Literature Camp: Writing, Reading, and the Castle Oil Built

Why literature? Why poetry?

Why a literature camp in a castle?

For years, friends raved about the annual “Lit Camp”, and last weekend I attended for the first time.

We left at 11:30 a.m. on Friday. I drove, and with me were two sisters from New Holland, Dorcas and Annetta. None of us had ever been to Lit Camp before. The trip to western Pennsylvania took five hours.

I hope this is worth it, I thought.

The details were sketchy: a mansion in Franklin, PA, lots of great bookish people, and bring your own mug, bedsheets, and a sample of your own writing for others to critique.

The final miles leading to the castle were on a dirt and gravel road surrounded by woods. Then the trees gave way to lawn, and the huge stone house was before us. We parked and dragged our luggage to the registration table beneath the car port. A collie sat in the shade, apparently the castle’s dog, but not the guard kind.

Lit Camp is hosted by The Curator, which was formed by a group of former Faith Builders students. Faith Builders is a Mennonite college located about an hour away from Lit Camp.

I got a private room on the second floor, in the Wilson wing of the castle. I used the map on my schedule to find it, and then went downstairs to look around the hall, front room, dining room, and kitchen. There was even a set of servants’ stairs.

“It’s like Downton Abby!” I exclaimed when I met my friend, Kelly, in the coffee room. We go to the same church and she was one of the friends who encouraged me to try Lit Camp.

Pictures in the hall told the history of the castle, which was built by an oil baron, Joseph C. Sibley in 1911. He loved to host guests, so he built a huge home.

When I was a student at Penn Johns, I remember a passage in our history book titled “Black Glue Becomes Black Gold” about the oil rush in Pennsylvania. Our castle for the weekend was only a half-hour away from Pennsylvania’s first oil well.

Sibley passed on in 1926, and the castle changed hands several times. It’s now owned by Life Ministries (no connection to the Life Ministries Counseling) who rents the building out for Christian retreats.

Faith Builders uses the castle for special events, so it was a natural choice for The Curator to host Lit Camp.

Lit Camp is open to anyone interested in reading or writing, but most of the attendees were Anabaptists. I never learned exactly how many people were there— maybe close to one hundred. One guy came all the way from Oregon. I talked with several friends I hadn’t seen in years.

Over chicken curry the first evening, I met Shelia Petre, one of the main speakers. She sat next to me and correctly guessed my church background based on my accent after we spoke only a few minutes.

After supper, the topics started with “Why I Am a Poet” by Shelia and “Why Literature?” by G.C. Waldrep. We sat in the front room, evening sun rays pouring in, windows open. The castle has no air conditioning.

The juxtaposition of the two speakers— Shelia, the mother of nine children, with her long sleeves and self-deprecating humor and G.C., a bearded professor who teaches creative writing at Bucknell University and regularly publishes in academic journals—started the weekend with a brilliant and sometimes hilarious bang.

I went to bed knowing I had made the right decision to come to Lit Camp. My night was peaceful, I couldn’t hear any traffic, even with the window open.

Saturday morning’s breakout options were “Taming Leviathan: a Comment on Management” by Kyle Stoltzfus or “What is Poetry—and How Do I Read It?” by Josh Nisley.

I decided I’d get more out of the latter. I don’t know much about poetry. We memorized poems in school, of course, and I enjoyed reading some of the great classics in my high school literature textbooks. “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe is probably my favorite poem. But I seldom pick up a book of poetry.

So learning some rudiments about poetry from Nisley’s lecture was helpful. Don’t read poems in a hurry. Read them several times. Let them stand alone.

In poetry, the writers must make every word count, more so than other forms of writing. Likewise, the reader has to work harder to glean meaning from poetry.

Later in the morning, we “close read” “To Blossoms” by Robert Herrick. “Close reading” is a form of literary analysis. Like doing exegesis in Sunday School, except this was a poem and not a Bible passage. Were the blossoms just blossoms? Or people?

Later we split into groups to critique each other’s writing. I joined a prose group with five others. A literature teacher named Carita led our group.

We spent Saturday evening on the lawn. For supper, the cooks served a Low Country Boil— a Southern dish of potatoes, sweet corn, sausage, and shrimp, all boiled together in one pot. After the meal, a group sang a few songs, as the rest of us lounged on white blankets.

After it got dark, we sat around a campfire, with more poems and stories. Hannah K. read a story written from an angel’s point of view. Carita read a poem in German.

In the morning, we went to church— a chapel on the hill above the castle. From the church, we could see the Allegheny River.

I left Lit Camp feeling like a rich, blessed woman to have experienced a weekend like that, and thanking God for all I had enjoyed. I’ll end with a poem I was introduced to this weekend.

Love III by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
            From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lacked anything.

“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”:
            Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
            I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
            “Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
            “My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
            So I did sit and eat.