Learning from Our Mistakes

Tonight, once again, was our weekly Friday Night Service.  And perhaps all the more appropriate given the amount of tumult in the world outside our bubble at North Star, the theme of the evening was learning and growing from mistakes and failures. Or more succinctly titled on our packets tonight: “Mistakes are Opportunities to Learn.” Jared Marcus gave a fantastic sermonette about failing the right way and growing at each turn, and spoke to his own mistakes here at camp and at home that have led to new passions and new successes.

This is actually one of my favorite services of the summer, because what better place than summer camp is there to make mistakes? Try a new sport you’ve never tried before, miss the archery target 10 times before finally getting it, spend all summer signing up for climbing trying to get to the top of the challenge wall, finally getting up on water-skis after falling over and over again.  It’s a pretty rare place in life to get to try, and fail, at so many new things: socially, physically, athletically, creatively…in an environment free from the judgments or eyebrow raises of the outside world.  

Today wrapped up our last day of the current series of campers’ activity picks before they move on to trying a different set of projects tomorrow.  That last day is always filled with the sounds of campers striving to reach personal milestones via our Objective Based Programming I mentioned in our last post.  It’s really the culmination of the activities and games and skills through the 3 days on a project.  But whether they hit all the targets they need to move up a level in riflery, finish the rocket they were building, get a handle on fielding ground balls or not, the joy is in the trying and growing.  Or hey, sometimes just in the goofy fun!

So before moving on to our next round of picks, it was nice to close out the week with this message tonight.  Try something new.  Fall on your face.  Laugh it off.  Get up and try it again.  And we couldn’t have picked a better night: a beautiful sunset, perfect whether, a nice breeze off the lake through the trees at the Council Ring.  If there’s a bubble to be in while the world learns from mistakes around us, we sure could do worse than this one!  

I for one can’t wait for the next week of successes, failures, growth – and most of all fun – up here in the North Woods.

Today’s Grace:

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

– Vince Lombardi

Be seated.