The Myths That Make Me: Part 5

Coming home from the SRF camp in California instilled in me a subtle, internal juxtaposition. I still found myself drawn to Christian communities because there was a tangible desire to know God, but I struggled with the continued narrative of sin and damnation. The groups took the Bible verbatim or cherry-picked certain interpretations to bolster their own ideologies. There was much less stillness. No time with nature. No focus on breath or the internal world that housed the most intimate sense of Divinity we as humans had access to.

Christians were looking for a saviour, and Christ held that torch. And yet, the notion of being one’s own saviour—the scripture of Christ saying “All these things you can do, and more”—seemed to be glazed over entirely. My Christian foundation was beginning to crack. Small fissures in the footholds that, while not consciously formed, were affecting how I interacted with my pursuit of God.

But as I stated above, I was desperate for communities who spoke freely of the Divine. So I continued to seek them out, and subsequently, continued to go to Bible camp.

Once you reach a certain age at camp, you have to make a decision. Either you stop going, you work toward becoming a counsellor, or you join the volunteer maintenance team. I definitely did not want to stop attending, and I was too young to step immediately into being a counsellor, so I decided to volunteer my summers taking out trash, clearing brush, and cleaning bathrooms.

I absolutely loved it. I got to see all the behind-the-scenes of how the camp worked. Sit in on meetings with the older staff. Hear about all the camp gossip. I felt included and part of something important.

The maintenance team was small and we all shared one cabin on the outskirts of the property. I believe there were six of us, with our boss sleeping in a cabin next door. Our days would start at sunrise and we’d work until evening. Looking back on the experience now, I don’t have much memory of the days. A part of my brain must have blocked it out.

What I do remember, however, were the girls.

Parallel to the maintenance boys (the entire team comprised of men) were the kitchen staff (a team comprised entirely of women). Being around the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, we were all starting to have the same sinful thoughts and desires. The boys would gather in the cabin after work and discuss the flirts and winks and whispers that happened throughout the day. And I can only assume the girls did the same.

I quickly fell into friendship with another boy on the team named Dave. He was a tall, goofy guy with a disarmingly kind demeanour. Brutally kind, and almost dopey in the way he cooly flowed through life, everything seeming to roll off his shoulders without a care. He had a nerdy cool about him that he put zero effort into.

Dave wasn’t just another hot-and-bothered teenage boy, however. Dave was in love. Madly in love. With one of the kitchen girls named Julia.

Dave and I would spend all day working together and he would gush over her. Reciting poetry he’d written about her. Telling me about the family they were going to have. Blushing over the progress building in their relationship. It was the kind of love that defines your early-teens. The kind that takes over your life, your mind, your body. You feel it ripple through every breath as though this person is your literal lifeblood. Without their love, their touch, their validation—everything you know would crumble from existence.

It was a cool, love-drunk obsession, and I was enamoured by it.

Dave talked about love with the same drunkenness that I loved to steep myself in. We would sit in quiet contemplation together and discuss the philosophical nature of love. Its impact on culture. The woven dance of Divinity and God’s hand in the moulding of love. We would debate scripture, and together we would paint outside the rigid box of Christianity, using instead the colours of sacred poetry. We talked of music and its ability to express love. He introduced me to Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy,” and we would sing the last line as though it were the greatest piece of scripture ever written by mankind:

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Part of us were entirely teenage boys driven by the fire of puberty. Another part of us were enormously gentle, bright-eyed, old soul love enthusiasts. There wasn’t an ounce of maliciousness in us. We wanted to love, and be loved in return.

One night, Dave and I were sitting on the porch of the cabin as the first stars began to poke through the dark sapphire sky. We dreamed into the constellations and admired God’s creation—laughing and waxing poetic. Dave had been telling me he was close to winning Julia over. She was resistant, being a good Christian girl and all, but his heart was so definitively made up that he knew she’d come around. And in his defence, she had been showing signs of interest all week.

Then Dave jumped to his feet and said, “That’s it! I need to see her.”

It was late, far past curfew for us to be wandering the campgrounds. But there was a lovestruck rebellion in his eyes that fired me up. This man wanted to see the love of his life, wanted to hold her, whisper to her. It was beautiful and courageous and everything Shakespeare wrote about.

So like ghosts, we snuck our way through the lightly forested borders of the campground to where the women’s staff cabins were located. Dave knew where Julia’s bed was, conveniently next to a window. The lights were still on, so the girls were assuredly sitting together, chatting about the day.

Quietly, we threw small pebbles at the glass.

A startled yelp echoed through the cabins, followed by the playful and genuine screams of six other girls our age. In that moment, we realized this mission of love had become a hilarious, harmless prank. A little fright never hurt anyone, and it was adorable to hear all the commotion from inside the cabin. Dave tossed one more small stone at the window before we bolted back to our own residence. The screams and chatter fading behind us.

Completely out of breath from the sprinting and the laughter, we collapsed on the porch in stitches. Just two boys getting utterly acquainted with the thrill of love.

The next day, gossip ripped through the camp staff like wildfire that the girls had been “pranked” that night. Dave and I exchanged glances—some a little too mischievously with the girls—but kept our secret.

With everyone riled up, we knew we had to sneak out again the next night and continue the prank. To us, it wasn’t really about scaring the girls. This was flirting. This was us breaking a tiny rule to show them we were interested. That we were thinking about them. That we wanted them to think about us. The tense giggling that followed the screams as we again sprayed the window with pebbles made our hearts swell.

I’d never laughed so hard with a friend in my life than I had those nights with Dave.

The next morning, a meeting was called for the maintenance team. Dave and I hadn’t told a soul about our secret missions, but the camp was abuzz with a serious tone as to who could be terrorizing the women’s cabins. Being we were a group of young pubescent boys, they deduced it was likely the maintenance team. The leadership weren’t ignorant to the fact that we had been flirting with the girls for weeks.

While we weren’t blatantly outed, our boss’s eyes lingered on Dave and I longer than the other boys when he announced the new rules. No one was allowed to leave their cabin past curfew. No exceptions. Security patrols would be doubled, and if anyone was caught, there would be very serious consequences.

Dave and I snickered, but we understood the levity of the situation had passed. They were taking this seriously, and we honestly respected that

In retrospect, I understand that the camp leadership may have assumed there was a more predatory aspect to this prank. That perhaps we were trying to spy on the girls as they slept or changed. But at the time, the thought didn’t even occur to me. The idea of just kissing a girl made my head explode, let alone seeing one naked. We were young and naive but perhaps without the larger insight to see the potential risks.

Regardless, it was clear a line had been drawn. The prank was to cease. And so we complied. We had no desire to be that rebellious. We weren’t doing this as a “fuck you” to authority. We were just giggly, in-love boys.

That night, we sat in our cabin and discussed scripture, God, and life. We laughed about girls and the camp gossip. It was a particularly hot summer night and none of us could sleep well. Between the staggering heat and the snoring of several teenagers, it was unbearable. The sky was also magnificently clear, and around midnight, looking out the window, you could tell the stars were breathtaking.

Dave whispered down from the top bunk: “I think we should bring our sleeping bags out on the porch. Just for a few hours and lay under the stars!”

It was the perfect idea. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps it existed in the grey zone of the new rule. We were technically leaving the cabin, but we weren’t actually going anywhere further than the porch and we’d come back inside afterwards. Surely it wouldn’t be an issue.

So we snuck out—blankets, pillows and all—and set up under the night sky. We must have stayed up until nearly dawn before falling asleep. Philosophizing on love and life and the depth of human existence. Two old souls who had found each other, trying to articulate the wisdom our hearts held while also navigating the confusion our young human minds & bodies were experiencing.

It was beautiful, innocent bliss. Filled with love and joy and God.

I woke to the sound of a truck grumbling along the dirt road in front of our cabin. I cracked open an eye to see the truck being driven by the camp leader—his eyes fixed on us, filled with ire.

Our intention had been to go back inside before morning. But we had fallen asleep. And now we had been seen.

We scrambled inside and prayed the leadership wouldn’t see this as breaking the rules. Literally prayed.

I had been there two weeks already as staff, mid-way through my third week with plenty of time to go. Before I could set off to my daily duties, our boss came into the cabin with a solemn look on his face.

“You two,” he nodded at Dave and me. “Come with me.”

I knew immediately what was happening. This wasn’t going to be good. I really didn’t want to be lectured by a pastor or any of the staff I’d come to love. I imagined all the possible punishments; extra toilet duty, or not being allowed to participate in the week-end games or competitions.

As a young, kind empath, I hated doing anything wrong. It was my literal nightmare to make people upset. My internal dialogue was already scathing.

I was sat down, alone, in front of the leader of the camp. I don’t particularly remember the exchange, but it felt more like an interrogation than anything. Like some great atrocity had been committed. I was such a sinner that my bones ached. My mind was also in a state of rebellion—desperately wanting to argue that sleeping on the porch barely broke the rule, if at all.

But that part of me kept quiet. Silent. Simply taking the lashing.

“We take this kind of stuff very seriously, Isaac. And unfortunately we have to set an example for everyone else here at camp. So, we are sending you and David home today. And you can no longer return to this camp.”

The words hit me like a freight train.

I couldn’t make sense of the punishment compared to the crime. All Dave and I had done was love with wild abandon. All we’d done was giggle and flirt and joke and tease. All we’d done was talk about how beautiful God is and how beautiful love was and how together they could create such magnificent things as girls. We’d contemplated the miraculous nature of stars and planets and the joy of being alive.

And now I was being ripped away from not only one of my favourite places on earth, but my only real refuge for God-consciousness. The only place I felt completely safe to love the Divine without judgment.

I was such an incredibly evil and malicious child that I was being banished from my place of love. My place of God.

The cracks that had formed in my foundation of faith cleaved wide open as the punishment landed on my heart. And in that moment I hated Christians. In that moment, I hated the hypocrisy of Christianity. These people who didn’t know love. Didn’t know the fullness of it. Who were bound by expectation and rules and fear. I choked back tears of embarrassment, sadness, anger, grief and confusion all at once.

My world crushed down around me. I felt my shoulders roll forward and my head lower. I don’t know if I made eye contact with anyone for the rest of the day.

The ride home felt like a prison bus. Dave and I sat alone in the back seat. Barely breathing. Eyes lowered to the floor. Whoever drove us home didn’t say a word the entire two-hour ride.

I had done the unthinkable. I had broken my relationship with Christ and with my community. And worst of all, I still didn’t understand what I’d done. The contrast between what I was experiencing and what I’d felt in my heart to be true were so stark that it hurt.

But I must have been wrong. My truth must not have been real truth. These people had to know better than me. They’re older. Closer to God. Better. Less evil.

And so I began to learn how to ignore my truth, because sometimes it’s not true. I learned to pay closer attention to what others really wanted from me. I learned that day that following love isn’t safe. Isn’t always true.

The crumbled bedrock of my faith lay obliterated, dormant and ashamed.

Next week: I turn aggressively to drugs! Stay tuned.