From Generation to Generation – at the Sugar Shack!
Glory to God,
whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Glory to God from generation to generation
in the Church and in Christ Jesus
forever and ever.
Amen.
One of the great gifts the church offers our modern world is that of an inter-generational community. Many of us live far away from our own family elders – parents, grandparents, their siblings and friends – and our children are age-segregated down to the year. As a result, we get skewed pictures of God’s creation and our own life journey. It is good for children to know older teens and young adults. It is good for octogenarians to have relationships with people in their first couple decades. It is good for 35 year olds to have easy access to caring 55 year olds. Our churches can offer that to people but those connections don’t always just happen on their own.
We have been trained out of making spontaneous inter-generational contact but, with a little effort, we can relearn. Confirmation classes could be mixed age. Teenagers and older adults could be joined in mentoring relationships. Young families and seniors could participate in a shared project. And, easiest of all, parishes can do fun things all together.
Christ Church Cathedral – to pick an example completely at random – is heading to a post-Easter sugar shack on April 15th. We’ve got a bus booked and a wide range of folks signed up to share a road trip, a huge meal, and some wonderful Québécois folk music. There are still spaces available so, if you are able and interested, please get in touch. We’d love to see you!
Cost
Bus tickets: $10 for people over 12 years old; $5 for people under 12 years old
Meal: $18 for people over 12; $8 for people 4-12 years old; free for people under 4
Email Rhonda to sign up or for more information.
Stories on the Way 
I am obviously not able (being in Saskatchewan and all), but I wanted to note that the parish we are a part of is a BCP parish and very traditional. Most of the members are retired. My husband and I are in our 30’s, and there are a few other couples in our age bracket who attend regularly; two of these couples have young children (one a two year old, the other a new baby). A few of the students at the university attend regularly, and of course we have one person who graduated from high school last year and grew up in the parish (he is a server and very skilled with the thurifer).
Most of the elderly members of the parish have family in the city, so that kind of a relationship is not needed, but it has been wonderful to get to know some of them on a personal level. One woman, the widow of a former priest in the parish, sewed my wedding jacket for me (she used to be a home economics teacher), and I take one of her granddaughters out once a week for some community access time (she has some disabilities). I am planning to ask this woman for sewing lessons so that I can learn more about adapting patterns for particular body types. Meanwhile, my husband has made intellectual connections with former university professors, and we were blessed with an influx of books, dining room chairs, a large CRT television set (and all peripherals), and a couple of glassed-in book cases when one couple sold their large house and moved into a seniors’ apartment-style residence. And we are, of course, friendly with the other young couples, the university students, and the recent high school graduate. 🙂
Also, your opening prayer is one of my favourites from the BAS.