“Thank you for your willingness to come and serve this week. I know you all love this place and many of your best friends are serving with you. But here’s the thing, yes enjoy your friends, but your primary reason for being here is the campers. Your number one job – 24 hours a day – is the safety and welfare of your campers. You are what is called ‘loco parentis’. And the real parents are counting on you to take care of that which is the most important people in their life.”
I, like every other camp director, has given some version of this speech to the camp staff hundreds of times. Nothing keeps a camp director up at night more than their concern for the well being of the campers whose parent has trusted their child to the camp staff.
When news began to spread of the incredible tragedy that took place at Camp Mystic in Texas I guarantee everyone who works at a camp took it like a hard punch to the gut. As Episcopal Camp & Conference Executive Director Jess Elfring-Roberts wrote, “We are profoundly aware that in our community, all camp is family. When one camp suffers, we all do. When one camp cries out, we all bend to listen. The connections formed in this network of camps are sacred, enduring, and now, grieving.”
I can also guarantee that every camp professional is yet again going through a hundred plus scenarios of all of the unimaginable potential tragedies that could befall their camps. Wind, rain, hail, lightning, fire, water emergency, injury accidents, food poisoning, illness outbreak, violence from a camper, violence from a person coming into the camp…they all play on repeat in the minds of those who are responsible for other people’s beloveds.
Like all of my friends and colleagues in the camp world there is a great sense of grief over the loss of life to the campers and staff at Camp Mystic, some of whom work at a camp just down the road from this awful tragedy.
I am grateful for the thousands of camp professionals and volunteers who diligently work everyday to make sure their campers are safe and healthy. All the while the vast majority of campers have no idea because they are having a fun if not transformative time…as it should be.
Love camp – love all those who make camp happen.
A Prayer for the Missing, the Fearful, and the Camp Community
O Christ who calls the weary,
Hold close the campers who are still missing.
Be their shelter, their guide, their hope.
Be with those who search and those who wait.
Be with every parent gripped by fear,
Every sibling asking questions,
Every friend praying for a miracle.
Be with the counselors whose hearts are breaking,
The staff who gave their summer to joy,
And the communities now walking through grief.
Strengthen those who cannot find the words.
Comfort those who cannot sleep.
Heal what feels beyond repair.
In your mercy, O God,
Gather us close.
Bind us together.
And do what only you can do.
Amen. -Jess Elfring-Roberts
BP