If Only For An Evening

A Shepherd's Child, with lyrics by Linda Camp

and set to music by Stephen Michael Camp*

It is a blurred memory—without the name of the California town we went to, the names of the couple whose home we were in, or any of the eighty people there—that fills me with longing to go back…if only for an evening.

I was traveling with Stephen Michael Camp, spirit-led singer, songwriter, and self-taught guitar player who shared my home—paying me the money he earned delivering newspapers, as he’d quit his sixty thousand-a-year job managing a graphic arts department. He only wanted to sing his songs to God. We came to California because his three daughters were there—in San Diego—and because he had a following for his sound healing workshops.

Driving at night on the highway to a town where we were invited to join in an activity that had continued for eight years without a week missed, we went in the front door, stopping at rows of people sitting cross-legged, facing forward, filling the living room. Stephen headed up front where the musicians sat wall to wall. To the left, the wife of the couple whose home it was began a meditation.

The songs were spiritual, with musicians changing who was playing as the room was bathed in music and voices in the obscuring lowered lamplight. I was known only as Barbara who was with Stephen—he was the one with a big, spiritual heart—an untrained baritone writing his own songs who was being asked by groups around the country to come—once they’d heard his voice. The night was one of harmony that I felt throughout my body in more than sound—but in kinship with the others gathered there.

My realization is, "We have moving experiences—unremembered but not forgotten—until a spark brings back the past—like a loved one who’s been away from home too long."

* © Stephen M.L. Camp and Linda Camp Chrystal 1986