We arrived Saturday night in Winslow, to be greeted by the Rev. Canon Norman Burke, who says his nickname is “Boom-boom” (because he’s a Canon, get it? Hee, hee). This is a fellow who, like our own Fr. George, is on his 50th year of ordained ministry and has been in the trenches with youth trips many times in his career, so he is a great host. He has breakfast and lunch lined up for us on Sunday and then shows us the Holy of Holies at his little church: A SHOWER! You have never seen teens so excited about the possibility of a shower as these unwashed pilgrims.
The worship space is beautiful with contemporary lines and very effective air conditioning. We stay up working on our sermon (yes, the pilgrims were invited to share their experiences as the sermon on Sunday) as well as designing the music for the service. This congregation doesn’t have a musician, so they use a sort of digital juke-box to play recorded accompaniment for hymns. We pull out the guitars, drum and persimmon shaker and plan the hymns for the next day.
Sunday morning comes with donuts, milk and OJ from the church and we get up to prepare for the 10 am service. The pilgrims each have pieces of the story that they want to share and do a tremendous job. Boom-boom doesn’t let the adults off the hook, though, so Kirk, Sarah, and Fr. Andrew also have to share a bit of their story. The music goes very well, thanks to the leadership of Paul and Meg on guitar. The congregation welcomes us as if we were their own youth group (which, by the way, has one member, named Adrian – nice guy) and eats lunch with us. Off we go again!
Occasionally, we have to stop at grocery stores to restock. These visits are always entertaining, especially in small town grocery stores – usually Safeway out there, it seems. We move in like a small, tactical assault force, set up a command central near the checkstands and then deploy our 13 members throughout the store to gather the needed supplies. It goes very quickly, but seems to startle the employees and regular customers. At one stop, while checking out, the checker asked if we were going camping. While Fr. Andrew began explaining that this was a church youth group, Rachel simply shouted out “That’s our Dad!” It was simpler to leave the checker with the mystery that is the J2A Pilgrimage than explain further.
After shopping in Winslow, we drove through the Navajo reservation on into New Mexico. We had hoped and planned to stop at the Sky Village of the Acoma tribe in northern NM and see their pueblo to do a sort of compare-and-contrast with our Hopi experience, but their village was closed for religious ceremonies. Maybe it was their kachina home dance? No way to know. Kachina practices are part of all the pueblo tribes, though, Hopi, Acoma, Zuni, etc.
About sundown, we arrived at Camp Stoney, an Episcopal church camp outside of Santa Fe. In an unusual twist, we reserved teepees for our lodging that night – which is sort of ironic since teepees are really plains tribes, and not southwest, but oh well – that would have been smashing except for the rain. Oops. The teepees dripped a bit and the ground was damp and, at 8000 feet elevation, it was a little chilly. However, our pilgrims were amazingly adaptable and, with the help of Meg’s shower curtain, the girls made the best of their circumstances and toughed it out. The guys shrugged and went 
to bed in the mud and wet without thinking too much about it. Before bed, though, we met 
DOC (Fr. Daniel, the Director of Camp) who gave us a great and fun welcome. We roasted hot dogs and veggies over a roaring fire and made s’mores. A game of eXtreme Spoons ensued along with some fun singing and general goofing around. We talked about how we use our creativity in all sorts of ways, including planning liturgies as well as sorting out teepee problems. Off to bed in the dark and damp.
