Growing up, I went to sleep away camp almost every year from 8 on. Some folks look at me askew when I say this and I get it. I understand, especially now as a parent, how incredibly hard this would be. To send your child away for up to 2 months calls into question your desire to be a parent, your ability to parent well, not to mention all the really sticky not being there to make sure your child is safe and happy.

And again, this post is not about THAT either. This post is about my emotional hypocrisy when it comes to religious experiences and sleep away camp. bet you couldn't expect that was where this post was going.

Growing up on the easy coast, as a Jew, sleep away camp was a secular experience, even though 95% of the campers were Jewish. This was true even at the YMCA camp I went to in Connecticut. However, here in Texas, in 2009 I cannot find a secular sleep away camp. I talk with other parents about the camps they send their kids to, how amazing they are and I think WOW! this could be so much fun for S. But after looking into the camps I discover, time and time again the words: "mission" and the follow up: "values". Those words in and of themselves are not negative, to the contrary. However they are code for a Christian experience.

Admittedly, I have baggage involving the Judeo-Christian God - that too is another post (dissertation?!) entirely. But back to camps and my emotional hypocrisy. I'm struggling with my reaction to the above camp in the Texas hill country and my attraction to this Sikh Camp in New Mexico.  I don't even know where to go from here with this line of thinking, as every avenue ends up on contradiction road. I know this. But somehow the 3ho (happy healthy holy organization) khasala camp is something I very much want to S. I know he'd love the archery as well as the sadhana. But how can I melt into this so easily and recoil at the thought of "champions camp"?

Possibly it's that the Sikh culture is an abstract spirituality because it's not mine, not American, not Judeo-Christian. The gurmukhi language are just sounds with meaning to me. Not as loaded as the English/religious lexicon, to me...is it that through yoga, buddhism I can surrender my desire for spiritual maning without the weight of who I was? I can more easily shed the archetype of who I am and discover my true nature?

Whodathunk that an innocent search into summer camps for my son would bring me back to the reason for it all.