Sunday night at N-Sid-Sen

God camp, Holly Near and the first one where I quote the Bible

This week I am at a United Church of Christ camp in North Idaho called N-Sid-Sen. It is a sacred place on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene where every year I get to spend a week swimming and singing songs and playing games with old friends. It has its glorious highs—deep conversation and belly laughs and lazy floats in the lake—and it also has its lows. This year I’ve already been stung by wasps. Twice.

Tonight we gathered as we’ll do all week, around the campfire-not-campfire (because the woods surrounding us are too dry for actual fire) to sing songs and pray.

The sound of evening sets in, with the gently lapping waters of the lake just beyond, the rustling leaves in the gentle breeze, the evening bugs and birds sending out their calls to one another. As the sun sets across the lake we sing old campfire tunes. Familiar faces slowly shift as the light fades until all you can see is the outline of the person singing across from you. And it feels like the whole place takes a long, deep breath together.

This is Kairos time, sacred time, God’s time. And we are waiting. Waiting to release the day, the long drive, the life back home and all its stresses. Even though we’ve entered sacred space, it doesn’t come easy or happen instantly. Instead, we wait, for that moment when our bodies and minds finally let go.

For some of us who have been here before, we have a Pavlovian response to the memories of camp and the shift happens the moment we enter the physical space of N-Sid-Sen. Automatically we feel a release of the chaotic world beyond.

For others it takes a couple days. A couple days of showing up with no agenda or expectation, letting ourselves be grumpy or tired or restless or whatever we need to be. Along with this is the waiting and praying, and longing, before we can surrender.

On Sunday night I am always a little worried: maybe this time, maybe this visit to camp, I won’t enter into it, to that feeling of being in rhythm with Kairos time.

But I come every year because I need it, this moment apart. We all need to enter Kairos time once in a while. Every year more and more it seems, the longing more acute, more desperate. And for me, along with it the deepening fear that this time, it will be unavailable.

But I know this fear isn’t the truth. The spirit of that which is most holy and most sacred is always available, the recognition of it never more than one breath away. It isn’t just at N-Sid-Sen. It’s available everywhere. The spirit of community gathering together to honor the Holy in nature is just one of the entry points.

But it is here I am reminded that the opportunity is always available, the welcome always extended. No matter where we are, we have everything we need to slow down and hear the voice of the Sacred. It’s out here in the woods by the lake but it’s back home too, if I can slow down and remember: we are held always and forever by something much larger than ourselves. We can lay down our worries, our stress and anxiety, and know we are loved.

Psalm 139: 7-11

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.