Eternity in the Middle

Sunday evening. Intersect.

Spring break and lingering sunshine draw the kids outside like a magnet, where they make up games with a frisbee and a foam ball; chase each other in circles up and down hills, around the outside of this little building across the parking lot from where they served this morning.

These are our Sunday school teachers. Our middle school leaders. Our Student Owners.

Willing hands move chairs and football tables and TV stands. Meet early to plan things that they haven't told us about yet. And, it might be almost cheating how easy this is, how simply they fall into these patterns and this community.

Beyond us; despite us; alongside us.

Working together to find eternity in the middle.

The youth pastor comes panting up the stairs to where we stand greeting the few who trickle in on this quiet Sunday, the entrance a passthrough, rather than the sticking point that it is when winter reigns. He is smiling, exaggerated, a thousand times removed from his moments earlier frustration of setting up sound and slides.

"The game already started! It just happened! Let's go play!"

Play link tag in this softness just before the sunset. Come inside to kids who MC and lead music in this echoing space that they have filled with light. Who laugh often and easily.

Listen to a lesson in this careful arc that they have set up. Because, no one minds the switch to chairs so long as they can see each other. So long as they're not doing this thing alone.

Team building activity by small group. Split, as always, by the months we were born.

Smiles that dance across faces, light eyes, as they enjoy these things, these moments that they have created.

A game played simply because they felt like it. Spontaneous clapping in a church that often can't hold a rhythm to save its life. Bodies curled cross legged on the floor to sing By Your Side, as a tangible reminder of our smallness and the bigness that holds us. Voices that sound a dozen times stronger than nineteen students and four leaders.

Collectively certain that this is right and this is good.

Silly commercials instead of breakout questions. Nonsense and holiness wrapped into one as we practice a little of the easy presence of grace.

Because, tonight, with these kids, we can.

We can step back and breathe and enjoy these people. Enjoy the smallness of this group.

Find Christ here.

Not because they are perfect - and certainly not because we are. It's spring and it's Lent and we're gearing up for Haiti and there are a dozen tensions in their eyes that we don't begin to name.

They are tired and ready for a break.

But, they are present. They are here, and they are pouring themselves into this.

They come, and they create space.

Create community.

Breathe grace.

And, it's dark when we leave, when they scatter to homes and coffee shops and wherever they go when they are not here. Still warm, with a wind that promises to bring in blue skies for tomorrow.

An hour and a half.

1.5 out of the 168 before we gather together like this again.

But, maybe, just maybe, we managed to find eternity in the middle. And, maybe, as we go out to be the church, rather than just be at it; maybe we'll find it again.

Lenten Musings

"Do you guys celebrate Lent?"

A new sixth grader asks the question as we sit down on the cool concrete of the floor, the youth pastor just ready to begin his talk.

Yes. No. Sort of. Not really.

We're not a liturgical church, and the days on the calendar mean little beyond the occasional need to set up more chairs, or the vague chance of dresses and ties. But, we do this time of year. 

Lent. Spring.

This something that eats at their bones and stirs in their souls until it begins to feel like we've been here, done this before.

Growing, learning, settling into the cusp of summer and the changes that it brings.

Talking about Haiti over the heads of little people about to begin music or while cutting plastic and denim to be turned into shoes. Pulling cardboard from the recycling bin and scrawling over it with the week's verse - word by word copying out truth.

Normalizing the transition to middle school and running, running, running when the crazy-makers don't have it in their bodies to stay still.

Mixing moments and eye rolls and smiles and exasperation.

"With us and responsible." "With us and responsible." 

"Responsible." "Responsible." "Responsible." Until the kids are saying it too. Leaning a little closer. Fidgeting a little more. Growing like weeds and not sure what to do with themselves.

Because, we're spinning our wheels in this mud, slowly making traction, stick by careful stick. And, I have to remind myself to breathe a little deeper. Slow down. Don't rush the end of the story. Remember.

Remember that we've done this before. This bit where they glue themselves to my elbows and my knees. Where M*t** reappears from his spot at the front and starts to sit near us again. Where they slip in and out of my space, just wanting to say something. Show a magic trick. Take a picture. Offer a cookie. Be seen.

Remember that this is Lent.

This, with my phone in the pocket of a sixth grade girl, while some of the seventh grade boys pass around the badge part of my name tag, the lanyard around someone else's neck. The clapping hand shakes with Ch*d that wouldn't happen any other time of year. And, the slightly discombobulated feel that we ought to be moving faster than we are.

Like we were hurtling forwards and someone hit the breaks.

Stop. Breathe. 

Look back on old behaviors and new growth.

See how far they've come.

Watch the hands slip into the air in worship. Stay with this one who still can't stand the intensity of feeling that it brings to the room. Let him be uncomfortable. Let him grow.

Let them count the number of camps that they have left. The number that they have already seen.

Let them slip away, back into a room that they haven't been in for months. Let them fall into habits that only come back when it feels like their world is not quite right. Let them scramble a little in this mud. Together.

Together, even when I don't quite catch the cues. When the boys circle up for the game and then send an envoy in confusion, because, where am I? Why do I already have this circle that has formed around me? Didn't I know to come find them?

When we release the girls too early or let them get too loud. When the kids aren't the only ones spinning their wheels, fighting for traction.

When we celebrate Lent because we need to remember.

Remember that a King is coming. A sacrifice. To do what we could never do for ourselves.

Remember that today is never the end of the story.

Remember

It's the only clear photo that I have of today. This one that a fifth grader took. Tired eyes. Pulling a face at her as soon as she pointed the phone in my direction. Things scattered everywhere, as if a tornado has struck in our "girl cave" under the stairs. Pants too short over my ankles.

One girl, maybe two still hurriedly drawing out today's books of the Bible. No one in frame doing anything particularly churchy.

And, yet.

K*r*ss* is behind me, carefully winding up a top that first came from Honduras. K*d*n is belly down, flipping through pictures of twelve-year-old me in Nicaragua. Laughing. Sorting them into two piles. Photos that I am in, and photos that I am not.

Because, this is how we do church.

This is how we do church when it's daylight savings time. When they don't have a worship leader. And, when the story presenters are different than normal.

My girls jump up front with me to help the 4th and 5th grade director lead ad hoc music while we wait for the videos to load. Jesus Loves Me and Amazing Grace and Father Abraham. Words but no music while fifty little voices belt out Like a Lion.

"Let love explode and bring the dead to life

A love so bold

To see a revolution somehow"

As if, on this day of celebration, with its balloons and cookies and brightly printed banners, we are being quietly reminded of the messiness of this thing that we are doing. The rawness of humanity pressing up against the Divine.

The squirrely one slips her hand into mine as we sing. Presses down on my shoulders while we pray. Hears a dozen reprimands and jumps on just as many chances to serve.

They whisper during story and try to remember where on earth Hebrews is hiding in their Bibles. We draw and look and pictures, and we run, skip, spin, and army crawl with a well worn set of relay cards. They play Fl*ppy Bird and mancala on my phone.

Too loud in the hallway. Climbing the outside of the stairwell. Boy in this girls' group because he knows us better. Messy in every way.

Holy.

Holy when their voices ring out. 

Holy when K*d*n mentions their girl cave and when K*yl* asks if we're going "upstairs."

Holy when we build into them with these tactile sensations that their bodies are going to remember long after their minds have forgotten the specifics of todays lesson.

Holy when my seventh graders are back in another season of "remember."

"Remember when you used to bring us donuts?"

"Remember how you used to chase me?"

"Remember when I was a baby?"

"Remember when…?"

Remember.

Remind me. Remind me that Jesus makes me enough. Remind me of the sanctity of this place where we come to love God and love each other. Remind me that nothing else matters.

So we remind and we remember. I chase this one and catch him and chase him again. Lead this group out to the foyer to get cookies. Put the balloons back when that one can't quite figure out how too fix what he undid.

Hand out gum. Let them look at pictures.

Play a game and roll my eyes at a dozen antics. Shake my head when they need to stop. And, laugh often. (The middle schoolers are convinced that I'm always happy and I always laugh.)

Lend out my name tag and let them store their stuff in my bag.

Sit in breakout groups where we talk about authority and their favorite kind of ice cream. Let them push me into a garbage can as payback for the game. Run up stairs and around corners and wear half a dozen different names as we try to squeeze everything that we can out of these brief moments, feeling the quiet press of time.

Never enough hands or lips or ears or moments to communicate the bigness of this God. Never enough chances to whisper truth or shout it across this room that is throbbing with life and hurt and mess and beauty.

And, yet, somehow, more than what we need.

Not, because of us, but because of Him. Because of Grace that is sufficient. Because of Strength that is made perfect in weakness.

Because of this God. This Holy that shows up in voices of thirty-three high schoolers and a handful of leaders as they sing in the basement of a building that is probably older than any of the kids. That shows up even when the youth pastor is gone for the week. Even when we're still trying to figure out which clocks are wrong and which ones are right.

That sends six pizzas in the front door just as we are trying to determine if we have any snacks for the kids. Not because they need it. No one here is starving. But, because, sometimes I think that He likes to remind us how much He works outside of our plans.

How He shows up in the loose and the messy and the not quite finished around the edges.

How things don't have to look "right" in order to be holy.

Because, my seventh graders aren't the only ones who need to remember.