It truly felt like communion to gather outdoors at Camp Asbury on Sunday, June 14, 2020, as the Body of Christ and worship together on sacred ground after being apart for the last three months.
Doris Gharky remembered her times at Camp Asbury in the mid-1960’s as a camper. In summer 1966 she stayed in Cabin #2. Virginia Goodell recalled the involvement of her late husband, Frank, in Camp Asbury’s beginning, and Joyce Ullman told me that her father worked on the construction of Lake Hibbard. Just sitting on the lawn, watching the breeze sway the trees, looking out over the landscape, I thought of all the memorable Thursday evening communions I’ve shared with campers and staff on Communion Hill.
Pretty amazing how Camp Asbury, as a sacred place, a place of worship and connection, a place where we find purpose for our lives and healing, continues to anchor our lives and gather us, no matter what season of life we are in.
Communion is really a “re-membering”—reconstituting the all-inclusive body. It is the experience of being put back together. Being made whole after separation by time or by distance (or by virus). Everyone belongs; no one is left out—the very things we teach and learn and experience at camp. It is not a nostalgia. It is a holy mystery—something God alone can do.
