For me it’s not really summertime until I go away to camp.
Camp. A week, several
weeks or even a whole summer “away”, excused from home and family and school
and work and regular life. I’ve been a camp devotee for many of the past 39
summers and know I’d be excused if I decided to retire my ritual. When I tell
folks I’m spending a week in the woods with 300 or so kids and adults in the
middle of a hidden corner of northwest Connecticut
at a church camp, the typical
response is, “Well, better you than me!”
Camp is kind of retro, old school. Cell phone service is spotty at best. Fine dining is hot dogs by the lake followed
by a glass of infamous “bug” juice. Our first night together is always marked
by at least one camper who is very homesick and needs reassurance. The weather
is completely unpredictable and riding out a thunderstorm in a stand of swaying
trees is not for the faint of heart. And the pay? Let’s just say it’s priceless.
Yet still camp calls out to me like an old friend. Camp is a
sacred place and space I return to year after year, that I trust, I get to know
again, all over again, every summer. I’m not alone in being a lifelong committed
camper. This summer more than 10 million
children and adults will go away to 12,000 day and overnight camps across the
United States and why? To meet that most
basic of human needs….
To just get away. To just
be away. To strip away the distractions
of daily life and be in an intentional community. To pack up a bag and maybe some
books and some sunscreen and stamps for letters home, and leave behind the everyday. Let go of the typical, the comfortable, the routine
and predictable and plunge into the singular experience of being “away”. Of not being here but instead being there.
Away.
To sleep out in a wooden cabin with creaky doors and one pesky
buzzing mosquito that somehow always find the tiny hole in the screen. To spend
seven days and nights with a rambunctious group of middle school kids in a prayerful
hope that somehow in a week we’ll build and find community. To wake up at 6 am
before everyone else arises so I can find a morning slice of sanity and then to
stay up past 11 until the last waves of giggles from the cabins finally cease. To
be fully screen free for the only time all year: no cell phones or Facebook, TVs
or texts, video games or Netflix. To feel the wetness of dew on my back as I
stare up into a jet black night sky and watch for falling stars. To sit around
a crackling and flickering orange and yellow campfire and eat sticky s’mores
and sing silly songs until my voice is hoarse.
We all should cherish our “away” place. An island tucked
amidst rocks and surf off a windswept coastline. A snug cabin nestled on a
hillside with a waterfall’s symphony playing in the distance. A tent in a meadow, the peepers lulling you
to sleep. A sailboat skimming over blue seas, as an orange and red sun sets in
the distance. Maybe for you “away” is
the open road, wind whistling through the windows, the car pointed to parts unknown and miles of possibilities which
lay ahead.
To just be “away”, no matter where, allows us to retreat,
encounter the gift of God’s amazing Creation and reconnect to the earth. We
remember our souls and that these too need tending. We jettison distracting
technology which so rules modern life. We return, and in returning by going
away, we rest. We are renewed for summer’s end which, by the way, will be here
before we know it. I hate to say that but I have to say that.
So in the weeks ahead, here’s a spiritual prescription: just
go away. GO AWAY! To camp, to the coast,
to a cabin, to a cove, to anywhere but where you are most of the time. Change
your scenery. Change your outlook. Change your life if only for a week or
so.
I’ll soon be on my way “away” to camp. See you when I get
back!
No comments:
Post a Comment