I have been going to family camp since I was about 12, and now going with my own children is just amazing and a bit surreal. There is an inevitable low that comes when that week is over, part exhaustion, part having to say good-bye. We made it back Friday afternoon and I took the boys to the park to stretch our legs from the long car ride. I immediately lamented the change in local. Not just the surroundings of camp, which are beautiful, but the spirit and community there. At camp, Miles would hurry to eat his lunch so he could go back outside and play; running around the field, climbing trees, or playing in the sand box, no matter where he was I knew he was safe, because even if I wasn't there watching, someone else was.
The mentality there is that all the children are like our own children, all the adults look after everyone else's child, and all the children treat each other like brother and sister. I've always thought that being at camp was like a little taste of what the kingdom of heaven would be like. Everyone together as one family. Wouldn't it be great to live like that all the time? It makes you want to channel Thoreau and strike out for a cabin in the woods--of course in this version it would be with about a hundred of your closest friends and relatives! But even that would inevitably turn sour I think, because we are not perfect people. After a few weeks our fallen natures would start to show and start rubbing up against one another. I know I'm far from perfect. I get impatient, stressed, angry. I take things out on the people I love. I can be judgmental and selfish. Some people think that if you are concerned with spiritual things that you somehow manage things better, that you don't have these types of issues. I remember before i started meditating I thought of anyone who did it as having some sort of supernatural power to float above all of the problems, that they were somehow better at life in general. How wrong I was! I sometimes feel like I have been given these tools because I am the one who needs them the most! Anyway, the point is, It's not the setting that makes paradise, it's who you have to share it with.
Back at the park, Miles tried to play with a couple of kids a few years older than him. They were playing a game where they had a "club house", which was basically one whole side of the playground equipment. Except they wouldn't let anyone else in their club house, so when Miles wanted to play with them or to go down the slide on that side they told him to "get out of our clubhouse! you can't come in!" My Mama bear reflexes stirred, but I reminded myself that they were just children themselves and tried to use it as a teachable moment. I convinced Miles to make his own clubhouse on the other side and that we would let anyone come in (even the "mean kids", if they promised to be nice).
Eventually we have to go back to the real world. As much as we would like to stay in that little bubble, until we can actually make that society on the grand scale, we will have to be ready to deal with bullies, egos (other people's and our own!), and real evil. We always tell the kids at camp to take the lessons and the spirit home with them.
I hope to do that too. I hope that I can create that feeling of safety, love, and joy, and a true connection with God, in my own home, so that it can be like a spiritual armor when we inevitably venture outside the safety of its walls. Perhaps if we can harness that spirit, we can help it start to spread to other homes, families, neighborhoods, and of course the park.
