Down the Mountain
Picture by Linda Bobbitt
This summer I had the privilege of spending several days at Sky Ranch Lutheran Camp in the Northern Colorado mountains. I volunteered at the beginning and end of the summer to provide support and spiritual direction to the camp counselors.
This was an experiment. Normally, camp is a place where groups of children and youth go to spend a week with God and one another. It is a holy time – set apart for God, where kids sing, laugh, and play, all in the intentional company of one another and God. God’s presence is named and felt by all.
Neither the year-round executive staff, nor the counselors themselves knew what it would mean to receive spiritual direction in that setting. After all, counselors were eating, drinking, living, breathing, and sleeping with the awareness of the God’s active presence the entire summer. Why would they need a spiritual director? In truth, I didn’t know either, but several years ago, I’d had a conversation with a former camp counselor who shared with me the struggle he had when he left camp at the end of the summer and went “down the mountain”.
“Down the mountain” describes the experience of leaving camp after a summer immersed in a unique community of faith and returning home to the “real world”. The phrase is quite literal in that it takes about two hours to drive down mountain roads and through canyons to return to civilization. But the phrase is also figurative, harkening to the story of the transfiguration (found in Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36 as well as 2nd Peter 1:16-18) when Jesus takes some of the disciples up a mountain where he is transfigured so that his clothes are gleaming white, and his face glowed like the sun. There he talked with Moses and Elijah. Toward the end they heard God’s holy presence proclaim that Jesus was his son with whom he was pleased.
The disciples are overwhelmed by the experience which altered the way they understood who Jesus was and changed their relationship with Jesus. This new understanding allowed them to eventually grasp the resurrection. But all of this took time to sink in. As they traveled down the mountain, Jesus warned his disciples not to say anything until after the resurrection. I imagine this warning was prudent because it was something no one could believe unless they had experienced it for themselves. That experience would not come until after the resurrection when people received the Holy Spirit.
I visited Sky Ranch three times. The first was for a work weekend where I met staff and alumni and heard many stories about Sky Ranch’s long history. On the second visit I met the counselor during their first week of training when they were friendly, but a little reserved with me and one another. Though some of them knew one another from past years, most of them did not. Several folks were working as counselors for the first time and there was a nervous anticipation for the coming week when children would arrive. During my time with them, I introduced the counselors to the idea that their relationship with God was like any other relationship in that it evolves over time. As young adults, all of them could relate to the ways their own relationships with their parents had changed considerably over the last 5+ years. We anticipated that their relationship with God might evolve through the summer, and they wrote a letter to God sharing their hopes and prayers for the summer. I also provided them some spiritual practices they could do on their own or share with campers if the opportunity arose.
At the end of the summer, I returned eager to see how the summer had gone. This time I found a very different group of people. The counselors had become a family. As they prepared to close the camp for the winter, they laughed and played even while scrubbing bathrooms and cabins, securing outdoor furniture, and performing dozens of other chores.
When I asked where they had seen God over the course of the summer, the stories flowed. They saw God in the nature surrounding them and in the love and laughter of the youth who visited – especially in the joyful energy of the children. They told stories of different kinds of children – those bounding with energy and those more reserved who gradually opened up over their time at camp.
When I asked what they would take home with them, the mood became more serious. They described camp as a place where they could be their true selves – open and free with one another. At camp they felt the love of God and love and support from their peers. This strengthened them so that they were able to offer back that love and support freely – creating a cycle of grace.
In their experience, the “real world” was often not a place that accepted them as they were. Back in their “normal” lives they often experienced negativity as the “normal” way of engaging the world. Optimism and joy are viewed as naïve and childish. In that environment, being genuine about who they are and the love they experience and need to express would leave them vulnerable. They wondered together how they might hold onto the very real experience of love and acceptance they had at camp when returning to the “real world”. We talked about how to prepare their hearts for what they would encounter in the coming weeks.
The first step was to recognize that their encounters of God and their love for one another were real. While this was obvious there at camp, all too often, we return to the “real world” and label our memories of spiritual experiences of God as something else. “This place is so beautiful”, “She is such a sweet friend”, “That was a moving sermon”, “That place is holy (and this one is not)”, etc.
While it may have been a good sermon, a beautiful, holy place and a great friend, the thing that touches our hearts and souls is God’s real presence in and through each of those things. Naming God’s presence when we notice it helps us hold onto God even when we can’t feel God. Whenever we remember that God was really with us and that God has shown God’s self to us, then we can take the next step to recognize that God is still with us and open ourselves to God’s presence wherever we are. From there we listen and learn to trust God’s way of responding to us, which continues evolving as our relationship with God matures.
The key thing is that we don’t have to start from zero each time. We can build on what we have already experienced. The first step is to trust that we really did experience God’s love. It was not just our imagination, and it wasn’t simply the biproduct of a great sermon, moving hymn or beautiful scenery. Our experience of love also wasn’t simply residual love that God happens to pour out on the world in general. True, God’s love is bigger than us, but it is also specific to us. God knows each of us and calls us by name to tell us that each of us is loved for who we are right now. When we experience God’s call and claim on us, we can feel it. It often feels like peace or joy, and it can be overwhelming and emotional (just like it was for the disciples on the mountain). The trick is to remember these times and claim them for what they are, real encounters with the Holy.
Next week I will talk about the second thing we can do to return down the mountain with God.
