At their best, camps are open doors. They provide an opening, an entrance, and a glimpse into the way that things can be, should be and will be. Camps provide a glimpse into a life that is closely aligned to the kingdom, a life that refuses to compromise to the values and ethics of our culture. In the midst of pain, fatigue and darkness, camps provide an open door for us to live in for a week. For a week, we choose the absurd, we choose a life that is radically counter-cultural, that calls into question the accepted norm of our other 51 weeks.
               
We enter an open door and live in the divine absurd:
           - where we refuse the hands of the clock to control our every move
          + where we proclaim that God is the creator and redeemer of all time

           - where we refuse to live in the numbing busyness that our world requires for “success”  
          + where we proclaim that the Sabbath is ordained by God for rest in the enoughness of creation

           - where we refuse to let the powers and principalities that determine popularity control our decisions  
          + where we proclaim that the creator of the world has deemed us lovable and valuable from our birth

           - where we refuse to let cooperate propaganda & media agendas numb our minds and kill our souls  
          + where we proclaim that creation inspires and sharpens our minds & silence gives life to our souls

           - where we refuse to let the monotonous prose of our culture dominate and reduce our sacred text  
          + where we proclaim the poetry of the story of grace, the Trinity’s dance and the Son’s resurrection

           - where we refuse to let nationalism, patriotism and party politics to corrupt and co-opt the gospel
          + where we proclaim God’s yearning for justice, peace and equality throughout creation

           - where we refuse to be rendered silent by the voices of rationalism, empiricism and relativism
          + where we proclaim humbly that the good news of multi-faceted salvation is indeed offered to all

           - where we refuse to be co-participators in the destruction and manipulation of our environment
          + where we proclaim the goodness of creation and seek to participate with God in its redemption

           - where we refuse to live dishonest lives in which there is no room to express pain, doubt and fear
          + where we proclaim that lament is faithful worship and that raw honesty is God’s desire

           - where we refuse to be clones in our Christianity formed by cookie cutters that make us all the same
          + where we proclaim and celebrate the beauty of diversity and freedom of expression and worship

And of course we must leave camp at the end of the week. We cannot stay inside the open door, at least not yet. We must go back, but we go back changed, we go back having lived in an alternative reality. We go back full of dreams of how we ourselves can also be a glimpse of this reality for others, how our lives can open all kinds of doors for people we see everyday.