Describing COP

COP 2015

It’s one of the funny things about being a Cap Corps Volunteer. We run so many retreats and at the end of each of them, someone’s bound to ask how it went. When they go badly, I know exactly what to say. In those cases I have a whole slew of strange and hilarious anecdotes to share. I can regale my audience with tales about small group mishaps. For instance, there was the time I had a girlfriend/boyfriend pair in my small group on a confirmation retreat. I asked them to share where they were at with their faith and with confirmation. Part of the ground rules were that they were to just listen when other people shared and respect them no matter where they were at. As they shared, it became very clear very quickly that the girlfriend was very invested in her faith. Not too long after, it became even clearer that the boyfriend was not. He was somewhere in the process of talking about how much he hated CCD when noise erupted from the other side of the circle, "AH HECK NO! YOU DIDN'T SAY THAT!" Apparently the girlfriend didn't realize her boyfriend didn't care much about church and it led to the biggest breech of small group ground rules I had all year.

Serving food at St. Patrick's
Soup Kitchen

For other retreats, I can tell them about trying to get some sleep (unsuccessfully) while all around me a bunch of teenage boys were freaking out because they found ladybugs in the room. (Really guys? All that over ladybugs?!) It’s easy to talk about the mishaps, but oddly enough, when the retreats go well, I rarely know what to say. People outside CYFM can readily understand why these teenage shenanigans would be frustrating, but it’s harder to describe to them those moments of grace and joy. You’d almost have to have been there.

Vacation Bible School

That’s the sort of position I find myself in as I try to write a reflection about COP. For those of you unfamiliar with CYFM acronyms, COP stands for Capuchin Outreach Program. It is a week long service retreat based out of our retreat center in Garrison, New York. During the day the kids do service at a variety of different sites in surrounding community. Some work in a soup kitchen, others do manual labor, others visit the elderly and the sick, and still others run a Vacation Bible School for kids. No matter where their site is, in the evening, they return to CYFM to pray, reflect and have fun. Through this retreat they get a chance to know Christ better and to get their hands dirty learning to love as He calls them to love. It’s a terrific retreat and truthfully (in my humble estimation) it was one of the best we had all year.

Drip, drip, DROP.

Given that the retreat was so good, I would be remiss not to post something about it. And yet, I hardly know how to put into words what I was privileged to witness on this retreat. For example, I can tell you all about Messy Games. I can describe in detail the sheer volume of paint that was involved (it was a lot...) Or how we played duck duck goose except by dropping powder paint on each person’s head until “the chosen one” had the whole cup of paint dumped on their head. I could describe the mess as the kids jumped onto a slip slide covered in paint, or the blue footprints at that spread throughout the building as though there had been an invasion of smurfs.

The fate of the loser...

What is harder to describe is the joy and camaraderie I witnessed in the course of those games. All the walls were let down, the kids were laughing and having fun and it didn't matter with who. I saw kids come out of their shell as they laughed about the fact they looked like a giant leprechaun and others get cheered on by their peers when they were afraid to jump on the slip and slide. I saw them throwing water balloons and laughing with kids they normally wouldn't talk to. Did it take a little while for them to warm up? Yes. But after the first face full of paint, the walls went down and they were free just to have fun. What a grace that was to see!

I can describe to you what we did during theological reflection and it truthfully won’t sound all that interesting. The kids returned from their work sites, they had a little bit of free time and then after dinner, we broke into our theological reflection groups. Each group had about eight people and met at a designated spot around the campus. Once everyone was together, we lit a candle and had thirty minutes of quiet reflection on Christ’s work in the course of our day. When the thirty minutes were up, the chapel bell was gleefully rung by members of Kelley’s group and we reconvened as a group for 45 minutes. In that time we discussed where they encountered Christ in the course of their day, went over the reflection questions from their journals and when it was all said and done, set them free to enjoy a little of bit of free time before Mass. 

You see? On the surface it all sounds very simple. And yet those were some of the richest small group sessions I ever had as a CCV. You wouldn’t know from just that description what amazing graces were communicated in the course of those discussions. As the kids described their day (both where they found joy and where they felt stretched) they gave their entire small group a glimpse at God’s work in their life. They shared about the moment where their faith became real and important to them. (Those stories were powerful and a lot of them involved DDA.) They shared about moments from their work site where they saw God. Whether they saw a kid come out of their shell, had a moving conversation with a homeless person, or spent the day reading to an elderly person who had gone blind, it was a powerful witness to God's grace. They engaged topics like what the Eucharist is, what it means to be a disciple of Christ and what it means to evangelize. In fact, they engaged those topics so deeply that they often spilled over into free time and sometimes continued late at night. Can I do full justice in describing what a grace it was to see these kids digging deeper in their faith? Not even close.

The Cortlandt Manor Crew

Lastly, there were the service sites. My group went to Cortlandt Manor which is a nursing home not far from CYFM. Even if I describe how we took “the scenic route” trying to get to and from Cortladnt Manor on our first day there (and that is a fairly interesting story), my description of what we did won't sound that interesting. We’d arrive at 9:30 and from then until 4:00, our day consisted of pushing wheelchairs, running games and making room visits to elderly residents at the nursing home. Nothing that exciting ever happens there and the residents themselves will tell you the same thing. It’s a pretty predictable place.

What you miss from that description are the facial expressions. You can’t see from the way I described the work how the residents’ faces lit up when Mikayla sat down to play the piano. (Truthfully, she didn’t either because her back was to them.) You might laugh as I told you about all the dementia patients who were convinced I was good husband material (there’s one lady in my life and that’s Our Lady) but despite that, the look of peace and the smile that came over their face as I held their hand and let them know someone was there for them was a great grace. Seeing the joy that the girls in my group brought with them to every resident they encountered was a grace. Seeing how their faces lit up just as much as the residents’ as they chatted with them and pushed wheelchairs was a grace. Seeing how much patience they exercised as they talked with people who couldn’t always respond much to them was an even greater grace. God's goodness shone through in those moments, but I’ll be darned if I can adequately communicate it.

Everything about the retreat was chocked full of grace: the jokes that went around at dinner, the amazing talents we got to see at the talent show, the side trip my work group took to see the Graymoor friary, the 11 PM discussion a few of us had in the chapel about relics, even getting completely covered in paint. If you saw the joy that permeated every aspect of this retreat, you would know that God was stretching the hearts of these kids in so many ways and there could be no doubt His grace was at work. You would know why this was one of the best retreats we had all year.

To all the COP participants, you know what I'm talking about. COP is over, but those graces continue to flow. Remember that this retreat was a lesson in how to love. Now go out and set the world on fire with love, with His love! I'm praying for you all! God bless.