I grew up being encouraged to ransack the Scripture and appropriate verses as I needed them. The Bible, we were taught, was not only full of promises made to us; it was also God’s love letter to us. We should therefore read it regularly, looking for a word from God for us that day.
We had a joke about the man who used the close your eyes, open your Bible, and put your finger on a text to find God’s direction. He first read, “And Judas went out and hanged himself.” He didn’t like that verse, so he tried again and landed on, “Go thou and do likewise.” Although we believed God would speak to us, we favored a more regular approach. We were indeed encouraged to read the Bible daily for guidance and to read it every year all the way through. The lives of biblical heroes, the tales of God’s deliverance of Israel, the life of Jesus and the birth of the church, were our stories, too. The people of both Old and New Testaments were our ancestors in faith, given to us as patterns. This idea was reinforced in the great “faith chapter,” the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, a detailing of the women and men whose words and deeds were given as an encouragement to us in the twentieth century. To be fair, this technique of reading the Bible for guidance is an ancient one. Saint Augustine himself, overheard children playing a game with the repeated line, “Take and read, take and read.” He picked up the Bible, began reading, and was converted.
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Here’s what you need to know about Keith: he was gorgeous, with dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. He was a few years older than I was, so we might have been in youth group together briefly. The son of one of the Hungarian families, and thus related to half the membership, he was active in church. After graduating from high school, camp was no longer part of the summer, unless one volunteered as a counselor. Each church had to send a male and female counselor with the campers, to stay in their cabins and make sure they stayed in the lighted areas. I went twice; one year, Keith was the boys’ counselor. Despite my shyness, we had to talk, because we were Authority, planning and overseeing events. Coming back from the ball fields one afternoon, the kids began teasing us. One of them taunted Keith, “Ooooh, is she your girlfriend?” And without missing a beat, that blessed man replied, “Yes, she is.” He knew it would shut them up, and that I would not hang on him the rest of the week. But for just a moment there, I had a camp boyfriend. Keith joined the Air Force, but his career was brief, because he developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I learned later that he married his girlfriend before he died, so that she would receive the widow’s benefits. That’s how nice my camp boyfriend was. [contemporary photo from camp website] A week at camp began as soon as the bus left the church parking lot on Monday morning. We’d somehow managed to stow our perceived necessities into one bag each and were headed northwest, to Sandusky. There, we purchased our tickets for The Challenger, a small double-decker boat that gave us an hour on Lake Erie before arriving on Kelley’s Island. The boat was liminal space, though I didn’t yet know the term. We were on our way, not yet there, but on a boat with other kids from around the state. We could begin the process of nosing out new friends, reconnecting with friends we hadn’t seen in a year, or making fun of the kid who turned green as soon as the engines started. Patmos was the island on which St. John was exiled and saw the vision that comprises the much-misunderstood New Testament book of Revelation. (Singular, one big one, not multiple.) To name the camp after this island was perhaps hubris or hope. We would be transformed in the week; we, too, would see wonders. A large wooden sign at the entrance to the camp proclaimed, The entrance of thy word giveth light, a verse from Psalm 119. Camp was my first experience of being away from family and home. I was a natural at it. True, I was in senior high before I went, but age is no discriminator for homesickness. I loved being at camp, with peers and the cool college kids who were camp staff, with only a few adults to play propriety. “Stay in the lighted areas,” was one of their admonitions, fearful that the rhythm of the waves and the moonlight would drive us to wild sex on the shore. Late bloomer that I was, this did not interest me, and I had no camp boyfriend—except once, in name only, when I was a camp counselor a few years later. Our days were filled. The cabins were not air-conditioned, but did come equipped with a PA system’s speakers. Every morning at seven those speakers blared a John Philip Sousa march, and the camp director would cheerfully announce in a slightly Southern accent, “Rise and shine! Rise and shine! Meeting at the flagpole at 7:30!” At the flagpole we pledged allegiance and had a prayer before trooping into the dining hall for breakfast. Meals were interspersed with games, activities, and sporting events. Volleyball was the one game I was adequate at playing, so I didn’t mind that. I never was able to master anything esoteric like archery, nor did I care. I tried valiantly to manage sailing the camp’s sunfish; what I remember most is bruising my belly just trying to get into one. We hiked the island, going to the tourist attraction, Glacial Grooves. We even had night hikes, looking for the snark. Skits were enacted on the porch of the old house that held the dining area and nurse’s station. There was also the option for a morning “polar bear dip” in Lake Erie. Some of us always requested that option, if only to have the lifeguard, a college boy we considered gorgeous, be surly with us. We attended daily chapel and Bible study. The last night of camp, we met around a huge bonfire to sing choruses and hear and appeals to give our lives to Christ, tossing a stick into the fire to seal the commitment. On Saturday morning, we headed back to the docks, some of us openly weeping at being separated from new and old friends. In an age before social media and e-mail, we had to rely on old-fashioned mail, and most of us weren’t going to make the effort, even if we did exchange addresses. We were headed back to the real world, where our dedication to a Christ-like life would be sorely tried. Episcopalians do not make a big deal out of church membership. You come for a while, you serve on a committee or become an usher or sing in the choir. No one questions your right to be there. We practice what’s called open communion, meaning the priest is not going to ask you about your baptism or your beliefs about the nature of the Eucharist before handing you a wafer. This was all so very different than what I’d experienced in any Baptist church to which I’d belonged. There was a process to joining the church, even if you merely wanted to transfer membership from another church just like it, further away. Even if you were teaching at the Christian school attached to the church or working at the Christian college just up the road and had already signed a doctrinal statement, there were hoops to be jumped through. Some churches offered a new members’ or an inquirers’ class. “Hello, I am inquiring about the gauntlet I must run to be a real member of this church.” Often, you were required to write out a testimony of your salvation and of the whys and ways in which the Lord had lead you to this church. There might be an interview with the deacon board, all male, of course, because Jesus’ disciples were all male, according to the men who wrote the stories. After all this, you appeared before the church, possibly to publicly proclaim your faith in Jesus and to express your desire to be a member. This public speaking exercise was followed by having “the right hand of fellowship” extended. In actuality, this meant you traversed a reception line comprised of the deacons, all of whom shook your right hand. It was not for the faint of heart. It was a form of agony for those of us blessed with introversion and/or shyness. It was required for the jobs I held. Membership conveyed all rights and privileges, and most particularly the requirement of service. As members, we were expected to be contributing (in every sense) members of a congregation whose doctrines matched those of the hiring institution. We were to be setting an example, if not a standard, for those lesser members not called to career Christian service. This meant that in addition to my work in the classroom or the library, I sang in the choir, taught Sunday School, or worked in the church nursery. (Women did not then serve as ushers—we wouldn’t want to distract men by walking up and down the aisles, or confound them with our ability to handle money. However, our church treasurer at my home church was a woman who worked in a bank.) I have found that it’s easier to offer service to the church when it is not a condition of my employment. Back then, this demand for extra service was all I knew, however, and didn’t seem as outlandish as it now does. Being tired for Jesus was part of the package. “I’d rather burn out than rust out,” we heard proclaimed from the pulpit. So, I burned out. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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