Sunday morning, here at camp. Work weekend. Spent the last couple of days digging in the dirt, here; preparing to lay some new electrical conduit for main camp. As it is the sort of thing that always happens on endeavors such as these, on Friday I managed to clip a shallow sewer line with the excavator. Spent most of the morning yesterday shoveling foul-smelling sand in order to find and repair the junction that had torn free beneath the gravel dooryard.
One cannot help but be impressed - taken aback, even - by the heart of these camp-friends and colleagues, here to share in all manner of pre-season work that comes with this time of year. Taking each challenge and minor catastrophe in stride; standing in the sun, ankle-deep in sewage, laughing about the experience. These men humble and convict me. Camp doesn't have a dime to its name, heading into the summer ministry season on fumes and grace. But it is the spirit of these people - their presence, sweat and generosity - that sustains this place, year-by-year. Sooner than later, we'll need a better plan, but in the end I hope that really never changes.
Becca and the kids have been up, too. It's nourishing to my heart to watch the girls run wild in the confines and healthy, outdoor dangers of this world. There is something good and true about witnessing an exercise of freedom, devoid of fear. Something, dare one say, Edenic?
The lake is beautiful, deep and clear. The far shore, pale green with spring; pale green newness mottled with the experienced darkness of the evergreens. The air is cool, this morning.
There's something about this place and the people who love it, and sustain it by their love. Something that can take and redeem even days spent shoveling human waste from a hole in the ground in search of one's sins, and leave you feeling that these have been days well spent. For all its foibles and failings - and there are many - there is a miracle in that. A miracle of the Spirit. A miracle wrought in love and grace.
These have been good days, spent in this peculiar, miraculous place. Good days, spent with these people. In the days of work, the healthy dangers of free-ranging children, in the shared meals and stories and close quarters, in the out-of-tune hymns and Sunday morning devotions, I feel that I have found something in my relationship here that I have not known since my teenage years: I have found myself inside. Inside, as C.S. Lewis opines, the beating heart of something beautiful and true. And in this moment, I am grateful.