We have had a wonderful week at CKC! After all of our trips returned, the energy was incredibly high in our meals at Kahdalea. Our chosboys returned from their cabin overnights this morning to a delicious lunch of tacos (arguably Chosatonga’s favorite meal of the week!) and eager to engage in a battle for the Color Week crown. As I write, there is a magnificent spectacle of “Color War” coming to a climax on our Kahdalea campus. Campers are running about from activity to activity gaining points for their teams, Red and Blue, and each team is ready to fight an epic color battle to gain the prize! Needless to say, this is a real blast and everyone is fully engaged and loving it! I can’t wait to share the photos with you when all is said and done 🙂
One special treat our Kahdalea campers and staff enjoyed this week was a visit from a wonderful band, Acaciawood. Formed by a group of California-born students at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, these ladies are seriously talented. They delighted our community for an evening of wonderful music and returned the following morning to lead our morning music as well as a song-writing workshop, which our campers loved!
Music is a key to our community at Kahdalea. From fabled campfire songs to lively dining hall tunes to folk melodies and hymns from the great American songbook, our unplugged camp family digs in deep to these moments of harmony and unison. There are songs for every occasion: somber songs which tell a tragic tale, lighthearted songs for the heart in love, hymns of praise and wonder, and songs that seem to find a way of expressing the “hard to reach” parts of our common, and beautiful, human experience.
Before I introduced the band, we reflected together on God as Creator. Drawing from the text of Pope John Paul II’s beautiful “Letter to Artists”, we picked up this thread of creating versus crafting. God alone is our Creator capable of making something our of nothing, yet he invites every single one of his children into an apprenticeship, a relationship in which he shows us how to craft the gifts of our talents, which we have all freely received, into a gift for the world.
John Paul II writes, “That is why artists, the more conscious they are of their “gift”, are led all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their vocation and their mission. Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”
The concert was a huge joy! After an encore, our traveling musicians surprised one of our JCs by leading Happy Birthday and presenting her with a freshly baked cake from our kitchen staff! What a gift to welcome such talented artists into our midst to share in the marvel of cultivated talents, given as a gift to the world. After thanking Acaciawood for sharing their music with us, we implored our campers to cultivate their own talents in the songwriting workshop the following morning. Needless to say, the workshop was packed and the three band members each worked with part of our camper population to complete a song by morning’s end.
We are grateful that this morning’s rain has passed over so the coed will function as usual with all of its sunlit fun. Tomorrow, our campers will enjoy a sleep-in and a donut breakfast before our chapel service. Please join us in praising God for another wonderful week at Kahdalea and Chosatonga!
