Bird Song and Old Steps

There is a certain kind of hoarse shriek that I am convinced only the middle school male is capable of producing. Some of them with more regularity than others.

It is unique. Identifying. And, I can tell without looking which sound belongs to who.

Other people learn bird songs. Jessica learns the piercing sounds of middle school boys who shriek like they are trying to use echolocation to orient themselves in space.

Some weeks it is quick, announcing their presence as they come running in or jumping over or hurtling down. Other weeks, like this one, it continues until I am sure that their throats must be raw with it.

Over and over and over.

Not quite echolocation, but almost. 

Shriek. Look up. Catch eyes. Play. Shriek. Look up. Catch eyes. Play.

Bump. Run. Catch. Torture. Release. Bump. Run. Catch. Torture. Release.

Shriek. Look up. Catch eyes. Play. Shriek. Look up. Catch eyes. Play.

He's in seventh grade, starting to get long and lanky, and the walk from one end of the church to the other was punctuated by greetings from the kids that he teaches, little boys who adore him.

And, maybe it is because it doesn't seem like so long ago that he was that size himself that I indulge the repetition and the patterns that we haven't used quite this way since elementary school.

Or, maybe it's something in the kids.

He brings up stories from our small group. *bby talks with me about when she was a baby. *nn* compares only knowing me since 4th grade. The girls huddle close but don't blink when I go to chase the shrieking one.

J*m** sits beside for the first time in forever, and J*m** rubs coins across the carpet until they are hot, pressing them against the tops of my bare feet, challenges me on our mini basketball hoops. There are no breakout groups. And, it's one of those weeks where growing up means going back, just for today, to being little.

So, when our pattern is interrupted by a game, he makes sure to tell me what side he is going to be on, makes sure that I see him during music (even when I break old patterns and don't come over), maneuvers his space during the lesson until we have a clear line of sight.

Because, these are steps to a fourth grade dance.

It's been three years, but we were once very good at this.

It gives us something to fall back on, something known. Something other than those messy questions that no thirteen year old wants to answer in a room filled with dozens of peers. "How are you doing?" "What's wrong?" "Are you okay?"

Not honestly, at least.

But, there is something raw and honest to the shrieks that never stop, to the running and the catching and the chasing. To the little boy who never gets up until I do, who asks that we not add other leaders into the game the way that most weeks allow. Who stops when I am talking to another boy and allows me to reach out and snag him.

Right to left. Back and forth. Rhythmic. Steady. I talk and swing him in a loose basket hold that he doesn't fight. 

And, I am reminded of the fourth grader who used to run wild circles, watching me out of the corner or his eye. Until I caught him. Reached out and snagged him in the circle of an almost basket hold. Let him stay there until he finally melted.

These patterns. Seasons. Fourth grade steps in a seventh grade dance. Grown up and little all at the same time. These are the languages that we speak.

Languages where shrieks are sometimes just as good as words.

Because, well, that's just middle school.

Cluster

For four years, I have co-led a high school girls' group with two other people, one of whom was actually my high school leader once upon a time.

Every week, the girls are incredible and insightful and thoughtful and oh so very funny, and I wish that I had the freedom to write more. But, what happens in cluster stays in cluster.

Unless, of course, we put it on YouT*be for all the world to see.

Because, yes, in what has to be the most exuberantly truth and information loving of all the clusters, this is the sort of thing that we do… talk about the eight sections of the Old Testament and how which of the things that we are reading fit in where.

And, then we make up hand motions to help remember them.

Enough?

"He was talking about you [at school]and he said that, 'my church leader has a phone on her app.'"

It's a simple phrase, the fore spoken 7th grader looking sheepish at my other elbow, and I don't want to put too much into it. She's only telling me because of the flip flop of words. Phone on her app instead of an app on her phone. It's gentle mocking. Nothing more.

But, I do anyways.

Between the quiet laughter and the half listening to game instructions that leaves all of us uncertain of what we're supposed to be doing - I over think it.

My brain spins a million miles an hour when I'm with this group. We've made four years' practice of sifting through every word and flicker of action in order to find truth that has always been buried in a certain level of noise and chaos. And, I'm not about to be able to turn it off now.

These are my kids.

Or, they were, but they aren't, but they are. And, it's as mixed up in real life as it sounds on paper.

As mixed up as it sounds in K*r*n's rendition of J*d*n's story. His church leader, even though this is the second year that I am not officially his leader at all.

But, I am.

Some weeks they are as close as my own skin, like someone forgot to install the normal space between our elbows, feet, knees. And, some weeks they remember that there are other people here, other leaders, other adult - or nearly adult - humans who want to teach them and love them and learn who they are.

Some weeks they forget in one moment and remember in the next.

Some weeks I am intentional about giving them space, about letting another leader step in to handle it, whatever it is. Some weeks they are intentional about not letting me do so.

Some weeks it is relatively clear that I am a sixth grade girls' leader.

Other weeks, a quick scan of the kids around me would make that distinctly less than clear. Because, there are still weeks where I am surrounded mostly by seventh grade boys.

Sometimes I think that I am as mixed up about it as they are, like a mom who can't decide if it is better to let her child cry for a few weeks in the nursery until he gets used to it or just not bother bringing him in at all.

I may have become that mom who just starts working in the nursery with her kid instead.

Over thinking.

Over thinking because church is meant to be a place where we can come to feel safe, known, steadied against the instability of a broken world. But also pushed, grown, challenged.

And, I have to wonder if we're finding the proper balance between the two.

Am I pushing them hard enough? Would they learn more if I stepped back? Or, would the lack of connection just be an excuse to disappear?

Since forth grade, I have trusted, we have trusted, these particular kids to self select, to put themselves in the groups where they need to be. They moved around a little, at first, but they stopped here. For the fourth year in a row, they have largely stopped here.

Is that okay? Shouldn't the boys have males at church that they look up to more than me? How much does shared history outweigh shared gender?

Is it enough? It must be enough. Surely it is enough. Is it enough to teach them how to be human and trust that, once they know how to be human, they will be wise enough to figure out how to be men?

Is enough to be slow and gentle, to let them learn to trust other leaders at their own pace, without breaking their trust in the process?

Is it enough, for the boys and the girls, to just do life, and trust God to take care of the rest?

These kids have a marvelous ability to set my head whirling, to bring up constant questions that might not have any answers. To turn ecclesiology back into a pondering of this situation, with these people, right now.

And, when ecclesiology turns to eucharisteo. When eucharisteo turns to chario. When the study of church turns to gratitude and gratitude turns into a greeting, a cause for joy.

That might just be enough.