a gift it is to take part in and bear witness to this ever-changing world, even as we can count on our ever present God.
While I hold the summertime at Pilgrim Lodge so dearly in my heart, I am excitedly waiting for the seasons to change, and to see what comes next for this special place. As we close up the boardwalk and prepare for the snow, I am already imagining the campers who will walk along its planks come next season. The work of closing camp will soon come to an end, but the work of this community is never finished. We will continue to live in the now and the next. before we know it, it will be time to pull the ice cream back out, put the boats back into the water, sing from the songbooks, and rock in the rocking chairs once again.
The summer season has ended, and we wait. Soon enough the warm days will return. Yet as the fall weather sets in and winter pokes its head around the corner, change becomes inevitable.
May this season be a time of dreaming and growing for all communities moving through transition. May this season be a time of brave renewal for all living in the now and the not yet. May this change in the season remind us that like the trees who drop their leaves and the loons who migrate until summer returns, we too are ever-growing creatures, ever changing with the seasons, and it is good.
Thanks be to God.
