One of the counselors in our bishopric bought a house in another ward (okay, it was my fault, but let's not go into that) and gave his farewell speech today. He made the BEST comment ever. He said: "Most of you are pretty weird. Maybe no one's ever told you that before, but it's true." Then he went on to talk about our terrific ward community. Well, what he said is absolutely true. Our ward is full of weird people. I'll frankly admit to being among them, but if there is such a thing as a weirdness level that goes from, say, believing that if you say your prayers out loud the devil can capture them (this would be a high level) or denying the truthfulness of plastic refrigerator dishes (still high for me) down to a propensity to sing certain hymns with a bluegrass twang (I would call this lower on the scale, if perhaps slightly more annoying in sacrament meeting)...um...this sentence is developing BOM proportions...IF, I say, there is such a sliding scale, I think the Mumford family is slightly below our ward median of weirdness. That is, we have a lot of people who believe, say, wear, and eat VERY weird things. But after our bpric member made this comment, I reflected that I would much rather have a weird ward than an ordinary ward.
We've LOVED our weird wards. In the ordinary ones, I think there is too much conformity of thought, which leads to both boredom and a stultifyingly orthodox culture. Narrow minds! Sleepy gospel doctrine classes! Uneducated youth! Etc. So give me the weird. A big group of people preaching their competing far-out gospel ideas makes for great table discussions at home.
It was a beautiful Easter for us. Long live the sunrise service, although Nigel fell asleep IN church, and Tom and I fell asleep after it.
I'm finally starting to prepare for Cub Scout Day Camp this summer. The theme is the Middle Ages. I have a problem with these themes. They sound fine in theory: last year, Pirates. Arrrgh! But after you've pounded together some treasure chests, what are you going to do with this theme? Next, we'll learn to rape and pillage on the north lawn! Well, the middle ages are just more of the same. I've never been too excited about the middle ages, to tell you the truth. All those SOCA dudes in their period dress with period names, heavy swords, and reenactments, they make me nervous. I've never liked dungeons and dragons either, or tae kwon do, and I'm going to freely admit (although I think I probably shouldn't) that all this stuff goes together in my mind. Anyway, I've been avoiding it for most of my life. I have a big historical hole from about the fall of the Roman Empire straight through to the Renaissance. I've always felt fine about this. Isn't that the definition of the dark ages--a historical hole?
Anyway, I just checked out a boatload of books from the library and pulled a bunch of relevant looking things off my own shelves to start doing my homework (Tom's comment: "You're reading Idylls of the King??? Who reads Tennyson to prepare for Cub Camp? I'm scared for those boys!") And guess what? This is going all the way back to the middle of the last paragraph where I observe that the middle ages is more of the same. WAR WAR WAR. Play war. Real war. Weaponry. Building castles for protection. Building trebuchets and swords and long bows and armor for attacking. Practicing the art of war by hunting. Feasting your friends and then (if you're a Campbell) killing them in the night because you decided they were actually your enemies. Oh, we can wring a few puppet shows and maybe a juggling class out of the lighter side of the middle ages, but let's face it. The whole period is death and destruction.
When I first heard about the theme, I thought we'd get creative and do Gallileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, but of course all the good stuff is the RENAISSANCE...the END of the middle ages. Why do we choose these stupid themes for our boys? Because nobody is THINKING about the content of the program. They're just thinking that the boys like to play sword fighting. Duh. If I hear one more thing about jousting with fun noodles, I'm going to scream. Our Day Camp program is supposed to be designed around 12 character connections like citizenship, compassion, and cooperation. I'm not saying compassion was not present in the middle ages. I'm just saying that a lot of these character points were not hallmarks of the age. Maybe we could find better themes? Just a thought.
8 comments:
We've got it! Do a monastery! Aren't monks the epitome of compassion? Sit them all down with feathers and some ink!
Or, you go do what our council does: just shoot BB guns. This is all the cub will remember anyway, as in: "What did you do at day camp?" One hundred percent of the time: "I shot a BB gun!" Second day: repeat.
You forgot about the plague.
Swords do rank up there with BB guns. Wanna borrow ours?
I DID forget to blog about the plague, but I have briefly considered both a science class involving disease vectors and a class dissecting rats.
Oh...and not to artificially inflate my comments number, but the camp director's hubby is a prof. of manufacturing engineering at WWU and she asked him if he thought he could make 140 metal swords for us. After briefly looking at us with the most INCREDULOUS expression, he asked if we had given up on merely maiming the boys and now intended to kill them.
You do have a weird ward, but it is the very best one that I have ever been to! Besides, that bishopric member is the weirdest out of the whole bunch, that's for sure!
I like the plague idea! That's funny...You could do a whole Monty Python Holy Grail thing...search for shrubbery, encounter a viscious rabbit, come across a great sorcerer named Tim. Just some ideas. :-)
I don't know exactly how you could work this in, but the Wackers have a new World War II army all-terrain vehicle that maybe you could borrow.
LONG LIVE THE WIERD WARD! It's our wierdness that makes us lovable! For the middle ages theme...why don't you teach them knots? They could burn each other at the stake or hang each other with ropes, just like in robin hood...hey... bows and arrows! that's another creative way they could maim each other!
Okay I have to inflate your comments number even more...did you actually use the word "stultifyingly?" I bow to your greatness!
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