Youth Adventure Camps 2021: Interview with Ann Burfeind and Jen Zimberg
By Caitlin Wallace French
One sunny January day several years ago, a large group of young people stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol at a youth conference. Various members of the group began spontaneously singing and others joined in. They soon realized they were all singing the same camp song. The midwesterners in the group thought that no one else in the world knew that song. Suddenly, they each felt connected to everyone else in the group. They all knew what camp meant – the acceptance, the camaraderie, the energy, the love – it was all there in the song. They recognized each other, they understood each other in their hearts. The flames of the spirit were lit above each of their heads – a Whitsun experience.
This interview is a window into camp experience: What happens there? Where does all this acceptance come from? Youth Adventure Camps – what are these? I had the pleasure of meeting with both Rev. Ann Burfeind and Jen Zimberg individually to talk about the upcoming Youth Adventure Camps.
Interestingly, they credit each other with the impulse for the camps. A picture of communal work! This work grew out of Ann meeting with six former campers virtually last year organizing camps. They learned incrementally how to do it and are now coordinators for the camps. In the midst of Covid, there were a lot of young people who were caught between graduating from high school or college and their next step. This group planned camps, not knowing if they would ever happen. Their group has now swelled to fifteen and the camps described below are the fruits of their work.
Ann Burfeind is a priest in The Christian Community serving in Vancouver, Canada. Jen Zimberg is the director of the camps as well as a Christian Community Camp alumna. She lives in the Harlemville, NY area.
Caitlin: How are the camps organized?
Ann: The camps are led by the needs of everyone in the camp community. Firstly, the campers who are children or teens are at the center of all our planning and visioning of what a camp can be. The needs of the staff, who are older teens and adults, are also a part of our visioning of camp. The directors, who are priests and other dedicated adults, hold the whole of camp. This has always been true in the camps that I have directed in the Midwest and in British Columbia. This year we have looked at the Dutch and German models of camps that have existed for many years. In the European Christian Community camps, the young adults take more of a lead in camp planning and directing. A priest attends and guides the camps. We are looking to this model for guidance because there is a dedicated and very capable group of adults that want to take on more creative leadership, and I am in British Columbia behind a closed border!
Caitlin: What would you say is your guiding principle or question?
Ann: How do we meet the needs of the young people, the wider Christian Community, and the world while serving the children? The answer is not always the same — it changes as the needs change.
Caitlin: Why do children and young people love camp?
Ann: They are outside of the familiar ties that hold them in a particular way – their families, their friends, and their teachers. They are free in some sense and can try out being a little different from their regular selves. It is also a place where homesickness and a crisis can occur. They can work through the crisis/stress cycle, through the sadness that can lead to a growing point. It can be described as a death process which leads to rebirth.
I’ve learned a great deal through my years as a camp director to trust this cycle, which can be painful, but leads the campers to a new level of courage and resiliency.
Caitlin: Why Christian Community Camp?
Ann: The staff can offer something outside of themselves – freely giving love, devotion, compassion to the younger children, and the younger children can receive it from them. The heart of the camp is the Act of Consecration – the love that streams from the altar. We practice being human beings.
Caitlin: Can you describe The Act of Consecration as it happens at camp in more detail? Is it outdoors?
Ann: It happens once or twice a week in a created, dedicated chapel, sometimes outdoors. This is set apart and held in a quiet way. The Act of Consecration is the sun from which all of the camp grows. The healing love which streams from the altar streams through to the adults – they carry this in an unspoken way out to the children throughout the week. The camp community is a place where people who don’t have a congregation near (often young people) can experience the service once a year and it can nourish them for the whole year because of the unique forces present at camp.
We also have the Close of Day service every evening. It can be a doorway into sacramental life. We are sharing life together at camp. The staff serves at the altar, and others see –“There's my friend, my comrade who’s wearing vestments at the altar.” We are so open, so exhausted; the candles are burning through all of this... a special atmosphere is created.
Jen: Christian Community Camp happens to be a place/community where in the short coming together, something else can enter. There is a unique constellation of people which will never be together again in the same way – all spending lots of time together outside, in the summer. There is an exceptional quality to it – reverence and meaning come into being through community building. All of the things that we do become a vehicle for this.
Caitlin: Would you say that it’s spirit coming in?
Jen: Yes. It matters that we are working while holding the recognition that human beings are spiritual beings.
Caitlin: You all have hit upon the gold nugget of camp. What would you say is the most challenging part for staff?
Jen: It’s a direct way of working in service to build this event and more of a leap than we talk about it being. It’s vulnerable work. It's about using a supportive, gentle gaze with the other staff – knowing what it is like being a person that others look up to. Lining up the physical details for the first day helps prepare us to take the leap right away. Saying yes opens the door for all of this to take place.
Caitlin: What would you say is the most challenging part for the children/youth?
Jen: I think it’s our task to support young people in their own holding of responsibility, their autonomy in that, and to leave space for what they will bring to the table. There are a lot of distractions in the world and yet it’s that “yes” that brought them to work at camp. They say yes to being there and then that’s when the challenges come; in the course of creating camp, anyone would encounter that it isn’t always easy. This is also why it is also so rewarding, because of the working through the challenges and the very real growing that takes place through it!
Caitlin: Jen, what is the role of singing in the camps? How do the children and young people respond to singing?
Jen: Singing has a large role in daily life at camp. Campers are sung awake in the morning. There are morning and evening gatherings bookending the day with songs that change depending on the time of the day. The children/youth who have been campers for many years sing a lot. For some new campers, it can take a bit for them to warm up to it. All in all, the singing builds a mood of reverence, joy and – at times – humor.
Caitlin: I have one more question after this, but is there anything that you wished that I had asked? Or that you would like to add?
Ann: I would love to talk about the North Carolina Kite Camp. This is a new adventure for us, though there is a long tradition of kite camps in the Netherlands. Lukas Chin, a former camper and a filmmaker who works as a teaching assistant at the Otto Specht School in Spring Valley, NY, is helping to organize this camp. He is learning how to fly the kites and which kinds of kites to fly. There are so many possibilities with kites – ones that pull skateboards, ones that are flown in synchronicity, ones that are handmade of paper or boxes… This camp is also in a beautiful place, in North Carolina at Hammock Beach State Park.
We have discovered the overarching theme of these camps is the elements:
Air – kite
Water – canoe
Fire – healing
Earth – hiking in the Appalachians.
This work is really about finding forms relevant for our times. Covid has really impressed that upon us. In the world, we are forming smaller, more regional groups. Hopefully, these camps fit into this new picture of the world.
Caitlin: Ann, you work with a lot of young people, do you have any words of advice for parents and others who spend time with young people?
Ann: Everything is about relationships. The young people pick up on any sniff of inauthenticity. They are watching us. They notice how much we are a part of the world. How much we hold the whole – whether we see each individual as a human being. This partly shows up in gender. I am seeing you as a human being, as part of etheric cultural activity. The higher self shines through (this part is not even incarnated). When we come together, it’s a safe space. They are seen, accepted. To know how to do this you have to live into the experience of another person.
Steiner talked about loving our times. Culture is so Christ-filled, He is walking through the earth. I am not at all concerned as long as we keep striving to see each other. Who do I see that I am? What am I speaking out of? You have to know yourself.
Caitlin: Thank you Ann and Jen for sharing about camp experience!
Dear Readers, click each image below for more on the Youth Adventure Camps…
Further, if you are interested in participating in Youth Adventure Camps on the West Coast, please email Ann Burfeind at annburfeind18@gmail.com, or call her at 1-438-725-4884. Also, please keep an eye out for details on a Children’s Camp in the summer of 2022 at Sunfield Waldorf School and Farm, Port Hadlock, WA.
About the Author: Caitlin Wallace French is a student in the “Knowing Christ” program and a former early childhood teacher. She lives in Santa Rosa, CA with her family of five.
This is a blog entry by a student at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student editorial team of Robert Bower, Shannon Young and Faith DiVecchio. For more information about our seminary, see the rest of our website, and for even more weekly podcast and video content check out the seminary patreon page.
The views expressed in this blog entry do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors or the Christian Community. They are the sole responsibility of its author.
