Why Sonlight Camp? God’s creation, Christ’s personal presence. Simple.
Ask someone to pray—at the beginning of a meal, in bible study, at a worship service—and that person will most often begin by giving thanks for creation. They’ll say something about the beautiful weather, or the blessing of rain, or the setting of the gathering.
Commentators on the bible often take creation as their starting point. Want to know about God? Look at the vastness of the starry sky, marvel at the complexities of every photosynthesizing leaf, observe the power and excitement of a volcano. Realize, dear humans, how small we are, and let the greatness of God dawn upon us.
Why not? The bible does begin, after all, with Genesis: the creation of all things. The first acts of God are the formation of the mystery of light, the architecture of heaven, and the weight of mountains. Do we wish to know God? Then we first steep in our created-ness and allow ourselves to be infused with the presence of the Creator.
But when the first students of Jesus realized they had an awesome message to tell the world, they did not develop an argument from the Things in creation. They did not write an essay on the Thing they had concluded from their study of the stars. They announced a Someone they had met.
Even John, the most hifalutin gospel writer, the most cosmic in his vision, tells of The Light that was a Person: a Word that had become flesh “and dwelled among us.” In his letter to the Church, he reminds them not of a theology derived from principle, but “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” This is the unique brilliance of the Christian message: God became human for us. Unmediated by text or technology, “God is with us.” In the midst of a complex, mesmerizing, overwhelming creation, God comes close in a person.
Why Sonlight Camp? When we whittle away the junk that clogs up our lives: noise, busyness, harassing technology, then we can breathe unmediated the great expanse of God’s creation: that is Camp. Aspen leaves, mountain peaks, clacking grasshoppers.
But in this wilderness we are not alone. We break beautiful bread together around a table unfettered by blinking phones; we talk and laugh in unhurried moments, settled into Adirondack chairs; we decorate each other in the smooth silk of shaving cream. We are alive, in person, no plastic walls between us. We are with persons who love us, and that is precisely how Christ appears.
Why Sonlight Camp? God’s creation, Christ’s personal presence. Simple.
That’s why I’m here. I hope you’ll come for a visit.
~ emrys tyler, Incoming Director