Last year my high school closed it’s doors.
This year the presbytery sold off my childhood summer camp.
Yesterday was the final celebration of that work, culminating 60 years of welcoming kids from all over northern Indiana for a week of crafts, games, swimming, and hand-churned ice cream.
Obviously, I didn’t get to go but I was added to a chat group and kept up a little with the happenings, who was going and who wasn’t, that kind of thing.
Geneva Center was the highlight of my life each summer from about 5th grade and into high school. Sure, lots of other things happened through the year but in my mind that week of camp was what mattered most. I had my friends at home and then I had camp friends.
Many times I tried to make camp friends into “real friends” but it was always too awkward and a life lesson that time and place often form relationships that don’t endure but are true friendship.
There’s a theory in religious circles that adults who move into the clergy or church leadership are subconsciously trying to recreate an intense religious experience they experienced in the past.
That’s probably true for me to a certain extent, as well. I know I was always trying to get people to that moment— consciously or not— of an intense religious experience because I knew it had the possibility to shape a life.
Likewise, within the church ecosystem there are lots of ancillary businesses— camps, mission trips, retreat centers, school bible clubs— pretty much the entire youth ministry world— designed to help you recreate that mountaintop moment.
A lot of good and bad things happen in church world because of this subconscious desire to relive that moment.
This subconscious search drives a lot. And as time goes on you realize you’ll never quite get that same high but you keep trying.
It’s a high you can’t quite replicate for yourself but you kinda hope that something you might spark that moment for a young person, thereby launching another person on the quest of their own, going into leadership or seminary or whatever sojourn it takes to try to recreate their campfire moment for them.
For non-religious types this same type of thing might be your annual camping trip or even a cruise. Nothing will ever be like “that one time” but every year you try to recreate it and drag other people along in your attempt. This is captured in movies and television shows about traveling, nostalgic flicks always seem to be trying to take you back to “the moment”.
When I think about Geneva Center of course I think about the fun. Belly flop contests in the pool, canoe trips down the river, and the thrill of holding the girls hand. Did you know I juggle? A skill I learned at camp.
But I also think about the adults who were my counselors. I still remember their affirmations, (appropriate) affection for me, the way they accepted me and included me. Maybe I don’t remember their names but I definitely remember how they made me feel.
When I think about my time as a pastor I hope I was that for a few others.
But I also think of that time as the highlight of my religious life, a place where I was accepted for who I truly was.
Before making a detour into evangelicalism, I was spoiled with the idealism of a small, loving community in the “liberal” PCUSA. I thought and still think having a female pastor was normal, thinking of God as neither male or female wasn’t an intellectual leap for me, the idea that God is big enough for all of us to have our own ideas on what they might be like.
Hitting the teenage years I ended up going a different direction with my church life. I was attracted to bigger youth groups, ones that were more serious about Bible study and more self-disciplined. But who also have a much smaller definition of God, an ever-shrinking one if we are honest.
I don’t regret that turn towards evangelicalism but I think I now realize it was a detour away from where I felt at home the most.
And I’m ok with that. It wasn’t a bad detour. Life is a journey after all, full of detours and side quests, triumphs and failures.
It’s hard when things you love, even if they are just distant memories, come to an end. It floods you with waves of thankfulness and even a bit of guilt, not that I had any power to change the course of history but maybe I should have stayed more involved in GC somehow?
As you might imagine, I’m not handling loss right now particularly well. Whether it’s a chicken on the farm or sending a fair goat to the butcher or, in this case, a camp I’d not visited in 30+ years closing, finality is hard as it gets loaded in the washing machine of emotions in my head every grief-filled day.
Thank you for the memories, Geneva Center. You were living proof that idealism and a few acres could change lives. You did mine. And I hope I’m living out what I learned there every day, Rooted in Love.
