Night, and Daycamp
I had a hard time deciding whether or not to write this here…
I’m not sure how to say this. I don’t usually have trouble writing down experiences. Alright. I went to church on Saturday. Right now especially I don’t feel like I’m on the same level as everyone else in my small group, not even the same plane. Some of my friends are being woken up in the middle of the night, called to read the bible. The Slayer is awake. That sends shivers down my back for some reason. Lots of talk about a sword, wielding a sword. And I’m sitting here thinking, “well, I had a good time at bible camp this week. Neuhehuh.” Anyway, I prayed then for God to give me something… anything. Nothing happened until last night.
I was lying there wide awake, it was around midnight, maybe a quarter past. Two general rules of my mind apply at this point in the story. One, my mind wanders to extremely random topics at that time of night. Two, if I can’t think of a specific word, name, or song lyric right then for some reason, it drives me absolutely crazy. The harder I try to think of it, the longer it takes to come to mind. Sometimes I’ll look them up if there’s an applicable source in my room. Lyric sheet or dictionary or whatever.
The random topic of the moment was the movie Minority Report. Thinking about how Agatha didn’t suit her name, about what might have happened if the Pre-Crime project had continued. Eventually the Pre-Cogs might have been revered almost as deities… but wait, they touched on that idea slightly in the movie. That guy made reference to what they called the room the Pre-Cogs were kept in. What was it called? And so it started.
You probably know the word I was looking for. It seems completely obvious now, but it didn’t then, and maybe for a reason. I knew it was a sacred place, like a sanctuary, but I didn’t know the specific word. And like I said, that drives me insane. I tried to think of the word on my own for about five minutes until I remembered a part in Exodus where God gave instructions on how to build the Tabernacle. Kind of the same meaning, so I considered reading the chapter over to see if they had a synonym in there somewhere. But it was strange. I felt fear for some reason. Like I didn’t want to turn on my light and wake up my mom as a surface concern, but there was something underlying that was making me tense. I still am not exactly sure. I sat up in bed and stayed like that for awhile, and then I turned my light on. I might have winced… I felt like I did, but nothing happened. It seems stupid when I type it. But whatever. I flipped to the chapter in Exodus. I’ve read that book recently, in the last two months, so I found the exact chapter I was looking for really easily. Skimmed it over, but the word wasn’t there.
Square one. Where else did I know of that might have the word and would be easy to find? Then I thought of another possibility: During the crucifixion, the curtain was ripped in half, the curtain that separated the [word]. Went to Matthew 37:51. Bingo. ‘At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.’
Temple. Theoretically, I had my word, I was happy and could go to sleep now. But I didn’t really want to. I flipped to a bit earlier on in Matthew: chapter twenty-three. Matthew 23:12 stuck out. Janet made reference to that verse (or one similar) one time. Saw the word ‘temple’ again on that page a few verses later in 23:16. Went somewhere in the Old Testament. Temple again. I went to about four more pages and each of them had the word. Now I’m aware that temple is an extremely common word, especially in the bible and especially in the Old Testament, but it seemed odd none the less. When I turned randomly to 2 Chronicles 29:5, (Listen to me, Levites: Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord, the God of your fathers. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary.) I thought, ‘that sounds kind of like that song by Smalltown Poets, There Is Only. That would be funny if the word temple were in the lyrics but I don’t think it is.’ But then I started to play the song in my head. ‘Your wish is set in stone, I broke the first of ten, I’ve cleared this temple out, come take your place again.’
So, there. It’s yet another link to myself and this other song that describes me (Smell the Colour Nine). I’m interpreting this as I have things in my life taking God’s place. On one hand, having the savior of the whole world tell me that I’m messing things up big time doesn’t sound like a good thing. But on the other hand, the savior of the whole world is talking to insignificant me. Which is summed up in the first line of the song above.
(3:08 PM) First day of day camp went pretty well. I was doing registration at first. (Let me know if I’ve developed a nervous twitch, arg!) Some of the parents just didn’t get it!! Anyways, it seems that I’m not a junior counselor this year after all. I’m actually kind of a co-senior counselor with Willie. Haven’t met my two juniors, Kieran and Courtney before but they seem nice enough. I have a few kids in my group (grades one and two) that I had a few years ago. It’s so strange to see them grow up. Angela read Matthew 23:12 in Bible X. Coincidence? Dun dun dun.
