After months and months of waiting and wishing and distancing, our communities are reopening. And after months and months of feeling like everything was moving so slowly, suddenly it all seems so fast. Maybe because it’s spring. Maybe it’s because summer camp is fast approaching and there are fewer weeks of the school year than fingers on our hands. Maybe because we’re all so excited to get to doing the things we haven’t been able to do for so long.

And some days, it feels easy – like breathing in a deep breath of fresh air. Like going to the place you call home. And some days it feels a whole lot harder. Keeping up the balancing act of the ever changing guidance, and case counts, and variants, and mask types, and keeping track of who is vaccinated and who is not. Our brains are so full with all the new knowledge we’ve gained during the pandemic. And now we’re confronted with the old – the things we used to know how to do.

We had adjusted. We adjusted to the vocabulary of “coronavirus” and “close contacts” and “antigen” and “quarantine.” We adjusted to contactless pick-ups and contactless temperature checks. To more time spent in our homes, our cities, our small circles of people. To reading people’s emotions over zoom calls and sending more packages by mail.

Out at Ferncliff, we adjusted to the slower pace. Fewer people on site meant more encounters with the deer, and the geese. The kids in Nature Preschool and LearnCliff move around site with complete ownership – this wild that is their playground. We took time fixing up the buildings and bridges. We forgot to wear our nametags, because weeks would go by where we didn’t encounter someone we didn’t see here daily.

And now we’re all readjusting. To new ways of doing old things. How do we eat in restaurants? How do we try on clothes in stores? How do we go to church? How do we sing around other people?

How do we welcome people to a retreat away? How do we order camp t-shirts? How do we train our summer camp counselors? How do we plan for events more than one month away? How do we get a site ready for all the folks who’ve been missing it?

May we have grace with ourselves and each other for the old things that are newly hard. May we acknowledge that we again (still?) find ourselves in transition – learning again (still?) how to re-adjust.

 

Jocelyn Wildhack is our Chaplain and Camp Director. She is soon to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).