1 aug 2012

i had a chance to reconnect with her this year at summercamp. i knew her when she was a child, so this was sort of cool, talking to her as an adult. she's quirky, bright, pretty. she's got these sweet almond shaped eyes... and freckles, and long long thick dark hair.

she's what you'd call liberal - and i mean, even if you think you are liberal, you'd find yourself more conservative than this girl. she'd just come out of her freshman year at warren-wilson college but she wasn't going back because warren-wilson was too conventional for her. see? i mean, if warren-wilson is too conventional for you, then it's pretty much all of civilisation that's too conventional for you. she's going to leave the united states (she taught me to say "united states" instead of "america") and work on a farm somewhere... i don't remember.

she's an incredible girl. you'd like her, i know you would. she's intriguing... she's so intriguing. she said she had never heard of god until she came to summercamp, and while summercamp's not primarily a godcamp, there's quite a few mentions of the ol' creator dude throughout the summer. she specifically said, i'm an atheist. she told me this in the context of feeling sort of marginalised and whatnot, which i am glad she told me because i do fancy myself a bit of a nonjudgmental fount of acceptance. i mean, who are we to say what's what? i of course reassured her that being exposed to her atheism would do no damage any of the youngsters for which she had been assigned counselor responsibilities (as someone had told her it would).

i do wish we'd had more time to talk, though... i'd have liked to have learned more about how someone so full of love and life and love of life could disbelieve in a supreme being. now, i really want to be very clear at this point and say i don't imagine that a capacity for love carries with it the requirement for a belief in supreme entity. i am convinced it is possible to have the former without the latter because i have seen it in action (and not only in her). i am not doubting it can be... i am just curious to know how it works.