I was waiting at a bus stop in Los Angeles a few nights ago. Absent-mindedly, I glanced down on the sidewalk and saw a shiny glimmer. It was a steel ring, about three inches in diameter. I shifted my gaze away, but then my eyes returned to focus on it.
A happy recollection warmed me as I picked up the ring from the sidewalk.
Annually, for many years, I was on the staff of a week-long summer church camp for teenagers at Cazadero, in the mountains above the Russian River in northern California. I led church family retreats at the camp on weekends at other times, as well. Time at Camp Caz was the occasion for staff and campers to have soulful conversations. It was a place where you could drop the mask you wore back home, be who you really were, and say what was really on your heart and mind. And that happened often while playing the ring game.
The ring hung from an oak tree near the outdoor dining patio. It dangled on a thin rope hung from a high tree branch. On the trunk of the tree, a metal hook was screwed in place. The object of the game was simple, but not easy to achieve: you stood ten feet back with the ring and tried to swing it onto the hook. Young and old alike found it challenging, sometimes maddening.
It was fun to take turns trying to get the ring on the hook. Success was accompanied by back-slaps and hugs. Failure, especially when repeated, was the focus of howls of mostly good-natured frustration, particularly when the ring clinked on the hook without hooking. The game had an obsessive quality to it. You just couldn’t stop playing it until you got the ring on the hook at least a few times. So it locked you into a good chunk of time with another person, creating an opportunity to learn a lot about each other.
I spent many an hour with kids aged four to sixty-four, two of us at a time, taking turns swinging the ring. And as we stood by the oak tree, standing in sun and shadow on dried, golden leaves, we’d have chats about everything from the ridiculous to the sublime.
I got hooked, so to speak, on the spiritual magic that happened in those moments, when people opened up with each other and listened with open hearts. I got hooked on the belly-laughs, the whoops and the howls, that happened by the oak tree as we played the ring game. Just like the compulsion of playing the ring game, I never tire of being with people who accept each other just the way they are.
It doesn’t take much to create a place and a space where love can happen. It costs hardly anything but time. All you need is a little patch of dirt, a scruffy tree, and a dollar’s worth of hardware. Or less, if you find a ring on the sidewalk.
Soon I’ll be setting up the game behind the apartment in Hollywood where my wife and I now live. There’s a scrubby pine that’s just the right shape and size. I am grateful to whomever dropped that ring at the corner of Jefferson and Hoover, for reminding me to share the loving, accepting spirit of Camp Caz, wherever I go and with everyone I encounter.
