Camp Songs

Campers spend lots of time on buses.  The camps are far away, trips to town are further yet, and sometimes we travelled to other camps for joint activities.  Counselors need to keep campers amused, in their seats, and enjoying the experience. The ever variegated song “You Can’t Get to Heaven” did a good job at all three.

“You Can’t Get to Heaven” begins with the refrain, and then continues with two lines of improvised insults, followed by the cap “I ain’t going to worry my Lord no more”.  The song was my first experience of call and response.  Call and response leaves us free of the need to “read” the music or “learn” the lyrics. Every phrase is a new chance to get it right.  Even illiterate groups (like the campers) can communicate and celebrate with call and response. The leader sings out a refrain or a short phrase from the song. The congregation responds by echoing the leader.  It encourages mild insults to authority (campers are amused).  It encourages the moments of silence needed to listen before we sing (campers are in their seats listening so that they can hear the next insult), and finally it encourages us to repeat the refrain with all the noise our body can make, and campers therefore enjoy the experience. 

It was the insults that kept me listening. I loved accusing the counselors of stopping at every bar, and imagining how such secular items as roller skates (roll right past those gates) and rocking chairs (don’t go anywhere) might keep us from heaven.  I felt like I was in heaven sitting in a noisy bus and singing at the top of my lungs.  Everyone has a different vision of heaven – that was mine at 10.