Feverish musings of a sickly lifeguard.

Hey, so it’s been a bit since the last bloggy blog. You know how it is…Okay, maybe you don’t. So, I’ll tell you.

I had lifeguard training this week. As you can tell from the title, I passed. If I hadn’t I would have had to make fun of myself the entire summer. Can you imagine a waterfront director that failed lifeguard training? Me either. I was somewhat blessed to wake up at 7 AM everyday and travel with a squad of lifeguards to training. We left the pool between 2:30 and 5:30 depending on how much we acheived. We swam about a bit and sat through THRILLING videos from the American Red Cross (Note the sarcasm on THRILLING…The videos blew chunks.) Then we took some tests, everyone who passed is CPR, AED, Lifeguarding, and First Aid certified.  Roughly speaking this means that if you pass out at the pool and I’m on duty…I could keep you alive until EMS gets there. Assuming you don’t decide to die first. Make the right decision. Additional thoughts on lifeguarding class in bullet point form:

1) It’s nice to be certified and all that, but lifeguarding class takes a lot of time and energy.

2) My friend Colte and I make a good team on the pool. We saved several pretend drowners and kept several manikins alive until imaginary EMS arrived.

3) Being in the pool so much reminded me of swimteam. I was on varsity for 2 years in high school. I liked swimteam alot, but somethings just aren’t good for the soul. I became a mostly unpleasant person after every season. My friend John McCallen’s name is still on the board at the aquatic center for almost every event. He was good. Also, It’s nice to know that flip turns and the butterfly stroke are like riding a bicycle: you never forget how.

4) My friend Erin is one of my lifeguards. She goes to school with me. A fact I didn’t know until about 3 days ago. It’s weird when people avoid you to avoid the awkwardness of “I know you, but you don’t know me…” sorts of conversations. It’s really not that big of a deal. Anyhow, She’s very sassy. I think that the instructors may have been irritated by her. In any case she says “I hate…” alot. What I realized is that when she says “I hate…” she really means that “I dislike…” it’s good to know because for awhile there I thought she hated just about everything. Not the case. She just is very open with her dislikes. She may not have had to actually take the class, but she did anyway…She told me that she hated me for awhile, then she ended up telling me that I was great. So, I count that as a high five worthy story.

5) Lifeguarding class made me sick. That’s why the title says “sickly lifeguard”. I’m still sick.

That’s right. SICK. I woke up for the last day of class not really having slept. I went to class the day before, played a game of croquet with the other Leadership Personell (LP for short…Sometimes you can make the “LPness” joke. Tee hee. Yes, I know I’m five.) then I went to bed only to have feverish dreams all night about lifeguarding. I was more or less in class for about 15 hours that day. Booo. When I woke up I had a fever and most of me was achy. Erin gave me an aleve which killed the fever, but I had to do my lifeguard drill exams. So I was in the cold water all day being active. When I got home for dinner with my parents that night I was way sick. I decided I shouldn’t drive back to camp until the following morning.

Sleep came free of charge with more feverish and sweaty dreams. Then I got up and drove back to camp. We had staff meeting. I made my first announcement about people following the rules of the waterfront for their campers’ sakes and made a verbal high five to lifeguards. I was ( and still am) unshaven and bedraggled.

Tangent to descibe the symptoms. It’s as though someone put a cat half way down my throat, let it scratch about and then pulled it out. Not too much scratching, or really too deep. So let’s change cat to kitten. Then add a really congested nose area, a cough that produces ugly greenish brown gunk, and a general dizziness/weariness that makes me mostly unable to walk far distances. THE SHAFT. No, not the African American Action Hero. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162650/ (FYI)

Back to the story. After staff meeting I slept until lunch. (about three hours). Then I woke up and ate tomato soup for lunch. Served with the tomato soup is the despicable Camp Firwood grilled cheese sandwich. “Boo!”, said the crowd. The cook hates it too. Hats off to Larry. No, not the song. It was a great tune though. Check it out. Oh, Del Shannon. I never knew your name until now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_FR3341bA&feature=related

After lunch I slept until about 4:30 (that’s another 3 hours). I stayed awake until 7:30 and slept until 7ish this morning. Total sleep count for yesterday: Approximately 18 hours. Am I still feeling sick? Yes. Even after the 3 hour nap I took when I got home. Hopefully another 8-10 hours of sleep ought to win me some sort of “I am healed” award.

That’s what’s up with lifeguarding class and sickness. What about camp, you ask? Well. It feels odd being gone most of the day. I really don’t get much of a chance to meet kids or hang out with my lifeguards who didn’t take the class with me. In addition to this I feel distant from the other LPs at camp. I’m not sharing the same experience as them and thus feel a bit like the outsider. I guess that this may change as this next week there is no class (praise the Lord.), but it felt odd all week. Especially when we had our BBQ as LPs and I had no time to go purchase any meat to cook…Yet, the generosity of my friends bailed me out. I ate food.

Speaking of food, there’s another part of camp that I mostly dispise. I really dislike the food at camp. It’s not Larry’s fault. It’s cooked well. It’s just that iceberg lettuce and evil scalloped potatoes aren’t my cup of tea. I’ll solve the problem someday. 

What’s new with the girl you ask? Well, I haven’t spoken much to her the past couple days since I’ve been sick. Sigh. I assume she’s doing well, I’m going to call her tonight. She didn’t come visit today because I’m sick…Arrg. Stupid sickness. I really wouldn’t have been a great host anyway, it’s probably better that she sat this one out.

There’s a strange phenomenon that happens at camp. I lose perspective on life outside camp. I don’t know why, but I suddenly am wracked with confusing doubts about my feelings and decisions in our over-the-phone relationship at camp. I overthink things (as usual). I become paranoid about my feelings. The lovely girl ended up telling me “not to stress out.” I took her advice. I also took a bit of my own. I won’t make decisions for outside of camp while I am at camp. Camp Chauncey seems to not have a great idea of what he wants. The outside-camp Chauncey does. This seems to be a common sort of thing with all my friends who are dating people at camp. Odd? Yes. Comforting to know though, that other people experience the same thing. So it doesn’t make me into a crazy jackass.

After coming through this journey of stress and lifeguarding and illness, I think it all might work out just fine. Deep sigh of relief.

That’s life, now for some thinking.

I miss time with Jesus. I had this great plan for getting up early and going kayaking and talking to the Lord and listening to what he had to say….but then I woke up early to drive lifeguards into class…for 2 weeks straight. RAWR. Anyhow, pondering time.

At camp Firwood we have a few things in our policy manual that bother me. Things that my friend Kile Petersen said, “You’re gonna love seminary.” when I brought them up to him. Firstly, our policy manual states that the bible is infalliable. This means without error. I don’t agree. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that it’s full with error or that key things are in error. For example, without the resurrection happening, our faith is pointless. Fact. But, I wonder about other things. Let’s ponder something.

The bible is in many ways the story of God’s people, right? I think so. In the story of God’s people how many things have gone perfectly the way God wanted them to? Only the ones where Jesus did stuff himself. His life, death, and resurrection. His second coming. Everything else, while Jesus has been working through humans has been good and the kingdom’s work has been done has been a bit of a gong show at times. As imperfect human beings we make mistakes, lots of times. Examples? David and Bathsheba. Solomon. The apostle Peter and his segregationist attitudes towards the Jerusalem church. Annanais and Saphira in acts. The church in Corinth. There are a bunch of examples of God working through human imperfection to achieve awesome things to his glory. We acknowledge this to be true. Why does the bible need to be different?

It seems to me that if imperfect people were putting together the Kanon (greek for measuring stick) that is our bible today almost a thousand years ago…they may have done it imperfectly. Despite being led by the Holy Spirit. Let’s face it, we tend (I say tend because of Enoch’s odd dissapearance in Genesis) to be imperfect until we are resurrected into life with Christ. My question is why aren’t some of us okay with the bible being an imperfect and simultaneously divinely inspired document? God is perfect. I agree. Does everything turn out how He wants it to? No. Does God work perfectly through imperfect vessels? I don’t think so. He does AMAZING things! but are they perfect things?

What are some of the errors then? you might ask..well for one the numerical accounts in the Old Testament. Not all of them mind you. Example in paraphrased inaccurate form: Did king David’s army really kill how many people scripture records? Was it exactly x amount of philistines? Does it need to be? Another example: Did Samson really tie the tails of foxes together and put a torch at the end and light villages on fire? Not to say it’s not possible, but is it a literary device to get accross how much of a badass he was or an exactly tally of the number of foxes he caught? That’s two, but I don’t have oodles of examples here, I guess the main point of this whole discourse was to assert my being okay with the bible not being infalliable.

NOW, it is possible to take this too far. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. I don’t think it’s okay to decide something to be an error just because you don’t happen to like it. If God says “Don’t steal” in Deuteronomy and you say “Well, I want to steal. Chauncey says the bible’s not infalliable so I’ll just call this part an error and do what I want.” then you’re dumb.

My point is not to invalidate scripture so that it fits several people’s lazy ideas of what it means to read the bible and hear the word of God. The only time you should ever make the call unilaterally is with a congregation (See Acts and the requirements for Gentiles to be Christians). You and A GROUP of people IN YOUR FAITH COMMUNITY, meaning more than just your friends, get together and pray and fast and make sure that the Holy Spirit is leading you in a direction other than what scripture says. This is the only way to not just decide on things that may not apply anymore in a willy nilly fashion.

Okay that’s one pondering. The other is that in our manual is states that we should make quiet times a priority. I agree, however the tone in the manual makes it sound like a required task. I think that time with the Lord is so much more than that. Should we be doing it for the wrong reasons? Maybe we should talk/listen to God because we want to, not just because it’s necessary. It seems to me that God is really big on motives. God isn’t utilitarian. Ends don’t justify the means for the people of God. So if we pray for our personal and ministerial benefit and not out of a desire for a better relationship with the Lord…are we doing it the wrong way? Can’t we do both at once? I think we can.

See? I might be a shoe-in for seminary with the way I can make a huge discourse over 2 sentences. Hurrah! Leave comments if you like. I may respond. Or I may not.