Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

We just spent twelve days at America’s Mecca, the Holy of Holies: Disney World.

Of course, it’s familiar in so many ways which is what makes it a place many parents take their kids. They are re-making memories they had.

The first time I went was in first grade.

My father came to school to pick me up, which was unusual. He had an old Datsun that was so worn down that the floor board was literally a board that covered rusted out holes! The door was closed with a hook and eye lock like you’d put on a gate. 

With a car like that, to say Disney was a stretch is putting it lightly. We came and camped out rather than staying in a hotel. I really only appreciate what that trip meant many decades later. 

Anyhow, what I have are memories more of feelings than any specifics. Although I do remember the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain, so there are few specifics in those remembrances. 

I remember Disney World through the eyes of my kids. I watch them take everything in with a mix of wonder and exhaustion and awe and even with some of that “seen it all-ness” that kids sometimes have. 

It made me think of church quite a bit in a weird way. We appreciate what’s here through the eyes of our kids, too.

The stories of faith, the rituals that bind us, the buildings we sometimes take for granted all take in new life through their eyes. We come to appreciate anew just what a gift it was that we were given at some distant point in the past we hardly remember when faith may have been shared with us. 

We might only have the memory of a feeling but often that’s enough.

As we build life here at Saint Philip’s it’s my hope that we build a collection of memories and feelings that will last, and that will create that pull so that down the road those same kids will be parents who want to bring their kids back, too. They’ll want to re-remember the gift of life in Christ through their own kids’ eyes, and in that new memory may come to appreciate again just what was shared with them. 

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert