I remember being
twelve and going to Vacation Bible School on the military base near our home.
My father had lost an eye during a brief stint in the army, long before I was
born, and received a disability retirement, though he was in fact the least
disabled (or soldierly) person I ever met. The disability retirement meant that
he and his dependents continued to have full military privileges, a state of
affairs my siblings and I took advantage of in every possible way. We swam at
the base pool, went to the movies at the base theater, shopped at the base
stores, and used the base library, which featured a remarkably comprehensive
collection of children’s books. Eligibility for participation in the base’s
Bible School was another perk of being a dependent. Like most of the kids who
showed up for it, we went mainly for the freebies handed out daily, including
beach balls, Frisbees, reusable water bottles, tee shirts, Nerf balls, and, of
course, Bibles. Those of us who lasted long enough even ended up with windbreakers
and pup tents. (Years later, I knew a woman who had been a chaplain’s assistant
in the army. She put together a huge buffet of donated food for the opening of
a new campus ministry center at the local university, and when I complemented
her on the quality of the feast—not to mention the door prizes—she told me,
“The one thing I learned in my time with the military was that if you want to
pack an event, you have to give away free stuff.”)
We would be picked up by a bus at Center
Chapel and transported to a collection of unused barracks deep inside the base,
rather dilapidated wooden buildings painted pale yellow on the outside and gray
on the inside. Each building was furnished with cafeteria tables and metal
chairs. The buildings also held an assortment of coffee cans filled with sand
and labeled “butts only,” which we, the kids, found very amusing. On the wall
near the drinking fountain in each building was a gadget that looked like a
soap dispenser packed with shiny salt tablets. For a couple of days, I was
strangely and stupidly happy to have unlimited access to the tablets, even
though I had no idea why someone would actually want to consume such a thing.
We were assigned to the different
buildings according to our ages. This meant that I couldn’t just hang out with
my siblings. If I wanted to score a freebie, I would have to mingle. The Bible
School was a joint effort by chaplains of different denominations, and perhaps
for that reason there was little actual studying of the Bible. We spent most of
the day singing folk songs and doing arts and crafts or having “rap sessions”
about drugs and drinking, dating, bullying, and the like. I had been raised,
both at home and at school, in my own faith tradition, but the army was a
pragmatically non-sectarian institution. I remember how the chapels on base
could be quickly altered to accommodate the different denominations that used
them. Every Sunday, after Catholic mass, the Reformation was symbolically
reenacted in a matter of minutes.
At the Fort Bliss Vacation Bible School, I
found myself surrounded by kids of many faiths, who struggled with the same
issues and fears and hopes that I did. There was a girl who had been in an
inpatient drug treatment facility when she was only eleven. A boy whose mom was
an army nurse and whose dad was doing life in prison. And there was Andy (not
his real name), a pastor’s son who had lived in Guam and Korea and with whom I
remained friends until his dad was transferred to the Presidio a few years
later. He was an incorrigible prankster and a talented and fiercely competitive
baseball player. When it came to picking teams, he was always the first one
chosen. Baseball brought a special stability and purpose to his otherwise
unsettled, peripatetic “army brat” life. But as I got to know him better, I
discovered that in spite of his athletic prowess, he often seemed lonely, lost,
and rather alienated, overwhelmed by feelings that neither his family nor baseball
could fix. All of that didn’t necessarily make him a better friend, but it did
mean he was someone you could be honest and authentic around. He understood
inner pain.
The chaplains who led our discussions were
predominantly young, and, unlike Andy’s dad, were not career soldiers. They
were surprisingly open-minded, even when it came to difficult issues like the
morality of killing for one’s country, and they tended to have more than a
little healthy skepticism about unquestioning obedience to authority. In the
midst of the ugly, impersonal military barracks and the avid queuing for
freebies, I experienced a real sense of community (though I didn’t put a name
to it at the time), and I also gained a new openness toward kids and adults of
other faiths.
By the end of it, my knowledge of the
Bible was not appreciably greater—and I was already pretty knowledgeable on the
subject, as it was—but I had made new friends, and created plenty of artwork
that my parents could proudly display, and ended up with lots of free stuff,
though most of it turned out to be rather shoddily made and, unlike the
friendships, didn’t survive the summer.
