Shabbat O’Gram 6/26

Dear Kingswood Families,

I love beginnings. Not because they’re easy. In fact, they’re usually pretty messy. Beginnings are full of uncertainty, mismatched expectations, tears, wrong turns, and sometimes disappointment.

I love beginnings because they contain something no other part of the story does: Possibility.

At this moment, four days into the session, no one knows who will become inseparable friends. Nobody knows which counselor will quietly change their life. Nobody knows which activity will unlock a passion they never knew they had. Nobody knows which difficult moment will become the story they tell for years after.

Every great camp story starts exactly the same way. With a beginning.

This week has been filled with them.

New bunks. New counselors. New routines. New friendships.

For some campers, those beginnings have unfolded exactly as they imagined. For others, they’ve looked a little different.

Earlier this week, I received a message from a parent whose daughter wasn’t assigned to the cabin she had hoped for. The parent was heartbroken for her, and as a parent, I shared in her pain. As parents, we want so badly for our children’s stories to begin perfectly. We want them to feel comfortable from the very first moment.

But we don’t grow from perfect beginnings.

We grow from learning what to do when things don’t unfold exactly the way we hoped.

One of the greatest gifts camp gives children is the chance to discover that disappointment is often just the first chapter of a much better story.

Every summer I watch it happen.

The camper who didn’t get the bunk she wanted meets the friend she’ll still be talking to twenty years from now.

The camper who dreaded their camping trip grows up to be on nature staff.

The counselor assignment that felt wrong at first leads to best friends traveling together.

Life rarely unfolds exactly according to plan.

The ability to adapt, to stay open, to look for possibility instead of certainty, may be one of the most important life skills we can help kids develop. It’s easy to stay surrounded by the people we know. But at camp we help kids discover that they have the ability to build meaningful relationships wherever life takes them. They get to discover who they are when nobody expects them to play the same part they’ve always played.

There is an incredible confidence that comes from realizing, I can walk into a room full of strangers, be myself, and find my people.

That confidence doesn’t end when camp does. It becomes the confidence to walk into a new classroom, join a new team, start a new job, move to a new city, or navigate whatever life asks of them next.

Our summer theme this year is STAY, and I can’t think of a better example of what that means.

Stay in the bunk, even when you can’t imagine having anything in common with your bunkmates.

Stay in the elective, even if your friends chose something different.

Stay at Ruach long enough to learn the dances that are so embarrassing to try.

Stay long enough for the story to unfold.

Stay long enough to discover that a disappointing beginning doesn’t have to become a disappointing ending.

Stay long enough for unfamiliar faces to become trusted friends.

Stay long enough to realize that sometimes life gives us exactly what we need, even when it isn’t what we would have chosen.

Tonight is our first Shabbat together.

If you’ve never experienced Shabbat at camp before, it’s difficult to describe. The pace slows. The noise softens. Campers who met only a few days ago stand arm in arm, singing together as the sun sets over Woods Pond.

It’s one of my favorite moments of every summer because it reminds me that community isn’t created in a single day. It is built meal by meal, conversation by conversation, joke by joke.

It is built by staying.

As I watch our campers tonight, I know that many of the friendships surrounding them didn’t exist on Tuesday morning. Some of the kids singing together tonight might never have met if their week had unfolded exactly as they planned.

That’s the beautiful thing about beginnings.

They don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be given the chance to become something wonderful.

Thank you for trusting us with your children. Watching them grow into more confident, compassionate, courageous versions of themselves is one of the greatest privileges of my life, and we’re just getting started.

Shabbat Shalom,

Jodi