The Blob

My daughter the atheist is off to Christian Camp with her friends. I warned her that she should probably keep her religious/spiritual questions and doubts to herself while there, but her friends already spread the word that a Godless heathen will be in their midst.

"Why do you want to go to this camp anyway?" I asked her this morning as she rifled through my spiritual books, looking for a bible.

"I'm just going cuz my friends are. And for the blob."

"The what?"

"They have this cool blob out on the lake that we can bounce on and jump into the water. It's fun." She grinned, aware of how utterly shallow it is to attend a religious camp solely for their recreational equipment. I stared at her, and she shrugged, grin widening.

Oh well. As long as there's a blob... Besides, it can't hurt for her to listen to another perspective. And whatever she has to listen to, it can't be much worse than last year's "Rites of Passage Camp."

I thought it would be one of those camps that make the girls do a lot of hiking up mountains, rappelling, making fires, and other character-building activities that build self-esteem by turning the little puffballs into Lara Crofts.

No.

When I went to pick her up, the counselors announced that our girls had "become women" over the last week, and that we might not even recognize them now. I think her exact words were something like, "Your girls have changed. They have grown wings to emerge into women now, and we ask that you let them stretch those wings and learn how to fly. Give them room to keep growing."

At this point Wednesday turned to me and muttered, "Please get me out of this hellhole."

That week, she had endured a sweat lodge (in the Georgia summer heat), slept outside and alone in the woods, participated in numerous hand-holding and feeling-sharing sessions, and listened to lots of spiritual wisdom from the Earth Mother/Counselors. For example, when she cut her knee on a fall while hiking "like, five miles" to see horses that they couldn't even ride, she asked for a band-aid.

"Let me try this first," said one of the Earth Mothers. She closed her eyes and spread her hands over Wednesday's knee.

"Uh, what are you doing?" my daughter asked.

"Reiki."

"Um, it's bleeding. Can't you just give me a freaking band-aid?" Wednesday said.

So, this week at least she will be at a camp with proper first aid, I suppose. In case she falls off the blob and cuts her knee.

When I was a kid, camp was just camp. You went to sleep in cabins, sing cheesy songs by campfire, play pranks on each other, ride horses, shoot arrows, make lanyards, roast marshmallows, swim in natural bodies of water, and get poison ivy. There was no indoctrination of any kind, no one tried to push you outta the cocoon, and I never brought a bible.

And yet I am clearly a spiritual seeker. Maybe we should be letting our kids today figure things out for themselves. Instead of trying to convince them to buy into a ready-made set of ideas, whether it's Christianity or a New Age Spirituality, let them wander around in the wilderness on their own, literally and figuratively. Can't camp just be a place to go to have fun, spend some time away from parents, and grow up a little?

This is another area where I am proud that I have not had any expectations where my kids are concerned. I don't mind that Wednesday has decided she is an atheist. In fact, I'm rather proud that she feels enough acceptance from me to announce such beliefs without fear of reprisal. Especially in the bible belt. The fact that she is inquisitive enough to have doubts at this age and feel secure enough to express them...I'm impressed. Good girl.

Do I think she will hold these beliefs forever? Probably not, but it's fine if she does. I would rather have children that believe what they do because they arrived at it on their own, than children who believe what I do because I told them to, and they obeyed. My goal is to raise little free-thinkers.

So, whatever Wednesday has to listen to this week probably won't kill her. She will either dismiss it, assimilate it into her own thinking, or change her way of thinking to incorporate the new ideas. Either way, she will be thinking.

And my guess is she will be spending a lot of time on the blob. Good girl.