The week of camp is a simulation exercise. We do not duplicate life exactly (we do not have to worry about where the next meal is coming from or whether our tentmates will still like us a week from now). Instead, we create a situation within which we can live out an experiment in loving God and each other.
The program at camp consists of daily life. We teach each other what is most important and how to deal with the important things. Liturgy and lesson are not divorced from dining and dancing; living and learning exist together. To accompllish this we can draw many ideas from those human societies which, like our camp, have been based on small communities — African farmers, Hebrew herders, American Indian hunters.
It is important for human beings to participate in life as individual people, and to learn this it is necessary to be sometimes independent of the family and other familiar communities. At the same time, it is necessary to learn this independence in relation to a full human community — young and old, male and female. In this camp experience we want to minister to both these needs.
What is most important should be first. Therefore we intend to begin each morning with morning prayer, each afternoon with quiet meditation, each night with words and songs of our heritage. Each of these will be done as a supportive community.
A week of Christian life is a week of worship, and like a service of worship it is to be set apart by a liturgy of invocation and welcome as members of the community arrive and by a liturgy of blessing when they depart.
In order to pace and structure our time together, and following the example of past communities, we will establish sacred celebrations throughout the week. These times or worship will help us to focus our lives during the week.