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.