THE LITTLE CHIEF TRIALS OF LIFE

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let’s think about our most crucial struggles in life.

Recently, a local doctor, and member of the church I attend, wrote an article in the newspaper wherein he mentioned that he went to Camp Ridgecrest in Ridgecrest, North Carolina for several summers.

Camp Ridgecrest for Boys was a four week, Southern Baptist camp where young men learned how to live in the woods, how to travel by canoe on a lake and live on the islands, and how to have fun doing it.

My grandmother wanted me to go so she paid the fee. My parents were happy to be rid of me for four weeks.

At Camp Ridgecrest campers celebrated our God of love and Native American culture. When a young man first arrived, he began as a Scout, and then he could become a Brave, then a Buck, and finally, Little Chief.

If he was really good, he could be promoted twice in one session.

Now, I may be recalling this list badly. Maybe there’s a web site where I can look it up.

Anyway, camp staff always claimed that the hardest trial to pass was to be selected as a candidate.

The last year I attended, I was selected. I was awakened at 11 P.M. with three other campers. We were taken to a cabin where the test was explained to us.

We were given two matches which we had to use to start a fire and keep it burning all night until 6:00 A.M. After that we were driven to a local mountain. It seems the name was Mount Kitsuma, but I am not sure. We were to run up the mountain with Little Chiefs who were on staff leading the way. Once we arrived at the top, we shared a vespers service. The next test we wrote a fifteen hundred word essay about what Camp Ridgecrest meant to us. Finally, around three o’clock, we were to chop wood for the big, final Pow Wow that included parents on the last day of camp.

Little Chiefs received a certificate, a knife, and a name.

The hardest part of the test was the trial of absolute silence. Everything had to be accomplished without saying a single word. One utterance and the test was over. A camper remained a Buck. He might be selected to try again the next time he attended camp.

Anyone who knows me can attest that silence for me approaches a violation of natural law.

I had no problem with the fire. I am a pyro at heart. With one match I could have burned down the entire forest quite sufficiently, but that would not have been in the spirit of the test.

I remember waiting with another camper at the foot of the mountain. We learned that the other two campers could not build a fire. The other boy disqualified himself when he asked, “How far is it?”

The run was tough, but I did it. The paper, I wrote by hand, I wrote it. Even now I wish I could see that magnum opus. The wood I needed to chop, I chopped it.

The silence I was required to keep, I kept it. I’m proud that I was able to be silent. That was a big deal to me back then. I’m certain my family members would love for me to take that vow again and more often.

The greatness of such a test has always been the lesson that the trials in life we do not choose can be endured if we pass through those fires we choose in order to make ourselves strong. Often, the best way to endure them is with silence.

My Little Chief name that they gave me was Grinning Ox.

Blessings…