We're about half way through Summer Soccer 2007, so here is a "team picture" from last Sunday's session.
When I look at this group, I'm amazed at how this program at a very small, rural Episcopal parish in New England has grown in 2 1/2 years. That first year, there was one session when I was the only participant. There was also one session when only I and the kid who had suggested the program to begin with attended.
Around this time that first summer I had the feeling on more than one occasion that it really wasn't going to work at all. Eventually, no one would show up; the few people in the congregation who had raised their eyebrows when I had suggested the program to them would be shown to have been right after all.
Then a remarkable thing happened. One Sunday, as I was standing at the far end of the corridor leading toward the field, I saw a very old woman whom I knew from the congregation making her way purposefully down the hall toward me. Her name, I knew, was Marge, and I also knew that she was 99 years old.
She manouvered her walker up to me, pointed her finger at me, looked me in the eye, and said "Are you the soccer man?"
I was afraid that I was about to be told that I was doing something Godless or worse and that I ought to be ashamed of myself for having ed this program. With that in my mind, I swallowed hard and said "Yes, I guess I am."
Marge said "Well, keep it up!" and turned and manouvered her walker back down the hall toward the church.
If I ever had seriously contemplated dropping the soccer program, Marge's admonition to keep it up pretty much put those thoughts to rest. She's now 100, and I'm not sure she's been at church this summer to see the kids in their new purple shirts -- at her age she's certainly entitled to take a few weeks or even months off -- but she has been there in my mind every Sunday.
Thanks, Marge!
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