"I know my own"

Truth be told, the best moment of my Good Shepherd Sunday was not the well-crafted sermon on the John Gospel text, nor the carefully rehearsed and surprisingly successful performance of Randall Thompson's setting of Psalm 23 for choir and harp.

Nope. Those things were lovely, challenging, tasteful. They preached the dying and rising again of Jesus. Good enough, surely.

The living waters of the day came from something else: four eight-foot pieces of white cloth, held by eight young people standing across from one another in a circle, waving the eight-legged cross they made up and down, fanning the air, and seeing it spin rainbow pinwheels held by other young folk. It was the convocation at the end of the Dream Act Pilgrimage. The Dreamers presented their lives, the fears and dangers lurking in their undocumented status. But they also spoke of their faith in the Good Shepherd, who knows their names and their status and calls them to be witnesses and gifts to others.

Go in peace. Serve the Lord.