Don't know if I'll be posting much over the summer months. Tomorrow I take off for four weeks of summer camp with Czech kids - who come to camp for a wild, wild time. Last year we had twelve year old boys running around with condoms! Unnerving, to say the least!
Boy times have changed since I was a twelve year old, timid and shy and almost totally ignorant about my own sexuality. I feel a spot of pity for that confused young boy, looking towards the future and assuming that I would begin experiencing interest in girls. What "saved" me from greater self knowledge was my own passionate, overwhelming yearning for God, even at such a young age, which replaced all of the normal prepubescent longings. I look back on this time of my life as a moment of stupendous grace which set the course of the rest of my life- on a path so different from my childhood friends. This was essentially a saving grace, yet also partly sublimation, substitution, a bit of escapism, perhaps, since our motives are mixed and the Holy Spirit gives her grace to correspond with our deepest needs. Yet I knew young love and passion for my young male friends, and developed passionate crushes on girls as well. However, none of these attachments could match the glowing, burning love that seemed to be calling me from such an infinite, mysterious, elusive height and depth, near yet far.
And so off I went, carried on the wings of love - and it would be another twenty plus years before I would finally come out as gay. A long journey of self acceptance, and I can't help wonder how much the religious quest prevented me from understanding and accepting my own nature. Yet it was the fruits of that quest - an abiding, profound sense of being loved in every particle of my being that finally enabled me to come out. All in God's good time.
Anyway, off to camp for four weeks, then one week free, then another four weeks of camp. I need To make money to make up for the eight weeks of work from pneumonia. Fortunately, I'm going to some beautiful camps in the Czech mountains.
Will post when I feel the muse, but will follow the usual threads and blogs, to keep with the unfolding events of our times.
Off to Summer Camp
4 comments:
Have a great summer, Jayden, and enjoy the camp experience. I can very much relate to your description of your 12-year-old self and the pity we need to muster for ourselves back then.
Return Man 2
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