Kindness on the Mountaintop

Our church teens had been looking forward to this summer camp all year. From the somewhat lower than flatland of New Orleans, we’d travel to the North Carolina mountains, with a stopover at Six Flags over Georgia. It was an exhausting trip and especially for the adult chaperones, including my wife, Susie, and me. In our mid-20s, we’d been married two years and hadn’t yet started our family.

I was the youth pastor, the starting place for most ministerial careers. I’d been at this same suburban New Orleans church since I’d graduated seminary.

My duties were straightforward: Sunday School class for the teens, aged 13 to 17; sitting in on Youth Choir practice Sunday evenings; and leading the youth group class on Wednesday evenings. But adding regular counseling sessions for teens and miscellaneous duties assigned by the other pastors, I usually had a full work week.

“The youth group is a collection of cliques,” I said to Susie after my second meeting with them. 

“You’re right, Mike,” she said after joining me for a Sunday School class. “And they don’t talk with each other much.”

The “popular kids,” as they were called, included the head pastor’s daughters, the jocks and cheerleaders at the local high school, and the kids who lived in the wealthy neighborhoods near the church. Comprising the next group were the “almosts,” the kids who didn’t quite make the popular group. Then there were the five or six “anti-populars,” the kids who deliberately dressed and acted to prove they were different. The last group was everyone else, nice kids but ones who didn’t participate much, never volunteered, and generally kept quiet. 

I’d tried a few things to break down the cliques. I failed. The group lines were rigid and unbreakable. 

Susie found some success with the girls, pairing them for Bible verse games. “But it’s over when the games end,” she said. 

Predictably, the kids quickly sorted themselves into their groups on the bus for church camp—popular kids all the way at the back, the almosts in front of them, the anti-populars, next, and the rest of the kids closer to the front and the chaperones.

One kid was new, or newer. Brian’s family didn’t attend church and had once belonged to another denomination. An only child, he was a school friend of one of the almosts, who’d invited him to church and youth group. He was a handsome kid, with dark eyes, dark wavy hair, and a slender face marked by two dimples. He’d just finished his junior year. From the first time he’d visited, he stood out. He would’ve naturally fit with the populars, but he seemed to resist their attraction, because it would’ve meant ignoring the friend who invited him. He usually hung out with the almosts, but he had no problem joining the anti-populars or the rest of the kids at meals after choir practice. He also had a beautiful singing voice, although it had taken the choir director weeks to draw him out. 

I asked him about his faith.

“I was baptized as a baby,” he said.

“But do you believe?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I like being here.” 

Brian joined us for church camp. The trip to North Carolina, including Six Flags, was mostly a blur; leaving at two on a Friday morning guaranteed an exhausted group by the time we reached Atlanta and going straight to Six Flags. We spent Friday night at a hotel nearby and arrived at the church camp Saturday afternoon.

Pine Ridge had served as a conference center and church camp for more than 30 years. A large, sprawling complex of meeting facilities, a large church building, and dormitories, it was nestled in the mountains near Asheville. Our 45 teens were among the 2,000 attending that week.

The week’s theme was “Galatians 5: Fruit of the Spirit.” Sunday would be a worship and camp exploration day, with the camp meetings beginning on Monday. Each day was structured alike: breakfast, meetings and Bible discussion, lunch, afternoons free to explore, and evening worship services in the camp’s church. The discussions were built around the Bible verses, with two “fruits” featured each day and wrap-up on Friday. Friday night would be a campfire jamboree, with departure the next day.

Our daily discussions were love and joy on Monday; peace and patience on Tuesday; kindness and goodness on Wednesday; faithfulness and gentleness on Thursday; and self-control and meeting wrap-up on Friday. As expected, the kids organized their dormitory rooms along clique lines.

There was one kid Susie and I kept our eye on. 

“Nobody hangs out with Hannah,” Susie said. “I think her family is super strict. No makeup, hand-me-down clothes that were out of style long before she got them, and she’s painfully shy.” Hannah had just turned 14 and was a little on the pudgy side. The one time I’d called upon her to answer a question in Sunday School had resulted in a tongue-tying non-answer that had several of the other kids laughing. She was also one of about 15 of the kids who didn’t sing with the youth choir. 

“And I’ve had to correct some of the other girls for calling her ‘Grandma Hannah,’” Susie said.

At camp after lunch each day, the kids would break into small—and the expected—groups. They had sports activities (volleyball was a favorite, for some reason), mountain hikes, exploring the stream that meandered through the property, a huge games room—plenty of things to keep teens busy., including a well-stocked library that no one seemed to visit.

On Wednesday afternoon, kindness and goodness day, we organized our entire group for a hike. The camp had several trails; we chose a moderate one that was relatively easy for us flatlanders. Only one stretch of about a hundred feet was steep. We made it to the top of the trail, with a beautiful valley overlook. 

Coming and going, our kids walked with their affinity groups. On the way down, however, some of the popular boys challenged each other to a race and took off running, ignoring the chaperones’ calls to stop. Most of the other kids joined in the race. 

I laughed and let them go until I remembered that steep stretch. And I raced after them, shouting stop. I was ignored. 

I’d just reached the main body of kids when I saw the mishap happen. 

One of the populars, a girl named Nicole, stumbled in front of the girl right behind her, who veered to the side and then, stumbling herself, landed in a pile of tree debris. She fell straight across a fallen tree trunk, and I heard the “oomph” of the impact.

The girl was Hannah.

Everyone stopped running; those ahead came rushing back. All the kids stood, gaping at Hannah as she struggled to get her breath back. I could see the beginning of an eruption of smiles and laughter that suddenly stopped with a movement.

Brian dashed to Hannah’s side. He pulled her up from the tree trunk, and then had her sit on it, telling her to take slow, deep breaths. Her knees were skinned; her face had a couple of small cuts, and her hair was full of twigs.

Brian pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wet it with water from his canteen. He wiped the tears from Hannah’s eyes and dabbed the cuts on her face, giving her the handkerchief to hold on them. He then helped her stand and had her take a couple of steps. 

The rest of us—43 kids and six adult chaperones—stood transfixed. No one said a word.

“All good,” he said. “You’ll be sore tomorrow but no permanent damage, so it’s OK. But we’ll get you to the camp nurse when we get back and let her check you out.” He looked around at the rest us gaping. “I had First Aid training,” he said, shrugging.

Almost no one spoke as we returned to the camp. Brian walked next to Hannah, keeping up a steady stream of conversation, drawing her out like he’d known her forever. He escorted her to the camp nurse and then saw her back to her dormitory with one of the women chaperones. The next morning, I saw him sitting next to her at breakfast, at a table with the anti-populars. They were all laughing. And he sat next to her on the entire bus ride home.

We didn’t see Brian much after that. I asked his friend who’d first brought him to church, and he said that they were in different circles now at school, the friend having become a male cheerleader. 

Years later, I was in a bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, where I pastored a church. A large placard featured a bestselling novelist with her latest book. She had a different last name now, but I recognized Hannah. The plain, shy girl had become a beauty. I opened one of the books to the dedication page:

“For Brian, the good Samaritan who taught me kindness.”

The featured image, “Angel of Grief,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Glynn Young

Glynn Young wrote his first story when he was 10 – a really bad mystery having something to do with a door behind a grandfather clock and a secret cave. At 14, he discovered Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, but he secretly wanted to write James Bond stories. At 21, he became a Christian, and the verse he was given, Philippians 1:6, became the theme of his life.

He received a B.A. in Journalism from LSU and a Masters in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He spent his professional career in corporate public relations, and mostly executive speechwriting. Since 2011, he’s published five novels in the Dancing Priest series and the nonfiction book Poetry at Work. Since 2009, he’s been an editor for Tweetspeak Poetry, writing a weekly column. He and his wife Janet live in suburban St. Louis.

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