Everyone counts.
Rituals of belonging.
I recently returned from my annual week at the Almont New Church Assembly family church camp. Of all the ways I’ve had the chance to “do church” with others over the years Almont is definitely among my favorite. It may well be the place that planted the seed for Worship Is Life. For seven days each year a group of around a hundred children, teens, adults and elders choose to make life together an act of worship, with rituals that punctuate the day and ground the community in its common purpose “to experientially discover and share God’s love for each of us.”
This year, the ritual that I find myself reflecting on and appreciating the most is the practice of gathering in a circle each day to raise and lower the flag, well three flags… our red and white Almont flag representing the Love and Wisdom of God, an American flag for our country, and a Pride flag to celebrate the glorious diversity of our human community. Each morning and each evening we circle up, hold hands, and sing a song as the flags are either raised or lowered. And then we count, we count everyone, including those who may still be off cleaning dishes or getting ready for a chapel service. We stand in a circle and everyone is counted.
This simple act of counting, of being counted is so much at the heart of what makes communities like Almont deeply useful to our human community. I’ve heard from many Almonters over the years that it was the feeling of belonging at Almont that sustained them through the trials of life away from church camp. A sense that while they may feel out of place everywhere else, at least they knew they belonged at camp.
But how many people on the planet have a place like Almont to which to belong?
I get the sense right now in our human community that there is a great reshuffling happening. That many of the ways that humans have found belonging in the past have broken down, leaving a sense of confusion, groundlessness and even desperation. Our desire for independence, autonomy, personal preference made the prospect of gathering around a flag pole to be counted (as one example) seem trivial and unimportant.
AND we are remembering. And as with all great reshufflings through human history this one contains opportunity. Now we know we need to feel we belong AND we know we need to be fully authentic to who we are. Much of the systems of belonging of the past required strict adherence to certain ways of being, speaking, conforming that our modern spirit can no longer conform to. Now as we find our way back together again we need to find and create rituals of belonging that don’t diminish anyone and make room for the independence and autonomy we have cultivated.
Places like Almont can help guide us in this remembering. They have persisted through the great reshuffling because they have managed to make room for difference, space for autonomy, while carrying forward the rituals of belonging that work. It’s a place that has managed to change and also stay the same.
We all need rituals of belonging. We all need to know that we count. May we be fluid and faithful as we discover our way back together in new configurations. May we trust that a new order follows chaos and that we are right now being called back together to circle up and be counted.