On this past Sunday of interesting juxtapositions, our regular church service was a celebration of Pentecost and a blessing of/introduction to counselors from the nearby camp, Lutheridge, where I have a house in the residential section.
The church sanctuary was full, even fuller than it had been the week before, when we celebrated 60 years of the church's existence. Part of that was the presence of all of the counselors, about 60 in all. Some of the people at church seemed to be visiting--it is a holiday week-end, after all, the 3 day week-end kind of holiday.
Some of us in the congregation had worked at Lutheridge, and many of us have supported Lutheridge in a number of ways. Given that, I was surprised by how many people in attendance on Sunday hadn't been involved with Lutheridge, even though the entrance to the camp is less than a mile than the entrance to the church. Not for the first time have I thought about how all the various types of church work live in siloes that never interact and how sad that is, how those siloes never communicate except for asking for money. Sigh.
But today, let me not unpack that idea further. No, today, let me celebrate these camp counselors. I am awed that there are still people who make the decision to spend a summer at camp, living in such very different circumstances than their peers (eating camp food, sleeping in tents, hiking all day, going up and down and up and down the hill, working/living with children). When I was young, my dream was to work at Lutheridge--back then, there weren't enough counselor spots for all the people who had those dreams. Now the situation is different.
I found a counselor job at a Girl Scout camp, Camp Congaree, which gave me similar but different opportunities. I got to be a backpacking counselor. I spent the summer with mostly women and girls, which is a kind of community that works for me, although I didn't realize it then in the way that I do now--and to be fair, we weren't living in that community in the best ways that we could, not living it in the ways I idealize now.
Maybe no community is living its best self--that's probably the lesson I should remember from all of my years of studying and creating intentional community.
But camp counselors have a head start, in that they're a self-selected group. And the group that we blessed on Sunday has an additional motive--they're here at Lutheridge to help with the spiritual formation of children, in addition to all the other kinds of formation that they will do.
They look so young to me, and yet, at the same time, in my head, I'm closer to their age than my own. In real life, I am the same age as their parents, many of whom were also camp counselors. Those camp counselors are just starting life as adult selves (adult-ish?). I am having a hard time believing I am as old as I am, but I am much closer to my senior years than my childhood years. Time in my head wrinkles and crunches and has a few rips here and there.
This summer, I will do more at summer camp than attend a week as an adult or a camper. I'll deliver mail, lead middle schoolers in a week of Bible study, and perhaps assist in the camp store. It's going to be an interesting summer, a mix of a seminary class that I'm taking, online classes that I'm teaching, and camp life. It will be the first summer where I won't be suffocating in the intense heat. Hopefully, it will be the first of many magnificent mountain summers.
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