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.
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1 comment:
Someone asked where the conversation went in my Bible class after I mentioned knowing atheists who seem to be doing a pretty good job of loving their neighbor: Nearly all the students had a story to share about someone they know who's a nonbeliever, but is also a genuinely loving person who goes out of their way to serve others.
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