By Kevin Cole
Last year I had the pleasure of attending the St. Elizabeth's talent show, during which a camper got up to sing a song. It was probably a top 40 radio hit at the time, but I can't remember. What I do remember is a group of counselors freaking out around me. As it turns out, the camper was largely non-verbal, and had said very little in the years that he attended camp. For those who knew him, this was huge. St. Elizabeth's has that kind of power and unfortunately it's one that I have yet to really experience first hand. I wasn't able to be on the mountain to capture audio for this episode of the camp cast, that was done graciously by St. Elizabeth's Program Director, Scott Waters. Here are some of Scott's thoughts on working for St. Elizabeth's camp and guest producing a portion of the penultimate episode of The Shrine Mont Camp Cast's first season (PS: Scott, when you read this, "Scott's Thoughts" would be a good name for a blog): I started working at St. Elizabeth’s as a counselor buddy in 2010. Last year I was the Sports Director and this year I was honored to be the Program Director. The Holy Spirit joins us every year at St. Elizabeth’s and changes the lives of all the people who are blessed to be a part of camp. Campers with special needs have the opportunity to participate in traditional camp activities and we counselors get to be part of this experience and get to meet and form relationships with these awesome kids. Over the course of a week together, barriers are broken, stereotypes are disproved and God’s love is seen in action. I was so honored when Kevin asked me to help bring St. Elizabeth’s to a greater community through this podcast. I hope you enjoy listening to staff from St. Elizabeth’s share their heart-felt experiences.
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By Ashley Cameron Campers and counselors are some of the many characters that make up Shrine Mont Camps every summer. These camps wouldn’t function without any one of them. We’ve asked them to #ShoutIt from the mountain what they love about Shrine Mont Camps, what causes them joy, what brings them back year after year, and where they see God on the mountain. These are the characters of camp. Come back every Wednesday and Friday for the rest of August to see the new characters featured! “I saw God when after we were done playing games, all the kids sat in a circle and we just talked for a long time. It wasn’t divided between girls and boys, but boys and girls were all talking together. I love the vibe and everyone is so close.” Where have you seen God this week? Everyone coming back together at the beginning of the week and just people making new friends, this is one of my favorite places to be. It’s such a tight community and all of my friends are here. My sister came here first and she said you should totally come, it’s the best place to be. And I’ve been coming ever since. “Every kid brings their own challenges, every kid brings their own story. It’s awesome to see every single person by the end of it get into the one circle at the end of the week or two weeks and just be that one body that you can’t see anywhere else. “
By Ashley Cameron Campers and counselors are some of the many characters that make up Shrine Mont Camps every summer. These camps wouldn’t function without any one of them. We’ve asked them to #ShoutIt from the mountain what they love about Shrine Mont Camps, what causes them joy, what brings them back year after year, and where they see God on the mountain. These are the characters of camp. “We all have a community of awesome people who care about each other. I’ve learned a lot about faith and community and worshiping God in so many different ways than you normally would. The thing that makes it special to me is just that it’s secluded from the outside world. You get to be your own person for once and you don’t have to represent someone you don’t want to be.” “In chaplain’s time, I’ve learned how important your identity is to you and how unique you are. Also, how you can relate to other people. When I go home, I’m just going to try to boost my identity and figure out who I am, basically.” How has being a counselor impacted your own faith?
“It has changed so much. It is so spiritual here. Everyone is so loving and so caring. It is like one big family. Spiritually it has helped me build my own faith up. And I’ve just loved every minute of it.” By Ashley Cameron Art Camp (campers ages 8 to 15) was the last camp on the mountain to close this past Monday, August 10. Campers spent the week exploring their creativity through new, exciting art projects as well as singing classic camp tunes and playing fun, outdoor games. The theme of the week was to “Consider the Lilies” since art teaches us to stop, look and listen, the campers were asked to stop and consider how we see one another in the light that God sees us. By Ashley Cameron St. George’s Session III (campers ages 12 to 13) wrapped up this past Sunday, August 9. These photos only capture a brief moment of the 12 days they were on the mountain, this camp continues to radiate radical inclusiveness. It is a living example of what the Body of Christ should look like. Through the actions and words of the campers it is easy to see how loving and kind they are towards one another whether they are strangers or have been friends for years. St. George’s provides a spiritual home for campers to laugh, grow and simply have fun. By Maria Gullickson, the First Lady of Shrine Mont Camps
As we prepared to come to camp this summer, I wasn’t really sure what it would be like. I spent many years working here in a variety of roles, and before that spent many years as a camper here. I'm not working at camp this year, but I'm married to the director of camps (Paris Ball), and since we have a new baby (Toby) this year, we decided to move the whole family up to the mountain for 2 months. So I don't really have a formal role in camps anymore, though I do like to refer to myself as The First Lady of Shrine Mont Camps. From 8:30am to 5:30pm on weekdays, I’m sitting in a room with a computer doing my Real Job, and the rest of the time I’m just hanging around. It’s pretty cool to get to hang around all the camps without any responsibilities to worry about. But I also wanted to find a way to get involved somehow. One of the things most of the camps do most days is Free Electives. The elective choices are different every day, and activities vary widely. So I decided this spring that I should come up with a great free elective that I could do with one of the camps in session on the weekends. I thought about it for a while, and came up with something pretty awesome. I’ve seen pictures online where people construct elaborate scenes on the floor, then incorporate their baby into them and take photos. This can be done fairly easily with simple materials – blankets & pillows, and maybe a few random other props (stuffed animal, flashlight, frisbee, yarn, and the like). Certainly the campers were going to have all the necessary materials. I did this elective with 5 different sessions of camp, with campers of all ages, and the results were awesome. I showed them a few examples, talked about what kind of materials they might have with them that we could use and let them each grab a couple things from their cabin that they thought would be good. Then I let them go to it. They came up with the ideas for scenes. They worked together to figure out how to create the scene and how to use the items each camper had brought. I just popped Toby into it where they told me when they were ready and snapped a bunch of pictures. They always had time to put together a few different scenes during our time together, so I came away with lots of great shots. Sometimes when campers see a free elective, they’ll sign up for something like “Ultimate Frisbee” or “Friendship Bracelets”, which are pretty much what you’d expect. Other times they’ll sign up for something ridiculous like “Baby Tossing” or “Goat Herding”, which is essentially just a Surprise elective. You don’t know what you’ll really be doing until you get there. I never told the camp staff what to call my elective, but they always opted for ridiculous names (including the two examples I just used). So kids showed up not knowing what to expect. But without fail, they got really into it. They loved creating the scenes and they really loved Toby. In the end, I really felt like I had accomplished my goal of finding a good way to involve Toby and myself in the camp life. We’ll have to come up with something equally fun to do for free electives next summer. By the Rev. Deacon Mary Beth Emerson Before The Dude abided, before he played Rooster Cogburn and before he stared at goats, actor Jeff Bridges starred in Disney's original “Tron” movie. “Tron” invites a gamer-wannabe into a closed mystery of light-cycles and digital races. It was exciting and terrifying, and I loved it. So when the sequel came out a few years ago, I downloaded the Daft Punk soundtrack before going to see the movie. Layered over dramatic theme music, Jeff Bridges' voice-over retells the story of his quest to get back into “the grid,” that mysterious interior place of digital transformation. He spoke of endless and frustrating searching, of losing his way, and then one day and purely by accident, he “got in.” And that's how I feel about one aspect of serving as a staff member at our Shrine Mont Camps. After years of bringing my own kids to our diocesan camps, first as campers and then as counselors, I “got in.” Whatever my kids experienced at our camps would bring them home changed, and often unable to articulate how these changes occurred. They were happier, for sure, but they also seemed more comfortable in their own skins, more courageous, more loving. They exhibited new ways of relating and new-found resilience, and of course, their dad and I would ask them about what happened at camp, but often got just a smile back, or one-word responses. It was all “awesome,” and “super-fun,” and we began to come to the realization that perhaps we weren't meant to decipher what went on for them at camp. Their experiences were exactly that: theirs. Theirs to experience and theirs to process. Hard lessons to learn as parents, that our children are not our children. But last year, as a MAD Camp chaplain, I got in. From the first singing of “The Goodnight Song” to hikes and rehearsals and worship and road trips, I got an insiders' view of how it happens. What I saw is a complex recipe involving careful planning and staffing, balanced quantities of fun and challenge, all in a loving environment that celebrates each kid for being and becoming exactly who God has made them to be. The secret ingredient: grace; that action of God in our lives bringing about things we can't conceive of or ever bring about on our own. The grace-filled invitation of camp is to go more deeply into relationship with God, ourselves and others and then to be that wonder out in the valley of the world. And if the invitation is accepted, everything changes. So after years of seeing my kids come home from camp changed and better, I came home changed and better, too. Getting “in” was a gift, one I hope to unwrap again soon. And although everyone's camp experience will be uniquely theirs and guided by the Holy Spirit, I now have a better understanding of the mysteries of this thin place we call Shrine Mont Camps. Staff light cycles would be cool, too. *Photo by Brandon Martin By Grace Aheron, the chaplain of St. George’s Camp’s third session this summer. Off the mountain, she is a youth minister and campus minister to UVA at St. Paul’s Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Grace lives in a Christian intentional community— the Charis Community— south of Charlottesville.
I might not have seen this month’s blue moon if I hadn’t been at St. George’s. I might not have made the time to stand in a field and take in her presence-- watching her slow, magnificent rise above the light-rimmed clouds. “Sky break!” one of the counselors called out, notifying the camp that there was something worth seeing in the heavens in that moment. We had just finished a long evening of games--running up and down the mountain-- as 100 faces turned upwards to pay homage. The moment’s stillness dissolved quickly into typical evening camp joy and the campers walked back up the hill to their cabins. I stood in that field for a long time. Behind me, I heard raucous laughter and the thwap of a soccer ball being kicked and the chattering of 100 middle schoolers and counselors headed to bed after a long day at camp. In front of me, the moon’s luscious golden face shone down upon us, gentle and still. Behind me, life. And before me, stillness. This has been the experience of camp for me as a chaplain thus far. Today is the fifth full day of ten, and full days they are indeed. I have moved through camp in coils of contractions and expansions-- moments of intensity and movement and noise and explosion while I am with the campers, and then the marked stillness of my own solitude when they are gone. These concentrated high-energy times with campers punctuate the expansiveness of quiet when I am not with them. As a chaplain, I am present with campers off and on throughout the day, but not constantly, like the counselors, which affords me time to feel the movement of the spirit into these expansions. It has become a practice of mine to sit alone in the upper pavilion after the 45 minutes of chaplain’s time I get to spend with the campers each day. I take that time to feel the holiness they left behind in that place, to pray for them, to let the reality of their belovedness wash over me. Similarly, I have been spending time with different cabins in their “feeling check” time at the end of each day right before bed. I carry their wide-open hearts and God moments of the day and cabin love down the mountain with me as I walk to my own room. And in those moments, I give thanks to our Creator for the wide night sky hung neatly over Shrine Mont and the dreams of those young ones falling asleep. The schedule at St. George’s Camp is nearly the same every day. In an almost monastic way, the rhythm of life here allows for these contractions and expansions as the campers and their energy move in and out of my day. It is a beautiful way to spend a few days of summer. On that first evening, I stared up at the quiet moon and thought, “Here is God.” And as I felt and heard the energy and life of the campers moving up the mountain behind me, I thought, “Here is God.”
By Kevin Cole
Throughout this run of the Shrine Mont Camp Cast I've worked diligently to cover my bias for Music And Drama Camp. I was a camper there from 2002-2008, it was the first camp I ever worked on, and has been a second home to me for many summers. MAD Camp is unbelievably near to my heart and largely responsible for who I am today, so for this episode I dropped the veil and let my bias shine through. Among the coolest thing that MAD Camp does is take their Session 3 campers on tour. This year they did things a little differently, putting on an original show and taking the tour as far out as Richmond to add a focus on service to the tour. In this episode you’ll hear about how the original show came to be, you hear clips from the show and you’ll get a taste of what it’s like to go on tour.
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By Greg Deekens St. Elizabeth’s camp wrapped up its 15th year on the mountain with tradition and grace that lives on in all of our hearts for the rest of the year. While only four days long, the concluding impact is just as profound as a 10 day long camp. St. Elizabeth’s runs as every other camp at Shrine Mont with the same unconditional love for all. Each volunteer counselor is commissioned and matched with a buddy camper. Each day is met with morning rotations. Everything from games at the happy pavilion, art time in the Dear Francis, chaplain’s time with Ellen & canoeing on the lakefront. All camps have amazing “evening programs” and St. Elizabeth’s is no exception. Each buddy enjoyed dancing in silly clothes, a relaxed movie night, and a fantastic talent show, all while being able to squeeze in an afternoon adventure on a hayride on the last full day. From the very beginning with the commissioning service of the volunteer staff, it is clear from buddies to volunteers, St. Elizabeth’s Camp is truly a slice of God’s Heavenly Kingdom. |
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The view from the mountainSpreading the good news of Shrine Mont Camps into the Valley of the World.
AuthorsThe View from the Mountain is written by a rotating cast of staff writers and contributors. Archives
September 2018
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