St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Waverly
In summer staff training at
Ewalu, we charge our staff with a very simple, but challenging directive: Just
love your campers. It is a calling illustrated in places like John 15, where
Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you. Now, that is
an awfully high standard. After all, God loves us the way we ought to be loved.
Amazingly, it happens at camp—again and again, it happens—campers come to Ewalu
and experience God’s love for them, and they go away calling this special
place, “Home.” That is a miracle.
Nevertheless,
I do have a certain fear when we talk about love. I’m afraid it will quickly
become… fluffy—love, love, love, that’s what it’s all about. Nobody will
disagree with that! And nobody will disagree with it because merely talking
about love demands nothing of you. Love that does nothing is not love at all.
We have to do more than tell kids they are loved, pat them on the back, and
send them home. We have to live it. Love demands an object and action. It is
never theoretical—you can’t love a theory and you can’t love in theory. Love requires
commitment to those we say we love.
A strength of camp is the fact that everybody who comes to camp comes away with an experience. Of course, we aren’t batting 1.000—we don’t always hit a home run—but we do punch above our weight for making a difference in these kids’ lives. We are successful in large part because we provide so many avenues for connection, which is important, because our campers are not one-size-fits-all. Each is a unique child of God. What is holy to me is not holy to every camper or staff member, and vice versa. I love the Maquoketa River—full of beautiful trout and clear, running water, with the occasional turtle and beaver, mayfly hatch and sucker run—but plenty of kids come to the same river and see mud and leeches and crayfish with those pincers, and they say, “I’m not getting in there!” You let some kids play in the forest and they come alive, building forts and setting their imagination on fire, while other kids feel claustrophobic under the canopy. Some kids love singing around a campfire; others only care whether or not there will be s’mores. Some love high ropes—some are terrified of high ropes—some start terrified of high ropes and end up loving high ropes.
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| Thanks to St. Paul's, Waverly for your support of Cedar @ 60! |
The reason camp works so well is, firstly, because of the love that permeates the work we do, and secondly, it is because we offer so many different places for that love to be experienced—so many avenues to connect with God, with the natural world, and with one another.
