Revenge of Camp Stories: Postscript.

My search for a YouTube video of the song I referenced in the previous post developed into an obsessive google-quest.  I believe it was first taught at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp about five years ago, in Whompy and Bethany's singing class, and I always assumed the title was "He is Wonderful."  The piece, as sung by these mostly white Midwesterners, is neo-baroque: square and crisply choral, one of the few songs that almost never lags at WCYC.  It's all over YouTube, but most of the recordings don't sound at all like what those campers were singing.  The closest approximation I could find was filmed in Samoa, which is not so strange when you consider that the song was probably brought over by a missionary from the Midwest.

But most of those YouTube videos are performed by African-American choirs at a far more relaxed tempo, with a swing and a sway, and with bits I didn't even recognize.  I was curious: did this song originate with a white church and later get an infusion of soul?  Or did it come from the gospel music tradition and get ironed and starched by European-Americans?  Well, after lots and lots of googling, I found my answer in the original 1985 recording. (The singing starts in about 3:45, but if you skip the music of that preacher's voice, I'm telling you, you're missing out.)

The writer is A. Jeffrey LaValley, who was actually born not far from WCYC, in Milwaukee.  He's the minister of music at the New Jerusalem Full Gospel Baptist Church in Flint, Michigan.  The song is titled "Revelation 19:1," and it was "chosen as the entrant for the Papal Celebration at the Vatican in June, 2006" (source is PDF).  I don't know whether that means it was performed or just submitted, but if it was actually sung at the Vatican, that must have been amazing.  If you're interested in other performances of the piece from around the world, I found the YouTube links on this page to be of better quality than the ones Google gave me.

* * *

 
So what exactly did that epiphany mean to me, there at that last devo?  Or more to the point, what does it mean now and for the future?

Well, it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going back next year. Jury's still out on that one, but there's a good likelihood I'll be busy with other things at that time.

And it doesn't mean my dilemmas are resolved, not by any means.  In fact, they'd only be resolved if I had decided not to return.  Because the other way of resolving them, by just blindly accepting what is being taught without measuring it against my own experience and understanding, is no longer an option.

It also doesn't mean that I'll be returning with a mission to rock the boat.  I won't be standing up on the cafeteria table to proclaim, "Jesus drank alcohol!" or whispering to campers that perhaps some of these praise songs might sound better with guitars and drums, heheheh.

It means that when I go back, I need to be on my toes, looking for appropriate opportunities to share my perspective, even at times I'm not sure it will be heard.  It means that I need to view my work with these folks as collaboration, even when our approaches seem to be in conflict.  It means that sometimes when things are done in a way that I disagree with, I'll have to just let it go, knowing that the outcome is in God's hands, not ours.  It means that I will need to accept that there are things I too will mess up, and be okay with this, knowing that messing things up is what people do.  And then, of course, I will have to do what I can to make them right.

(I really think that last part is the clincher.  I'm a perfectionist; I will do almost anything to avoid messing things up, doing things the wrong way, saying the wrong thing.  I really need to get over that.  It has cost me a lot of opportunities for speech and action.)

When typing up this journal, I debated whether to use the phrase "working at cross purposes" to describe what I feared I was doing at WCYC, because its potential double meaning was exactly the opposite of what I intended.  But no other phrase seemed to quite fit.  The mental image I had was of two objects colliding with each other while headed in completely different directions.  Or a bunch of parallel lines, and then one line coming in out of left field and intersecting them all at some crazy angle.  Or that politically divergent couple who cancel out each other's vote at the ballot box.  If I'm going around trying to fix what you're doing, and you're going around trying to fix what I'm doing, then not a whole lot is going to get done, was my thinking.

But I'm reclaiming that entendre now.  I'm currently operating on the theory that working at cross purposes with other believers may, if done in love, not be as contrary to cross purposes as it might seem.

* * *

There's so much I left out of this journal.  I didn't tell you about how I was three days in before Toto's "Africa" stopped running through my head nonstop.  I didn't tell you about the cabin devotionals, or about what I shared during our second round of confessions.  I didn't tell you about how the camper I was afraid I'd have trouble with, aside from a couple of mildly abrasive encounters, never actually caused any trouble.  Out of respect for their privacy, I didn't tell you much at all about the campers, which means you didn't get a lot of class and cabin narrative.  And out of respect for my readers' sensibilities, I didn't talk about my digestive system nearly as much as I might have, or even mention the no-soap experiment.

I left out the conversation I had with Shane right after being "healed of leprosy."  I didn't say whether the devo talks got better as the session progressed (answer: not as much as I would have liked), or about taking a teacher and board member aside to tell him about how it seemed to me there was a lot of talk of sin this year at the expense of spiritual growth (he hadn't noticed until I brought it up, but now that I mentioned it...).

And I didn't tell you about my ride back to Chicago or the time I spent with Mitch, teaching her friends to play Monster Cards, wading in Lake Michigan, scouring the comic shops for a copy of Scott Pilgrim v.6, and watching video footage of ourselves in 1995 (we were sooo cute!).

But I managed to cram in an awful lot, and if you've actually read all two weeks' worth, bravo!  That was a lot of words.  Thank you for reading them.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Friday, July 30.

Again with the doom-and-gloom in Rabbi's Meeting this morning about this post-modern generation and their lack of objectivity.  I finally speak up: I hear what you're saying, but I have a lot of faith in this generation as the future of the church.  They're going to get a lot of things wrong, but they're going to get a lot of things right, and I'm excited about that.

The naysayers are polite, but unrelenting in their disapproval of Christian kids these days: sure, they're very spiritual, but they're lacking in self-discipline and conviction and focus and... I forget what-all, but I've heard all this before from baby-boomer Christians, and I have very little patience with it.  There is always reason to despair.  There is always reason to hope.  And I am certain that these teachers' parents had similar rants about their children's generation.

Then Roger the Cowboy says, Well, I came to an objective decision about my faith when I was young, and then the spirituality came later.  But maybe these young people have to do things in a different order.  Maybe they have to get to where they're going on a different horse.  I don't know that horse, so it's hard for me to trust it, but it may get them there all the same.

I appreciate this, but as I move on to the Bible class I'm teaching, that unanswered question from last week writhes in my gut: Do I even belong here anymore?  Am I working at cross purposes with these people?  Or are we just presenting two sides of the same coin?

I do not hesitate to identify myself as a post-modern woman with a post-modern faith.  I believe it's possible for an action to be sinful for one person or situation, and yet to be completely innocuous for another.  I'm convinced it's a waste of effort to try and convince people that alcohol, cigarettes, and coarse language are to be avoided by everyone at all costs.  I believe it's far more important to be earnestly seeking God than it is to follow all the rules.  I believe that, as a means of encountering your environment and experiences, feelings are just as valid as objectivity and logic, and to omit one of those is as dangerous as the other.  I believe the Bible is a document that comes to us from a specific culture and period in history, and that fact has to be taken into account when applying it to our lives (and, more significantly, the lives of other people).  It seems to me that, if all your friends believe the same things you do, it's time to make some new friends.  I believe God is love, and that in Christ, we are free indeed.  And I believe in admitting I could be wrong about even the beliefs I hold most dear.  That doesn't mean I believe in them any less.

It feels good to write this out, but the question remains.  In the balance, it's clear to me that what is being done here is so much more beneficial than harmful.  But am I wasting my own energy working alongside people whose teachings so often make me grit my teeth?  And if I am more active in speaking up when I disagree, am I going to mess things up for everyone else?

It's raining now, so we have to scramble for indoor class locations.  For Bible we cram into the front room of the Nurse's Cabin, squished together on the cool concrete floor, and the physical closeness of the group feels cozy and appropriate for our last day together.  Another class bumps my World Travel class from the Lodge to a smaller venue.  While we're waiting outside to redirect everyone, there's a crunch and a chorus of shrieks from the Lodge's back porch, which hangs out over the hillside on some seriously sketchy-looking concrete pillars.  Cries of "The porch collapsed!" go out, though later we learn that only a single weak board gave, under the weight of a large group of people standing close together in prayer.

In World Travel I ask the students to talk briefly about a trip, real or imagined, that they might take, including some of the logistical details we've discussed through the week.  Most of them say the kinds of things I'm expecting to hear, speaking of planned mission trips, upcoming family vacations, the dream of a bicycle tour of Scotland.  The student from Mexico is last.  He says, Well, I've been a lot of places, and he lists them; he has in fact seen more of the US than I have.  But, he goes on, I can't leave the United States, because they won't let me back in.  I don't have those papers yet.  I make sympathetic noises; I'm sorry to have put him into a corner where he has to share this.  Well, I hope your papers come through for you soon, I say thoughtlessly, and then bite my tongue.  His expression says he's not holding his breath.  Even knowing all that I know about immigration, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that my country doesn't jump at the chance to have such a talented, intelligent, compassionate and responsible young man as a member of its citizenry.

The camp song (or "The Singin' News") is an annual favorite which I suspect was originally penned by Roger, with a chorus that's easy to join in and verses that sum up the highlights of the year's session.  The afternoon is mostly taken up by rehearsal with Roger on guitar and counselors Bethany and Lorraine on vocals (the really time-consuming part of this is getting them all in one place at the same time).  I offer them what I consider to be the finished product, and invite them to adjust it as they see fit.  We work on it a bit more after rehearsing, adding a line here and a twist there, and then we're ready to go.  We perform it that evening to a highly appreciative audience.  A sample verse for your entertainment:

We played Braveheart and Death Star
   and hid Snipes in the trees,
And kept Nurse Carol busy
   with all our injuries.
The skeeters were so bad this year
   they joined in all our games;
They carried off two campers,
   but we forget their names.

I don't reckon that'll happen again in months and months and months;
I don't reckon that'll happen again in months and months and months!

Devo happens immediately afterward, in the Great Hall, because there are so very, very many mosquitoes.  There's no campfire in here, sadly, but the cross is on the table again, this time with a cluster of candles at its... uh... crux?  (Geometrically speaking, it's not the center.)

Tonight, head teacher Shane actually asks us to speed up the songs: "You can fit in a few more that way," he suggests gently.  I fear I may have verbalized my response ("Finally!") a little too audibly, because nurse Carol, sitting behind me, strokes my ponytail and whispers "Sweetheart!" in a tone that I interpret as equal parts amused and reproachful.  But though I fear the request will have little effect, there's a huge difference in the tempo of the songs.  They are full of life and energy, and joining in is an unmitigated pleasure.

While I'm singing, I reflect again on the question that's been dogging me all day, and has popped up repeatedly through the session.  Do I belong here?  Should I come back?  Would I just be waiting until some conflict so dire that I walk away so angry I no longer even want to return?   I consider ruefully that if I'd made the time to discuss this with someone, maybe I'd have an answer by now.  Maybe.  But I was never clear enough in my dilemma to feel I could adequately explain it.

One more time, Shane gets up to give us the nightly injunction: "Consecrate yourselves, dedicate yourselves, prepare yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord is going to do some amazing things among us."  By this time the campers know it so well they can say it with him, but tonight it has a special meaning.  It's easy to expect (and be looking for) God to do amazing things at camp, because it's clear to us that he has; but tomorrow, we're all leaving.  We are consecrating and dedicating and preparing ourselves to return to our mundane, everyday lives, and we are expecting him to do amazing things there, in the places that it seems least likely.

Director Jeff speaks again, too, reminding us of the two greatest commandments, and saying that if we are faithful in following those, God will let us know about any other behaviors we need to be correcting (a message I deeply appreciate right now).  Then he calls forward all the graduating seniors, and announces from their ranks the winners of the camp's Mr. and Miss WCYC contest (a tradition abhorred by so many of the staff that every year I expect to hear it's been canceled).  The overheads dim to black, and Jeff lights two pillar candles, one for each of them, from the lights on the cross.  With those two candles they ignite camping candles in the hands of the other seniors, who pass the fire on to everyone else present.  As flame flickers from wick to wick, the darkened room fills with warm light, and with song.

All praises be 
to the King of Kings
And the Lord our God,
He is wonderful!

It is the prettiest of camp songs, a four-part chorus in intricate, jubilant polyphony.

Allelujah!
Salvation and glory,
honor and power:
He is wonderful!

And it is there, amid hands and voices and faces and flames lifted in worship, in a moment of intense emotion, that I find the answer I'm seeking:  I have given my Word into the hands of imperfect people, with the full knowledge that they, and you, are going to mess it up, yes, sometimes very badly.  But these are the flawed stones from which I have chosen to build my own house, the imperfect tools I'm using to construct my Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. 

I must confess this sounds like a terrible idea to me.  It sounds messy and endlessly frustrating, and I don't see how it can possibly work.  But my approval is not required, and neither is my comprehension of the plan in its entirety.  What is required is my willingness to put myself into places where I can be useful.

Hallelujah, 
He is wonderful!

I'm pretty sure this is one of those places.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Thursday, July 29.

I get really frustrated in Rabbi's Meeting today (again, this is the class where Bible teachers go over the day's text and discussion questions before teaching their own classes).  First there is the question of whether the two greatest commandments can be obeyed separately.  One teacher says that no, you cannot claim to love God if you do not love your neighbor, and you cannot truly love your neighbor if you don't love God.  Though I agree with the first part of statement, I strongly disagree with the second.  But I'm slow to respond, thinking through this, and feel I'd missed my opportunity to say so before the discussion moved forward.  So I'm angry at myself.

Then there's more tsk-tsking about this generation, how shallow they are, how driven by their feelings, oh, everything has to be about feeling good with them.  Now.  This whole topic of feelings vs. religion is a sore subject for me that goes way back, and could fill a sizeable blog post on its own.  Suffice it to say that, over and over in church when I was growing up, we were told not to trust our feelings, that our feelings were inherently flawed and could only lead us to ruin.  Feelings = stupid!  Feelings = weakness!  Logic and reason were the only approved ways of interacting with reality, and the inherent flaws of those were never acknowledged, though there were some pretty blatant examples in plain sight.  For a girl who felt things pretty strongly, and was already unsure of how to handle those feelings, this message was toxic. Honestly, I'm still dealing with the fallout.

So I'm pretty growly by the time I go off to teach Bible class, but once again, talking with the campers gets me all hopeful.  They're not boxed into a comfy Christian social circle that thinks like they do, as many of their teachers seem to be.  I wish more of them had Christian friends back home, but I'm glad they're interacting with the non-Christian world and its accompanying dilemmas, even if that means they have more opportunities to make choices that are harmful to them.  I bring up the question of whether the two Greatest Commandments can be taken separately.  Shrugs and hesitant negatives.  But when I say, hey, I've got some atheist friends who are a whole lot better at loving their neighbors than I am... then they start talking.

The afternoon is busy. There's a dramatic production of the first chapter of a sword-and-sorcery epic, written and directed by a camper.  It plays, beat-for-beat, like a D&D game, complete with a tavern meetup scene and armor/weapon info narrated for each character's description. It's acted out by a bunch of campers who understand its inherent ridiculousness in a way that the writer does not.  And yet they love him.  So while they don't exactly play it straight, they do try very hard to make him happy, and, I believe, succeed.

Before that there's a baptism, and afterward there's a surprise party for a camper from my cabin, celebrating 9 months of sobriety.  And all of this is wonderful, and I enjoy it.  But I wave a disappointed goodbye to the day's chance to drift in circles on an inner tube, reeling out my brain to swoop like a kite overhead.  And I'm still behind on journaling, yes, and still working on those lyrics too.

Dinner is the final cookout, and the mosquitoes are so bad out there that even though the site has been fogged before we arrive, they're still maddening.  I'm wearing baggy nylon pants and boots, and I zip my rain jacket up to my chin and pull on my hood, but I'm still constantly windmilling to keep them away from my face.  DEET makes it less bad, but still: it's bad.

Once I'm finally sitting down in a breezier, less buggy area with some food in my belly, I abruptly realize I'm on sensory overload, full-on introvert reaction mode.  Too many people.  Too much noise.  Rather than halfway attending to an adjacent conversation, I space out unabashedly, letting my glazed eyes rest on the trees massed below the hillside.  It feels good, but I really, really want to be alone just now, in a quiet place with no mosquitoes.

After a few minutes, teacher Dianne pulls her chair over and says, "You look like you're lost in thought.  I thought I'd come and rescue you."  Hah.  I explain what's going on, and she lets the conversation lag to intermittence, which is a lot more comfortable for me right now than trying to sustain dialogue.

I sit out of that night's Snipe game; I can no longer deal with mosquitoes in quantity.  I lie on my sleeping bag, listening to shrieks and footfalls around the cabin, and take deep slow breaths, and feel better.  Better enough to recall the calendar, and a projected hormonal shift that may have influenced the evening's mental meltdown.  Ah, yes.  You'd think after all these years of womanhood I could see these things coming, but no, I never do.

Tonight's devo is the annual tradition of Anointing, which is both less and more scary than it sounds.  Once again the table bearing the cross is set up in the middle of the room, but this time instead of bread and juice, there are small bowls of olive oil.  Anointing, in this context, is simply smearing a little oil on someone's palm, while speaking a blessing or word of appreciation to him or her.  (The best part is that your anointee is not allowed to talk while this is going on, or even reply immediately, which can make for some serious squirming.  The worst part is that you can't defend yourself with words while it's being done to you.)  Meanwhile the same thing is going on with pretty much everyone in the room at the entire time, which means it's a greasy, teary, huggy scene, messy and intensely beautiful.  I do circuits of the crowded room, trying to catch campers I've connected with in class and in the cabin, and as many "lepers" as I can possibly snag, as well as most of the staff.  I wish my blessings were more profound, original, or reflected a clearer observation of the person in question, but what I am really saying to all of them is I love you, and I think that at least gets across.

* * *

I didn't write down any of the blessings I gave or received, but two and a half weeks later, pieces of a couple of them are still with me.  One was from Joe: I told him how much I had appreciated his steadiness while we were "leprous," how (while still taking it seriously) he had been able to view the situation with a detached eye, even when I was getting all worked up about it.  Later, he caught me and said, One of us needed to be emotionally involved, and you were right there in it with them.  And I saw that, rather than being the weak link, I had been half of a really well-balanced team, and this made me happy.

The other was a camper who said to me, with great conviction, You are changing the world.   It startled tears into my eyes, and I realized, or remembered: that is exactly what I want to do.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Wednesday, July 28.

Today is a day of recovery from the previous two.  I'm terribly groggy until I manage to get a nap in at that free period between classes.  Then I wake up ready to rock World Travel.  It's time to talk about packing again!  Show and tell is popular; my class enjoys squooshing the inflatable pillow and ooohing over the soft travel towel.  When I mention that in some countries women are still expected to wear skirts, I'm surprised at how many of the girls groan.  "I hate skirts," several of them say.  I felt the same way at their age, but thought I was in a pretty small minority.  (For me it was a mobility issue: I like to climb things and sit with my legs tucked up under me.  Eventually I discovered you can wear boxers or biking shorts under them, and then I didn't hate them anymore.)

Our afternoon activity is camp service projects.  Our teams are assigned tasks somewhat haphazardly.  Mine starts out pruning back overgrown paths, then joins another team in hauling firewood, and winds up helping to move buckets of dirt and gravel to create runoff channels for future rainstorms.  We had another one of those last night, though it was significantly less dramatic.  Today the mosquitoes are much worse.

Crickin' sounds pretty good after all of this.  I've begun a habit of snagging the smallest inner tube and drifting in a circle down below the rapids.  Kick sideways to get into the current near the foamy water (look out for that rock!), ride the fast flow about 50 feet toward the shallows, kick out into the backflow that takes me back toward the "falls" again (look out for that camper!).  Once I have my fill of this, I sit down on a shallow sandstone ledge and tilt my head back (upstream) to give my scalp a good pressure-wash.  The water is colder today than it was yesterday, and the current's flow is much more powerful, threatening to shove my bum off the ledge until I move farther toward the creek's edge.

Tonight's the talent show!  Aside from the usual quota of vocal solos/duets with/out guitar/piano, there are several unique numbers:  a spoken word performance (followed by a spot-on spoof of said performance), beatboxing, breakdancing, a two-man military review with "rifles", and three guys threading pine needles in one nostril and out the other (shrug?).  The "grand" finale is the song that teacher Dianne and I wrote to the tune of (parts of) the William Tell Overture.  Dianne has recruited an improbable number of people into this endeavor; I don't know how she managed it, but now that I think of it, she does every year.  There are representatives from each of the major staff groups to carry their designated verses, and counselor Bethany holds us all together with the piano accompaniment.  Here's a sample verse, the one for the teachers:

Archery, Juggling, "Ultimate Man",
Take a class, your teachers have a plan,
Fix a bike, play guitar, sing like a lark,
And we'll allllll discuss the book of Mark!

Yep.  And that's one of the better verses.  The girls' counselors were all about rehearsing elaborate choreography for their verse, while the guys' counselors completely rewrote theirs to say something like "if you want poo, we're the men for you."  It's pretty much ridiculous from start to finish, which is so traditional for the annual staff skit that, obviously, it qualifies as a success.

There's more, but I barely jot down the skeleton of the day.  Nearly every spare minute is spent catching up on my journal (which I didn't have handy for most of the past two days), and working on the next lyrics assignment: words for the Camp Song to be sung on Friday.  This time, I'm writin' it all myself.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Tuesday, July 27.

None of us sleep well in that tiny stuffy cabin.  There aren't quite enough beds for us all; I'm on the floor with my mattress, crammed in at a weird angle between two other bunks and their angled ladders.  One of the girls asks me, this morning, if we have to clean it up for the daily cabin check.  "Nope!" I reply.  "Unclean people don't have clean check."

Yesterday a couple of lepers asked if Jesus was going to come and "heal" us.  We laughed at them, but in fact, last time we did this, that was exactly what happened.  A minister and two other men visited the camp in the role of Jesus and a couple of disciples.  Joe and I have been trying to figure out who might show up to play the part this year.  We suspect it might be one of the Cleveland clan, but agree that it's hard to imagine Nate, perhaps the most likely candidate, playing the role without his usual trademark ironic flair.  (Try to imagine Bill Murray playing Jesus. There you go. That'd be Nate.)

In Rabbi's Meeting, Joe and I sit on a bench a bit away from the other teachers, but still participate in the discussion.  Head Teacher Shane points out that this is the behavior expected of leper pupils in classes today.  I'm not really very focused on the discussion until Roger the Cowboy, draped in his green "Rabbi" robe for the simulation, stands up to make a point, then proceeds to remove the strip of cloth from counselor Natalie's face which marks her as mute.  Then he tells us all not to reveal the identity of the Messiah.  Ohhh.  Roger is playing Jesus.  Didn't see that coming.

I cheat and lower my bandana to teach my classes.  My throat's feeling better today, but there's a lot of background noise, and I just don't project that well.  Mid-morning, I see one of the lepers waving to me from across the hill, en route to another class.  Her bandana is gone; she, too, has been "healed."  I signal congratulations and go on to the next class, relieved to have further evidence we're on the downward slope of this thing.

While everyone (but the lepers) waits in line for lunch, the Pharisees and "Jesus" get into a very public argument.  Pharisee Jeff shouts loudly enough that we can all hear him, but Roger's replies are hard to catch from 50' away.  The argument appears to center around a "paralytic", who is obviously about to get healed.  One of the lepers makes a beeline for "Jesus", pressing straight in through the crowd, which is of course completely inappropriate given his diseased status.  I'm proud of him.  Jeff ad libs outrage: "You bring a leper among us?!"  We can't see or hear much of what happens after that, so we back off to a more comfortable spot to sit and wait our turn to eat (and/or be healed).

After a bit, the leper who forced his way through the crowd comes back bandana-free with another "healed" leper.  "Unclean," we mutter at them, but they say, "Come on! Come and get healed!"  I shrug and eye the six or so remaining camper-lepers; it's their move.  But no one moves.  Joe plays the skeptic: "Who is this guy? I don't trust him."  The five or so campers sitting with us know this is an act, but their lack of motivation to go surprises me.  (I think the biggest reason for this may be loyalty; the experience has drawn this group together pretty tightly, and no one wants to abandon the others.  Further, they've all chosen to follow the rules of the simulation, and barging into a crowded dining hall is pretty clearly outside those rules.)

Our inertia clearly baffles these two as well: You could get this fixed now, and yet you just sit there?  They waste little time on arguments.  One of them grabs a girl and carries her bodily toward the dining hall.  The other one, significantly shorter, makes a move to do the same, realizes it isn't going to work, then turns to me, grabs my arm, and drags me after him.  It's enough to get everyone moving (and laughing), and we shove our way into the dining hall en masse.  Everyone else is there too, and "Jesus" isn't rushing any of his encounters, because magical healing powers aren't really the point here.  So there's a significant line, and we have no choice but to wait.

I'm hoping for a batch healing, like the ten lepers in Luke 17 (then we can one-up them by all coming back to say thanks!).  But when he finally gets to the first leper, it's clear "Jesus" isn't going that route.  Meanwhile, we're all blocking the salad bar.  Pharisee Shane tells us to move along: "You're creating a disturbance!"  I'm prepared to ignore him (his heart clearly isn't in it; he's as eager to be done with this as I am), but some of the leper-campers leave, so Joe and I follow them out.  He and I have to be last anyway, in order to chaperone any remaining lepers through rest period (which follows lunch).

And last we are.  The remaining leper-campers eat outside with us, then disappear into the dining hall and disperse bandana-less with friends.  We see Pharisees leaving the dining hall, removing their robes with relieved expressions.  Eventually Roger emerges, clearly exhausted, and Joe and I make our requests.  It's strange to role-play that your friend is divine, but not as strange as it might be; Roger is already someone I think of as being an awful lot like Jesus.  I vaguely remember him telling me my sins were forgiven and to follow God all the days of my life.  But I don't end up recording any details about this encounter, because by the time I get all of this down it's two days later; in fact what my journal says at this point is "I am SO READY TO BE DONE WRITING ABOUT THIS."  What I do remember clearly is the overwhelming relief that now things can get back to normal, which I think is really the opposite of what you'd feel walking away from an encounter with the Son of God, assuming you took his teachings seriously.

Even though there's no need, I put a word in my fellow cabin counselor's ear and take my rest period in the "leper cabin."  I don't nap soundly, but for an introvert like myself, having time alone is restful in a different way.  And I really, really need rest right now.

* * *

Typically, as we file toward the campfire or into the dimmed Great Hall for devotionals, we are hushed or shushed, preparing to enter a time of focus and listening.  But tonight the Hall is fully lit with raised roof: campers not just singing but belting out "Awesome God", beating time with thunderous stomps and claps.  The burden of the past 24 hours has been palpably lifted, and the result is an explosion of exuberance.  A few of the campers even get up and dance (breakin' and a little swing), which surprises me; I'm not sure if that's frowned upon here or not.  It sure would've been when I was a kid.  I eye the ex-Pharisees, but they're relaxed, smiling, soaking it in.

After the singing, campers get the chance to speak about their experiences.  The stories are many and wide-ranging.  For some, the exercise was very painful; for others, even some lepers, it was no big deal (a couple even suggest it should have run longer).  Everyone didn't take the same lessons from it, either, but it's far more interesting to hear what they've worked out for themselves, rather than having them just repeat something they were told.  It's really lovely that no one ever gives us the authoritative purpose for the exercise, or tells us the Big Lesson we ought to have learned in case we missed it.  Because maybe it's not the same for everyone, and that's okay.

From where I sit, it looks like the point of the exercise is to make real to us the impact that Jesus had on his community; more specifically, it creates a camp-wide yearning for things to be set to rights that, in some small sense, echoes a people's millennia-old desire for their Messiah.  And that collective yearning is like a kaleidoscope-view of an individual's longing for God:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
       so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
       When can I go and meet with God? 
[Psalm 42]

This thirst is as personal and familiar to me as my own pulse, and all too often, as ignored.  I can't say if the simulation is worthwhile for everyone involved.  I can say that for me, 24 hours of discomfort and confusion are well worth the visceral reminder of that longing's source and purpose.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Monday, July 26.

Yesterday campers signed up for their second week of classes.  I was worried about my World Travel class, because though it got a lot of students, it wasn't the first choice for most of them.  So I expected apathy and lack of participation.  But they were lively, fun, and very resourceful with today's warmup game, a simple charades assignment (communicating phrases like "Where can I find a taxi?" or "Do you have any soap?" with only gestures and a nonsense syllable).

The exercise is intended to get them thinking about interacting in a country that has a lot of non-English speakers, but the resulting discussion goes in a different direction.  I have one student who was born in Mexico and two who were born in Haiti, and one of the latter talks about what it was like to come to the US with absolutely no English education.  His experiences speak louder than anything I could say.  (My favorite of his anecdotes:  "When I saw a girl that I liked, I would say, 'I love you!' But then they told me, 'No, don't do that.'")

I feel a little awkward having them in the class, honestly.  I've targeted it at US kids who want to go to other countries, and I know some of the stuff I have to say will sound a little weird or obvious to the ones who come from other countries.  I mean, the campers from Haiti don't need to be told they can pack fewer clothes if they wash them by hand and hang them up to dry.  That's standard procedure in Haiti.  The guy from Mexico already knows it's wise to dress nicely and be respectful when interacting with customs officials.  I am concerned about excluding and about stepping on toes, and I'm not sure what to change about my lesson plan to make it better.  I hope I don't mess this up too badly.  It's okay for me to feel awkward, but I don't want them to feel awkward.

* * *

This afternoon we begin a simulation that hasn't been done at camp for about five years.  It's preceded with a speech from head teacher Shane: "Do you want to get closer to God, even if it's painful and difficult?"  There is hesitation from the campers before they loudly assent.  He explains that they'll only get something out of it if they play along and take it seriously, and for those who know or think they know what's going on, he has only one request: "Shut up. Let other people work it out for themselves."

I know what's going on; five years ago was my first year here, and I remember it vividly.  The camp is divided into social groups, loosely based on the culture of Jesus' time.  Certain (male) staff are given the role of Pharisees and Rabbis; they wear robes and call the shots.  The majority of the campers and staff are instructed to play the role of "righteous Jews."  And the remainder are assigned some sort of infirmity or stigma. Some are "blind" or "mute", "crippled" or have a "maimed" hand.  A couple are even "paralyzed", unable to move from a stick-and-blanket stretcher.  Then there are the outcasts: Gentiles, tax collectors, "known sinners", and lepers.

I'm one of two counselors assigned to the lepers, and I'm relieved to learn that Joe is the other.  He was also here last time we did this, so he knows what's in store as well as I do.  Also, though outside of camp we don't have much in common, he's someone whose company I enjoy.  This is convenient, because we're going to be spending a lot of time together.

Here are the instructions received by all lepers:

Until further notice, you have leprosy.  To fulfill your role in society, you must...

• Wear this cloth over your face -- be sure to cover everything from your eyes down
• Avoid coming within 50 feet of anyone who is clean
• When approaching clean people, you must cry out "Unclean! Unclean!" while making sure you get out of the main walkways and allow them to pass
• Sit on the fringe of each class so as not to cause a clean person to become unclean
• Eat last, outdoors, and only with other unclean individuals
• Sleep on the porch or some other area designated by your cabin as undesirable

Frankly, I'm relieved to get this assignment.  Last time we did this, I was "mute", which was hugely inconvenient when it came to keeping order in the cabin or teaching a class.   This time, as I see it, I've been assigned a specific group to hang out with, and as I look at the 7 male and 8 female campers wearing leper-bandanas, I have a hard time complaining.  I like these people.

Still, I'm thrown off by the news that we're repeating this simulation.  I remember it being... worthwhile, but intense, and I'm on edge emotionally at the prospect of repeating it again.  The leper-campers are uneasy too, not knowing what this assignment will mean for them.  Several are confused about what leprosy is.  I distract them and myself by sharing what I know of the history and physiology of the disease.  Many of them are horrified.  I tell them about the lepers cared for by Mother Theresa in Calcutta, and about the remote colony I sort-of-almost visited on Molokai, the time my cousins dropped anchor just offshore for the night.

We've stationed ourselves in and around a couple of tiny play cabins, off to one side of "the hill" where the other campers are spending their free time, but we see them passing by, and shout "Unclean!" through our bandanas when they get too close.  Some of the campers look at us sympathetically, or mouth "I love you!  Be strong!" at their leper-friends; others throw sticks and pinecones (they were instructed to do this, but some really enjoy it).  The level of discontentment varies widely from leper to leper; some (myself and Joe included) are playing cribbage and laughing about being called "leopards", while others chafe against the enforced separation from close friends.  One normally docile leper says, "I feel like being a bad leper, and rebelling!"

"How?" I ask her.

"I don't know.  I just feel rebellious!"

Dinnertime is when it really starts getting rough.  Tonight's meal is a cookout, but we can only approach at the speed of the paralytics (whose carriers keep having to set them down and get them resituated).  Again and again we advance a few steps, then halt to maintain that 50' (-ish) barrier.  No lepers brought bug spray, so we sit on the trail slapping and complaining, particularly when we notice others going through the food line multiple times.

At last some compassionate campers bring us bug spray, and later, a plate of hot dogs and brats, another of celery, condiments, and bags of chips and buns.  Cups of water and lemonade, too.  One leper is sulky and tearful, and sits far back on the path by himself, refusing to eat.  Others are borderline belligerent and keep trying to push closer to the "clean" crowd.  I try really hard to keep them reined in (although, in retrospect, that may not have even been my responsibility).

We're sent back to camp ahead of the rest, as the path is too narrow for everyone to pass us at the required distance.  "Where should we go?" we ask, and the reply is "Somewhere on the hill" (the open area at the center of camp activity).  So we pick out a nice swing and bench to occupy.  One of the Pharisees orders us to move, so we switch to a different swing and take the bench with us.  There's a definite undercurrent of rebelliousness among the lepers that, at this point, I sympathize with too strongly to quell.  One of the girls starts singing "Well I Feel Good," and most of us join in.  It's a blatant act of resistance, but we figure, how can they get mad at us for praising God?

We keep singing, one upbeat song after another.  We do feel good, and we sound good, too.  Then Pharisee Shane takes us aside and sternly chides us for not taking the activity seriously enough.  I'm pretty mad about this.  I get out my list of prescribed leper behavior and tell him we've been following it to the letter.  I'm about to tell him about how the lepers of Calcutta are by all reports a far from somber people, but somewhere in there I realize that I'm a leper sassing back a Pharisee, so instead I finish off with "...so thank you for explaining how we can do better."

After he walks away, I'm like, fine, whatever, we'll play cribbage out here with the mosquitoes, I've had worse evenings.  Then I look over at the other lepers.  One girl, who was among the most defiant earlier, is sobbing, so I go and sit with her.  After a moment I realize the girl on the other side of me is weeping too.  I am a sympathetic sniffler, and this is altogether too much for my tear ducts.  Around the small amphitheatre where we're sitting, nearly all of the girls and several of the guys are crying.  (The other guys are playing cribbage with Joe.)  A knot of lepers is holding hands and praying in broken voices.  One of them later tells me: "My normal response to something like this would be to rebel, but we couldn't do that. So my second response would be to make the best of it.  But then he told us we couldn't do that either."  What's left?  No wonder they cry.  It's hard not being able to tell them, it's okay, I've been through this and it all comes out right.  But I'm humbled by how much more willing they are to put themselves in this painful place than I am, to really confront the situation instead of just gritting their teeth and rolling their eyes until it ends.

A handful of non-lepers wander over to try and cheer up the exiles, but their efforts are rebuffed.  "We can't talk to you," sniffs one of the girls.  Others avoid eye contact, playing possum until the "clean" ones leave.  They are inconsolable, and the tears continue long after I've wiped mine and slid over to watch the cribbage game.  I can still hear them talking, though:

"I hate this."

"I just didn't realize how hard it would be."

"I miss camp!"

One of the male lepers, clearly anxious about the amount of crying going on, whispers to me, "They're just making it worse."

"Girls... have a different way of processing things," I say, which is a lousy explanation, but the best way I can think of to say, "It's okay, they need to be doing this right now."

The emotions of female-types are not Joe's strong point either.  "Just don't ask questions," he tells him, shaking his head.

At devo, the polyester-robed Pharisees and Rabbis lead songs from Old Testament scripture, such as a minor-key setting of the Sh'ma Yisrael.  There is a scripture reading from one of the books of prophecy, one clearly chosen for ironic effect: it is one that foretells the sufferings of Christ.  Prayers are self-congratulatory proclamations of righteousness.  Seating is segregated by gender, and only the males are allowed to sing.  We lepers straggle at the back, guys and girls intermingled, and sing if we feel like it (but not too loudly).

I'd been notified the female lepers would be sleeping that night in an empty cabin, but given no info about when we should go back to the cabins to get our things.  When devo ends, I realize that's not going to change.  We're the first to retreat from the amphitheater, to allow the "clean ones" to leave, so I tell the girls to run back to their cabins to get their things for the night before anyone else gets there.  I thought they'd dally, but I was wrong.  They sprint, hoping to avoid contact with cabinmates.  One who isn't quick enough comes back crying.  "The way they were looking at me was just..." she sniffles, "I don't know... I couldn't stand it."

I let them take as long as they like settling in.  Being outcast like this has a silver lining: no one is watching you too closely to make sure you don't fudge the rules.  I've spoken to head women's counselor Janet, and she agreed the leper girls could go up to the bathhouse after the lights-out bell.  (The leper guys haven't even been assigned a place to stay; Joe takes them down to the Great Hall for the night.)

One of the "clean" campers delivers a forgotten item to one of the leper girls at our cabin.  Through the screen door, she says, "I am also unclean," and leaves.  One girl sobs, "I don't know if she was trying to make us all cry, but it worked!"  Actually, it didn't for me, but I'm the only one, so I keep my mouth shut.  This entire episode is one long exercise in not talking for the staff; we've been told even before the introductory speech that we should let the campers figure things out for themselves, rather than trying to lead them to conclusions.  Hard as that has been at times, I love this aspect of it.  Hearing the leper girls process their experience, particularly this evening in the cabin, is both painful and amazing.  By this point they've stopped fighting, stopped wallowing in helplessness, and have started really putting their brains and hearts up against their situation.  I let them talk until they decide they're done.  Two of my favorite comments make it into the journal:

"Now I know what it's like to be a social outcast.  I feel so bad for those kids at my school... and I never did a thing to help them."

"I wish they'd all be mean to us, because this nice thing is just not working out for me."

Thanks to emotional exhaustion, they stop talking (and crying) before it gets ridiculously late.  But man, I hate trying to sleep with a stuffy nose.  I toss, turn, and finally go to the nurse's cabin for a Tylenol to take the edge off my tension.  Nurse Carol is still up, having just dealt with a sick camper, and she sits me down for a chat, as concerned about my emotional health as my physical needs.  I give her a brief rundown of leper life and reassure her that we'll all be fine.  I realize as I say it that I'm also reassuring myself.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Intermission.

Will our intrepid heroine overcome her scruples and learn to love singing verrrrry slowly?  Will she eat any more Oven Pizzas of Tummy-Doom?  Will she ever shut up about Rest Period?  Will there be popcorn in the lobby and a long line for the ladies' room?  There's only one way to find out!

(Thanks for reading.  Camp Stories continue their revenge tomorrow.)

Revenge of Camp Stories: Sunday, July 25.

We got one new camper yesterday, and today more are arriving all day long, far more than we expected.  By the end of the day, enrollment will be at a record high of something like 115.  This afternoon, I'm in the Great Hall helping teacher Dianne compose lyrics for a song to be performed by staff in the Talent Show, and we're interrupted at least three times by the arrival of new campers who need to be escorted to someone who can deal with their paperwork.  I'm secretly grateful for the breaks.  (I'm good at doggerel, but I'm not good at collaborating on it, and Dianne and I have been taking turns being impatient with each other.  It's been difficult to convince her that a couple dozen reluctant staffers aren't going to be able to learn a full-speed parody of The Mom Song in less than three days.)

We've honestly had a dream cabin so far, despite having more campers than any other.  They may not always be the tidiest or the most punctual, but they're respectful to their counselors and compassionate to one another.  And the group was a size we've learned to manage.  But today we gain five additional girls (for a total of 23), and it feels like a delicate balance is upset.  We have to adjust not only to additional numbers, but to additional personalities.  One, in particular, I'm concerned about; there is a low-level sullen resistance that I fear will only escalate.

But we can deal.  We can stubbornly love her, and we can stubbornly uphold our standards.  God and Janet (the head women's counselor) will take care of the rest.

It's Sunday, so tonight is our second communion service.  We are back in the Great Hall, and the long folding table stands in the center of the room, with the slightly-less-than-life-sized cross on it.  Counselor Joe gives a few words of introduction; it occurs to me that it's rare (and therefore odd) to see him be so serious about anything.  Afterward, there is a long silent pause.  Finally, one tenuous female voice breaks it in song, and others join.  The song ends, another begins, and campers flow forward toward the cross, take bread and juice, and stand in small groups, arms around one another.  Some remain standing together for a very long time.  The room is filled with human voices, laughter, sobs.

Dianne grabs me and Joe, and we squeeze forward to a spot near the table.  Joe reaches in a long arm for three cups, then tears off a piece of flatbread and divides it with us.  There is that awkward moment where I wonder what comes next: is someone gonna pray, or should I just put this stuff in my mouth?  Dianne bows her head over her juice, so we both do the same.  After a moment, we all eat and drink.  I hug them both, and Dianne says, "It's good to share faith with those you love.  I think about you two more than you realize."

As we return to our seats, Joe's solemn demeanor finally cracks, and he mutters to me, "I hope that wasn't a matchmaking comment."  I agree, chuckling.  With Dianne, you never know.

The eddies and whirlpools around the cross continue.  The tone and tempo of the songs picks up, and they shed the lag with the shift from meditation to rejoicing.  It is hard to write while singing -- I have to write a letter, rather than a word, at a time -- but I must record this.  This, I feel, is what communion should be.  As Shane says: "Common unity.  Comm-unity."  Whatever we may be getting wrong here, we are getting this right.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Saturday, July 24.

I'm lying awake around 3 a.m. when the heat lightning begins, followed by deliciously cool gusts of wind.  Cracks of thunder follow, and some give the illusion (through sheer volume) of being very close.  The curtains covering the screen above my bed swing out well past 45 degrees from the wall, and I can hear the rain coming before it hits.  I lie in my sleeping bag for a couple of minutes even after it starts pelting in, riding the adrenaline buzz while submitting a request for the safety of all present.

Then I get up and tell the girls to move their sleeping bags out of the screened porch into the main room of the cabin.  There's plenty of floor space there, but I'm too discombobulated to think to drag mattresses along.  Fortunately, someone else thinks of it.  I move everyone's stuff away from the inside of the windward wall, and we all settle in on the floor.  It takes about 20 minutes for everyone to quiet down again, but no one is terrified.  Some girls take the opportunity to snuggle up with others.  It's like a slumber party, but without the party.

It's hard to get up that morning.  I wake them 15 minutes early to allow for dealing with sogginess, but the wind has dried the room overnight.  It's a disaster, though; all six of the campers in this tiny room have brought an incredible amount of stuff, huge tubs of clothing and jewelry and hairdryers, and they can barely rein it in under the best of circumstances.  Today, there's no way we can get this room presentable before breakfast.  Later, I request a day's exemption from cabin clean check, which is freely granted.

Today is the last of this week's classes; new classes begin on Monday.  I'm frustrated with Rabbi's Meeting today (the class in which Bible teachers discuss the text before teaching).  A staff member complains about how the campers in his class refuse to condemn homosexuals as sinners, then not five minutes later proceeds to mock some Christians he knows who choose to observe certain obscure Old Testament laws.  I catch the old familiar stench of belief that we're the only ones who've got it right.  I've known its odor for oh, far too many years: topnotes of ignorance with a deep lingering reek of self-satisfaction.  I don't hold my nose, but I hold my tongue.  If no one else smelled that -- if no one else sees that these particular beliefs just might be a point on a continuum of human Biblical understanding, rather than an island of Obvious Correctness in a sea of Idiocy -- then maybe I am in the wrong place.

My Bible class has truly been top-notch, and I tell them so.  They want to get the same group together for next week's class, but sadly, it's logistically impossible.  I let them have free conversational rein for a while today because they keep taking it in such interesting directions.  "Will the Jews who died in the Holocaust go to Heaven?" a girl asks at one point.  I refuse to give answers (though I do point out the distinction between being racially Jewish and religiously Jewish), but counter with another question: "What about people from other [Christian] denominations? Are they going to Heaven?"  Given the perspective I've just heard in Rabbi's Meeting, I'm not surprised that no one replies emphatically in the affirmative.  But a couple of them say something to the effect of, "Well, they haven't got everything right, but neither do we," and this fills my heart with hope.

We get an extended rest period to make up for the sleep lost to last night's storm.  Afterward, I play washers with some other staff members: Joe, Josh, Whompy, Daryl.  It's not the most exciting game in the world, and I'm utterly abysmal at it (or anything involving throwing), but I enjoy their company.  I'm still missing some people who should be here this year, and one in particular I wish I could talk with about the stuff that's been on my mind.  Even if he didn't get where I was coming from, he'd still listen and respond with respect and compassion.  But I bet he'd get it.

I'm headed down to check out the alternate swimming hole being used today (the water is super high after the storm), when I run into a counselor who's concerned about unsupervised campers in the Great Hall, but has no time to deal with it.  (No campers are supposed to be in the Great Hall without staff present; it's too out of the way to keep an eye on otherwise.)  I check on the Great Hall, but two counselors are there.  Cool.  Back to my original mission.  But I sorta forget how to get there, so I take the scenic route, and just when I'm getting close, who should I find heading the opposite direction but... those same two counselors.

"Hey, is there a counselor with those campers in the Great Hall?" I ask them.

"Yeah, there is," says one, looking a little confused.

"No, we were the only counselors there," the other one reminds her, "but... they're working on a devo skit."

I grimace. "There's supposed to be a counselor present at all times. Otherwise we have to kick them out."

One of them says she'll go sit in the Great Hall, but then waffles: a camper is getting baptized soon, no one knows exactly when, and she doesn't want to miss it.  "Okay," I say, "I'll do it, but let me know about the baptism; I'd like to be there too."

So now here I am in the Great Hall, listening to one camper play the piano, while screams ricochet from the next room (from the aforementioned skit).  It's cool and relatively mosquito-free in here, and the piano music's all neutral-warm-chords stuff, soothing without being distracting.  It's been the perfect opportunity to catch up on writing.  But I still feel grouchy.  Why? Is it because I found myself in the role of rule-stickler when other staff were willing to let things slide?  Or is it feeling stuck down here, away from the fun on the (hot, muggy, bug-ridden) hill?

Aaand now I'm out of things to say.  I wish I had that Celine Dion book handy.

*  *  *

"Shout to the Lord." Is not. A dirge.

I had to pull out my notebook and scribble the above at devo, which was indoors again (in the Great Hall this time, which is bigger and airier than the Lodge). This song sounded great last night at the Serenity campsite, but now was restored to its former slow progress.  I had to stop singing for a bit, because, oh my goodness aggghhhh.  Ultimately, writing that line was enough to help me vent and get over it, although it also attracted Director Jeff's attention.  He teased me about being a "mole," which made me laugh. Later I explained what I was writing and why.  He sympathized.  Whew, I was starting to think I was the only one who noticed.

Previously!  I didn't have long to wait after writing that complaint about boredom in the Great Hall.  Counselor Terri came in and chatted with me a bit, then pointed out that it was now nearly dinner-bell time.  We chased everyone out and went to eat.  The baptism took place afterward; no one had to miss it.  On the way to the crick, I openly eavesdropped on twentysomething counselors Josh and Joe comparing notes on relatives who pummel them with invasive questions about their (currently non-existent) dating lives.  It was tragically hilarious.  I can relate to some degree, but man, I have to admit that even my grandma is a whole lot more respectful.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Friday, July 23.

At least once a night here I get up, walk to the bathhouse, admire the moonlit campground, and promptly return to bed and sleep.  This night, though, my awakeitude is prolonged by the progress of dinner (cheap mini oven pizza) through my digestive tract.  I remember this meal having similar effects in previous years; those things seem to have just the wrong combination of ingredients for me.  The one I ate Sunday night seemed to cause me little trouble (although in retrospect it may well have been related to Monday morning's extreme grogginess), but this one causes acute discomfort.  I toss, turn, and vow to fast from wheat today to give my gut a rest.

(My mom has developed a severe, and I mean really severe, reaction to gluten. While I don't currently share this predicament, I've noticed I'm generally more alert and energetic when I don't eat wheat, which indicates that it does tax my digestive system to some degree.  I'll still eat it when someone else is cooking, but in my own home I'm basically wheat-free. At camp, obviously, I'm not.)

Easier said than done.  I must pass up most of breakfast, but at least there are scrambled eggs.  Lunch is spaghetti, breadsticks, and cookies: wheaty wheat with a side of wheat.  I take a helping of cooked peas and, at one cook's laughing suggestion, top them with parmesan.  It's actually not bad.  I'm grateful for the salad bar, which is uninspiring but consistent, and for my snack stash in the staff fridge.  Conveniently, my appetite still hasn't fully returned, so I top it off with a kid-sized milk carton and carry on.

Classes continue to go well.  My Bible students make me laugh a lot, and they're eager to talk about nearly any topic you put in front of them.  In World Travel class today, guest speaker Amanda talks about her travels in Costa Rica; I talk about packing, a topic near and dear to my heart, and show-and-tell some of my favorite travel gadgets (travel pillow, backpacker's towel, compression bag).

Before lunch, a counselor approaches me to share her concern for a camper who is leaving tomorrow.  (Most campers stay for both weeks of the session; a handful are leaving at the end of the week, and we expect a few more to arrive.)  The girl in question has a strong and well-educated Catholic background, and has stood alone on some controversial issues discussed in this counselor's class.  The counselor is concerned about the girl leaving camp with unanswered questions, which appears to me to be the best possible outcome from a first encounter with a church that's very different from your own.  I try to ask leading questions, rather than just point out what I see as dangerous flaws in her reasoning.  She says she wants the camper to "have her own faith" (as distinct from her Catholic parents'), but clearly means she wants the camper to have a faith that looks a lot like her own.  She mentions trying to get this camper to understand that salvation doesn't happen without good works, a theologically sticky standpoint.  And she is disappointed in how "progressive" her students are, saying that they refuse to pass judgment on others' moral choices.  Hmm.

I bite my tongue a lot, hear her out, and reassure her that the camper is in God's hands.  I'm grateful she's willing to share this, but it's a frustrating conversation for me because it underlines the doctrinal divide between my beliefs and those of so many here.  I grew up in the Church of Christ, the denomination sponsoring this camp, but several years ago I left it to attend a community church, finding a more ecumenical and, yes, more progressive approach to be better aligned with my understanding of God's grace.  Key members of the staff are aware of my membership, so I'm not really sneaking in undercover here, but I have to wonder: if this counselor knew what I believe, would she even want me here?  Do I even belong here anymore?

It's a painful question, but the fact is, there's a lot being taught here that I just can't agree with.  I feel cowardly sitting by and doing nothing to counteract it.  But I don't know how, or what to say.  How am I to speak up to disagree here, in this denomination that taught me my place in the church is to be silent (and if I have a problem, I should ask my husband about it)?  I don't even know whether those whose words I've been troubled by are really speaking for everyone.  I know I haven't heard many voices to the contrary this year (some who might have provided balance are absent, and others I just haven't heard much from, so far).  I don't think the bias has always been this extreme, but I can't honestly tell how much of the mismatch I'm feeling is because camp has changed, and how much is because I have.

Yet these people are truly loving, truly understand what it is to serve, and I am called to love and serve them, the body of Christ, warts and all.  But I don't want to be at cross purposes with them.  Do I belong elsewhere?  Or are these just differences of opinion I'd find in any gathering of believers?

I stew about these matters for the rest of the day, though it doesn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying, in consecutive order: a "boat race" down the crick (boats are constructed by campers from recycled and craft materials); a lovely shower, after which I promptly get sweaty again; several games of washers; the remainder of Whompy's manuscript; and a nice catching-up chat with head teacher Shane on the hike to the campfire site known as "Serenity."  (Shane would be a good person to talk to about my questions, but I don't want to discuss them in earshot of the campers who are close on our heels, and am at this point still not even sure how best to communicate my unease.)

At Serenity (No fireflies, sorry!) we eat dinner cooked outdoors, and I decide I'm done fasting from wheat so I can eat my bratwurst on a bun. Afterward, Roger the Cowboy gives us his annual concert, standing between the campfire and the edge of the ridge, miles of treetops spread out behind him.  Roger's songs are plain, sweet, and twang-less, accompanied by acoustic guitar strummin'.  He covers songs like "Grandma's Feather Bed," "I Walk the Line," "Red River Valley" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys," and plays several numbers of his own.  It's a pretty low-key show, but everyone loves it.

By the time he's done, it's nearly dark and time for devo.  There's no speaker tonight either, but the contrast between last night's singing and tonight's is stunning.  Up here in the open air, we stand in a tight cluster beside, rather than around, the campfire; the energy is high and the tempo does not falter, not even three verses into good ol' number 728b.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Thursday, July 22.

The real downside to keeping an account of an action-packed adventure like this is having to choose between writing/reflection and rest.  Today, due to rain, our outdoor activity time is replaced by an extended rest period (the announcement of which was met with loud cheers from pretty much everybody).  Even with the extra time, I'm in a rush to get caught up so I can put the pen down.  Between this project and the draft of Whompy's novel that I've been reading, I may not finish any of the books I brought on this trip. (On the plane I began Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. It's an examination of the appeal of Celine Dion, written by a music critic who can't stand Celine Dion but is determined to figure out why she's so popular. I'm fascinated and itching to get back to it.)

It was raining when we woke up this morning, and has rarely stopped since.  I'm well prepared with hiking boots, rain jacket, and nylon pants, but most others are not.  Both my classes meet outdoors, so we have to scramble for indoor meeting places.  It's an uncomfortable but interesting change of pace.

The rain is finally done by the time rest period ends.  Campers stretch and proclaim how rested they feel.  Awakened mid-REM cycle, I do not.  I take Whompy's book out to read during free/swim time, but as so often happens here, interesting people keep sitting next to me and saying interesting things.  Kate, daughter of a kitchen staffer who is perhaps 9 years old, provides us with entertainment and pestering by turns -- "us" being whoever happens to join me on the bench swing.  Mostly it's Alex, a very patient camper with a homemade didjeridoo that baffles Kate, and Gavin and Joe, two male counselors who egg Kate on to ever-greater feats of feistiness.  Kate challenges a younger female counselor to a fight, then hops around with her fists up, unsure how to proceed.  Finally she kicks the counselor in the shins and runs away.  Later she plays us a song on the guitar (she's quite good), then shouts furiously at an apparently random camper (male, very tall and completely confused) to come and fight her.  It's absurd and, I have to admit, very entertaining.

I chat with Alex, Joe and Gavin, and also Roger the Cowboy.  Roger is the real deal, no rhinestones.  "This is the year of the fence," he tells me wryly, when I ask him what he's been up to.  Fencing an open corner of his pastureland has turned out to be a sizeable project.  We talk about property taxes and the purifying properties of wood charcoal on the digestive system.  I get absolutely no reading done, but I wouldn't trade this.

The evening's activity is Capture the Flag, a well-loved camp tradition.  I'm neither very speedy nor very strategic, and have honestly never cared for the game.  I stand around talking to Whompy about his novel through the first round, defend the flag through the second, and bail completely on the third. By this point so many other people are tired of it that it's a little tough to tell if there's even still an official game on.

All the campfire sites are still waterlogged, so devo is held in the Lodge, an ancient log structure with a screened porch overlooking the creek.  It's muggy and stuffy with a hundred people in there, warm and dimly candle-lit.  Perhaps as a result of this, the songs draaaag.  (This is a Church of Christ camp, which means that all devo songs are sung a capella. Also, there aren't songleaders so much as song-starters, so it's easy for tempo to decline over the course of a song.  But it hasn't been too bad until now.)  Every song slows to a plod, drained of vitality by limited oxygen and the mysterious allergy WCYC has to syncopation.

I can't take it.  I retreat to the bathhouse, more for the walk than for the toilet.  "Well, I hope you like it," I remark to God en route.  Of course I know he does.  I wish I could hear what he hears.

I return quickly so I don't miss the speaker, hoping for evidence to support my theory that we're done with the sin-oriented devos of Monday and Tuesday.  But there is no speaker.  Hmph.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Wednesday, July 21.

The day goes quickly, the first so far to really seem like routine.  Our guest speaker in the World Travel class is Whompy; he holds the girls' interest with stories of his cross-country bike trek from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.  He emphasizes that anyone can do this, which I appreciate; I think it may be hard for some of these campers to imagine themselves capable of such an adventure.

I spend most of rest period writing the previous entry.  I feel better having pummeled my unease into words.  I have begun to wonder who I should talk to about it, if anyone, but I haven't come to any conclusions yet.

The schedule has been getting tighter here and there, and rules are slowly being amped up, nudging us in uncomfortable ways.  At meals now, we have to sit with our teams, and crickin' today is split up into separate times for guys and girls (as it is at the camp sessions for younger kids). During these times, everyone now has to go down to the water, even if s/he doesn't want to get in.  The reason given for these changes is "honoring camp tradition."  There is grumbling in my cabin, but the veteran campers correctly guess it to be an object lesson, so they complain less than I expected.

None of this is onerous, but everyone's relieved when that night at devo, Jeff concludes the exercise and explains its purpose.  Parallels are drawn with the elaborate religious traditions of Israel at the time of Christ.  In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gets called out a lot for being a religious teacher who breaks some of the finer points of the Law: healing the sick on the Sabbath, touching those deemed unclean, etc.  I admit I am not paying super close attention to the lesson this evening, so I don't catch it all, but it seems to me the previous two devo talks have been part of this theme. I fervently hope that from here on out we'll be able to talk about what Christians should be doing, rather than focusing on the rules they shouldn't break.

Earlier, outdoor activity leaders Ed and Jon hit it out of the park with a new game they called "Snipe Hunt."  Willing staff and a few select campers dress up in wacky costumes and hide in the woods, and the campers go out in cabin-based teams to find them and bring them back.  Lured by the promise of a Klondike bar, I volunteer to be a Snipe.  I forego the facepaint, but deck myself in foam flowers with pipecleaner stems and find a shrub to hunker down behind.  When I'm spotted by a team of girls, I flee... straight into the arms of another team, resulting in a tug-of-war in which the role of the rope is played by me.  I am eventually returned to the scorekeeper somewhat chafed, but in one piece.  The event is hugely popular, and the resulting tales of risk, struggle, and triumph are passed around for days afterward.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Tuesday, July 20.

I sleep well, waking only once for a brief visit to the bathhouse. The darkened campground is theatrically draped in mist, which I find still lingering after the sun comes up.  The weather is delightfully cool, and I feel sooo much better this morning.

The hours pass quickly, with Rabbi's Meeting (a class for Bible teachers to discuss the day's text), my Bible class, the daily staff meeting, my free period (used for class prep), and then the World Travel class.  Bible class is always discussion-based, and this week's group is lively and ready to engage.  No one has to be prodded to speak; the challenge is keeping on track, rather than getting discussion going.  It seems like most of my previous classes have involved an awful lot of shrugs and blank stares, so this is a lovely change of pace.

My World Travel class is made up of six polite young ladies (one addition since yesterday) and two staff members sitting in.  I am nervous and talk too much -- they're nearly all experienced travelers and could probably share stories for days.  But it's okay.  I have four more days to get it right.

The "crick" is still high and muddy from recent rains, but the level has dropped enough to allow a return to the favored swimming spots at "the falls."  (Not the precipitous drops down a cliff face that the word suggests: the tallest of them is between three and four feet, and the others look more like rapids, though the lowest one drops off into a deep pool created a century ago by dynamite.)  "Crickin'" is a central part of camp life, and yet I feel no real desire to get in at this point.  Maybe it's because the weather is cool, and maybe because I'm feeling the absence of dear friends who would, any other year, be part of this fun.  But the collective movement draws me down to the water's edge anyway.  I perch on a flood-soaked, mossy log, dampen my sandaled feet, and watch.

The falls are caramel-colored, the deep waters brown as Guinness.  There is much shrieking and splashing, staggering and shoving, in the deeper part of the swimming hole.  A couple of inner tubes float by, skip over the rapids, then float by again.  Girls stand in the shallows and shave their legs; boys wade past, politely trying not to splash me as I write.  Some give me a curious look, but only one stops to ask what I'm doing. "Oh, uh, I'm keeping a camp journal," I say, instantly self-conscious.

"What's happened so far?" he asks.

I stammer and flip back through the pages. "Uh... you were there for most of it?" I say.  He laughs and moves on.

Later, I opt out of the evening's activity, a game in which cabins attempt to dunk each other in waist-deep water.  I don't want to deal with contact lenses, fast-moving water, or one-on-one conflict. This year there is no giant red ball to provide a non-combative goal for the exercise. I am tougher than I look, especially when hyped up on adrenaline, and I know I could hold my own.  But I have a strong desire to not participate in this, and I go with it, claiming journalistic immunity by taking photos for participants.  And I seize a rare opportunity to talk with my good friend Whompy and quiz him about his tandem bike tour with his mysterious girlfriend. (Actually, it's not so much that she's mysterious, as it is that I haven't heard about her before now, considering how long they've been dating.)

The evening's devo involves the testimony of a minister whose life has been changed irrevocably by self-destructive choices.  It's heartfelt, and heartbreaking, but it forces me to once again confront the issue I wrestled with yesterday. Thus far, the apparent focus of this year's spiritual instruction around the campfire has been on not sinning.  Is this really as far as our faith goes?  Are we more concerned with protecting our youth from consequences than we are with their relationship with the Divine?  Do we really believe that not breaking the rules makes you a good person?

I am so discontented with this being given the spotlight.  It was the same when I was a camper (elsewhere): the big intense firelit talks about sexual purity, not hanging out with bad influences, not drinking/smoking/partying.  It was all about not causing trouble.  I understand that those who have dealt with the heavy consequences of their choices want to spare the next generation from a similar fate.  But is this really what we need to be emphasizing most?  (And if we're going to talk about sins, are partying, drugs/alcohol, and premarital sex really the biggest dangers we can think of to warn our teenagers against?)

Yes, we're studying scripture in our daytime classes.  We're singing and worshipping together at devo, too.  Those are all constructive things.  But it seems to me we've brought the mentality of the old-school tent-revival altar call with us into our present-day retreats, and I question its ultimate value in helping us learn to love and serve God better.

As a teen who was pretty good at following rules, I never knew exactly where I fit in with this sin-sational approach. Was it even for me?  Like, should I scrape together some confession about having a bad attitude, and offer it up beside dramatic tales of drug abuse and back-seat liaisons?  Maybe I should go out and commit some interesting sins so I could relate?  Or should I just be conscious that this event, like so many youth group activities, was tailored more to the needs of other people than to mine?  I spent so much time wondering where I fit into all of this, when, with a different kind of spiritual instruction, I could have been moving forward.  I was eager to move forward.  I am angry about this, on behalf of my teenage self, and on behalf of these teens.

So this is the frustration that I bring to the topic.  And other factors, I know, affect my ability to see it clearly.  I mean I am very self-centered, if the above paragraph didn't clue you in to that, and also I am very good at lying to myself.  I have to consider the possibility that I, too, have something specific and obvious to confess and repent of, and I am using this internal conflict to mask it from myself.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Monday, July 19.

I sleep fitfully, as is not unusual for my first night at camp.  I'm itchy, and every skin-twinge might be the brush of a mosquito's wings.  My bladder eventually drives me to shuffle across the hill to the bathhouse, thumping my temperamental flashlight to life.

All morning I am spacey, too dull-witted to write.  I don't want to be antisocial, so I find conversations to park myself at the edge of, saying little, while my mind drifts.  Later, I'm not the only sleepy one as we listen to the entire book of Mark read aloud by a rotating cast of narrators.  I have to laugh (internally) as I rein myself in from dozing midway through chapter 14, where Jesus is chiding his best friends for falling asleep when he needs them most.  Alas, that would've been me.  "Could you not keep watch for one hour?" he asks, and Mark hardly takes longer than that to read through.

Five people (all girls) sign up for my five-day class on World Travel & Missions.  I am tremendously relieved.  Last year my class on Journal Comics got me three students the first week, none the second.  Though I enjoyed that extra free time, the fail didn't help with my insecurities about teaching.  I'm lining up guest speakers and have finally, the day before starting, managed to visualize my first lesson activity (yeah, prep has never been my strong suit).

Campers are split up into permanent teams for chore assignments and group games.  Each team has a male and female staff member attached to it, responsible for making sure everyone is present and involved.  Last year Jeff (now camp director) was my fellow team leader, and he was so on top of everything that I could often just sit back and enjoy the ride.  This year, an enthusiastic but frequently oblivious college student is my partner, which forces me to have my act together.  This is a good thing (I frequently remind myself).

The latter part of the day echoes memories of old routine: rest period (ahh, blessed naptime), group activity, free time (shower!), dinner, a dodgeball game enhanced with water balloons and the "Death Star", time to clean ourselves up, and evening devotional.  This one's outside, around a campfire, with a skit performed by some of the staff.  The skit involves a young man who is telling his girlfriend how much he loves spending Sundays with her, attending church, praising God, reading the Bible, etc.  "You're my Sunday Girl!" he tells her affectionately, but then inadvertently mentions that he spends Mondays with a different girl, who balances his checkbook and gets his finances in order.  She appears, followed by Tuesday Girl who has just leveled up her fifth World of Warcraft character, Wednesday Girl who likes to veg out and take naps with him, Thursday Girl who likes sports and exercise... you get the picture.  The obvious message is that we should put God first every day of the week, but I am so delighted by the idea of this fantastical romantic arrangement (my roster clearly needs to include a chef, a sailor, a musician...) that it's hard for me to pay attention to the lesson that immediately follows.

The speaker has a lot of hard-earned wisdom to share, but his emphasis is on staying out of trouble by avoiding the big-ticket sins.  I feel strongly that this should not be the core of the message we communicate here, and I disagree with the way he uses fear as a motivator ("I don't think you guys really believe in Hell," he says at one point, as though if we all just believed in it better, everything would be all right).  And while I think the morality of violent video games is certainly worth discussing, he sounds out of touch to me when he warns that they desensitize gamers from their own mortality.  The gamers I know all have a pretty healthy sense of self-preservation.  But frustration with this particular speaker is not new to me, and I grit my teeth, smack at mosquitoes, and wait it out.  It'll get better, I tell myself.  It has to.

My fellow Merry Breezes counselor, Lorraine, wants to do a confessional cabin devo at lights-out time.  I am wary -- as a camper, there's no way I'd open up on the second night -- but I agree to go along with it if our third cabin counselor, Natalie, agrees.  She does, and I am amazed: nearly half the cabin has something to share in that darkened room, something they're running from, something that's holding them back.  For myself, I can't figure out how to describe my struggles with any coherence ("Hey kids, ever heard of acedia?"), but I conclude the session with a song and prayer, and we tumble into our beds where, mercifully, sleep is not long in coming to me.

Revenge of Camp Stories: Sunday, July 18.

Against all odds, I managed to keep a fairly detailed journal of my two weeks at Wisconsin Christian Youth Camp.  I may or may not get it posted online over the next two weeks (you may recall the early demise of my post-UK-travel journal blog), but I am going to give it a stab. It will be a challenge for me on several fronts, so bear with me.

Here's how it begins:

When I wake, Toto's "Africa" is ringing through my head, probably because Mitch and I were singing it together in the cabin last night.  She's been taking guitar lessons and is sounding really good.  Mitch drove me the 4+ hours out from Chicago yesterday, but she can't stay for camp.  In fact, she's heading home as soon as she can get her stuff to the car.  I'm sad to see her go, but I know we'll connect again at the end of this trip.

Jeff, the director of this two-week camp session, invites me to join the rest of the staff (or rather, the select few who have already showed up) for lunch at Culver's.  On the way to the tiny town of Black River Falls, I tell him about my recent interest in observing intentional communities in action.  Church camp was my first experience with intentional community, I say.  I remember, as a kid, thinking how weird it was that we put all this effort into creating this near-utopian setting, only to walk away from it right when it's getting good.  I used to fantasize about some disaster that would prevent us all from going home again, and how we could all just stay in the woods together indefinitely, foraging for food and singing 'round the campfire every night.

"What we create here is very exclusive," Jeff weighs in, choosing his words carefully.  Unfortunately I haven't brought my notebook, so I don't get them down, but the gist is that while we do a fair job of building the Kingdom of Heaven at camp, the other part of our work is to share it with the world.  He draws a parallel to attending church services, where we are revived and prepared to return to our tasks in the world.  I appreciate his thoughtful perspective.  I also appreciate that he did not once resort to the dismissive phrase "mountaintop experience," which I have heard used to describe camp ever since I was a teen myself.

After lunch, we return to camp, and to last-minute preparation before the campers begin to arrive mid-afternoon.  I take a luxuriously unhurried nap on the screened back porch of my cabin, "Merry Breezes," soothed by the liquid white noise of the nearby creek.  The peace and free time are delicious.  I am torn between reluctance for it to end and electrification at the coming mayhem.

I find myself hampered by diffidence once the campers begin to arrive.  It's been a year, and names and identities are hazy at best.  I feel I should remember who is expecting a hug, who is wary of me due to past confrontation, who I've met before and who is new to me.  Of course it doesn't matter.  Today of all days, no one will mind if I invite myself into their little conversational clusters.  But I find some errand or other to keep me criss-crossing the tree-spattered hilltop that is the center of camp, rather than settling into greetings and introductions, until I see staff members I recognize.  I admit the staff are my clique.  It's a strength and a weakness; my allegiance to them is essential, but my attention should be more with the campers.  They are why we're all here.

I help with registration, settle campers into my cabin, then shoo them off to a group activity and go attend the initial staff meeting.  There I learn to my chagrin that the clunky old staff PC has been eliminated.  "A lot of bad stuff came over on Facebook and Myspace," says the camp caretaker by way of explanation.  This takes some mental readjusting; I am used to at least being able to check my e-mail a couple of times during the session. There is wireless, but I'd have to track someone with a laptop down in order to use it.  Oh well.  I've told everyone I'll be offline anyway; might as well really be offline.

Jeff's comments to the staff are constructive and practical.  Camp is the opposite of Vegas, he tells us: "What happens at camp does not stay at camp."  This is both an encouragement (campers are influenced in positive ways and take that home with them) and a caution (poor choices by staff can result in stories being told back home, and blown out of proportion in the process).  He reminds us of our calling to serve rather than to be served ("If you see something that needs to be done, do it"), and speaks about structure and punctuality.  He asks us to monitor our own levels of patience and frustration in difficult situations: "If you have a problem with somebody, you need to communicate to them, not about them."  And he asks us to keep a larger perspective: "God is going to put us in situations to touch these kids' lives.  This isn't just camp.  This is Kingdom."

There are more mundane items to be discussed: water conservation, camper supervision, prank suppression, dress code (no bare shoulders or midriffs, all shorts longer than the wearer's fingertips).  The head counselors cover these topics; they're long-standing policies, merely review for nearly everyone present.  The camp's caretaker talks about first aid kits, the proper way to deal with ticks, and the importance of keeping food out of the cabins (nearly all are porous enough to admit small rodents).

That night everyone gathers for our first of 13 devotionals.  On this night, because it's Sunday, we take communion together.  Plates of flatbread and paper cups of grape juice are set up around a rough-hewn cross laid on a long table.  Shane, the head teacher, invites us all to partake: "Communion means community: common-union.  When you take communion, you don't get in your private phone booth and talk to God."  Most of us here come from a church tradition in which trays of crackers and juice are passed along the pews in silence, while everyone, eyes lowered, ostensibly meditates on the suffering of Christ.  So it's beautiful to hear it described this way, and to see the campers and staff go up to the table in clusters and stand, quiet together or talking in low voices, sharing the feast.