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.

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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.