Where Did He Go?

This weekend, Oddwalk spent time in sunny San Diego, California. We had a great time, met a lot of wonderful people, and managed to scare off a priest. More on that later.


Oddwalk was leading two days of training for youth in the diocese – they have such days every few months. This time around the subject was liturgy. In addition to the fun and zany things that we normally do, we led them through an exercise of being a parish liturgy planning committee. The teens got to experience the whole process of using the readings, the liturgical season, and community events to plan the music for a Sunday Mass. They also had the opportunity to create their own (fictitious) church and parish community. This included a 700-year old “Cathedral of St. Michael” which was named for one of the teens in a group.

We led two days of training. The first day was in San Diego itself. The second day had us traveling two hours away from San Diego to Imperial Valley to repeat the process with another group.

During the “warm-up” section of the second day, we sang our infamous “Matilda the Gorilla” (big surprise there). Sometimes when we do that song, we single out certain people like adults, for instance; when we do that, they have to sing the refrain and do the silly gorilla motions by themselves. That particular day, we decided to also single out the pastor of the hosting church, who was just hanging around watching (and not doing the motions). When we did this he pretended (we thought) to slip through a door to a nearby room to hide. Playing along (we thought), Shannon left the stage and went to go get him to come out of that room and “force” him to do the actions. When he reached the door the priest had gone in to, the door was locked and he didn’t come back out. What we thought was a playful gesture was actually a priest running in fear. We never saw him for the rest of the day. Poor guy.

Our weekend also included (but was not limited to):

- Good looking donkeys
- The cover-band at the airport
- No vegetarian food at the Mexican restaurant (Sorry Janelle)
- Caution, Cassock-Wearing Priest Crossing Ahead (happens all the time)
- A broken chair (Shannon’s doing for once)
- Great views of the city, ocean, and mountains
- Strangely political graffiti in the porta-potty
- Grande Hot Chocolates, times 2.5
- Stinky cows
- Fearless birds at the Harbor
- And Hannah, seen here:
Hannah is the almost 3-year old daughter of Blair, an assistant in the Youth Ministry office in the diocese, and her husband, Dominic. Here, Orin and Hannah were reading Dr. Seuss’ “Oh the Places You’ll Go” together – Hannah already has this book memorized. Shannon and Orin also had a bit of a game with her – Shannon trying to get a high-five, Orin trying to get a “pinky-shake” from her. In the end, Orin finally got his shake, but Shannon never did get his high-five. He’s not sure how he will be able to carry on.