It has been a long time between blog posts, but the reason for that is that I have been on an intensive research-and-interview trip to New York City these past few weeks. Now that I'm back home, I can write a blog post with some highlights of my trip, and yet those weeks were packed with all kinds of experiences I'd like to share with you here, so the word "highlights" seems like a challenge. There were sights and sounds of New York, there was research into photographs and old onion-skin files. I attended churches that Shiloh folks had attended decades ago, I interviewed former and current board members of Shiloh, I heard stories about conversion experiences and also about traumatic events in people's lives. Many people I talked to spoke about relationships they had through Shiloh. I met people of all kinds of colors and ages and backgrounds, all associated with Shiloh in some way. I did one-on-one recorded interviews and held small "History Parties" to gather together current and former Shiloh staff and alums so that I could record their stories as a group. I learned a lot of historical information, but in this post I'm going to tell you about some of the moments of connection I saw because of Shiloh.
Below is a picture of Elaine and Nita. Elaine lived in the city as a kid in the 1970s, and Nita was her counselor in Shiloh's year-round program in Brooklyn when Elaine was about eight. That meant that Nita lived in apartment building in Elaine's neighborhood, and Elaine and about seven other girls her age were in Nita's Shiloh class after school. They went on field trips to the city and beyond, chugging along in the Staten Island Ferry or even piling on a bus to go to Nita's parents house for a weekend. They learned Bible stories, did art, read together, made things, sang songs. By 2012 Elaine and Nita hadn't seen each other in over thirty years, and they were reunited at a History Party we held at an old church building in Manhattan. And by the way, Elaine and her brothers and sisters still all get together to sing the songs they learned as Shiloh kids.
Another reunion I witnessed from its near edge was between Clyde and Robert. Clyde had been involved in Shiloh in various ways, but in this part of the Shiloh story, he was involved as a church member decades ago. When Shiloh staff asked local church members to host city kids on weekends, Clyde and his wife decided that they wanted to develop a relationship with the particular set of kids they hosted instead of hosting different kids each time. So they began to get to know some of the kids in Robert's family, especially Robert and his brother. In the interview I did with Clyde, he said he and his wife had really felt connected to those little guys. But they had lost track of them about twenty years ago. When former Shiloh staffer Kay heard this story, she said, "I'll find Robert." And within a few days, she did. I was in Kay's car on my way upstate to see Shiloh's campsite when Robert happened to call Kay back. His voice was coming through her speaker phone, and he was in tears; he said Clyde and his wife had been so important to them as kids and had shaped what Robert knew of God. Later I found out that Robert and Clyde had indeed spoken by phone right afterwards and were both excited to meet again after all this time. Here is a picture Clyde after I interviewed him--he didn't know yet that this scheming was going to take place:
Then I went up to camp and saw how the little kids literally hung on the camp counselors. Many of those counselors had been Shiloh kids at camp when they were small, and they are from the same neighborhoods as the young kids of 2012. Some of the counselors had been at camp for nine or even eleven years and have been able to be mentors for the little ones. Here is James, the counselor, and it's his second year as a counselor. He's painting rocks with his buddy who is about nine:
And at camp I saw tough guys be good to each other. I tried to sneak a picture of the guy below, but he caught me taking his picture, so I gestured that I wanted to photograph him and would that be all right? I thought he might keep his tough-guy exterior in the photo, but instead he broke into a smile. Then the other tough guy sitting next to him looked over and said, "You have a wonderful smile." He did. And here it is:
Here's another tough-guy picture I liked, taken while the group was singing a slow song about God during Celebration time:
Lest these seem like wishful assertions of meaningful experiences, let me say that I think throughout its existence Shiloh has deliberately been about building relationships with underserved youth, even in all the messiness of what "relationship" means. That hasn't always been easy on a big scale or a small one, and I've learned about some times when the camp and the year-round program have struggled or even been undone. I've learned just the smallest amount about some very hard experiences in the lives of some of the people at Shiloh. But as an outsider trying to look in with a critical eye, I have also heard a lot of stories about times when this program has dramatically impacted kids and counselors alike. For example, at a practical level, the summer camp roster now is purposefully small so that every kid feels special attention, and I've heard from one camper-turned-counselor how this is the one place where she could just be herself. Some former Shiloh kids talk about learning to read (Elaine still loves Charlotte's Web for this reason), and some talk about feeling safe at Shiloh, and there seems to be a definite recognition of healing amidst sometimes debilitating pain. At successful times in Shiloh's history, people are provided a specific opportunity to talk through their story and their doubts if they need to. I don't want to over-idealize it, but I think Shiloh does have some powerful echoes. I'll be exploring them as I learn more about Shiloh's history. More to come as the project moves on. . .
