Campmeeting

I will go ahead and make the bold statement that Salem Campmeeting is my favorite week out of each year. It is hard to explain to people who have never heard of campmeeting so here are a few resources.

Salem Campmeeting Home Page
Wikipedia - Campmeeting

I have written a few papers on Salem while at Furman. Here is a creative writing paper I wrote freshman year. If you would like the full bibliography please email me.

Family, Fellowship, Food, and Friends

The bell clangs loudly as it swings back and forth. Screen doors slam shut as everyone walks toward the music and finds a seat inside the tabernacle. “Hallelujah, Thine the Glory, Hallelujah Amen” is sung without a hymnal, and the offering plate is passed around for the second time that day. A little boy sprinkles sawdust on his feet and then rubs his toes together letting the sawdust pass through and return to the ground. With a sheet of paper he found next to him, the boy fans the sweat dripping down his brow throughout the service. The preacher prays, “We thank you for the fact that there are bicycles lying on the ground all around this tabernacle, symbols of young people, of kids, who are coming to love this place, and consequently to love you” (Nearly 180 Years Old). It is early August, and Camp Meeting has begun.


The scene above is unique in today’s culture. To an outsider it seems unusual, but to those whose families have been going for decades, it is another sacred tradition. In today’s world of hustle and bustle, Americans all over the country step away from society for one week to enjoy this time. Unique to America, the concept of Camp Meeting started in the early 1800s, revolving around the First and Second Great Awakenings. Thousands upon thousands of people traveled from all around, where they crashed upon the camp grounds like waves (Shore 2).


Thirty minutes east of Atlanta in Newton County, one of the oldest running Camp Meetings continues as it has for the past 175 years. Taking a glimpse into a week there helps one to understand why and how this tradition has continued until today. Just like in 1898, laptops, televisions, and Playstations are nowhere to be found. No pool floats or sand buckets were loaded into cars for the journey, even though for many families this is their only summer vacation. They arrive and gather with many friends and relatives for the first time since last Camp Meeting. In many tents, four generations of people from the same family are united once again. Those who have passed away during the year are mourned for, and babies’ new lives are celebrated.


Bunk beds fill rooms where small children sleep the humid summer nights away while their parents and other family members pack into the other rooms. Each family stays in a unit referred to as a tent, an allusion to the days of old, before the wooden structures were built (Bruce 71). The tents aren’t just sleeping quarters; the history and stories behind each unique one add to the sense of community and ritual (Kendell-Taylor 20). Giggles and talking can be heard throughout these tents because no ceilings exist, only tin roofs that crackle in the sun and fade to rust in the rain. Six feet over, an even larger family sleeps, providing another link in the horseshoe of tents which surround the tabernacle.


At 7:30 in the morning the tabernacle slowly fills. Old and young alike try to stay awake during the short devotional. This start to the day is the same as it has been for hundreds of years, being seen as an indispensable preliminary by all who have attended (Johnson, 122-144). Families retreat for buttered biscuits, and then everyone splits into classes to learn age-appropriate Bible lessons before the 11:00 service. Joyous singing can be heard as the latecomers slip in the back of the tabernacle. Soon after, the clinking of change can be heard as coins drop into the tin offering plates. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,” the preacher remarks midway through his sermon. The fan above slowly provides relief, for his perspiration has plastered his shirt to his chest. He asks the crowd whether anyone wants to come to the alter, but no one accepts the offer that day. People quickly file out to go and savor the pimento cheese sandwiches and sweet tea.


Instead of taking afternoon naps, people sit on their porches and the campground comes alive with chatter. On one porch, an eighty year old man tells his grandson’s friend to be careful with girls when he goes off to college, “A girl will you leave you high and dry, but God will always be there.” Filing through old index cards with scribbles of family recipes, a lady tries to teach some little girls how to cook. One man, who goes by Bubba, describes this aspect of Camp Meeting like this, “We get too busy in the world. We need to sit down on a porch and swing for a while” (Hendrickson). He and others share updates on what they have done throughout the year, advice on raising kids, and reflections on the sermons from the week. Children swing on the playground under the sweltering sun, sharing embellished stories about their schoolmates, memories of Camp Meetings past, and questions about life. At 4:00 the bell rings again, and all the men and children slowly make a pilgrimage to the softball field.


The younger kids change into swimming suits and cross the busy road onto an old concrete path under a canopy of pecan trees. At the end of the path they find a piece of history accidentally trapped in urban sprawl. They stick their heads under an old pipe and chilling natural spring water rushes over their heads. A feeling of shock and refreshment overcomes them, the same sensation people who were baptized there hundreds of years before received. While they play, a man by the name of Casey tells the story that if a couple drinks from the spring together, they’ll get married and that it has been tested time and time again (Thorpe). The kids promise that it’ll never happen to them as so many have before.


Family, fellowship, food, and friends are simply not enough to keep an institution like this one going for 175 years. Swinging on the porch, while fireflies light up the night, Bubba passes on wisdom as it was given to him so many years before. He tells some young boys, “Camp Meeting provides a time and place for everyone to stop and meet with the maker of life. We need Camp Meeting to remind us of who we are and who we are meant to be” (Hendrickson). One of them asks, “That’s why people keep returning every year isn’t it?” Bubba simply nods his head and realizes the boys are starting to understand.


As the sun goes down behind the tabernacle, the tenters gather for the last service of the day. The suburbanites cruise by and honk their horns. Some are bewildered since for the first time all year, the grounds are vibrant with life and light.


Front and center, the scene is the same as it has been for hundreds of years. The messages that are delivered from behind the old oak pulpit cannot be dodged, even by the teenagers who sit on the last row, eager to slip out any chance given. An altar call is given this night and one college boy feels the calling of God on his life to become a minister. A new passion wells up in him and the cycle continues. He will one day stand behind the same old oak pulpit while his family sits in the pews. His children will play in the spring and one day grow to hear a similar message that changes them.

The Fourth

The Pride of all the South

I have been at Camp Rockmont for the past month and the summer has been amazing thus far. I am in the oldest tribe and in a cabin with eight rising 8th and 9th graders. Two summers ago I worked with rising fourth graders and after working with my current age group I enjoy it tons more and I believe my skills are better suited for them.

Tribal Campout

Currently I teach Bible Study and assist in Fly Fishing. My summer goal was to learn how to flyfish and I am slowly achieving this feat. In regards to Bible Study, I was asked to lead this a few days before the boys arrived. I had heard the old adage "God doesn't call the prepared he prepares the called" many times, but this summer I have seen it come true in my life.

Making the summer even better, I have Salem Camp Meeting to look forward to beginning July 11
Facebook Event Here

Presidential

It is hard to put into words the feelings I had when President Bush's motorcade pulled into Paladin Stadium.

The stands erupted and as I turned around from the press box I saw the Furman community on their feet welcoming the President. Soon after, I heard the reports of the thousands of citizens who lined Poinsett Highway welcoming his motorcade. Suddenly the 50 people on campus who dissented seemed pretty insignificant. After all of the anticipation, excitement, stress, debate, and controversy I was more proud than ever to be a student at Furman University.

His speech was very well done and was filled with hilarity, humility, and insight for our futures.

Some of the shots I got:






Update: Furman Magazine Article and Furman Photographer's Gallery of Commencement

Professors and protest.

You may have read my post about how excited I was about President Bush coming to campus. Of course, not everyone was excited and now protesters will be lining Furman's mall and some professors won't be attending. It has simply provided for the latest controversy on campus. The following is one of the best editorials I have read on the issue. I'll update how it all goes down after commencement on Saturday.

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Professors and protest.
From the blog of Joshua Treviño

When the news came that President George W. Bush will speak at Furman University’s Commencement on May 31st, I was immensely pleased. I am an alumnus of the Class of 1997, and though I’m not as active as some of my peers — as Furman’s alumni giving department might attest — I do retain enduring ties of friendship and affection for my alma mater. Coming from a peripatetic military life, Furman and Greenville were the closest things I’ve ever had to a hometown. In that light, news of the President’s planned visit inspired pride: my University was always a place of excellence, and it is at last getting its due.

A full disclosure is in order: I worked for George W. Bush from 2001 through 2004. This is not as remarkable as it may sound: thousands of others can claim the same. I was a Schedule C political appointee — selected ostensibly by the President, but really by the White House personnel office, to perform tasks in the Executive Branch. For just under four years, I wrote speeches for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, first on domestic issues, and finally on international affairs.

Depending upon your perspective, then, I am either a public servant or a right-wing operative. What I am not is an unalloyed fan of the President. Having served in the Administration and seen the policy process firsthand, I am well aware of its shortcomings, its errors, and its flaws. Having had classmates from the Furman Army ROTC battalion killed and grievously wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am also well aware of the terrible human cost of this Administration’s policies. The injured and the dead were better men than me, and so their loss is an especial blow to our society and country.

All of this is preface: though I believe history will judge this Presidency more kindly than popular opinion does now, I understand and appreciate those who disagree. They are our friends, our family, and yes, our former teachers.

Those who disagree include the members of the Furman University faculty who are dismayed at the President’s imminent visit. They number approximately 220, to judge from the signatures on their cloyingly named “(W)e Object” petition at the University’s website. Furman alumni will note the names and understand most of them — there is always a cadre of professors in any school that cannot resist a good, public display of self-promoting righteousness, especially when there’s media involved.

Other, more surprising names on the petition present themselves as probable cases of departmental peer pressure, which reveal much about academia’s state. The departments that produce few graduates who work in their field per se — English, Philosophy, Religion — are overrepresented. The department that actually deals directly with politics, Political Science, is wholly unrepresented. This is not to say that the Political Science faculty at Furman supports the President. It assuredly does not. It is nonetheless noteworthy that the professors with the strongest grasp of the issues at hand in the President’s visit choose to steer clear of their peers’ politicized emoting.

What we see at Furman University now, in this fracas, is not a case of left versus right, but of the adult versus the juvenile. It is painful to arrive at this conclusion, loving my alma mater as I do, and having had no small part of my own juvenilia corrected there. Yet it is inescapable: the declared rationale of the Furman faculty of “(W)e Object,” set against the facts, reveals a professorial group motivated not so much by politics as by love of self — and tragically unable to distinguish between the two.

Like dramatic heroines in a Victorian penny dreadful, the Furman faculty of “(W)e Object” declare that they must protest the President’s visit because — well, because they have policy disagreements with him. In their minds, these policy disagreements elide into moral differences, and the result is an inability to display the most basic value necessary to the modern university: tolerance.

These professors present themselves as latter-day Cincinnati of Greenville, reluctantly abandoning their plows to serve the greater good. “[W]e accept our civic responsibility to speak out against [the President’s] actions,” intones their petition. The litany of those actions is drearily familiar: Iraq, domestic surveillance, global warming, and — rather incredibly — “reckless over-spending” and “expanding the reach of national government into local affairs.” (Suffice it to say that I recall a silence on those last two during the Clinton years.)

One might assume, then, that the student leadership of the Furman class of 2008, which unanimously approved the invitation to the President, is completely unaware of these things. Or, one might assume that these students are aware, but do not especially care about issues on which 220 of their professors suffer the most grave impetus toward “civic responsibility.” It is now up to the Furman faculty of “(W)e Object” to step in and rectify the moral and factual gaps left by four years under their own tutelage.

Whether this is irony or tragedy is irrelevant: it is damning.

The truth is that Furman’s students are quite aware of their nation, their President, and the critiques of both. They are also aware that they must live in a pluralistic society, simultaneously undergirded by common values and enriched by different ideas. They understand that in our Constitutional order, the American Presidency is an august office regardless of its occupant, and deserves respect as such. Finally, they know that a thought does not demand to be uttered merely because it exists — they know that there is a time and a place for someone else’s protest, and that their day is not it.

Dan Hoover of the Greenville News proposed that the students of Furman are more “conservative” than their faculty. This strikes me as doubtful, but even if true, it does not explain the discrepancy between Furman’s students and their teachers now. There are plenty of leftist, anti-Bush students in the Furman class of 2008. The reality — at once hopeful for our country, and unfortunate for Furman — is that when the President speaks on May 31st, the wisest, and indeed most adult members of the audience will be the young men and women about to leave the University forever.

This piece originally appeared in a severely edited form in the Greenville News here, on 24 May 2008.

Beach Weekend

Recently my digital camera started renumbering my photos beginning back at 0001. I couldn't figure out what was going on until I realized I had taken over 10,000 photos on my camera and the counter had to roll over. The photo below is of New Providence United Methodist Church in Darlington, SC. It is where my Papa's mother attended growing up.

Signs

This summer I will be working at Camp Rockmont as I did after my freshman year. I will be involved with photography at camp in some capacity although I am not sure quite what it will look like as of now.

Here are a couple pictures from a recent trip of mine to the Asheville, NC / Black Mountain, NC area.