Religion - Part 3

I don't get it.

I was raised in a religious family. As far back as I can remember I was made to attend church with my mother and father every Sunday. Early on, you never asked why, you just went. I have a few early memories of our first church. One is a memory of everyone standing and shouting praises. I remember thinking that Jesus himself was there though when I later asked my mother about it this was not the case. Another memory was of a time in what may have been a Sunday School for small children, I was maybe 5 or 6. My brother who was 18 months old or so was there as well. And older boy (he seemed big to me then, but was probably only 10 or so) who realized we were brothers came up to me and asked me "Is that your brother over there?". When I responded in the affirmative he told me "OK, I'm going to beat his brains in". Of course I was scared and on the verge of tears before I realized the boy had no intention of following through on his threat. It still had an effect on me - I still remember it and it's one of the few memories I have of my early days in church.

As I got older my dislike of the church grew. My parents divorce in 1980, and my mother started attending a new church. I don't have much in the way of memories between 1980 and 1985. There was bible school in my grandmother's church in Waco Texas that I enjoyed during that period, but not much else. In 1986-87 I was in confirmation class where I started to note distinct cliques forming in Sunday School and UMYF (United Methodist Youth Fellowship). Those who weren't in the cliques tended to be excluded. I attended lock-ins in the church that seemed to go well and drove down the walls between us. But then there was the Church Summer Camp in 1987 or 88. By this time I had been attending Summer camp at YMCA Camp Kern for 3 years or so, and Boy scout Camp at least once. Both of these represent some of my fondest memories from my childhood. At the time I thought it might be a great bonding opportunity.

It was exactly the opposite.

It started off well. They had ping pong tables there and I loved ping pong. As it turned out that was about the only thing I liked about that week. First was the "warm fuzzies" necklaces. These were necklaces that were supposed to be given to people you cared about; along with an affirmation of that person and why you cared. Until you received one you could not give one, and once received you were supposed to give them away ASAP. I don't quite recall how they were started, but it took until Wednesday of a Sunday to Friday camp for me to finally receive one from one of the camp counselors.

Of course, I cherished it, and had no intention of giving it away. I mean most people had more than one at any given time, and many people had 10-15 of them. Of course, by the next day other campers started noticing that I had not yet given it away to anyone. They started to tear me apart for still having it. Finally, Thursday night I threw it in the trash. I had no one there that I felt comfortable giving it to at that point, for obvious reasons which will follow.

Speaking of Thursday night. That was the night of the "dance".

I was an awkward teenager. Well, maybe more so. I was a dweeb, I guess you could say. With rare exceptions I never had the courage to talk to girls, much less ask them to dance. I didn't obtain that ability until after I graduated from high school - I was a late bloomer so to speak. That might explain why I only attended one homecoming and never went to either of my high school proms. However, this "dance" at least at first wasn't about girls. It was about camaraderie and it was supposed to be fun and inclusive.

Each night all the campers gathered for a presentation or sermon if you will. It generally included a run down of the day and what was going on the next day. Thursday's was different in that when we came in all the chairs were in a big circle. Everyone knew the dance was directly after the presentation, so obviously, my stomach was churning. I was nervous as hell. When the presentation was done the speaker said that this year's dance would be different. To dance, he said, you must first be asked. Guy or girl it didn't matter, you were just supposed to be asked, but until you were asked you couldn't get up. Well, this was good news for me. I was safe, I could ask the guy sitting next to me as soon as I was asked. So the speaker asked one person to dance, and they got up and danced for a few seconds then the two of them asked two more people, and so on.

Slowly the people around me were asked. One by one everyone was standing. Except for me. No one asked me to dance. Not one person. Minute by minute I watched as the people sitting dwindled and the people dancing increased. At some point I was the only person sitting down. I continued to sit for a few minutes in disbelief. This "inclusive" activity had managed to exclude me. At some point I got up and exited through a side door. This was the point at which I threw my "warm fuzzy" into the trash. I walked far enough away from the building to where I could be sure my inevitable crying would not be heard, sat down and started to sob quietly. Apparently one of the counselors had seen me leaving and I soon felt someone touch my shoulder. I don't remember who it was, but it wasn't anyone associated with my group or me. Of course he wanted to know why I was upset.
"No one would dance with me" was about all I could push out.
"Oh, come now, we can find someone to dance with you, come on back with me." the person replied.
"No, I'm done. No one ever asked me to dance to begin with," I said matter of factly, "and I have enough pride that I'm not going to be led into a sympathy dance with someone who's only doing it because they pity me."
"Fair enough" was the answer, and the person left me alone to feel sorry for myself.

Clearly it's not the religion's fault that I was a shy teenager and no one at the camp really attempted to reach out to me. The thing that opened my eyes the most however, was how completely opposite this religious camp was from all the other camps I had attended. Specifically speaking, I spent many years at Camp Kern. I never felt like an outcast. One year I was given the "Most Flirtatious" award. Another year I actually met a girl and spent the King's Island Saturday with her. At Camp Kern, everyone was included in everything. There were no cliques, no competition, no feelings of not measuring up.

The religious camp was the exact opposite. If you didn't express certain feelings or beliefs you were automatically excluded. On a nightly basis people were "overcome" by the spirit and spent an hour crying for their past "sins" and swearing they were born again. They would get up and witness about the bad things they'd done and how because of the camp, their life was renewed and they felt closer to Jesus than ever. I can honestly say if I ever in my life felt "close to Jesus" that religious summer camp would have been the last place it could have been.