Susquehanna Morning

Susquehanna Morning

Monday, February 26, 2018

Lent 10: Weekend at Beach Haven, 1976


For Lent, I'm writing here about memories of significant moments from my life in faith. 

Of course I went on the first high school retreat.

I was always and everywhere the first to sign up for the retreat.

It was the spring of my sophomore year and I arrived at the school on Friday morning with my overnight bag and my guitar, which I had to keep in the attendance secretary's office because they wouldn't fit into my locker. (Good thing my mom volunteered there Mondays, and Sister Marguerite knew me by name.) After school about 20 students climbed into two large vans, each driven by a diocesan priest who also happened to teach at the regional Catholic high school. They drove us north on the Garden State Parkway. It felt like more than an hour's drive... though looking now at Google Maps, I can see that Beach Haven is just 49 minutes away.

When we arrived at the old Victorian house (just steps from the beach!) there was the inevitable stumbling around trying to claim a bed or a bunk-- girls with girls, boys with boys, of course. And people choosing roommates (or choosing sides for kickball, or choosing from their peers for any reason whatsoever) was always an excruciating moment for me. In the end I was with T. and J.1, girls I'd known since second grade.

The night we arrived there was.... what? My memory is dim. Did we begin our retreat-proper? I chiefly remember a girl named J. 2 also had a guitar. She asked me to play something, and I played "Someday Soon" by Judy Collins (which I can still sing for you, even though it begins, "There's a young man that I know/ his age is twenty-one./ Comes from down in southern/ Colorado"). She in turn played me "Diamonds and Rust." Now, I knew Joan Baez, which is to say, I knew Joan who sang, "The answer my friend/ is blowin' in the wind" Joan Baez. I did not know, however, this song, about the end of the affair with the boy who'd written that one.

Well, I'll be damned. 
Here comes your ghost again.
Well, that's not unusual.
It's just that the moon is full, and you happened to call.

Saturday morning we were handed those tiny New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs the Gideons had managed to disperse so widely. This one was green. We were told to open to the letter to the Ephesians, and we were broken into groups of five. We were to read the whole thing, and then discuss it chapter by chapter.

At some point during this exercise I must have thought about my decidedly pre-Vatican II mom back at home, with whom I'd already gone a couple of rounds about the issue of having a bible. One of the priests on this retreat, Father H., had encouraged us to pick up a copy of the Living Bible, which had a very handy chart in the front where you could check off chapters of the books as you read the entire thing through. (I would not accomplish this particular task for... let's say, quite a few years.)

"Why?" she'd asked me, again and again, exasperated. "Why does he want you to read the bible? When I was your age, the priest read the bible, and told us what it said." She shook her head, she rolled her eyes, she stormed around at this complete mistrust of what felt very Protestant. But ultimately she caved. Upstairs in my bedroom in Beach Haven was my Living Bible. But now I was reading this little Gideon number, King James version.

I remember the conversation with my peers chiefly because a couple of boys in our group were, to my mind, amazingly interested in what we were doing. I had seen them here and there at school (it was a large school, about 1800 students). Never once had either of them ever appeared to me to have the slightest interest in things religious or spiritual. But here they were, wrestling with the text of Ephesians along with the rest of us.

The thing that caught my eye in the first chapter was the word: adoption. I was adopted. I'd always known I was adopted; can't remember a time when I didn't know. And it seemed an odd word to put between God and us, whom God had clearly made, maybe even more profoundly than our birth-parents had made us, because God started with nothing, whereas the humans... How did it make sense that God had adopted us? (Have you noticed that as an almost 15-year-old I was completely conflating Jesus and God? I notice it still, and I resist it still, and I do it still.)

Jesus Christ had adopted us unto himself, because God from all eternity had predestined it. (This was ALL VERY PROTESTANT. I knew that even then.) And it was this adoption-- through no merit of our own-- that made possible our salvation. It was something to be very, very happy about.

Later that day we had time to walk on the beach, and I noticed immediately that T., that friend I'd known for so long, was hanging around with one of those boys who'd shown so much interest in the bible now. I was a little envious, not of either of them particularly, but of being on the beach on a breezy and sunny spring day with a romantic interest kindling. That was very appealing.

Every free moment I had, I sat down with J. 2 so that she could teach me the guitar part to "Diamonds and Rust."

We returned to Ephesians and we talked about Christ as the head of the church, and we the body. This is the my very first memory of that image. My experience of the masses of my childhood was that the homilies were exclusively on the gospel passages. I do not recall a single homily of my childhood or youth about any other book in the bible except one of those four.

There was something unsettling about the image, the body of Christ. The intimacy of it. The connection was so visceral... I can feel it now, in my memory, the freshness of its implications. Even then I knew that intimacy was frightening and beautiful and hard.

Saturday night I remember games... card games and board games, but also games that had us running around the old house... After pounding up the stairs in pursuit of (I forget who and for what purpose),  I learned that those who had been quicker than I had snagged round bedrooms, because the house had a tower with a turret. I seem to recall the guitars coming out, and lots and lots of snacks, and only flopping into bed because the friendly, beleaguered priests were begging.

On Sunday afternoon we had, not mass, but an agape meal. An entirely new experience. One of the priests read a passage from Ephesians about love.

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. ~Ephesians 3:14-19 (KJV)

Then we took time to focus, in turn, on each person there. Each one around the circle would say something they appreciated about the person who was the focus. After we'd all spoken, we took a sip of juice. (We had been given little cups of juice to drink.) There were at least twenty of us, so this all took some time. And it was uncomfortable, in that way that intimacy can uncomfortable if it is new. I both anticipated and dreaded my turn to be the focus of the group. The thing that surprised me was that, in the end, I felt seen by just about everyone there. They were referring to things that I'd said, or done... on the beach, or bent over the little Gideon bibles, or playing the guitar with J.2.  I felt seen. It was nice. It was uncomfortable.

After dinner we all piled back into the vans for the drive home.

When I walked into my bedroom, I found that the walls were freshly painted, a pale blue (my mother's favorite color). I'd left a record on the stereo, and there was one tiny drip of blue paint that always skipped, but never stopped the song from playing.

Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel
Things will always be much better if you only will.

The smell of fresh paint still pulls me back in an instant to that retreat: to the quick but not simple intimacy, so unsettling and lovely; to people surprising me; to people really seeing me; to that perfect James Taylor song.



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