When my friend Mary Anne called earlier this year and asked me if I ever might like to join her for a week at Chautauqua, a river of "yes" tumbled from my tongue faster than you can say Ogeechee (or for my northern readers, French Creek). She had offered me an opportunity so perfect that I didn't even have to consider the cost or consequences. Had I ever longed to go to Chautauqua for a week? I never really thought about it. But now that I'm here, I realize that this might be my spiritual home.
Originated by the Methodist Church in 1874, Chautauqua is a community of scholars, religious, literary, and scientific, who gather for a nine-week season every summer to learn, teach, worship, and enjoy a life of the mind and, I think, the heart. The collection of homes in the community varies from painted ladies of the early 1900s to more modern homes, from places like to Athenaeum Hotel (which holds hundreds), to small places that hold one or two. Many houses have been turned into apartments, which are rented during the season. A lucky few own their home and live here year-round, or often just for the season. The community is unique in its variety of landscaping; there is little grass but gorgeous plants that fill the small front yards with color and sometimes, a wonderful scent. Chautauqua is a community filled with front porches, where family members young and old gather for meals and conversation.
Yes, Chautauqua is definitely a family place. To sit on the terrace of the cafe and watch parents and children sharing meals and conversation warms the heart. To see fathers playing with their children on the park-like Bestor Plaza, to see mothers walking youngsters to dance class, swimming, play practice, and to walk down shady streets and spot, in the nooks and crannies, families talking, planning, and sharing, I feel as though I stepped back into my youth.
Chautauqua is well-organized for families, but it is also well-organized for scholars. I searched through the workshop offerings for the week I am here and found that I could be writing, singing, acting, swimming, teaching, exercising, and more. The list is limited only to your imagination. I chose the prose writing workshop because it will be most meaningful to me, I think. My first class is tomorrow, so I will have more to say about that later.
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The Episcopal Chapel is on the corner of the street I am living on, but I have not made it there yet. The good news--or do I mean the Good News--is that there's worship every day at 7:45 a.m. and 9 a.m., and a service of Compline at 9 p.m. And lest you think the Episcopal Church is special, let me be clear; the Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, Unitarian Universalists, the Church of God, the Christian Scientists, the Quakers also worship regularly in this amazing place. With so many diverse appeals, God will certainly hear his children!
It's been a long day filled with the opening worship service, a delightful visitor, and a performance by the American Legion Band of the Townawandas, a 90-piece brass band voted National American Legion Band five years in a row. And a barbecued chicken dinner, and ice cream. I wonder what tomorrow will hold?
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