The Four Axioms

12/2

I consider many places I frequent to be special. Some spots I ritually visit I might even call sacred, but one place stands out to me as the single most sacred place in my life; the holy of holies, of sorts: Camp Highroad. Only forty minutes from home, Camp Highroad is a summer camp I attended all through middle and high school. Compared to other summer camps I’ve been to, it’s pretty mediocre. The food is bad, the facilities are run down, and it’s spread out over 400 acres of rolling Virginia hills. While beautiful, it’s frustrating to have to walk up and down mile after mile just to get to different activities, especially as a counselor dealing with thirteen elementary schoolers in 101 degree heat. Despite all of this, I love being at Camp Highroad more than nearly anywhere else. Camp Highroad is so sacred to me because when I was a camper there in 2009, I became a Christian. 

Reading Lane’s four guiding axioms instantly reminded me of Camp Highroad. It was as if I already knew each one to be true before knowing what they were from my experiences with Camp Highroad. I’d like to look at each axiom and talk about how I relate to it. 

(1) Sacred place is not chosen, it chooses

This could not be more true. I did not intend on enjoying my time at Camp Highroad. The only reason I agreed to go with my friend to camp with him was because he told me the girl I had a crush on would be there. She was not. I was bitter. Other than my one friend, I knew no one at the camp. The weather was miserably hot, over 100 degrees for three days and never dropping below 90 during the daytime. Even with these factors, the Lord still managed to demand my attention and call me into Himself. I guess I would phrase this axiom differently: The Lord chooses where He interacts with people, not the other way around. Camp Highroad seemed to be the most unlikely place for me to find God and surrender my life to His purposes. I would have picked a different time and place, but God knew better. That’s typically how calling works. 

(2) Sacred place is an ordinary place, ritually made extraordinary

Ritual made Camp Highroad sacred to me in part. What truly sets Camp Highroad apart for me is my encounter with the Living God. Camp Highroad is my burning bush or mount Moriah. Because of that incredible experience I had there, it became a pilgrimage destination. Every summer for nearly six years I would drive down Lee Jackson Memorial highway out to Aldie and turn right onto Snickersville road, winding through farmlands until I reached the Camp entrance. The commute there was a ritual. The activities we did at the camp were ritualistic. Each year at camp follows the same schedule. Each day follows the same schedule. We walk the same paths. We see the same landmarks. We eat the same meals. Everything about it was ritual an let me tap into that first experience I had. 

(3) Sacred place can be tread upon without being entered

Of all the four axioms, this is the one I recognize most obviously. I have been to Camp Highroad as a camper four or five times, and of the hundreds of kids who attend each year, only a handful hold camp in as high a regard as I do. Even my friend who invited me to the camp doesn’t consider it as special as I do. As Whitefield said "God has various ways of bringing his children home; his sacred Spirit bloweth when, and where, and how it listeth.” I can’t expect all people to be as moved as I was because God’s plan is not the same for all people, but still. This point is most obvious to me. 

(4) The impulse of sacred place is both centripetal and centrifugal, local and universal

Camp Highroad stays in Middleburg, Virginia but its effects come with me wherever I go. Its memory alone proves to be an unbeatable defense against doubting my faith. The encounter I had there with God was real. It was literal. It was raw. I was changed there, and that change stays with me. Each time I return to Camp Highroad, my experience is different. Never again have I felt God’s presence so evidently as I did the first time I went to Camp highroad on my return visits. Whitefield was right; God cannot be confined to one place. Regardless, Camp Highroad is still a place of great power and significance to me.