Ligonier Camp, Summer 2012, Session 6

Quick, I better write this down before I tell anyone else and stop feeling the need to write it down.

On Saturday, August 11th, I drove up to Ligonier, PA, to be a "rover" at Camp. When it was a counselor's day off, I would take over his tribe for 24 hours, then at dinner switch to a new tribe. I stayed through helping clean up camp, because it was the end of the summer for them, and drove home after breakfast Sunday. I was so tired.

The second Saturday night, after the last batch of campers had gone home, Camp had the closing campfire for staff, including a time called "Say So", which is when people stand up and talk about things they saw God do at Camp that summer. I wasn't going to stand up, because I was only there for a week, and there were people present who had been there all summer, but then I thought about it for a long time and decided what to say. So I thought I'd first tell you the two things I said then.

I remember driving up the long driveway of Camp in 2008 with my Dad, because I didn't own a car, and being dropped off in a part of the country I had never been to, at a place where I knew no one, to do a job I really didn't know how to do. I also remember how much better Summer 2009 went, partly because I already knew people and thus felt more comfortable. Frustratingly often, my abilities and personality seem to depend greatly on how familiar I am with the people around me. And so it was that as I approached the Camp this time, driving up PA Route 711, my thoughts were greatly consumed with "What the heck are you doing?! This isn't going to go well, because you won't know anyone there. It's been too long!".

After arriving at Camp and parking, I quickly found Stef, who's now Summer Camp Director, but she was headed off to the Lake Property for a Dedication ceremony, and so I went into the dining hall full of unfamiliar faces. Except there was Geraud, the first counselor I ever talked to when I arrived in 08, and he was also there to fill-in for the coming week. And there was Amy, who had been Stef's assistant all summer, but was leaving that day. And Liz, who has no official title at camp other than that she's "around", because she lives in town and helps whenever they need. And Lauren. And others. It quickly became apparent that there were enough familiar faces, and the rest of the staff were so welcoming, that everything would be okay. I could pretty easily say that Session 6 is the week when a lot of old staff come back, so it makes sense that there'd be so many familiar faces, and Camp Staff are generally welcoming of strangers who have come to help, particularly at the end of the year when everyone's tired... or I could thank God for providing me with that.

At the Staff Say So, I said I'd pick the latter, and I still do, but not to the exclusion of the first one. I hope that makes sense.

Back to 2008. When Mike German told me that his high school friend Lori told him that the Camp she had worked at the previous summer needed more guys for their summer staff, I was a dissatisfied Comp Sci major who had vaguely considered teaching but had little basis for serious thoughts in that direction. A year later, I had been a TA for a year, just received a Comp Sci degree and was about to enter my second summer working with kids. A year after that, I started a part-time Masters program to become a teacher, and hopefully I'll be finishing that within a year. If it hadn't been for the work at Camp, as well as all the education majors who work there, I don't know if I would have pursued teaching as a career. Again, it's pretty easy to explain this all away as the logical outcome of events, but again I'd rather thank God.

That's pretty much what I said at the Say So. I could probably write a post about what went on during Session 6, the ridiculous skits featuring Hans & Franz, the kids who needed "wraparound" counselors and the kids who only sort of did, kids peeing in the woods, faceplanting chasing a ten-year-old playing Gold Rush, just volunteering for lots and lots of things because I wasn't tired like everyone else and then getting sick, hanging out with people I hadn't seen in years, telling old stories, debating and making jokes about theology, losing at chess to children, playing Camp songs on guitar, jumping up and down.... but those things don't feel as important to tell you. When I left, Sunday morning, eight days after arriving, I shook hands with the guys I had worked with that week, hugged several of the people I knew from years previous, got in my car and left. It was exactly the sequence of events I wanted to do before getting in the car, which was nice. As they said this summer, I had "no regrets" about the week.

Oh, one last thing: At the start of the week, I felt like a pretty awesome Counselor, once I realized I still knew how to do the job. By the end of the week, I had seen a lot of the ways that I am not the best at it. It was humbling, and that was good. Some of my problems there will probably be problems to some extent when I'm "in the classroom" (as they say), so in that sense it was hopefully helpful. Again I am thankful.

Love, #2

One of the great things about Jesus' teachings is that at the heart of it are two commands "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.", the two commands upon which he says "depend all the Law and the Prophets." He even tells one man that this is all you need to do in order to "inherit eternal life", after which he confounds everyone's idea of who their neighbors are. Now, we can probably all agree that what it means to obey these two commands is an incredibly nuanced and complicated affair. How do you love God with everything you have, so that you have no other principalities, powers, objects, people, loyalties, loves or anything else commanding your actions? How do you love people as much as you, a selfish creature, love yourself? I think he keeps his statements simple because you can not write out laws to wholly entail love for all people. You can not sum right living up in a set of rules, for right living is loving.

Love, #1

Jesus says I should love God with everything in me, with everything I have. People have told me, many times, that if I fully love God, I will love the things he loves. Thankfully I am not Jewish, or I would have to love not eating bacon. Jesus then goes on to say that I should love everyone else as much as I love myself. It's a good thing that's the second command, or I might have to hate God, because maybe some people love hating God. I'm supposed to treat others how I treat myself, or maybe how I want them to treat me (though not with the actual expectation of reciprocation).

I think it's interesting to think about the fact that I might be wrong about what is the best way to treat others, but loving them only obligates me to love as I think I ought to, not as I actually should. I mean, there's no other way to do it, really, but it's still interesting. The other interesting bit is that if loving God fully means loving the things he loves, then maybe loving God more fully than I do now will cause me to love others more in the right way, instead of however I presently believe I should love them. So learning to love God more fully helps me love both God and others more fully.

Ligonier Camp, Summer of 2009

I have two posts unfinished, I confess, and I might never finish them. But I recently realized that I have not written much at all about my second summer as a Camp Counselor at Ligonier Camp & Conference Center, in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. For those of you who missed it, I wrote a few posts about my first summer there, and reading them will tell you what Camp is like, generally, which might help you understand the rest of this. On the other hand, I can not guarantee that they are the most interesting posts. Also, if I don't write soon, I may forget.

Near the end of May, I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County). A few days later, I went off to camp with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and studied the first few chapters of Genesis for a week. It was excellent. A little before this, I had to fill out some paperwork for a job I was offered and accepted, and when I got back from camp with IV, this still had to be finished. Also, I needed time to recuperate from a fairly awful semester (My GPA went down a bit more than I wanted) and camp. So I called up Camp and told them that I needed a few days, I would be getting to training two days late. I didn't like doing that, but I didn't feel too awful about; I'd been through counselor training before.

The first person I met this year who I hadn't known before, was Allan Edwards. He was this year's Men's Director, he's been around Camp for years (but not much last year), and the first thing he did was say "Tim Milligan's here!" (which is how Lauren and Dana introduced me) and gave me a big hug. Later he actually said "So, I'm Allan" and we did the actual meeting each other thing. My Dad said "From the hug, I thought you knew him.." I soon went off to put my stuff in one of the cabins where guys were staying during training, and almost immediately ran into a pack of Counselors, our paths colliding as they went from some training session up to belay training, where I was to follow them shortly. This wasn't really something I was looking forward to, as I failed my belay test last year, and so started a trend. A few days later, I passed the belay test, something I had to do only twice all summer; I can't say I enjoyed any of it.

Camp was not the same this year as last year. There was a new dining hall, a new zipline, new activities sometimes, etc. We had bulldozers and dumptrucks all summer, and the dining hall didn't get approved by the State until a few days before Campers arrived. There was a Target Sports co-counselor, and yet I got to teach Archery a lot; it was later revealed that Steve was good at archery and knew little aobut guns before taking the job, yet there he was at the riflery range every day. Some of the people I got along best with last year weren't there this year. Many people from last year were there this year. Many people there this year weren't there last year, many of them having never been to Ligonier before at all. I confess, I had my misgivings about some of the folks on staff; I thought "Really? That person is going to work here at a counselor? I am not too sure." but, what a surprise, I was wrong to think that way. It was a quality group of people serving God by loving kids at Camp this summer. Or maybe it was a group of terrible people depending on God. That, I think, is a lot more true.

My first year at Camp, I often felt a bit on the outside, never quite connecting as well as I wanted to with others, never quite understanding how things worked because I was new, etc. I still didn't connect as well as I wanted to, because I am not really the best at being open and honest and loving, etc, but this year did feel different. I distinctly remember being told by folks that they were really glad I came back this year, and that took me by surprise; I didn't really know why and I don't think I do now. One day, I was told that although this was supposedly only my second summer at Ligonier, they felt "like that isn't true" and I had been there for a long time. As much as this was certainly confusing and strange to me, it was also plenty encouraging.

Camp Staff is divided into Units, which sort of roughly corresponds to the ages of the kids you work with, maybe. I was once again in Unit 2, right where I wanted to be, which meant ages 10-13 again, which was fine by me, though that didn't quite work out; more on that later. Unit 2 Guys this year had, if I do say so myself, a rather distinct personality. We'd meet together twice a week to hang out and do some Bible study with Allan, and one day we got to talking about the Pixar film "The Incredibles." From that point on, "The Incredibles" was discussed at every Discount (Discipleship/Accountability) in exactly the same fashion every time:

• "THAT'S INCREDIBLE!"
• "You mean like that family of Superheroes?"
• "Yeah! The Incredibles! They're just like the Brady Bunch, but with superpowers!"
• "Yeah! Except the incredible part is that they manage to stay together as a nuclear family in a modern world of high divorce rates!"
• "And then Syndrome is all like 'I'm Syndrome!' and Frozone's like 'Where is my supa-suit!?' and then"
• "And the baby, he's like 'I'm a baby, I can't decide what power I have' so he has ALL of them"
• "And then that kid is like "Wooooow, that was INCREDIBLE!"
  

Every time. At the end of the summer, Allan fulfilled our dreams and we watched "The Incredibles" and oh it was good. There is nothing like anticipation to make a good thing even better.


I admit that a lot of the rest of this will end up being about the 2nd half of Camp. I loved the first half, really I did, but it was mostly uneventful. Except that one week I had a kid with Autism in my cabin, and an extra counselor was assigned to take care of Charles. It was difficult to know what to do sometimes, like when we turned around and found Charles naked, but it was also really Good. And Peter was back in my cabin for the 2nd year in a row, and this time he cried a lot less when not-winning, and he and I had a really interesting and I hope Good talk about all the trouble he's been having in school this year, and how Jesus wants him to react to that, and how that's not easy at all. And Riley and I combined our tribes into a super-tribe and had a really good campout.

When I was in first grade, I went on a canoe trip with my father and a bunch of others guys from church (well, Christian Service Brigade, technically), and our canoe flipped in rapids and I held on and ended up trapped underneath it briefly. This discouraged me from much participating in boating activities for years, and my aversion continues to this day. But this summer, I had to go White-Water Rafting, because I actually had campers old enough. I did not wear my glasses, because otherwise you lose them, and I was in a boat with Riley, another counselor and also half-blind, a kid who was half-blind, a raft captain kid who couldn't give correct directions on time, a kid who started out by not paddling hard enough, and a kid who alternated by not paddling hard enough and paddling two hard just to mess with us. I fell in once and it was terrifying. Then, we ate lunch on land, we started to get our act together as a raft, and I had fun. But two weeks later when I had the chance to go again, I let Steve, my co-counselor for the week, go instead.

Last year, I was glad that my oldest camper was 13; I always found myself a bit more awkward with older kids, not as good as being their counselor. Session 4 of Camp, I had a cabin full of 13 and 14 year olds, the kind that want life to be a wrestling match. This why I went rafting, this is why I did the Vomit Comet, my kids were old enough, and this is also why I went paintballing this year. Paintballing hurts like crazy, and is not fun until you figure out how to aim well, which didn't happen until the 2nd time I went. I still didn't like it a whole, whole lot. The week after I had those kids for two weeks, there was a program at Camp called The Next Step, where 16-18 year olds came and had lectures and discussions about Christianity and philosophy in the morning, and did all manner of things in the afternoon. Tyler got sick the day they were to arrive, and suddenly I found myself with even older campers, ones who were going paintballing, rafting, and even on the zipline. I didn't go rafting again, but I did the others. Also, I found myself, along with Abby, in the position of helping run a program that had never happened before, dealing with outside staff (that is to say, those not as familiar with Ligonier), and that was incredibly difficult.

The week after I had the really old kids, I got sick for a few days, and then I was a rover for a few days. Rovers take over counselors' tribes on their days off, just for a day, and then the rover is off to a different tribe. I thought this would be awful and hard, but it turned out to be a whole lot of fun. Then, after that, I had what are called "Lil Ligs", kids ages 6-8 who come to Camp for two nights. I was pretty afraid of this idea, and other than one kid throwing up at 2am on the 2nd night, and two brothers being homesick the first night, it went really well. The other counselor in the cabin that week, a guy named Chris, was great with the homesick kids, while I took other kids to the toilet. The next night, I was great at cleaning up barf while Chris took the kid to the nurse. I discovered that little kids are lots of fun to throw around in the pool, but I still don't think I'm all that good with little kids.

During Session 5, a plague swept through Camp. It was some sort of flu or something, and it generally caused you to barf and feel awful for 12 to 36 hours. I caught it just as my really old kids were leaving, and so instead of having a day off, I had a night of puking for 5 hours. Thankfully, though, I wasn't alone. That night, we had two cabins full of sick kids and counselors, with two CITs (Counselors In Training, high schoolers who love camp and do the dirty work for not enough money) who had already had the illness working most of the night exchanging trashbags of vomit for empty ones. I gave up on sleeping in a dark room full of puke-smell and sick campers and sat out on deck all night with Brian and Jeff, even sleeping a little bit, but also puking, as I said, for 5 hours. I don't know if I've ever puked so much before, and I hope I never do again; I wasn't even in the worst group of patients. In the morning, Ben and Josh read Bible stories to the kids, and then later I read the first quarter of "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe" to everyone. After the few remaining sick kids were moved out, we scrubbed those cabins with bleach. A few days later, before Lil Ligs, we did it again. And one Lil Lig still got sick!

It might seem like I did a lot of things that I didn't like this summer. It's true! But it was Good for me. God showed me that serving him isn't doing what I like. He also showed me that the the things I think will be terrible, sometimes, are not all that bad. I am thankful. By the end of it, I was exhausted, and it was good. I learned that remembering that Christ is your master is pretty important. He also showed his mercy in that I never once had to do any silly dances all summer long. Other highlights of the summer include walking through fields for part of the journey to Town, something I did several times, singing "The Mariner's Revenge (abridged/cleanedup)" with Ben at Dessert Theater, and seeing all the cool animals that Ben, our Nature Co-Counselor found. I corresponded regularly with my friend Matthew all summer and I also sent letters to several other people, including one hand-written copy of the Book of James. I suspect that my letter writing took the place of journaling in many instances, but I'm okay with that. It was a good summer. I think I learned that hard work can be very fulfilling. I think I've written enough about Camp for now.

Here are some photos

And one more, taken during a walk back from Town, this time with friends

Doing Nothing

For the past two months, I have had the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. I came into this experience after being a Summer Camp Counselor for two and a half months, so I certainly needed rest. Secondly, I needed a space in which to live. As I have not yet started my post-college, "real" job, I am still residing in my parents' house. After four years of moving in and out of college dorms, two of those without any real residency in this house, my room had become a complete mess of boxes, clothes and other unsorted items. This was more than just a cleaning effort; I had to reorganize and reevaluate my possessions, throwing some away. I did this at what can probably be best described as a snail's pace, my unfortunately natural laziness no longer motivated by any known timetable. After I finally put everything in its proper place and vacuumed the long-unseen floor, I began to move into other parts of the house.

My family is just as naturally lazy as I am, my family falls into the terrible pit of the internet just as easily as I do, my grandmother died, my sister started college and my other sister started High School. So I began to move through the house, cleaning and reorganizing various areas as the impulses took me. I believed I was doing a good thing, and I still do, but I am also an arrogant jerk. Can you tell someone they need to be more conscious of how they take care of their living space, when you suck at it too? Can you tell someone that you "fixed" a mess without believing terrible things about yourself? Probably not. The garage is still a mess, but I am not sure I have the power and authority to fix that.

There are many, many ways a man can distract himself. I feel like the internet has increased these ways tenfold. I have played with Desktop Tower Defense Pro more times than I know, but I still can't beat the last two Scenarios nor most of the Sprint Modes. Thankfully, eventually the vast void of entertainment and idle distraction proves fruitless, its pleasures and flashing lights no longer enjoyable but instead feeling hollow, the truth. I'm not saying that recreation doesn't have its place in life, but such things should serve as an enjoyable rest from work, and I have not been doing a whole lot of work.

When I was at Camp this summer, Allan, the Men's Director, sometimes talked about how we're meant to work six days a week and rest on a seventh, the model outlined in the very beginning of Genesis. Camp works you hard, for the most part, because kids are a handful, loving them can be very tiring, and Camp is designed to challenge the Staff as well as the kids. When your day off comes around each week (whatever day that turns out to be), you love it, you enjoy it, because you need it. You don't do nothing, either, because there are things you want to do that you haven't had time to do the rest of the week. You rest by doing things, just not the same things, not the work things. Rest is good, so good, when it is preceded by work.

There's been some progress on the whole "starting that real job" thing, lately, although I still don't actually know when that's all doing down. Until then, though, I need to work. I tried to get hired as a substitute teacher, but it seems like the nearby school districts are pretty full up on those, probably thanks to the recent events in our economy. My recently deceased grandmother's house needs a lot of work done to it, but I don't know what to do and I get a crazy headache when I go there because she smoked like crazy and it reeks. The garage isn't finished, but I already mentioned how I may be at impasse there. I don't know what to do. But I sure can't do nothing; it's neither right nor healthy.

Family

Jesus says he didn't come to bring peace to the Earth, but that instead, of all the things you might not expect, he came to bring a sword, because swords violently divide things. Have you ever read Matthew 10, verses 34 through 39? He says that my enemies will, or at least could be my own family! I don't want to be divided from my family, but there's Jesus, threatening to chop us up. When his family shows up to see him, he says they're not his family, people who do the will of God are his family. That makes sense, because then we all have one Father, but it still sucks for families. But on the other hand, if your family is more important to you than doing the will of the Father, then you're not following Jesus (he says so). So much for Jesus valuing the nuclear family! Now, for me, a good thing to keep in mind is that my family are Christians. At the same time, however, Jesus says that being a Christian redefines who my family is. So although my family may still be family, my family is not longer restricted to them.

I often wonder what it means to be family, since both the existence of adoption and the teachings of Jesus tell me it means something other than blood relation. Personal experience suggests it means the people you love best. People say you don't have to like your family, but you do have to love them; I've never been clear on how to love someone without at least not disliking them, but personal experience may help here too. At Camp, there are plenty of people who, if not for Camp, I probably would never be friends with. To be more precise, I would not consider them a friend, if not for Jesus. This, I think, is significant. Here are people I would not love except for the fact that we follow Jesus, and, indeed, I consider them my brothers and sisters, despite that we enjoy different things, think different ways, come from different places, etc. If we weren't brothers, I'd probably dislike some of them even, but instead I want to love them, despite our differences. Maybe family means that you hold in common your most important bond. For many, this is blood, DNA, relation. For Christians, this is our Father.

I'm supposed to love my neighbors, which means people who help me when I'm beat up, and I'm supposed to love my enemies too. So how do I treat my family any different? If there's no difference in how I treat them, why does it matter their family? Laying aside that complicated issue, what would it look like if I treated all Christians like family?

If all Christians are my family, and we're supposed to be a family that loves each other, not some kind of dysfunctional mess, then we can't just move away and stop talking if we disagree about stuff. If all Christians are my family, then I need to eat with them, I need to talk with them, I need to live with them, and I need to take care of them.

If I treated all Christians like family, I'd let them live in my house whenever they needed to (presuming I own a house, I guess). Of course, Jesus tells us to do that for people, because when we do, we're actually giving Jesus a home, somehow. I'd give them food when they needed it, and much the same comments apply here. I'd love and trust them above all, because ... well, because they're family. Trusting everyone who loves Jesus?

That really is the problem, I suppose: loving people.

Time keeps on slipping into the Future

I ought to write another post, a followup to the Trash one, about how the Trash one was pretty silly, but that won't happen right now.

Some Christians often talk about being good stewards with their money, because God gave them their money. This is very Biblical; Jesus tells us the parable of the Talents to tell us to use our money wisely, and the parable of the Shrewd Manager to tell us to use our money for the Kingdom,. I will refrain from utilizing the Talents-talents homonym found in English, but I will say that God gives us Spiritual Gifts as well as not-spiritual gifts (Don't ask me what those mean!), and we should use those the same way that we use our money: for the Kingdom. Money is a material possession, even if people forget that sometimes, and the best use of it is the same. But recently I have realized that God also gave us Time, and the best use of it is the same. This may sound like I am saying that God gave us our lives and therefore we should use our lives for the Kingdom, for the glory of God, but I don't use "My Life" as a unit of Time, whereas I think about how I am spending my time pretty frequently.

Several times, people have told me that if I used a planner, I would be able to manage my time better, spend my time better, and generally make myself a better person as well as a better Christian. I won't even bother explaining that, but I can tell you unequivocally that it did not work. I never remembered to look in the thing, even if I remembered to write things down. The idea of planning out how I would spend each minute of the day was incredibly difficult for me, and I would not have stuck to such a schedule even if I had succeeded in creating one. Instead, where the pro-tight-schedule people would have had me block in time for homework, time for this thing, time for that thing, I have free-form whatever time.

This freedom is so easily abused, and so my free-time all too often becomes my lay-around time, or my read-blogs time, or my play-computer-games time. None of those things are wrong, in and of themselves, but they cease to be relaxing activities of respite and become holes in which to laze away my day, depriving me of both the joy of accomplishment after hard work and the joy of a well-earned break after hard work. The transformation of what was meant to be joyful into meaningless boredom is a good sign of sin, I think.

This makes a lot of sense, to me. The best way we can use the time God has given us is for his glory and his Kingdom, which are really one and the same, I suspect. The question, then, is whether or not I can use my free-form time properly.

The Summer of 2008, Ligonier, PA - Part 5

I grew up in a Presbyterian Church, going to Sunday School every week, with a pastor practicing good, exegetical preaching. I think, in terms of theology, I had a pretty good education, although theology isn't everything. In high school, NavYouth taught me a lot, but the Christian Fellowship that met weekly at my High School is what forced me to quickly learn how to lead Bible Studies. Looking back, I can see that Joy, who led the fellowship until I was in 11th grade, would pick topics and then find related verses, and attempted to teach me to do the same, but when John, Ariell and I took over, we consciously. yet with stated reasons, switched to picking a book of the Bible and going through it, learning what it had to say. Then I went to college, and InterVarsity taught me more about how to lead a Small Group Bible Study, again by examining a passage and seeing what it has to say, though IV calls it the Inductive method. But how much of this taught me how to lead kids, ages 9-12, in Bible Study?

I started out the summer with a core belief: Kids are stupid. This isn't true, and I knew it then, though less than I do now, but it was sort of a useful thing to start out with, in terms of expectations and view of discipline. On the other hand, it was also a discouraging thought; how could kids do any sort of Bible Study that I don't think is a dumb waste of time? We can talk about how that's arrogant later. I was wrong about kids, and I was wrong about the Bible Studies.

During training, the Executive Director's wife, Sandy Meyers, came in and talked us through the Bible Studies that they'd already written for us to do with the kids: A series of various stories and passages illustrating the life of the apostle Peter, tying his redemption to the redemption of the world. They did a really good job writing them, but my previous experience inclined me to not follow their questions exactly, which worked out pretty well. But being able to rephrase questions isn't everything, and Bible Study was not without its challenges.

Most kids don't like sitting down and reading and listening and thinking and talking. This isn't really all that bad, I can't fault them for wanting to run around or throw pinecones or stare into the distance, but it can be a little frustrating. This is what I expected kids to be like, really, yet there were plenty of surprises.

One time, in discussing the fact that we all sin, I said "Nobody's perfect". As soon as I did, several of the boys launched into a Hannah Montana song featuring that line. Another time, one of the kids asked "What if God hadn't made Eve?" and another said "Then being gay would be okay!" Some of the higher-ups at Camp had definitely suggested that sometimes it helps if kids act out a Bible story. This did not go well.

I feel like this is a very undirected and messy post that doesn't communicate quite what I want. Let me give it one more shot:

There is something absolutely incredible in hearing 12 year old guys make the connection between Luke 5 and John 21, or to hear them try and dig through the layers of meaning in Peter's epistles. There is something incredibly frustrating in telling kids about Jesus only to realize they're not paying attention. Even more so is watching a kid go through his week at Camp only caring about himself, hurting those around him in a struggle for dominance, or watching a kid stop and think about how his place as de facto leader of his friends impacts some of them. I say witnessing those is a better experience because you haven't lost the connection of the Gospel, but instead of words, it's deeds. One week, after we were given the job of explicitly preaching the gospel to our cabins instead of the Camp Executive Director doing it, because the threat of a tornado had messed up the entire evening's schedule, and after it seemed like they didn't listen at all, one of the Wilderness Staff, Matt, said that all we could do was pray that they heard something true about Jesus tonight and that someday it helps. Frankly, that's how it is with all of Camp.

I don't do what I want to do

I have had a lot of schoolwork to do this past semester, and a lot of extracurricular activities to accomplish as well. Some of these extracurricular activities are things like leading a Bible Study, and that involves Jesus, and I try and put Jesus-related-things at the top, never mind the confusion of what is Jesus-related, what isn't, and how everything really is and ought to be. This has, however, left me with even less time to do my schoolwork than I normally have. To make matters worse, I have frequently found myself lazing about, talking to people, playing computer games or doing other things, instead of doing my schoolwork, which really does need doing. My Biology TA and my Russian Professor can attest to this, as I have not turned in a whole lot of homework in those classes. One of my friends has been constantly talking about terrible this semester has been, and I am apt to agree, at least on this front.

I said that I try to put Jesus-things at the top. Yet at the same time, how often do I read the Bible? Let me explain, for those not in the know. Christians think that regularly reading the Scriptures is a good idea. We think that "all Scripture is God-breathed, and thus useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." God says to Joshua, after Moses dies, that he should meditate on "The Book of the Law" day and night, and it should never depart from his mouth, and he should be careful to do what it says, so that he will be prosperous and successful. Jesus says we should build our lives on the foundations of his teachings, like a wise man builds his house on firm rock, not on shifting sands. We take things like this to mean that reading the Scriptures regularly is a good idea.

The thing is, I don't read the Scriptures regularly, but I say that I want to. The same goes for all kinds of things. I say that Jesus is right, I should pray, fast and give to the poor, but I only do one of those with any frequency, and that's because praying is easy. (If praying is easy, am I doing it wrong?) These are all very concrete things, almost a check-list. Let me go on, then. I'm supposed to love God above all things, then love everyone else, even my enemies. I agree that this is how I should live, yet my deeds do not match up with this. There are definitely people in this world that I dislike, there are even people I like to some extent that I don't treat the way I should. I look to other things for satisfaction; I don't find satisfaction in God. I don't live the way he wants me to live, I don't love the things he loves, and in general I find that I do not love God with all my heart, soul and might. But I say that I believe that I should.

Do I not believe, then? They say that actions speak louder than words, and I think it's true that your actions betray what you truly believe. If you ever find a church that says all the right things, then acts in a lot of wrong ways, you might want to think about leaving. They might say the right words, but that doesn't mean they believe the right things in their hearts. The problem here is that sometimes I do the right thing, so it is not as if I can claim to clearly be believing the opposite of what the Bible teaches. The very fact that I care what the Scriptures teach might be a good indication that my belief is not all a lie, a sham to trick Christian girls into dating me or something.

I used to only think about Romans 7 in the context of lust and, in particular, pornography. This is understandable, because that is a big issue to try and think about and deal with, and one that sometimes seems to have no hope. But if that is all I was applying it to, I was missing out on a lot. The Apostle Paul is wordy, as usual, but here he's talking about how Christ purifies our hearts, yet we still sin. In verses 15 through 23, he says the following.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Well now. That is pretty much a description of the problem I outlined above. As much as it seems a little thing, I really do think it is wrong of me to not get the work done that I'm supposed to get done. Sloth is one of the traditional seven capital sins, and for good reason; it's easy. Furthermore, it's easier in today's society, as I can attest. Paul, however, does not leave the issue here. He, and I read this as a cry of desperation, says:

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

That is quite a statement, I think, calling himself "wretched", but I also think it's accurate. To find yourself doing the things you do not want to do and to find yourself not doing the things you want to do is pretty shocking, worrisome, gut-wrenching, etc. It feels awful.

One time, I talked with my friend Alex about this. I don't remember why, the context, or anything like that. I think we were in his car, maybe. Either way, we did talk about how long Paul goes on and on about his problem, the problem of sin, yet doesn't provide a very lengthy explanation of the solution. He says one sentence in answer to his cry for deliverance, then moves on. Alex said that Paul does this because the solution is very simple, at least in the basics, the part that you really need to know. So who will save me and you and Paul from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

That is a great comfort, and it's true too.

Home

Although my family lived in two different apartments for the first two years of my life, and although we lived in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England from when I was 3 til I was 6, the earliest firm memories that I have associated with the term "home" are of our row house in Woodlawn, Maryland, about 3 blocks away from the official city, where we lived for a little before England and then afterwards until October 2002, my 10th grade year. Despite being residents of Woodlawn, though maybe the Post Office was confused about this, we always wished we lived at least in Catonsville just to the south, home of a lower crime rate, or, better yet, Howard County, the next county to the south-west of Baltimore County. Howard County contains Ellicott City and Elkridge, where my Mom lived during her High School years, and thus my gradnmother's house; as well as Columbia Presbyterian Church, in Columbia, and thus the majority of our closest friends. We tried to move away for years, but it never really came together until 2002, when we ended up in a single-family home in the southern end of Columbia, right in the very midst of some of the people we had been friends with since before even England. Despite having wanted to leave Woodlawn for years, I distinctly remember sitting alone in the tiny room I had called my own since sometime in middle school, still painted a pastel yellow from when my sister, Elizabeth, picked its color at a very young age, and, on the day of our moving out, crying.

After we moved out, we lived with our friends, the Springs, for a week, waiting for the contract on our new house to be finalized. This sticks in my mind as an incredible act of love and hospitality, allowing a second family to share their home with them for a week, and a really good example of how Christians ought to treat each other.

Then we moved to Columbia, as I said, where my family still resides to this day. This was where I first became really aware of my issues with comfort in new situations. When I first arrived at Atholton High School, as well as at my simultaneous introduction to NavYouth, a Christian youth group and High School ministry of The Navigators in Columbia, I was very quiet. Three years later, by the time of my High School Graduation, this was not nearly as true, and I was generally a much friendlier person for it. I guess it took a long time, but I had become a lot more comfortable in Columbia.

In August of 2005, I became a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), living in Patapsco Hall, among a lot of people I had never met. Though incredibly near to the familiar places of my youth, it was still assuredly a place I had never been before, and I found myself, for the most part, just as quiet and seemingly unfriendly as when I moved to Columbia. It took me a year and a half, or thereabouts, to find myself comfortable, talkative and at home at UMBC.

This summer, I am a Summer Camp Counselor at Ligonier Camp & Conference Center, in the Ligonier Valley, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I remember, just 5 weeks ago, moving into a cabin in a place I had never been before, among people I had never met, and being very quiet. This past Saturday, at the Staff Say-So, a time, after the kids leave, for the Staff to stand up and tell stories about the past week, I told about a revelation I had had concerning my attitude and the nature of what we do here, and a lot of other things. I had this realization while sitting on the toilet, so I made sure to tell them this, and that that place is where I get some of my best thinking done. This was the Next Level Counselor's final week here, Next Level being a semi-simultaneous camp run out of the Lodge, and later someone told me that that was how the Next Level crew would remember me, as talking about the toilet. Though I'm not sure this is true, as I hung out with them several times, I realized I wouldn't be disappointed if this turned out to be the case. My standing and telling them story in such as fashion is a pretty good indicator that I am comfortable here. But unlike UMBC, I am not sure I would call this "home".

Living as a Counselor here means that I'll only have slept in Columbia, Maryland for 12 nights this summer, if my count is accurate. Though many of my possessions still reside there, it becomes increasingly difficult to think of it as home. The dishes aren't even kept in the same places anymore, making it incredibly frustrating any time I am asked to help unstack the dishwasher. When the few other staff from Maryland ask where I'm from, I tell them that I grew up in Woodlawn, my parents live in Columbia, and I live at UMBC most of the year. Sometimes I feel like a nomad, like Abraham, other times I feel a permanent resident of a college campus. The latter is clearly not true, as my approaching graduation will no doubt reveal. American Christians have been known to affix trite bumper stickers to their cars, warning you that the rapture will severely impede traffic, or that their home is a mysterious place called "heaven". While I think the theology behind the first is wrong, the second is a lot truer. We, as Christians, are told to live as foreigners in this world, in it but not of it, something like Israel those 40 years in the Wilderness. While I suspect the more accurate term for our proper dwelling place is the New Jerusalem, while will descend from Heaven (the third one, if we go with the old and wrong understanding of celestial spheres which Paul held) onto the New Earth, this is not of much importance. Why is this place, which I suppose Jesus is preparing right now, and has been for some time it would seem, to which I have never been, my home?

One of the reasons I am able to think of UMBC as home is because it contains a sizable collection of people I know well and love, who have become something like family to me. I have only known many of them for two years, three at the most, yet it feels like much longer, and I will be grieved at the parting of our ways.

That which chiefly holds me back from calling Ligonier home is familiarity. Despite being on staff for several weeks, there are many places on Property to which I have never been, and simply so many things which I do not know. Maybe this will change by the end of the summer, and though I can walk around to many places in teh dark of night, it still carries that air of unfamiliarity which repulses the name "home".

The issue of why it becomes increasingly difficult to refer to the home of my parents as "home" is a tricky one. Are there not people whom I know well and love? There are: my family. Is it not familiar? Admittedly less and less so, as the example of my mother rearranging the kitchen cabinets demonstrates, but it is still no foreign land. I think, instead, that the difficulty arises in the amount of time I actually live there each year, a decreasing number to be sure, and the amount of time that I anticipate living there in the future. A few days after Camp but before School, Winter Break, Spring Break, and then I graduate, shortly after which I really ought to depart.

These three, then, may reveal just how I can call heaven (or the New Jerusalem, rather) my home. The place will be packed full of those whom I know and love, for we are all grafted into one vine, adopted into one family, heirs of the King, our Great and Glorious Father. It will be familiar, I believe, as God will make all things new, the world free of sin, how it ought to be. Lastly, the days we will live there are countless, and not just because it becomes difficult to count days when there is no more night, thanks to the light of the Lord God dwelling among his people.

Let me tell you, "home" is a tricky and meaningful term.

I don't know anything

At the risk of sounding a little bit like Donald Rumsfeld, I want to tell you about the things I knew that I don't know, the things I thought I knew but I don't know, and how I don't know anything.

There's a lot of things that I definitely don't know. I don't know what grades I'm going to get this semester. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I don't know who I'm going to marry, and that assumes that I will. But worse than all those things, I don't know how to make myself do what's right, and that assumes I know what the right thing to do is.

When I was a child, I would not eat red fruit, whether or not I had actually ever tried them. A few weeks ago, I had some strawberries, and they were pretty good. I used to be confident that I was really smart, and really good at Computer Science on top of that. I have a GPA of 3.28, which, while not bad, is less than I used to have, I assure you, and I rarely get As in CompSci classes anymore. It's hard for me to admit, but I thought that I had a lot of things all figured out, that I knew what to do, when to do things, and all about myself and the people around me. When I am alone, walking to and from various places, or on the toilet, or in the shower, I will frequently imagine future conversations I might have with my friends, even predicting what they will say and coming up with responses, so that I can come across as eloquent and clever when we do talk. Sometimes I'm right about what they'll say, I won't deny it, but I'm never all right and my predictions are pretty weak to begin with, never mind that it says some pretty weird and potentially bad things about myself that I do this. I like to think that I have my closest friends all figured out, and I put the people I don't know as well into neat little categories, stereotypes, which strongly affect how I think about them and how I treat them. Not only do I suspect that this is morally wrong, but it doesn't work. I don't know everything about the people I think I've got all figured out, and they constantly surprise me with revelations about themselves, and I am surprised even more so with the process of opening my eyes to the people that I've filed away into stereotypes. I went for a long time not realizing this, and that's the way it goes with lots of the things I do that are wrong, and even some of the things I think are right; I don't know that they're wrong. I don't know all of what is right or wrong, all of what is good or bad, or anything even close to that. I thought I knew, but I've become convinced that, when you get down to it, I don't know anything.

I have, for better or for worse, in my mind, an idea of what is my ideal future. In my ideal future, I am married to some beautiful woman with whom I make several babies, and I suppose this is all well and good in the eyes of the Noahic covenant. Most importantly, however, is that I own a farm, most likely a potato farm. A discerning mind will guess that my ideal future is me in the idealized world of my ancestors, the old Ireland which is apparently after we've gotten potatoes from America, but before there was a Pototao Famine, and definitely not the Ireland that existed with high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy. I'm sure it's not entirely Ireland, I really like Maryland, but that's the image that I've got in my head. I also have ideas about other ideal versions of things. I think that if the history of the Church had gone how it should have, there would have been no Catholic-Protestant schism in the 1500s, and there would have been no East-West schism in 1054, and we would have a parish system with bishops and all, with a whole bunch of patriarchs, and every Sunday I would go for a liturgy that had a time for prayer where everyone in the church prayed all at once, out loud, for awhile. But why stop there, with church history? Why not just dictate how the entirety of history should have gone? If I had my way, sin would have never entered the world.

Can I say that that's wrong? Sin is wrong, and the cause of many evils. Wishing that it had never happened, how can that be wrong? But on the other hand, God is sovereign over everything, not just over the here and the now, but He has been sovereign since before there was time. He allowed sin to happen, and none of his deeds are ever wrong. A paradox? Maybe. I don't really understand why God allows bad things to happen, though I've heard some people say that it's so that he can fully demonstrate his love through the death and resurrection of Christ, and that starts to make some sense, sometimes.

I am not going to own a farm in the future, or at least it is not looking likely. We Christians talk a lot about what God is calling us to do, even if some of us are really terrible at listening. Terrible at listening though I may be, I don't think God is calling me to own a farm and all the rest of that idyllic, agrarian fantasy. I do not know what he is calling me to do with my life, though I wish he would tell me, but I don't think I'm called to own a farm. Now, I could go off on my desires and do all the right things that would result in me owning a farm, but that's not the point. People in the Church did what they wanted and look where we've ended up. Adam did what he wanted, and look where that's gotten all of us. My desires, though sometimes rooted in good motivations, do not always yield good results. Wanting to provide food for others is good, but that doesn't necessarily imply that I should go own a farm. I hope you don't think I'm saying that all my desires are good, that all my motivations are good. I'm only realizing that even the good motivations don't always yield good actions.

This has gotten way too long, so I'm going to wrap it up. What I've been trying to get across is this: I do not always know what is the right thing to do. I am fully capable of tricking myself into using good reasons and intentions to support wrong actions. I don't like this, because I still want to do the right thing, but this implies that someone has got to tell me what to do, and I don't want that at all. This is where those bad motivations start becoming really apparent. I don't want to listen to God, because I want to do whatever the heck I want to do. It's my life, who is He to tell me how to live it? This is starting to sound awfully familiar, like one of those sermons where they talk about why Adam and Eve ate the fruit, or like C.S. Lewis's Perelandra, which is the same thing. I think that doing what is right is really important, and not doing what is wrong equally so, so the idea that I don't know how to do that is frightening. If I don't even know how to do that, I don't know anything! Thanks be to God, then, that He is willing to tell me. The next trick is remember to ask Him, and then listen, but that is not something I am prepared to write about yet.