Fun at Camp Quest Minnesota!!

It's time for Summer camp, and I just got a chance to visit Camp Quest Minnesota!!

Camp Quest is a week-long secular camp for kids, full of friendship, fun, and learning -- this year's Minnesota theme is the ocean, especially the deep sea! The Chaplain wrote a good post explaining what Camp Quest is all about, so to avoid repeating what she wrote, I'll mention a few points I learned on the tour I got from the director Jeannette (who, BTW, was kind enough to mention that she read and liked my book):

Camp Quest Minnesota is one of the first Camp Quest locations. They get campers from all over North America, but lately a higher proportion are local since more camps have been opening. Nonetheless, the Minnesota chapter just keeps expanding -- this year they had more than 50 campers, essentially filling the camp to capacity.

I asked if they'd perhaps move to a bigger location, but they're happy with the current facility, the Voyageur Environmental Center (which runs its own camp for kids for the rest of the Summer). Instead, they'll probably expand to offer two separate weeks of camp.

Now, you may have heard that "Camp Quest was specifically designed for children of Unitarians, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, or whatever terms might be applied to those who maintain a naturalistic, not supernaturalistic, world view." Jeannette mentioned her pet peeve is that the press constantly labels it an "atheist camp" (which probably causes some people to imagine it is some sort of indoctrination camp, parallel to Jesus Camp).

However, it is not an atheist camp, it is a secular camp -- which means the kids are encouraged to choose their own labels or choose not to label themselves as they see fit. They are encouraged to develop critical thinking skills and also develop respect and friendship for people they may not entirely agree with. The bottom line is curiosity -- encouraging young minds to explore!!

OK, so I'm wearing an atheist T-shirt in this one -- but I'm on vacation, and it was the only clean shirt I had left!

My kids liked it too -- I may be sending them here in a couple of years.

Though I hope the bear is not representative of what they'll run into here...

Opening up these sorts of camps around the country (plus some international) isn't free -- there are big start-up costs in addition to the standard operating costs. That's why we're having a fund-raising competition again this year -- PZ Myers vs. the horde!!

Last year the horde won -- and as part of the bet, I was supposed to get my Mormon relatives to sing some select tunes from The Book of Mormon (the musical) during our big family reunion.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out because we didn't have the community center rented long enough to do a sing-along after the talent show. So, my apologies for not following through -- and I hope to make up for it by helping raise some more money for Camp Quest this year. Please consider making a donation!

My great big Mormon family reunion!!!

For the sake of having a fun story to blog, we should have had an embarrassing disaster or at least some awkward discussions of religion. But for the sake of the family, I'm glad the whole thing went smoothly -- more than smoothly, even -- fantastically!!

This isn't even everybody.

It's all the more astonishing because we had 67 people in attendance (out of the 98 descendants + S.O.s of my Mormon grandparents). It may not sound like much, but 67 is a lot of people. And these folks are normally spread all across North America and the whole world -- and most hadn't seen each other since the last reunion, 10 years ago. Some were new, and were meeting the extended family for the first time.

As for religion, about half of the adults in my generation (my siblings and first cousins) are former-Mormon or never-Mormon, and about half are believing/practicing Mormons. But as far as I could tell, neither side was judgmentally looking down on the other or trying to impose one set of beliefs and practices on the whole group. Our family absolutely came first -- before any kind of ideology -- because we genuinely wanted to see each other and reaffirm and reestablish our family relationshps.

Personally, I wanted to facilitate building memories for all the kids who are too young to have attended the last reunion so that the cousins wouldn't just be "some people my mom and dad know" to them. And I think this goal was passed with flying colors.

The religion question never took center stage. The time and address of the services of the CoJCoL-dS were listed on the schedule, as well as an alternate gathering at the amusement park of the Mall of America (some of the faithful opted for the latter). There were also some (pretty tame) evening drinking parties -- including one at my parents' house! And there was a huge, fun talent show in which all the kids really hammed it up!

My "talent" was designing this fab reunion T-shirt

The day after the extended family left (and we were down to my own parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews), we had a big family meal that began -- in traditional Mormon style -- with a prayer. It was at that moment that it hit me that we hadn't had a single whole-group prayer for the entire reunion. This is kind of unusual for a Mormon family gathering: normally some meal would have a prayer or some event would open or close with a group prayer, even if some of the members of the group are not believers.

Yellow team rules!!

This is partially because my nevermo sister-in-law did all of the leg-work to organize all of the venues, all the food, all the financial accounting, etc., and made sure (through delegation or, if necessary, doing it herself) that everything that needed to get done got done. And she didn't have any particular reason to schedule in any group prayers.

It's also partially because there were so many people (including so many little kids) that it is hard to get everyone to quiet down and be reverent for a prayer. Some big Mormon families would manage it, but you have to really want it in order to manage it, and this group was more focused on making everyone feel welcome and comfortable.

This is everybody.

Save the humans!!

"Save the Planet" -- as a rallying cry for environmentalism -- has got to be one of the most tragic cases of mis-branding I know of.

When there's a choice between things you want or need now vs. "the planet" or "the environment", it's too easy to say "I don't care that much whether this or that species goes extinct," or "the planet can fend for itself."

The thing is, though that "the planet" isn't really in danger. It's going to keep revolving around the Sun regardless of what we do. "Life on Earth" will too. Even in the worst-case scenarios, we humans almost certainly won't manage to wipe out all life.

All human life -- all of the planet's potential to support human life -- well, that's a different story.

One of the most amazing and wonderful things about the human species is our capacity to think about the future, and to make decisions based on their consequences.

But are we good enough at it to save ourselves?