"No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks."
The season for youth camps is here again. I am sure all over the country organizations, groups, especially churches are preparing for yearly events like this. Right in the campus where I am, one group is doing theirs during the week. While this particular camp is going on, I have houseguests whom I went to youth camps with a gazillion years ago, and a flurry of nostalgic reminiscing soon went underway for us (and of course remembering all the “characters” that figured in our days in the sun back in the day). We stayed up late talking, laughing and sharing vivid memories of one of the most truly enjoyable and meaningful times growing up. There is just something about youth camps (in spite of bad food, uncomfortable bedding accommodations, ripe body odor coming from some of the hygienically deprived campers) that becomes a significant factor in one’s life. The warrior games we played, the songs we sang, the friends we met once a year (although they are as precious as friends we see more often).
I remember it was not just fun and games. Youth camps can be a time and place to assess one’s life (and no one is too young to through a bout of self-autopsy). There were times at worship when I felt especially intimate with the Lord – back at a time when I had doubts about God. Youth camps became a time for me to grow deeper in my faith. I for one have made several life-changing and serious decisions about my life through in the (Christmas and summer) youth camps I have attended and lead
As expected, the attendees of this particular camp are mostly teenagers –high school and college students. Fresh, and enthusiastic, they are achingly young and somehow very optimistic -as we had been nearly 20 years ago. We were like them too in many aspects. Just discovering what life is all about, we were optimistic and in many ways naïve. Things have changed of course, as is inevitable. We are less optimistic now, more jaded, and perhaps even scarred in so many places. For many of us, life did not turn out to be the way we wanted it to be. We’re not the same people anymore, as the song would put it, but had it not been for the youth camps, and the lessons we’ve learned from them, we could have ended up worse.
While we shared the laughter and the fond memories, my friends and I as recalled the times when we were younger, freer to laugh, more playful, we know also that those times are gone forever. There is no going back, of course. Even if it were possible, I would not consider going back to where I had been, which is not to say that I do not appreciate what was. In fact, it is very precious. Nevertheless, the best way to honor the past is continue on looking forward, moving on.
While on the topic of pasts, I recently visited the venue of many of our youth camps before. Right in front of the mess hall, and where there was some sort of a verandah, there used to be a stately acacia tree that had been a silent witness to the many things that transpired during camps: the games, the fellowship, the friendships made, the tentative love affairs that blossomed for some into marriages, among others. I loved that tree. That tree is now gone. The current camp director said it was rotting and it was a safety risk that is why they cut it. No matter what the explanation was, the loss of that tree felt like an amputation. There was a sense of loss that came surprisingly sharp and painful. And so I learned that even if the past is to be left behind, there will be times when pining for things gone is the only appropriate response to a loss.
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