It’s Peace Camp, not Calm Camp

Cast your cares on God and they will sustain you; they will never let the righteous be shaken. – Psalm 55:22 (NIV, adapted) 

Can I be honest? Peace Camp is not always…peaceful.  

Every year, my beautiful congregation hosts a weeklong Peace Camp for the children in the neighboring county. We do crafts, play cooperative games outside, sing old songs, and read new stories to each other. But the main thing we do is try to be a peaceful community for a week. 

Well, it’s hot. The days are long. Someone’s feelings get hurt and they burst into tears. Someone pokes the person next to them, but it’s not exactly clear who is the poke-ee and who is the instigating poke-er. Someone made something beautiful, but now no one can find it and maybe it got taken out with the recycling yesterday. We take turns crying or fuming or kicking the empty recycle bin.  

But the cool thing about Peace Camp is this: When peace collapses, which it does approximately ninety-three times per hour, we take a breath and we try again.  

It’s not that we are, as the psalmist promises, never shaken. It’s just that we’ve made a promise to the Divine, and to each other, to cast down the cares that stand in the way of peace, as many times as it takes. 

I guess when I first heard about Peace Camp, my first image was of gentle calm. But we are not the unshaken righteous of the psalm. We are real live people creating peace one real live interaction at a time, with grit and sweat and tears.  

Prayer
Holy One, remind us ninety-three times every hour that—although the way of peace is not always an easy path—it is always a good one. Amen.

About the Author
Rev. Jennifer Garrison (formerly Brownell) is a writer, spiritual director and pastor living in the Pacific Northwest. Her published work most recently appeared in the book The Words of Her Mouth: Psalms for the Struggle, available from The Pilgrim Press.