In the Good Old Summertime

June 2009

For many of us summertime is the best time!  We spend a weekend at the lake or the shore, take a day hike in nearby mountains, relax with a good book, or have fun at a backyard barbecue with family and friends.  It’s that time of year where we enjoy God’s creation.  Some of us birdwatch, fish, swim, bike, or garden.  Maybe we have more than one hobby.  For sure, most of us are aware of God’s presence.   Oftentimes, at SCC meetings when we discuss feeling close to God, we share faith around an experience in nature.   The great thing about summertime activities is we want to share our experiences with a friend or friends, our family, our SCC group. One of the important elements of small Christian communities is community-building.  How do we do this?

One way to build community is for a group to do something together at the beach, on a hike, at a garden party.  There are loads of activities that we can do jointly:

• If you live in the northeast, visit a sculpture garden like Pepsico in Purchase, NY or Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ 

• Up in Maine August is blueberry picking time.  Pick enough to share with a local soup kitchen.

• It’s fun to get together and have a Southern Foods Contest.  Who makes the best fried chicken, etc.?  Or maybe have an Italian Foods Contest.

• If you live in a coastal region, maybe you and your SCC can arrange a clambake at the beach.  Loads of instructions for a clambake on the Internet.  Don’t forget the seaweed.  Try epicurious.com.

• Enjoy going to a carnival one night.  Ride the carousel.  If that’s too mild, then dare each other to ride the ferris wheel.

• In almost any metropolitan area, arrange for a day/evening trip to a baseball game.  Maybe not the major leagues but the minor leagues:  Brooklyn Cyclones out at Coney Island, Lakehurst Blue Claws in the Garden State, the Tucson Sidewinders, the 66ers of San Bernardino, the Sarasota Reds, the Peoria Chiefs, the Sky Sox in Colorado Springs. These are fun.  Do you have a minor league team near your area?  Check the Internet for more minor league teams.

• Join together for a history picnic in a member’s back yard.  Set up tables for each and every family and ask family members to display artifacts that are important to that family.  Bring loads of photos, the older the better.  At a gathering in the New York metro area, without prior consultation, various members brought old newspapers with virtually the same headline:  Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Yankees.  

• What I Did on my Summer Vacation:  Remember that assignment when we returned to school in September?  How about getting together with your group and discussing favorite summer vacations?  Why was it memorable?  Who were you with?  What role did God play in that vacation? 

• Sponsor an art contest in your driveway or the sidewalk in front of your building. Use chalk.  Who can draw the best landscape?  The looniest __________? 

• Dance, dance, dance.  Bring your favorite records to someone’s yard that ‘s big enough and do the jitterbug, savoy, lindy, frug, salsa, mambo tango, polka  A friend said that at her Italian-American family get-togethers her two uncles would get up and do the peabody with one another.  The little kids would try to imitate them.  Everyone loved it. 

• Hate to dance?  Arrange a singalong.  Perhaps one based on a particular theme or entertainment group, e.g., Beatles, Maguire Sisters, Neil Sedaka, Jersey Boys.

• Create a cookbook based on everyone’s favorites.  This just isn’t created by cooks.  We all eat, and we all have memories.  Include the stories of flops.

• Hold a joint birthday party.  Select a name out of the hat and research what it was like when that person was born.  Of course, everyone has to be willing to share his or her age.   End it with a birthday cake.  Go to epicurious.com or the Martha Stewart Web site for some good recipes.  Some like chocolate; others vanilla.

• Visit space.com.  See what the night sky is going to be like in your area. The Perseids Meteor Shower takes place just before mid-August.

• Go fly a kite.  Such joy!

• Treat yourselves.  Borrow or buy Rachel Carson’s book, A Sense of Wonder, and develop an SCC meeting around it.  Use a Psalm or excerpt from Genesis to complement it.

Make plans.  Where will you go?  What will you do?  Who’s responsible for what? How can we incorporate God’s love into our adventure?

Take time during the event or after the event to share faith:

• What was the highlight of our time together?
• How was God present at our event?
• What prayers of praise and thanksgiving can we offer our God? 

What do you and your SCC or family do to have fun?  Let us know so we can share it with others.  Write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it