For Wilshire Baptist Church
Uniforms are interesting things. They unify and identify people in a certain way but never totally. We can dress alike but we’re never completely alike. And yet we’re more alike under the skin than we often admit.
Last week at this time we were at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico to see my brother receive an award given periodically to former staffers who have distinguished themselves in their careers. We were just guests while the real audience was the 1,100 staff that were preparing to host 30,000 Scouts and leaders through the summer.
The staff – men and women from age 18 and on up to gray hair – were all dressed alike in casual uniforms of khaki shorts pants or and dark green shirts. They moved as one through the flag-lowering ceremony to the chow lines for dinner and into the amphitheater for the evening program that included the award presentation. Watching them I admired their enthusiasm and energy and got excited knowing I’d be back there in late July for a trek with my nephew and his troop. And I recalled the pride I felt wearing the Scout uniform during my youth – beginning with Cub Scouts when we wore our blue uniforms to school on den meeting days. I doubt they allow pocketknives dangling from belts like they did back then.
Between the dinner and the evening program there were worship services at four outdoor chapels designated for Catholics, Jews, Latter Day Saints and Protestants. This is not unusual and in fact is par for the course in our culture. I’ve toured the Air Force Academy – another uniformed setting – and they have separate chapels for different faith groups; the same is true elsewhere. Still, I find it curious that we readily put on uniforms for a common cause and yet we divide ourselves out when the church bells ring.
We decided to pass on the chapel services, choosing instead to visit with family and check out vendors from the town of Cimarron nearby. We might have gone to the Protestant service but sometimes that can be a liturgical washtub where the colors that define us bleed together into a dull gray, and we “protestants” do like our different liturgical colors. On Sunday mornings LeAnn and I back out of the driveway carefully so as not to bump someone going to one of the four churches we easily could walk to if we didn’t prefer the colors of Wilshire.
Part of that Wilshire color is our focus on the needs of our immediate community. On Sunday in Wilshire’s Epiphany class, Heather Mustain, our minister of missions, talked about the Food on the Move summer feeding program that brings nutrition for the body, mind and spirit to children at apartments near the church. I’m pretty sure the kids at the apartments don’t care what church we are from or the colors of our spiritual uniforms. They just care that we come to spend time with them; they just care that someone cares.
And the Scouts who go to Philmont this summer to hike and camp won’t care about spiritual colors or uniforms either. They’ll care about the outdoor experience, and that begins with the staff who will guide them. At the Tuesday night program my brother told his personal story about how working at Philmont for several years helped prepare him for life. He interspersed his talk with songs, ending with the first verse and chorus of “How Great Thou Art.” It was a good choice there in the majesty of God’s creation:
Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
When he finished singing the chorus he invited the staff to join him in a repeat. Soft laughter floated through the audience because he couldn’t hear that many in the crowd had already been singing with him. They were unified in more than just their Scout uniforms and their common purpose; they were unified in the presence of God under the endless canopy of stars.
Post Script:
During the program at Philmont they announced that the wildfire danger rating had been raised from “very high” to “severe.” Two days later a wildfire broke out at Philmont and quickly burned up 37,000 acres. The staff evacuated to a county fairground 30 miles away and returned when it was deemed safe, but word came Monday that the first half of summer activities have been cancelled and there’s no guarantee beyond that. So now, in uniform or not, Scouts around the country are united in disappointment – me along with them if our trek is cancelled. But then again, maybe we’ll be united in our resilience. Scouting, like faith, is a way of life and not a one-summer event.