Handing my wife the phone, former camper, counselor, and staff, and lost a counselor friend to the flood yesterday.
Today would have marked the first Sunday of the term. A simple day, a day of rest. Wake up at 9am. Eating 'sticky buns' in the dining hall. Devotionals on the beautiful bank of the Guadalupe. At lunch, they always serve peanut butter with plain ol' Bluebell vanilla ice cream for dessert.
Vespers Sunday night. A night for simple lessons on a simple day, but lessons that hold true in every phase of life. One of the poems read at the first Vespers of the term reads:
"All I really needed to know about life… how to live and what to do… and how to be… I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
-Share everything.-Play fair.-Don't hit people.
-Put things back where you found them.-Clean up your own mess.-Don't take things that aren't yours.
-Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.-Wash your hands before you eat.
-Flush!
-Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
-Live a balanced life learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
-Take a nap every afternoon.-When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
-Be aware of wonder
-Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup they all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned the biggest word of all LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if the whole world had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.And it is still true, no matter how old you are… when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
Camp is a simple place for lasting lessons. Poems extrapolated into sophisticated terms can't prepare you for all the loss, grief, and pain that those affected and beyond are going through right now.
I thought I might add a few more verses, though I know the magnitude of this tragedy can never be put into words:
It's not the river's fault when it rains and the deep becomes deeper. The river only knows its path. The water does what water does.
Our Lord is God of the river and the rain.
When all is lost, He is not. Clinging to Him is the deepest, strangest, and most innate instinct we have.
Do not forget the counselors who fought so hard to protect these precious children. Do not forget the campers. They will rest forever in the simplicity of God's peace.
All we too can ask for now is peace, peace, peace. An old camp song sings:
(Listen here)
https://open.spotify.com/track/4bHsS3vMonnrQaEii2zuhw?si=v6GThOg8Sn2s-rJPN-oSRwPeace I ask of thee, O river;
Peace, Peace, Peace.
When I learn to live serenely,
Cares will cease.
From the hills I gather courage,
Visions of the day to be.
Strength to lead and faith to follow,
All are given unto me.
Peace I ask of thee , O river;
Peace, Peace, Peace.
