Bible Study with Alzheimer's Patients

Several weeks ago, the parish received a call from the program coordinator (or as I like to refer to her, the cruise director) at Somerford Place, a residential facility here in Redlands for Alzheimer’s patients (an extremely nice facility, BTW). There are several churches and religious groups in the area that periodically come in and do worship or Bible study. The "cruise director" wanted to know if Trinity would be interested in doing something similar, providing a more mainline perspective (most of the other groups tend to be a little more on the fundamentalist-evangelical end of the spectrum). David (the rector) and I talked about it and he said he really doesn’t have time to add another program, but if I wanted to do it, go ahead. I decided it would be interesting to at least give it a try. So, I contacted Somerford Place and agreed to do a trial run of every other Mondays during June to see how things go.

Yesterday was the first attempt. I have to admit I was a little nervous. I have no experience dealing with Alzheimer’s patients. I didn’t know what to expect. But I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. There were about 25 people present. Now, about a quarter of them were dozing, but everyone else seemed to be at least somewhat engaged. And there were about five or six who did respond to questions and invitations to share their own insights.

Being the day after Pentecost, I decided to focus on that. I started off with a little discussion about Pentecost. Then I focused on Romans 8:22-27, the Epistle lesson for Pentecost. After one of the patients read the lesson, I essentially gave a recap of my sermon from Sunday. I thought that would be good because in my sermon I focused on how the Holy Spirit is always with us, particularly in times of need. I thought the patients just might be able to relate to that. And they did. After my reflection, I invited people to comment and add their own insights or experiences. There were several people who did open up and talk a little about times of need in their own lives. There were a number of occasions when someone would come up with something that might have seemed tangential or even unrelated to the topic of discussion, but I was generally able to take such comments and use them as a springboard for further discussion.

The Holy Spirit definitely was present in our time together. My initial concerns and uncertainty were quickly dispelled and I felt pretty comfortable with the way things went. Actually, I was pretty surprised that things went so well for the first time out of the chute. I can hardly wait to see what will happen in two weeks.

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Peace Camp

Sunday, July 15 through Thursday, July 22, I served as a chaplain for the first-ever Peace Camp at Camp Stevens, near Julian, California. The camp was designed for middle school students (seventh, eighth, and ninth graders) and explored various dimensions of peace. We had 17 campers (18 counting the nine-year old daughter of the Peace Camp Director) from varied ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, four counselors, three chaplains, a program director, and a camp director. In addition, two of Camp Stevens’ counseling staff assisted with a number of the activities, and other Camp Stevens staff took time off from their regular duties just to participate in some of our sessions. During the four days, we discussed such topics as conflict, violence, escalation and de-escalation, and what it means to be a peacemaker. The central structure for the camp was the Baptismal Covenant from the Book of Common Prayer, and various Bible passages regarding peace.

In the course of examining peace, we looked at racism, heterosexism (the kids brought it up, not us), economic justice, and environmental justice. We used a variety of teaching tools, including Bible study, making origami peace cranes, Dr. Seuss books (some, like The Butter Battle Book and Horton Hears a Who have wonderful moral messages), videos, the Millennium Development Goals, and various community-building and team-building exercises.

One of the most exciting team-building exercises was an afternoon at the ropes course, where teams of two had to (if they wanted) climb up a pole to cables suspended 25 feet above the ground. The team members had to support each other as they inched their way across the diverging cables. It was amazing to see several young people who were initially terrified of the idea go through a transformation thanks to the loving support of the other participants. Several of these got up the courage to go through with the exercise and did fantastic. They looked like pros and even wanted to do it again. Alas, this chaplain and his partner did not do so well. We were a little too enthusiastic and not as patient as we should have been. In the course of trying to place our hands on each others’ shoulders, we lost our balance on our respective cables and went tumbling to the ground. In the process, I attempted to stabilize my partner and ended up scraping my arm against her cable, getting a nasty burn.

The campers also enjoyed some arts and crafts projects (including making a peace pole), hiking, and swimming (which was a big hit). The Camp Stevens staff also provided us with a tour of their organic garden and a hiking experience intended to raise awareness regarding the environment. Every evening we had community time, where we sat around and sang lots of great songs. We ended the camp with a closing Eucharist, in which the campers provided various parts of the liturgy (e.g. music, prayers, homily, etc.) After communion, we commissioned everyone as peacemakers. Their first acts was to then lay hands on and bless the peace pole they had made. We then presented the peace pole to the Camp Stevens.

I think this was a transformative week for many of the campers (as well as for the Peace Camp staff). They are still a bunch of unruly middle school students, but I saw glimmers of hope that they were getting some of the concepts, and trust that throughout their lives, what they learned at Peace Camp will inform how they live and function in the world.

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