There’s a quote from Madeleine L’Engle I returned to time and time again in writing my second book:
I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be...1
The book I write of, as you might recall, is called Church Camp. It’s a story of a hidden part of the white evangelical subculture, but a part of the subculture that is hugely influential, especially in the lives of children and youth.
Some people — particularly those I’ve only just met in the last five or ten years — often find my fascination with this fascination particularly, well, quite fascinating.
They don’t realize my connection to church camp, that church camp is a huge part of my story. Church camp marked my summers as a child and as a teenager; I spent every summer in college working at one church camp or another, and then continued on as a camp speaker (and musician and head leader and, and, and…) for another dozen years.
They don’t realize that church camp is part and parcel who I am, a marker of my identity. Perhaps it goes without saying that “I am still every age that I have ever been,” including all the ages that found a home under starry cobalt skies at those sacred playgrounds.2
What does it then mean to hold the parts of myself — and of who I was at these many different ages — with who I have become today? What does it mean for all of us to honor our and hold space for all the many ages we have been, even if these different ages live in tension with who we are today?
In more ways than one, we learn to hold the whole and complete memory, including what one psychotherapist describes as a memory “made up of all those files together at the same time, such as what you emotionally felt, saw, heart, and physically experienced.”3
For me, I hold the funny. God, camp was a place of laughter. Give me the gargling olympics, spam creation contests, and even the Banana-Bandana skit and I will die a happy, jolly, chuckling woman. Give me songs with a thousand wild hand motions that leave you sweaty at the end of the second chorus and a smile that will not soon leave your face. Give me the stories and the antics of camps, the tales and memories that can only be explained with the moniker, “You had to be there.”
Give me sixteen-year-old me, who sat on the floor of the club room and laughed so hard tears rolled down my face. Give me twenty-two-year-old me, who stood on the front of the stage, cordless microphone in hand, and gave it my all, as I led what can only be properly described as a white people’s bible rap. Give me thirty-year-old me, who also stood at the front of the stage and felt so honored to be the one chosen to proclaim the gospel.4
I hold the friendships and the life-change that happened on her grounds. Like many of my peers, I hold the fact that church camp gave me the gift of being exactly me. Nowhere else could I not shower for four days straight and still feel the cleanest, best version of myself. Nowhere else did I so deeply and viscerally experience God — even if that version of the holy sometimes looks wildly different ten, fifteen, twenty years later.
But also, I hold the grief. I hold the belonging I experienced in that place that I do not experience now, not as my theology and my personal views have changed in ways that no longer fit in that place, with those people. As
wrote in an essay last week, “I used to belong there. I don’t belong there anymore.”5How true that is. How much that hurts.
I don’t belong when I push back on the need to sell Jesus, when I think harmful atonement theories (that are too often adopted because they work) should no longer be employed,6 when I believe camps too often act as gatekeepers toward those who are not rich and white and straight.
And I hold the grief is not about me but is instead about those who have not and will never fit the aforementioned mold. With tenderness, I hold a pain that only allows me listen and hope to practice empathy, that dares dream another future possible.7
Because I also hold grace toward all these many ages of myself. Oh, hi there. I see you. I see that you were doing the best you could, with what you could. To all these ages, grace, grace, grace.
These ages will always live inside of me, you see. And when it comes to the pages of this manuscript, the tension of all these ages tells a story that can only be told and held and experienced in this way.
It’s a story that can only be seen through the lenses of all the numbers I’ve ever been, and maybe, all the numbers you’ve ever been too.
Is it true for you?
L’Engle writes elsewhere, “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”
Jacob Sorenson is the one who coined the phrase, “sacred playgrounds.” It’s also the title of his book.
https://saferelationshipsmagazine.com/why-you-only-remember-the-good-stuff-of-a-bad-relationship-part-1#
“Proclaim the gospel” is a very campy, white evangelical phrase in and of itself.
I’m talking about you, penal substitutionary atonement. And yes, this theory is often employed at camps because it’s guaranteed to produce results, as in, conversions.
In what can only be expressed as deep tenderness, I hold the grief of those who have been harmed by a place meant for love. I recognize my privilege in not having experienced hurt and trauma because of intrinsic parts of my identity.