Young Life Camp!
Camp was really awesome, but being away from my Karen and our kids was Sad. All is right with the world now. The picture for this post was, by the way, the only picture of me taken the whole week unless you count blurry pictures or ones where i was standing under a huge downspout of rainwater not wearing my shirt. Those are available by request, by the way. In that picture, you can see Sara, our dedicated and unimaginably competent leader. If disorganization and unfriendliness were butts, she'd totally kick butt. Like, into the next time code, or whatever. Also, Kia who's from my old hometown of Portland Oregon, and there's me. With the dreads.
The whole point of Young Life Camp is to trick kids into listening to the Gospel. The part where God gave Jesus, the perfect innocent sacrifice as a payment for the sin and brokenness of humanity and the world, and calls us to God's self through Jesus. But out of 16 waking hours, fourteen of those are spent being shamelessly entertained by: insane people acting out preposterous skits; intense, coed physical activity like boy vs. girl football where the boys must remain on their knees the whole time; swimming; tanning; eating delicious food; riding mountain bikes; playing pool or foosball or ping-pong. And more stuff. Oh yeah, they can also shop for stylish clothing and accessories, all Young Life branded and shamelessly overpriced.
These hours and hours of mind blowing fun are cleverly juxtaposed with the gospel message, and classical behavioralism teaches us that pleasurable stimuli affect the way we perceive simultaneous input. So, volleyball tournament followed by pizza and pop, followed by swimming = GOOD! Gospel message = GOOD! I'm sounding pretty cynical about this whole strategy, but i'm not. Not really. My background in Calvinistic theology is coming through. But God works in ways that i am utterly not equipped to comprehend, and my fondness for Molinistic theology helps me understand that everything does happen for a reason. The kids at camp are getting high on endorphins and suntan lotion (and, perhaps for the first time in years, not weed or booze). Those who choose God at that point, of their free will, do so because of God's irresistible call to grace... which includes launching waterballoons at relativistic speeds at bubble-wrapped grown ups (inside!!!) and playing "Musical Mono".
"Musical Mono" is a game which involves four boys kneeling on one knee, forming a kind of chair. In each of their mouths, they're holding an Oreo cookie. Five girls circle them, and when the music stops, they pounce onto a knee and extract the Oreo cookie. This is an extremely misguided game, in my responsible adult opinion, but there was much cheering, and almost a girl-fight.
So anyway, God works through lavishly expensive outfits like Young Life, and as long as i'm engaging kids with love and grace, trying to show them Christlike selflessness, i figure it's doing good.
I enjoyed camp very much. Youth is so beautiful. I got sunburnt. I scraped up both feet, and hobbled around in lots of pain one evening only to find the pain evaporated the next morning. Welcome to thirty-six, Juanito. I kicked higher than any of the other kids who were trying, and then warned the next guy that he was going to fall on his butt. I was ambivalently pleased and saddened to have been right.
Well, check out the ___more___ to see the panorama, if i can find the code.