every blogpost needs a sound track. and we all need a little more tom waits in our lives. if you can't handle tom, feel free to cue up the norah jones cover as you read along. we're just more of a tom waits kind of family around here, whatever that means.
camp is over. the last of the staff is leaving tomorrow. jamin and cora keep asking me when are we going to do arts and crafts and why don't I push them on the swings like their counselor does. they spend most of their time playing camp, "teaching" me songs I couldn't get out of my head all summer because there was always some group somewhere singing them at the tops of their lungs. thankfully the dining hall is still serving meals for retreat groups or jamin might really go into shock.
this isn't home. quinipet, for all its wonders and beachfront property, ain't got nothin' on redbud springs. and people from long island don't even know what bluegrass music really is. and we have a lot of living left to do in brevard. but once we figured out where home really is, we knew we could take the long way to get there.
so I am taking a year's leave of absence from the family place. that's the only real decision that we've made. as far as short term plans, we're leaving here for new hampshire next week to visit some redbud family and celebrate our seventh anniversary as a happily married couple. eric flies home for a wedding in brevard, then makes the trip back up with our very best friend allyson. we're here on shelter island until the end of september. we need this time.
we are walking on the beach every night after supper. we're watching as many sunsets as we can. we are posing for pictures in front of yachts far bigger than our house. we are homeschooling and staying in the flow and listening so hard it hurts sometimes. we need this time, this pace, this rhythm. at least for right now.
I don't really know what we are doing beyond that, and that feels pretty okay right now. I am learning what we are good at, how to balance that between the four of us. how to hold hands and jump, how to appreciate the view from here. and now that we know where it is, it feels good to take the long way home.
there is this blogger lady that I love named patti digh. she is fabulous. I read her book "life is a verb" this spring as we were prepping to come to new york, and it got me all centered and happy and inspired about our trip. so I started following her blog and that makes me pretty happy and inspired, too. I ended up using lots of quotes and themes and thoughts from her work in my devotionals with the staff this summer.
so she leads these projects, kind of like an online class, but really more an experiment in community and inspiration with lots of writing reflections. right up my alley. and it just so happened that this particular project starts today, the last day of camp. the first day of the rest of my life. what a time to be intentional, to be inspired, to be focused, to be surrounded by folks doing the same hard thinking and soul searching that I like best.
here's a link to project 137. and here is my first photo assignment. the assignment was to take a photo of myself that expresses the love I feel for myself. so here I am, plunging right on in.
part of my job this summer is leading staff devotionals once a week. at the beginning of the summer, I wasn't sure exactly how this would go, if people would show up, if I had anything relevant to say. so eric helped me make a brag-worthy snack spread every week, and I would rush through bedtime routine with the kids to make it up to the welcome center on time. the snacks certainly helped, and word of mouth soon had people asking me to lead the same devotional twice on thursdays so counselors could come during their breaks. this week was the last week of overnight camp and what I thought would be my last devotional. it turned out to be a doozy. here's what we talked about, after a meditation from hermann hesse and a couple minutes of silence...
To a Leaf Wilting
Every blossom wants to become fruit.
Every morning turns into evening without regret.
Nothing on earth is eternal except change, except taking leave.
The most splendid summer yearns to fade into fall.
Oh, autumn leaf, be still and yielding when the wind wants to seize you.
Do not resist, be a player in the game.
Surrender to the change in motion.
Let yourself be broken, seized, and blown to the next home.
~Hermann Hesse
five things I hope you learned at camp this summer:
1- you are totally fabulous.
maybe you reached a goal for yourself this summer. maybe you tried something new. maybe you did something you never thought you'd do, and it turned out okay. maybe you met someone who taught you big things about yourself. maybe you realized you're really good at something you'd never bothered to try before. whatever it is, I hope you know how totally fabulous you really are. that you can do big things, small things, important things, and silly things, and you can do all those things even better than you thought.
2- your life is pretty stinkin' great.
I hope this summer taught you more about your life, mostly how great it really is. you are living an incredible story, and this summer is just one part of it. I hope this summer helped you realize something amazing about your future, helped you decide what direction to go next. or maybe this summer helped you put together the pieces of your past so that your future makes more sense. or maybe you just have good stories to tell about the adventures you had or the people you met while you were here. whatever it is, I hope you know how how great your life really is.
3- god is bigger than you thought.
being in a beautiful place like quinipet surrounded by passionate, loving people should give you a pretty big idea of god's nature. I hope you saw god in those around you this summer. I hope you learned how god's love is big enough for all of us, from the devout to the doubtful and everyone in between. I hope you saw how god is always working on the bigger picture, even when we disagree with the means god might use to get there.
4- make this place your home. wherever you are, make it these things:
H-happy. frederick buechner says, "the place where god calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." god wants you to be happy. sometimes that means making the best of where you are, and sometimes it means getting the heck out of where you are into something better. learn to know the difference. learn to find your happy. O-open. be open to being yourself. to whatever is next. to allowing those around you to speak their truth. open your heart, open your mind. create space where others feel safe to open up as well. M-meaningful. use your home-space to find out what matters most to you. tune in. whether it is perfecting your chocolate chip cookie recipe so you can feed the masses a little bit of happiness or taking off to africa to fight for women's right to health care, find the meaning in your life. then do what matters. make sure home is where you can rest up to do good work. E-engergize. be sure you have a place where you can rest, recharge your batteries. space that is sacred enough to fill your metaphorical cup. space to take a break, but also space that gets you pumped up, fired up, revved up to do big things. listen to mozart, then listen to macklemore. then do what you need to do to energize yourself to take on the world.
5-say yes. to whatever it is god calls you to, to whatever adventure is dropped in your lap, to each and every chance you have to love on those around you. say yes.
(i started at 2:42 for time and political correctness's sake, but you should really watch the whole thing.)
wherever you are, what ever summer adventure you have had, I hope this all proves true for you as well.
when I was a camper in middle-of-nowhere georgia growing up, we told ourselves all sorts of stories to convince ourselves that camp was magical. there was a certain hill behind the tabernacle that we were sure we could fly off of if we got a fast enough running start. there was a lake monster, of course, and if the wampajaw didn't get you when you fell out of your canoe the leeches would. I didn't need stories to know that camp was magical, though. the suspension of reality for an entire week was magical enough.
being back at camp at a place where I was never a camper, only a counselor, is haunting in a very different way. I knew that coming back to a place I haven't been in ten years would bring up a lot of ghosts. I was counting on phantasmic encounters of things I'd long tried to erase from my head, visions of people I'd long forgotten, memories of a time in life that was hard to muddle through. I wasn't prepared for those ghosts I keep bumping into to be ghosts of myself.
last weekend friends from my first time here at camp came to visit. these are the sort of friends everyone hopes to have in their lives, the kind of cliche "pick up where you left off" people that know things about you that you have long since forgotten. what amazes me about these sort of friends (and this crew in particular) is that no matter how long it has been or how cloudy my memory of my time with them, they know the essence of me better than I could ever describe it myself. that part of me that hasn't changed as I've moved all over the place and married someone I didn't even know when I knew these friends. they know me in a way that doesn't change after having children or going through life's wringer. they see me through eyes that not only ignore my well-earned gray hairs, but also my broken ideas of who I thought I was or even who I think I am. there is no "think" with these folks, just heart connection. and catch up time is not a timeline of events, but rather a swim out to the dock where we confess the big stuff (the heartbreaks, the disappointments, the silly remembrances), while lying on our backs and letting the sun dry our skin.
seeing my ghost-self and seeing myself through the eyes of those who loved me best ten years ago makes it so very clear to me that my life is a magical beautiful blessed adventure. it shows me that I'm doing more than fine, that I'm better off now than I ever dreamed of all those years ago. that all the brokenness, all the wondering, all the uncertainty and leaps of faith and therapy and wandering, all of that makes being my present self all the sweeter.
so now when I see that ghost-like girl out of the corner of my eye, I remind her that it doesn't last forever. that the not-knowing is sometimes just part of the adventure. that she is doing better than she thinks she is. and I thank her for muddling through, for doing the best she knows how, for reminding me just how far we've come.
if I have to be plagued by ghosts, I can't think of a more beautiful way for it to happen.
camp is over. the last of the staff is leaving tomorrow. jamin and cora keep asking me when are we going to do arts and crafts and why don't I push them on the swings like their counselor does. they spend most of their time playing camp, "teaching" me songs I couldn't get out of my head all summer because there was always some group somewhere singing them at the tops of their lungs. thankfully the dining hall is still serving meals for retreat groups or jamin might really go into shock.
I don't really know what we are doing beyond that, and that feels pretty okay right now. I am learning what we are good at, how to balance that between the four of us. how to hold hands and jump, how to appreciate the view from here. and now that we know where it is, it feels good to take the long way home.
