I know many of you are already back to school, or close to it. Here in Connecticut, we still have a few weeks of summertime. Our kids are playing Monopoly with their cousins at all hours of the day and night. We celebrated William on his 17th birthday. We’ve been taking bike rides and walks on the beach and watching the sunset. I’m trying to remember—or learn—what it is like to not have a relentless to-do list and instead delight in the hibiscus blooming and the osprey overhead and the giggles from my nieces and nephews.
I learned a new word this week—kith (from Karen Swallow Prior’s new book, You Have a Calling, which is lovely). Kith means intimacy with a place. Every summer we come to the same place, where my family has gathered for over a century. I’m not sure I even know how to use the word kith in a sentence, but if I did, it would have to do with these roads and rocky shorelines and marsh views.
This place has shaped and formed me, and my family, and yet I’m also struck by how important it is to get away from the kith. How essential it is to disrupt the patterns and habits and allow ourselves to be shaped and formed by unexpected goodness, truth, and beauty in unfamiliar places.
As you’ve heard me recount here already, Hope Heals Camp is one of those places filled with disruptive grace and unsettling beauty. I’ve already shared some of my own reflections from our week there, but I also wanted to give our kids a chance to offer their thoughts. Marilee declined to comment, but Penny and William both had a lot to say.
Beauty, Belonging, and Complexity
For Penny, Hope Heals is a place of belonging, friendship, and joy that she doesn’t experience anywhere else, even within our immediate family. She wrote:
“The dance party after the banquet feels like freedom.”
“Those worship leaders performing together is like a blessing to my soul.”
“Hope Heals is a different experience than the rest of the world. Because at Hope Heals I feel more welcome and I can help with anything they need me to.”
I love that last line about feeling welcome and knowing she can help. When we feel welcomed as we are, we also know we matter. Belovedness and belonging lead to participation and offering ourselves to others.
William had a more complicated experience. As he wrote:
“Camp has an entirely different value system and way of approaching people with disabilities. In my everyday life, I do not interact much with people with disabilities outside of Penny and the Down syndrome community. HH expands that greatly, and gives people with disabilities much more respect, dignity, and value than society normally does. The other thing that feels different is the idea of mutuality, that people with disabilities can give to you as much or more than you can give to them.”
That “entirely different value system” can be refreshing and beautiful. William’s highlight of the week was spending time with his new friend, Chase, who is 15 years old. As William put it, “It was awesome to get to know Chase, and have his bright, friendly personality light up me and everyone else he interacted with.”
That different value system can also be unsettling. William also wrote:
“It is always hard to have my older sister get so much more attention and praise at Camp than me. It can sometimes make me feel like I am actually less valuable than her, because I am also told that the value system at Hope Heals is closer to that of heaven/what we should aspire to. At the worst, Hope Heals can make me feel like I matter less, and that all of the things I have achieved in my life so far are not worth much.”
As a mom, I wish it were deeply ingrained in both William and Penny that they are valued and loved for who they are, not what they do. And I also wish they knew that what they do in this world—and at camp!—matters. I will keep banging that drum with both of them. I also know that much of this transformation happens from the inside out, and that sometimes we need to step into these value-shifting, uncomfortable, upside-down spaces. These are the spaces that push us to admit our fears and doubts and insecurities, to name the comparisons we make between ourselves and others, and—hopefully, someday, I pray—to grow into people whose sense of belovedness frees us from a social hierarchy of comparison.
I’m grateful for a place that prompts a struggle with what it means to be beloved and what it means to belong. We’re still working out the way to know these truths at the core of our being, both in our kith and at camp.
Where in your life have you experienced a “different value system” that challenged how you see yourself or others? I’d love to hear from you—leave a comment!
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