Y-Camp, Yay, Y-Camp!

Lately, I have been thinking about Ravencliff.  Where I went to for three years during high school as a camp 'counselor'.  (I say in '' because I was actually a C-ILT, but I tell people that I was a counselor because it makes me feel better..).  Regardless, I have been thinking about it.  In certain circles, we, Ravencliffers, would refer to it as 'camp' and knew in the back of our minds that is was affiliated with the YMCA, but, ultimately, Ravencliff was just Ravencliff.  It was truly my first experience with spirituality and contemplating the divine.  In all the turmoil that I was going through during my high school years (at home mostly), there was always Ravencliff and I looked forward to it every summer.  Just closing my eyes, I can see it in my mind.  How the light falls on the creek in the afternoon, the coolness of chapel in the early mornings, the long trek up the hill to the cabins, the rustic beauty of the cabins, the rock where we all carved our names....

I don't often spend time thinking about it, Ravencliff comes to mind every 6 months for a fleeting thought, but ultimately its always there.

It sometimes seems odd to think of all the things I have done such as Ravencliff.  Just two weeks every summer for three years is a small amount of time but the influence it has had on my mind and heart is outlasting.  I always thought of it as sort of a little joke, you know, the meme: "That Ol' Ravencliff Magic"...but it is truly real.  Whenever I have needed it, that magic has been there, giving me the strength I need, even now, years after I have left.  I have always wanted to go back, but now I wonder, do I need to?  Is it too late? Am I too old?

I recently was watching youtube and somehow found some videos referring to Y-Camps, so I typed in Ravencliff, just to see.  There it was, kids, most likely high school counselors (as I had been), had taken their cellphones or their digital cameras and filmed campfire so then they could go and instantly upload it, perhaps.  It was funny to see and not in the least bit odd.  Having technology there at Ravencliff seemed a degradation of something holy; when I was at camp, there were no cellphones at all, the internet was just starting out and hadn't really taken off, and we didn't even have digital cameras.  No, we had the ol' fashioned film cameras, where you couldn't see how the photo came out until you took the three or four rolls of film  to the store where you forked over 10 dollars or so to get them developed, remember glossy and double print..which means no way of controlling how many pictures you could take, so make it a good one!

 I now know a little of why I find so many people, after 'camp, that I connect with and its because they, too, seem to have some of that 'camp feel' to me, even if they never set foot on the upper playing field (UPF), or smelled the chocolate factory, or went through the nightly ritual of the ragger's creed....So, I accept the love and connection of these new 'campers' in life, with hopes to instill some of that 'ol Ravencliff magic' into their lives!

There's No Place Like Home!

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things are ahead, I press forward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."--Philippians 3:13-14

 I have some issues regarding the common translation of this verse.  I know what it says, to not focus on what is behind and reach forward.  But, too often, I fear that Christians take it too literally in that trying to 'forget what is behind', they hinder their own personal healing and growth that the Lord offers them.

A few years back, I was led back to my home-town, for the purpose I thought, was to attend graduate school, but in the end that only got me 12,000 dollars in debt! In my heart of hearts, I resented the fact that I had to leave Ashland, of which had not only been my place of residence, but had come to be, and always had been, my true home on this 'swiftly-turning planet'.  But looking back (no pun intended), I see now that my purpose in moving back to the place where I was reared was to cut out all that is within me from my past that was hindering me from moving forward in my walk with God.  In a word, looking backwards helped me to let go, reach forward, and press on to the "upward call".  Without that time of introspection and realization of my anger, unresolved pain, bitterness, and abuse from family, friends, even the church (something I still deal with today, "Jesus never said everyone was lovable, right? That's why he made the church!"), I would not have found the amazing freedom of true healing and the pathway to not only receiving forgiveness for myself but for those who hurt me in the past, present, and even the future.  By looking back, as well, into the ways I have wronged others, I am free to forgive those that hurt me by recognizing how I have done damage myself.  So, I urge you, my Christian brother and sister, if you have been told by the leadership of the church or even other parishners, to forget what is behind, not to obey this until you have made peace with yourself and allowed God to 'work out' the pain that needs to be released.  Only in that, in my experience, will you be able to move forward to your glorious calling and a true freedom.

I resent, as well, the popular thought around the church that "feelings are  evil".  In truth, I had a friend outside the church, a nonbeliever of  sorts,  who always has expressed the need for me to "feel my feelings" and that has been the truth path-way to abiding deeper and more closely with the Lord.  In my own thought process, feelings are just feelings, they are not bad or good, but merely feelings."  Feelings do not necessarily have any significance of a notion of evil or sin, they just are.  I have found when I start to feel a feeling, if I acknowledge to myself and allow myself to 'experience that emotion' (not necessarily by expressing it outwardly), it passes away and I am able to continue forward.  Later on, I am able to examine why the emotion was felt and truly let that be healed.

Well, during my struggles back in the childhood stomping grounds, I often longed to be once-again in my true 'home-town' of Ashland, Oregon.  I cannot explain to those who are not called to this place just why and how I feel this to be my place, and even if I travel or live elsewhere, I know that this is always where my heart resides.  And truly, home is where the heart dwells!  But, I know this was where I was supposed to be, at some point, I was meant to return.  I would often find myself fleeing the confines of the California residence and escaping to a kind of 'spiritual retreat' to Ashland.  All my friends that reside here, who truly know the magic of the town, knew that I would one day move back.  I felt this too, but I know now that I could not return until God had accomplished in me what he needed to internally in that place.  But, as I say with my favorite movie herione, Dorothy Gale, "There is no place like home" or rather, "There is no place like Ashland!"

I hope my readers will themselves go back into their past, deal with it, acknowledge their hurts and how they have hurts others, and then truly move on.  You may not have to physically go back to a place, but there may be 'a place that resides within' that you need to travel to, and become truly free.

So, at that time, I pray you can say the words I have longed to express to my Ashland friends (about my time in California and all that entitled):

"Truly, this was a real live place, and I remember some of it wasn't very nice at all, but most of it was beautiful--But, all I kept saying was, I want to go home! I want to go to Ashland--And they sent me home!"

And also, the lesson Dorothy learned, I have learned in that:

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

Truly, friends, there is no place like....Ashland, Oregon!

He who has ears, let him hear