Category: News from Weequahic

Important, Uncomfortable & Necessary Growth

June 6th, 2020

While I had planned on taking a bit of time off from writing and speaking, I felt compelled to say something about the sad and important moment our society currently faces.

Now, you may be thinking, ‘Cole, you are a white, southern guy – what the heck do you know or have experienced to make you a person who should comment?’

The answer is: very little. I know I’m luckier than 99% of the world. I also know that I’m a part of a community that, for a few weeks each summer, connects people from all walks of life, all socio-economic backgrounds, and dozens and dozens of different perspectives. Please take the following in the latter vein, that of someone trying to listen, learn, and help.

Race at Camp Weequahic

I spent time over the past week speaking with some of our past, present and future staff who are people of color. They were so open, patient and honest with me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate their time and courage to speak with me in that way.

We’ve not had conversations about race at Camp Weequahic because that’s not what camp is about. To me, Weequahic, at its very core, is about living out this one truth: we are all worthy of love and respect. No matter where you come from, what you look like, how much money you have or anything else.

“If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another.”
Mother Teresa

At camp, for a few short, wonderful weeks, we get a sense of ‘belonging to one another.’

There are no distractions. Life is much simpler here underneath the pines for those fleeting moments. And, because our entire staff decides to follow one mission – that of creating an amazing experience for everyone we meet through gratitude, attitude, and courage – we get close to erasing everything that could divide us in the outside world.

Outside of camp, I fear Mother Teresa’s admonition hits a little too close to home. We’ve got problems in our outside world. This is nothing new. We always have problems. You can’t live together as humans and not have problems. Heck, you can’t live by yourself and not have problems.

A House On Fire

Earlier this year, I wrote a note about our small neighborhood. In relationship to the Earth, Weequahic is a tiny neighborhood. We’ve got several small houses, play areas, a nice lake and more. If one of our bunks were on fire, we’d all work together to help, wouldn’t we? We’d get everyone out safely, care for them, and rebuild something even better.

Well, compared to our galaxy, the Milky Way, our Earth is an even smaller ‘neighborhood’ than Weequahic is to the Earth. As far as we know, we are the only humans for millions and millions of lightyears. We’ve only got each other.

Weequahic, one of our neighborhood houses is on fire. It’s been smoldering for years. Because of the repugnant, brutal actions of a few, that house is now burning. Are we going to help put out the flames and work together to help rebuild towards a brighter future? Or are we going to ignore and just focus on our own?

Many people are angry right now. I’d like you to try something: think of anger as pain made public. When you approach it this way, you begin to open up to listening in hopes of understanding and working side by side rather than at odds. You begin to treat the other as you would want to be treated. You begin to find common ground on which you can both stand.

Moving Forward

So, how do we, the eyes of this camp director, move forward to a better, more just world? To be honest, I’m not sure. However, after asking questions of those I respect and love, here are a few ideas that I think may help.

First, recognize we have members of our human family who are in pain right now.

Second, listen with empathy.

That is harder than it sounds for many of us because it requires us to be what’s called emotionally intelligent. Before you can get to that point, though, you have to know how talk about what you are feeling. You have to be emotionally literate.

This is harder when we are stressed, out of our routines or anxious.

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling that way right now. How about you? While we may be in a situation across the US where these feelings are widespread, the Covid situation doesn’t give us a pass for not doing all we can to care for those around us.

The good news about this approach – recognizing and listening for understanding – is that it’ll help you grow. This is something we all want to do.

The bad news is the growth will be uncomfortable.

And it should be. You can’t grow when you are stuck in the same place doing the same things. When you want to grow a muscle or your endurance or your abilities on the piano or with public speaking, you practice and make mistakes and learn and repeat. It’s challenging!

Do you think raising your concerns, your fears, your pain is comfortable? I know many of our campers who have gone through the very natural missing home feelings at camp hide those feelings from their counselors, their division heads, and me. It’s natural – these are uncomfortable feelings. You imagine the conversation about it will be even more uncomfortable.

Weequahic, growth only comes from learning and moving through uncomfortable times. The campers and staff members who have the courage to put a voice to their concerns, a voice to their pain are the ones who come through it better. Those who have the courage to listen for understanding with an open and grateful heart will learn as well.

Tie Your Shoes

Finally, we’ve got to get up, tie our shoes and do something about it.

We, the entire human family, need to

Ask questions and listen.
Serve and help and lend a hand.
Fight (peacefully) for what is just, what is good, and what is right.
Show that we share an important common ground – that we are all worthy of love and respect – through our actions and words.

I cannot truly walk in your shoes and experience all that you know and feel. You can’t walk in mine. But, we are better, as a human family, when we strive work and play and learn together. We become something more than just a collection of individuals going in the same direction. We become a community and start to belong to one another.

Weequahic’s Challenge to You

Be grateful for those giving voice to their pain. They are giving you a gift and its not an easy one to share.

To those putting a voice to pain, strive to be grateful for those who are listening for understanding. This will not be easy for you and it’s no less important. We’ve got to meet somewhere in between and work together in order to move forward.

And, difficult as it may be, we must all be grateful for the vast majority of women and men who protect and serve in all the right ways – with patience, fortitude, courage and justice.

Choose an attitude of humility, patience, generosity and hope. With this as our base, we can work together to make the world a bit more like camp.

Finally, develop your courage to peacefully and purposefully strive to make the world around you a more just and kind place.

Build a Bridge

The headlines will soon fall away. The media coverage will find something else to bark about. What will be left are those who work on a day-to-day basis to build bridges and bring people forward. Or not. We get to choose.

Camp Weequahic, let’s tie our shoes and put some GAC into the world around you. Do this often enough, you’ll change your home, your class, your team, your group. If we all do it, the effect will magnify. Start small, aim big!

Influencing the Future

May 16th, 2020

Last week, I talked with you about questions. Two of those questions – ‘Where am I going?’ and ‘Do I have what it takes?’ concern the future. You are taking stock of how things are right now and doing your best to envision a future ahead.

The hard part about the future is that we can’t predict it. Who would have predicted our online campfires, physical distancing, and fear caused by this outbreak? When we think about the future, because we are positive people, we normally think about improvements to the life around us.

And, why wouldn’t we? As a human society, terrible poverty has fallen dramatically. The advances in science and medicine has been astounding. People are thinking more and more about helping those around them as well as the earth itself.

We can’t predict the future. But, we can influence it.

Hope Isn’t Enough

If you want to become the best singer in your school, you would envision that future first. How it would make you feel. Being up on stage having finished an amazing piece and hearing the crowd roar their approval. As you think about that wonderful future, you hope you’ll get there.

If you want to become the best baseball player in your league, you’d imagine diving catches, sharp base hits, stolen bases, and cheers from the stands. When you think about that wonderful future, you hope you’ll get there.

But hope is not enough. If you want to get from wherever you are to where you want to go, you’ve got to make some changes. And change can really hard. It normally means giving something up or changing your focus or modifying your behavior.

What’s Important?

One of my favorite teachers spent some time with me one day after a practice. I was upset – things were not going as I wanted them. He asked me where I wanted to take my golf career. To college, I answered.

“Great,” he said, “that’s a wonderful goal.” And then he started asking me how I spent my time.

How many hours a day are you sleeping? Studying? Reading outside of school? Spending time with your family? Practicing? Playing video games? (Yes, there were video games all the way back when I was a kid, too.)

He wrote all of my answers down. I was always honest with this coach – I knew he had my best in his mind and would support me no matter what.

“Ok, here’s how many hours a week you’d sleep. Here’s how many hours of studying…” and on down the list. It turns out, I was spending as many hours playing video games as I was practicing golf. (And both were more than I was studying….)

“Cole,” he said, “I’ve always found that tracking how I spend my time and my money is the best way to see what’s most important to me. Do you think spending as much time playing video games as practicing your short game will help you become a college golfer? Do you think sleeping in every weekend will help you draw closer to your family or your faith?”

He smiled, told me to make another 50 short putts and head home. I got the message and changed my behavior: more time reading, more time practicing, and about 10% as much video games.

Handling Disappointment

That story in my life ended as I wanted it. I changed enough behaviors and beliefs in order to play golf in college. I gave up a lot, too, but the relationships and memories I gained were more than worth the trade.

But what happens when we can’t influence the future to our liking? What happens when things out of our control go wrong, go against what’s most important right here and now for you?

Well, everybody handles disappointment and grief differently. Some people get to work. Others get sad. A few get mad. Most of us, though, go through a whole range of emotions. And, you know what? That’s completely ok.

We are supposed to. Believe it or not, it’s actually good for you to feel those things and even better to, when you are ready, talk about them with someone you love and loves you back. These emotions won’t be minimized or excused away. They need to be confronted, talked about and processed. Like all things in life, the only way out of those feelings is going through them.

This Too Shall Pass

When I think about disappointment and loss, I often think of King Solomon’s ring. If you aren’t familiar, King Solomon was thought to be the wisest king of Israel. Legend has it that one of his rings had a saying that was true no matter the situation: this too shall pass.

Let me break down that sentence a bit: This – whatever is happening right now – will change into something else. We can cheat in cards and in video games but there is no cheating time. ‘Too’ – everything changes. The more you fight the change, the harder it will be on you. A better way is to be like water and flow with it, carving your own channels over time. ‘Shall’ – not maybe, not possibly, ‘shall’ – it will. ‘Pass’ – move on, pass by, change.

This sentence is really useful when things are going great. It’ll keep you humble. It’ll remind you that things change and you’ve got to change with it. Do you think Weequahic had to change much as we grew from 120 kids to 750 in 8 summers? Oh, yes, we have to change every year.

It’s also an important sentence to remember when times are scary or dark or troublesome. Those times will pass. We don’t know when, but they will. There is hope in that message.

Our Decision Making Process

Speaking of changes, let me address the very large elephant in the room. Many of our friends in Wayne County cancelled their summer sessions today. I know the decision was terribly hard for them. While we respect their decision, we have not yet made one about Summer 2020.

As I said in my email earlier today, safety is our most important concern. And this concern involves our campers social and emotional health as well as their physical health. Being cooped up for so many weeks is hard on our kids. Camp, I believe, could be a wonderful respite for them.

We read the same headlines that you do. They are certainly concerning. We’ve been reading studies. We know that while a very small portion of children have been affected, there is a much lower risk for them. Could sleeping in a bunk increase the possibility of spreading a virus. Yes. AND, if we can test everyone before they arrive, keep our staff at Weequahic for two weeks prior to camp, and keep everyone at camp the whole time, we may be able to mitigate that risk.

We’ve been talking with our camp doctors a bunch – I think they are actually tired of hearing from me. There have been multiple conversations with many others in the field. We’ve been on testing calls, research calls, and more.

We are still waiting for guidance from the American Camp Association. Some of that has come out today. The rest will be out over the weekend. We are waiting to hear from the State of Pennsylvania’s Department of Health. I’ve heard news from them will be coming out ‘in days.’

When and How We’ll Decide

Kate and I feel obligated to do everything we can to provide our campers and staff a safe summer. We’ll continue to dig and learn and think creatively. If, after reading through the guidelines, we feel we can’t make Weequahic great and as safe as possible this summer, we’ll let you know. If we feel we can, we’ll do that too, in a very detailed manner.

We want camp for our kids and our families and our staff. We just need a little more time to see if we can make it all work. Thanks for being patient, flexible and hopeful with along the way.

Speaking from the Heart

April 25th, 2020

At Camp Weequahic, we talk a lot about ‘courage.’ It’s one of our three main values for one very good reason. To quote Maya Angelou:

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

It’s good when you are generous and kind to a friend. It’s even more so when you treat someone you don’t know. What’s the very best? When you treat everyone that way, consistently – even those people you don’t like or feel like you shouldn’t.

Doing so takes courage. It requires us to be uncomfortable and, possibly, afraid of the consequences.

Learning a Lesson

When I was a senior in high school, I got a lead part in our three-act play. I was known at school as the preppy, conservative golfer. The young lady playing the female lead – and my character’s love interest – was a liberal, artsy, ‘rebel’ in my opinion. We both got some grief from our respective groups about having to work together. I was not happy… and neither was she.

We were neither generous nor kind to each other over the first few weeks. Then, grudgingly, we started to appreciate one another. On the final night of actual show, we stood on stage accepting the applause while holding each other closely. We had become good friends who appreciated each other, despite our differences.

I often think back and wonder how much better the play would have been had we both had the courage to be kind and generous to each other.

The Heart of Courage

The word courage is an interesting one and one that is linked very closely to the ‘Heart of Weequahic’ video we showed right before this campfire talk. The best person I know of to speak about this is Dr. Brene Brown:

“Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant ‘To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.’ Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences — good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as ‘ordinary courage.’”

Isn’t that great? I love how Dr. Brown drills down to the essence of things and puts these big ideas in such a way that we can apply them to our lives right now.

Ordinary courage is having the courage to speak honestly and openly about who we are and our experiences. It’s also about listening and accepting the gift of someone else doing the same.

My Heart Right Now

I’ll take a moment and speak from my heart.

These last five weeks have been the most difficult of my camping career. The uncertainty is the worst part: will the Pennsylvania Depart of Health allow us to open? What will the American Camp Association and CDC guidelines for summer camps require? How will our campers, families and staff members handle this experience and the decisions for this summer? Will we start on time, a few days or weeks late, or not at all? What will this do to our campers, our families, our staff, our camp and our full-time team?

I go through these incredible swings of emotions every day: I get a piece of news that leads me to think we are going to start on time and think this will be the most incredible summer ever. A few hours later, I get another piece of news that puts doubt into my heart.

Kate, Sue, Dana, Scrappy, Cammie, Jerry, John and I make plans, and the more plans, and then more again. Everything we are doing right now centers on two things: safety and flexibility. Thankfully, our suppliers feel the same way. Both Amerasport and CampTrucking will offer full refunds if camp doesn’t happen. The ACA is allowing medical forms to be filled out within the past 24 months. PackMyRx – our new camper medication fulfillment company – would send the medications home rather than to camp.

This Summer

Will we open? I don’t know. Are we planning to open? ABSOLUTELY! Are we coming up with a ton of ‘just in case’ plans? Of course. We’ll all know more in the next three weeks. As soon as we know which plan we can put in place, I’ll let all of our families know.

One other piece of my heart to share: thank you. Speaking on behalf of the team, I’m so grateful for the support, patience and love our families and staff have shown over the past several weeks. We know y’all want camp. We know that you all know that we want camp. We are going to do everything in our power to put have us all back safely at Weequahic this summer.

Whatever happens, I know our Weequahic family will face the situation with a grateful outlook, an intentionally chosen attitude, and the ordinary courage required to share our hearts. We all love you. Be safe, patient, and hopeful. We’ll all get through this… together.