J. Javier Pioli (pictured), a member of the ecotheology team at the Emmanuel Center in Colonia Valdense, Uruguay, wrote this reflection following a recent youth camp sponsored by the Evangelical Waldensian Church in the Rio de la Plata.
“There are two small coves between those rocks. Take off your clothes and enter its waters. The salinity in the water is so strong that it keeps you suspended no matter what way you turn. You remain like this for a moment, enclosed in a great emerald-colored liquid. The millions of cells of your skin experience a pleasure they haven’t known since the day you were born. You’re once again in an isotonic, warm, maternal liquid that suspends and swings you, just as it did before you were born, just like what still happens during certain nights, when you dream of floating weightlessly.”
With these words, Isidro Más de Ayala described a scene from the Atlantic coast of Uruguay in the late 1950s. The landscape may have changed since the 1950s, but the feeling of being suspended, like a body drifting in space, remains. Somehow Isidro Más de Ayala manages to use words to draw the almost mystical experience of bathing in the sea. It’s not a refreshing bath, nor is it splashing or dipping your feet in the water; it’s rather a feeling of entering another medium, another substance, in which your body becomes one with a universe of particles.
I found this text by chance, just days after having visited the Waldensian youth camp on the Río de la Plata, which this year was held in Palmares de la Coronilla in the presbytery of Eastern Uruguay. I brought home the scent of salt on my clothes, the warmth of the bonfire that I could still feel on the soles of my feet, the echo of new songs filling my silences, the warm aromas of the youth camp’s kitchen, and the untranslatable feeling of having been part of a small community. It was as if my body, enmeshed in an ocean of others, had moved to the same shared rhythm, driven by the same force, swept up in the same circular current.
What I experienced wasn’t entirely new; it was linked with many previous experiences. Camps – whether by a river, a stream, or the sea – are something universal and
foundational. In our church, every camp is an experience of living together, of building bonds that cannot be undone or forgotten. They always offer an opportunity to recognize yourself in the midst of everything else. How could we forget the ones who shared bread with us?
In the Palmares de la Coronilla camp, there was much talk about contemplation: about appreciating what surrounds us to discern in it an expression of God. During our time together we came to understand that camps are an invitation to immerse ourselves in a community experience and to feel that we are not swimming alone, and that everything around us – the sand and the campers, the people cooking and the birds, the south wind and the trees, the water and the bamboo fields – are all part of the same community.
Perhaps for Jesus’ disciples caught in a boat during a storm or for Jonah when he was swallowed by a whale, the sea might not have been the best metaphor to talk about community. Experiences change, but we are still surprised when we recognize that we are, in fact, a tiny particle in an immeasurable creation, from which we cannot separate. Recognizing that we depend on that sea that contains us is central to understanding the meaning of being a community, in close dependence on every other particle.
Any month of the year can be a good time for a camp. There’s no age limit either. Why not go to camp and let yourself be swung by that sea?
Palmares de la Coronilla is a peaceful place in harmony with nature and all those who wish to know and enjoy the beauty that God has given us.
