OF A GOLDEN AGE

this never occurred to me before, but having been reminded of my childhood summer camp by a new Facebook group, I looked it up — and man, it would be easy to argue that their motto is steeped in pantheism. no, it does not directly state that the world IS god, but the idea of seeing god in everything lives on a slippery slope.

it is pretty fair and charitable, though, to say that christian summer camp is a very Romantic and transcendentalist idea. I went there for a week each summer from age six through thirteen, everything from sports to art to general interest camp. my parents are not religious, nor were my grandparents, but the camp is a few miles outside of the town where my grandparents lived and where my family lives now. the god stuff was always a distant second in my mind, and actually, now that I think about it, there was a pervasive absence of religious content in my camp experiences. maybe that was because we were such young children, and I had an unusual awareness of my religion or lack thereof so I noticed this absence of bible study or anything. in my last year there, my camp was much more biblical and god-oriented, and it really turned me off on ever going back. they finally gave me the pitch and I turned heel and ran!

last night I went to the library with my friends. we sat and studied separately-together, Nick reading psychology, Emily reading religious politics, myself reading Kierkegaard. somehow, we started to talk about religion and religious symbols that people display publicly. it was an interesting conversation, but mostly it made me realize that I feel the same way about public displays of religion that I do about public displays of affection: keep it private, please.

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