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Who’d Have Thunk It?

The Source

Who’d Have Thunk It? I guess I’ve become a bit old and lazy. Given of choice of working in my backyard in the heat of summer or sitting in my air conditioned house reading a book, the book wins every time. I look up and down Sandusky Street and see folks out working happily in their yards. At least I assume they’re happy or they’d be indoors reading a book. Over the years we’ve moved our Green Pastures camp from hot tents on the far hillside and sweaty meals by a campfire to air-conditioned lodge rooms, plus wonderfully cool cafeterias and performance areas. Unless the little kids go from their dorm to the main building they’re in air conditioned comfort all day long. . .all praise to God and Amerin Illinois. We even have indoor campfires at night, far away from the Buffalo gnats, ticks, and tocks. But something strange has happened of late. Weather permitting we take the kids on a little walk outdoors while we set up our indoor camp. Each group of ten or so are led by a staff member and every twenty yards or so the kids pass a guitar-playing counselor, then interspersed between the guitars other counselors stand there and pray for one child in the group as they stop a moment. The bugs are still there, the evening heat is still upon us, the scary sounds are still in the forest, and sometimes there’s mud underfoot, but then something strange. At the end of camp many of the counselors ask their group about their favorite parts of the camp experience. Every week a common response is, “That walk we took!” I was slack-jawed. Even in our heavily treed part of Central Illinois, few kids actually get out and walk in the woods, especially at night. Many of them say that the only real time they spend outdoors is under the night lights on a ball diamond where there are no guitar players, it’s not quiet, and the only ones praying for them are their mothers when they stand at the plate facing a pitched ball. In fact, more and more kids over the years have taken every opportunity to work and play indoors and opt instead for a simple stroll around the camp, a hour drowning worms down at the pond or partaking in a pickup game of basketball in the June heat. I guess that some of this yearning to be outdoors can be chalked up to a greater tolerance for heat among the young, but most of their desire to be outdoors is simply their weariness from spending so much of their life in temperature controlled comfort. Believe me, the gnats, ticks, and Hoot Owls are still there and the little ones don’t seem to care. The second and perhaps even more amazing thing that’s developed in recent camp seasons is their cell phone use. At the beginning of each camp I tell them they may use their phones to take pictures or make videos, but please, no texting. Frankly, I thought this was a rule that we’d never be able to enforce and boy, was I wrong. I have a staff of about forty who keep a watchful eye for any maverick texters and we’ve found that the huge majority of our campers don’t even bring phones camp and those that do happily ignore them. Okay, once this summer I caught two sixth-grade boys texting their mothers in a bathroom stall . . . the boys, not the mothers. They sheepishly put their phones away and I was reminded of something that I’ve mentioned in an early column about the lack of cell phones didn’t bother the kids but it sometimes drove mothers crazy. Fifteen minutes and I haven’t heard from my child! And in addition to this, I’ve learned something even more valuable . . . something I’d have never found out without this yearly contact with kids: When given a few days with their peers with very few rules, lots of laughter, an army of volunteers cooks, a little time away from home and surrounded by a host of counselors who are the best role models imaginable, kids become quite wonderful human beings. Toss in an emphasis on God and you have a sort of heaven on Earth for a few days each summer. Walks in the woods, lack of cell phones, nothing stands in their way of getting to know each other in way that delights them and they begin seeing the good in each other. We never compete against each other at Performing Arts Camp; we celebrate our collective talents. There’s a lesson there that much of the educational establishment and the world in general has yet to learn. Okay, I’d still rather not walk through a humid patch of woods, I’ll pass on the basketball and when the heat gets over ninety I’ll take my fish at the Approach in Dosh, but I won’t be leading the world tomorrow. . .they will. And in that there’s great hope.