Living in community – at camp Camp Bishopwood teaches life lessons in natural setting

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HOPE – Anglican bishops from around the world struggled last month in Canterbury, England, to overcome their differences and keep their worldwide communion from splintering. Unbeknownst to most of them, youth and adults at Camp Bishopwood, run by the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, were modeling how spiritually fulfilling living in community can be.

Camp Director Georgia L. Koch has spent every summer for the past 30 years creating community at the camp located on 75 wooded acres on Lake Megunticook.

Koch, 57, of Portland spent just one week at a summer camp as a child. Her family couldn’t afford to send her more often, but memories of her time in the outdoors stayed with her.

She studied recreation and outdoor education in graduate school at Pennsylvania State University in Philadelphia. A cradle Episcopalian, she felt the tug toward outdoor ministry in the 1970s when she worked for a parish in Baton Rouge, La.

“This is my calling,” she said earlier this month. “I believe that living in community is the best way to, under faith. So this seemed a perfect blending for me.”

The camp was built as a private girls camp in the mid-1930s. The Episcopal Diocese of Maine purchased it in 1961 and named the cabins for former archbishops of Canterbury.

The biggest changes Koch has seen over her years at Bishopwood have been in technology. Computers with e-mail and Internet access are in the camp office. Staff members arrive with cell phones even though access on the lake is limited. The abundance of cell phones has put an end to the line at the camp’s land-line phone on Saturday nights.

The campers, however, haven’t changed that much.

“The kids are more the same than different, but they seem to feel more of a sense of entitlement now. That worries me some,” Koch said. “We’ve tried to keep camp simple because simplicity is one of our basic values. Our big concession to technology is that on Saturday nights we show a movie [on DVD] for the kids and staff who are staying over for the next week. But mostly, we’re unplugged.”

Between 60 and 70 percent of Bishopwood campers have an affiliation with an Episcopal church in Maine or out of state and about 90 percent of them attend church fairly regularly. About 75 percent are Maine residents and a majority of the remaining 25 percent have some family connection to the state.

The rest are minority campers from big cities such as Boston or Atlanta who are recruited through churches in those cities. That program began in the summer of 1980 when African-American children in Atlanta were being kidnapped and murdered. It has continued on a smaller scale, according to Koch.

Christian education is part of the camp curriculum but not overtly, she said. Each year, Koch and her staff build activities around a theme. This year’s theme is gratitude.

“We model it day in and day out by living and being very intentional about the way we live,” Koch said. “Knowing Christ in oneself and in others is important. We have a service every Friday night, but we don’t use a lot of ‘church talk’ on a daily basis.”

The Very Rev. Benjamin Shambaugh, the dean of St. Luke’s Cathedral in Portland, said earlier this month that he looks forward to conducting a service at Camp Bishopwood each summer.

“It gets to the core of who we are as church in community,” he said. “It’s very renewing. … Being out in the woods has helped reconnect me to my faith many times.

“Bishopwood also helps our programs [for children and youth] stay strong,” he continued. “It’s beneficial to churches whether they have large or small [Christian education] programs.”

The camp holds seven sessions a summer – June 29 through Aug. 16 this year – for campers ages 8 to 16. In addition to the director, there are about 35 staff members. The camp can accommodate between 90 and 95 campers each week.

Despite the ailing economy and a tuition of $390 a week, the camp has been at about 95 percent capacity this summer.

“We’ve given out a significant number of full and partial scholarships this year,” Koch said. “We had a lot more people asking for help than in recent years.”

Local churches also provide scholarship money to children in their parishes and communities.

John Gillis of Dexter was 9 the first time he went to Camp Bishopwood 10 years ago on a church scholarship. This summer, the 19-year-old graduate of Dexter Regional High School came back as a counselor. It was his eighth year at the camp.

“I keep coming back because I like the environment and how open everyone is,” he said at dinner. “I’m an agnostic, but I like how the camp doesn’t pressure you to be an Episcopalian or a Christian.”

Gillis has been a bilateral amputee since he was 15 months old. He was born with deformed feet and legs, he said, and learned to walk with prostheses.

“People at school and in other settings are a little more standoffish about it,” he said. “Here, they ask me about it and move on. What I took back to school from here the first few years was a willingness to try things. When I first came here, I wouldn’t do that due to my disability. As a person, I just became more able because of my experience here.”

Gillis still is trying new things at the urging of his camp colleagues. This summer, he bought and wore his first pair of sandals.

Delia Nichols, 10, of Belfast attends St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in her hometown. This was her first summer at Camp Bishopwood, and despite the rainy weather, she wants to go back.

“I like the canoe trips best,” she said. “It was really fun to go out on the water and see the family of loons. I just think it’s a lot of fun to see all the nature here.”

The campers and some of the staff were unaware that while they were living in community five miles from a bustling Route 1 in Camden, Anglican bishops from around the globe were doing something similar in Canterbury, England, at the Lambeth Conference. The meeting, held from July 16 to Aug. 3, is a once-a-decade event that drew 670 bishops from around the world, including 135 from the United States.

Maine’s two Episcopal bishops, Chilton Knudsen and Stephen Lane, and their spouses participated and posted comments on the diocesan Web site almost daily.

Making connections and forging relationships was a highlight of the meeting, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Aug. 7 in a live webcast about the conference. The 2002 election and consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire has created deep divisions in the Anglican Communion. Some conservative bishops boycotted the Lambeth Conference, and Robinson was not invited to attend.

“Many bishops came to this gathering in fear and trembling, expecting either a distasteful encounter between those of vastly different opinions or the cold shoulder from those who disagree,” Jefferts Schori said. “The overwhelming reality has been just the opposite. We have prayed, cried, learned and laughed together and discovered something deeper about the body of Christ.”

That’s the kind of thing that happens to a lot of kids every summer at Camp Bishopwood, according to Koch, but they aren’t able to describe it in those terms. Sometimes, it’s the small things such as a first pair of sandals that are the outward signs of the kind of transformation that can take place when people live in community.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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