Tag Archive | camp

It’s Chapel time for those of us who worked at Teresita Pines. One of our campers is in surgery right now for breast cancer. Your campers aren’t ever supposed to grow up to get grown up diseases but they do.

So for today’s chapel ceremony we will start by singing “Today”

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
‘Ere I forget all the joy that is mine, Today

I’ll be a dandy, and I’ll be a rover
You’ll know who I am by the songs that I sing
I’ll feast at your table, I’ll sleep in your clover
Who cares what tomorrow shall bring

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
‘Ere I forget all the joy that is mine, Today

I can’t be contented with yesterday’s glory
I can’t live on promises winter to spring
Today is my moment, now is my story
I’ll laugh and I’ll cry and I’ll sing

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
‘Ere I forget all the joy that is mine, Today…

****

Do you remember being On the Loose?

Did you ever watch the sunrise turn the sky completely red,

Have you slept beneath the moon and stars, a pine bough for your bed
Did you sit and talk with friends, though a word was never said,
Then you’re just like me and you’ve been on the loose.

Chorus:

On the loose to climb a mountain,
On the loose where I am free.
On the loose to live my life, the way I think my life should be,
For I’ve only got a moment and a whole world yet to see.
I’ll be looking for tomorrow on the loose.

There’s a trail that I’ll be hiking just to see where it might go.

Many places yet to visit, many people yet to know,
For in following in my dreams, I will live and I will grow,
On a trail that’s waiting out there on the loose.

Chorus

So in search of love and laughter, I’ll be traveling cross this land

Never sure of where I’m going, for I haven’t got a plan,
So in time when you are ready, come and join me and take my hand,
And together we’ll share life out there on the loose.

Chorus

Lady Mother, a child is in your hands as all children are

Keep her safe on her journey

Don’t let think she is damaged in any way.

Let her know that her scars show that she is a brave warrior

And that there are scars that show us we survive to fight another day.

Let her know she is never alone

That she is surrounded by people who love her all the time.

She may not always see us but we are there

Holding vigil and sending her healing and peace.

Let her know she is surrounded by the light of her sisters

That camp awaits her as always.

A place of refuge in the green pines

And the mountain breezes.

And the cool streams that flow below camp.

Even if only in her mind’s eye and heart.

Let her know she is a Scode and not a boating award

No matter what she feels like when she wakes up.

Let her know she is carrying on your wings

Let her know she is loved.

You may leave the Chapel quietly now.

Thank you Hope!

Nov27

Missing Kathy

Nov23

My ex had a dream that I came to her and told her she had to do a service for Kathy. Only one Kathy comes to mind that we had in common and is dead. Kathy died several years ago though I didn’t know that until last year when all the camp staff started to find each other again after many years. Facebook did accomplish that at least for some of us. Kathy had passed away from ovarian cancer and it really hurt that none of us were around to help her. I hope she knew how loved she was still.

Kathy was half Irish and half Native American and the best parts of both and her mother had played a sneaky trick on her by giving her the letter “o” for a middle name because she had an Irish last name that usually has an O in front of it. That O caused her more grief when she had to give a middle name because bureaucracies never would believe it was just the letter.

We lost Kathy when she broke up with her partner after something like 17 years as I recall. She gotten involved with a really jealous woman who was a friend of another ex of mine and she made her move away to Wisconsin and severed contact. At the time it was really weird and it seems even weirder now that Kathy let herself be manipulated that way. Kathy was about as easy to manipulate as a redwood before she got injured and had to retire. She’d been a firefighter with the CDF (now it’s called CALFIRE). And someone dropped a BA (breathing apparatus) out the window and it landed on her head and at that point she found out she’d already broken her neck earlier at a rugby game.

So she was retired from firefighting and firefighting had been her life in a lot of ways. It was a huge part of her identity. Somehow she got together with J and J was not a nice person. She worked in collections and if she was pissed at you she would put things in your credit score and you were screwed. After Kathy moved back to Wisconsin I called her a couple of times and the last time she told me not to call anymore because J was getting mad and she didn’t want anything to happen. And that was the last time I had contact with her although I did try writing a few times and never got an answer.

Kathy meant a lot to me. The first time I met Kathy she scared the bejeebus out of me. It was my first women’s music concert and I wasn’t out of the closet yet and this tall Native American tough looking person came stalking up to the group in leather jacket and bandana and chains and looking very scary to little not ready to come out, what am I doing with lesbians? me. And then I saw her eyes, Kathy had the kindest brown eyes I have ever seen on any human being and I couldn’t be scared anymore. She was just Kathy with her shining soul.

When we used to go to the Rose Parade every year, one time my brother and his partner joined us and these fools from Iowa walked up and called my brother “faggot”. They weren’t very bright or they would have noticed they were surrounded by Girl Scouts and rugby players all of whom were bigger than these little dweebs from Iowa State. Kathy and Edie stood up and chased the little homophobes back to their group and I’ll bet they never did that again. Edie was even scarier looking than Kathy because she had lost all her teeth playing rugby.

She was the one who first put the Goddess in front of me and later when I was ready got me to her HP when I needed help. How she even knew that of our whole group I was the one who would be interested I don’t know but she did. And years later when we did our two rituals for the spirit of place at our camp I found out she was my magical other half. There has never been another person whose energy I have matched with as if two halves of a whole. The first time we priestessed the ritual together there was an almost audible click and she and I kind of looked at each other in shock. It was so unexpected. It was such a successful pairing the spirit of place showed up and actually touched me. I have to admit I squealed like a little girl and then apologized to the spirit.

I was one of the few of our group who ever turned her down for a liaison. I didn’t want to hurt her partner even though she said she had permission but still, I didn’t do it. I loved them both and just couldn’t do it. So to find her so closely matched in energy was a huge gift. And the two years we did ritual I reveled in it and I missed her a lot when she was gone from our lives.

We used to all go to the West Coast Women’s Music Festival and in 1986 I was in a merry widow back brace and feeling like dog doo when I got home the next day I ended up having an emergency appendectomy and Kathy would always tease me she could have removed it with her pocket knife on the big flat rock that had been in the middle of our camp site. Was never sure she wasn’t serious about that.

So yesterday when I posted the Gaelic Blessing and the Knot of Isis it was for Kathy. Some where Kathy is happy and healthy and I expect if she knows what’s going on laughing her ass off. Much love, Kathy on whatever trail you are hiking or whatever women’s music festival you are attending in the sky.