Camp is...

All week long, I find my brain running with the impossible task of trying to define this place. Royal Family is...what?

RFKC is...a tiny seven year old in a pink, fuzzy pegasus/unicorn costume clopping across a baseball field in wildly oversized cowgirl boots, craning her head up to talk to one of several costumed teenaged boys, while dusty elementary schoolers run the bases and a just bigger boy in a penguin costume stands to play catcher.

It is canoe rides that have no other purpose than to pick a leaf off a lamb's ear plant on the tiny island just off shore,

...a CIT having a magical battle with a clump of three armor clad little boys, waving her wand to turn them into anything that their imaginations can come up with as they roll and run over this grassy field shaded by towering pines,

...bug bites and cough drops and long lines at the nurses' cabin,

...birthday parties and bounce houses and chariot rides and children who are so equally tired and covered with dirt that we decide to put them to bed smudged and sweaty and deal with showers after the next day's Polar Bear Swim, because children who have just jumped into an unheated pool at 6:45 in the morning think that hot water is their new best friend.

RFKC smells like...sweat and bug spray and glue sticks,

...sunscreen and urine and endless glasses of milk poured before the counselors sit down to begin a single meal,

...like cake and nail polish and curing irons used on little girls who have just finished washing their faces on the front porch of the cabin,

...like that gloriously sweet and musty smell of dirty socks and air freshener and fresh air that can only come together at camp. Because, yes, summer camp has a smell.

Camp is...tinies who fall asleep on the nearest grown-up during chapel and wander through these trees absently picking up sticks and setting them down again and singing to themselves with the words of these newly familiar songs.

"I am not forgotten..." the boys bounce against the edge of the inflatable, waiting their turn, "...Lord, Jesus, won't you come and fill me up, 'cause, without you, I'd be feeling so empty..."

Lined up for fancy dinner, during a lull in chapel, walking down to the pool, or waiting for coach's games, they sing, "...You never let go, through the calm and through the storm..."

RFKC is...endless letters and constant finagling over when they can next check the mail boxes,

...counselors and staff fitting letter writing into every spare moment that they can squeeze out of the day, because, in this land of no phones and no cameras and no instagram, if the kids don't get a letter about it, it may not have actually happened,

...and seven-year-olds ecstatic to learn that even though it is only everybody's "pretend" birthday, the cupcakes and ice cream are going to be very, very real.

It is...meltdowns and giggles and slow trust that comes quicker than we have any right to ask or expect.

This year in particular, it is sunshine and unity and kids and adults alike who light up as if they have just been given the greatest present in the world.

It is...CITs who hold out their arms with patient grace to absorb the boy cooties that one of my little girls has managed to pick up from here or there or everywhere and who let her tug us together on her steady mission to discover who exactly at camp is taller than who,

...teenagers and adult staff who quietly get up to place a towel over mysterious dripping substances in the middle of the night and then go back to sleep, ready to wake up and smile all over again the next morning.

It is...high schoolers who take on the role of high intensity parents for the week and relax in the moment after the bus pulls away, grateful to once again "be the kids" in the equation,

...and who spend the next hours and weeks talking about "their kids" every moment that the opportunity begins to present itself.

Camp is family determined to let every member know that they are seen and appreciated and loved, a week long group of tight knit purpose that manages to spill out the seams to infect an entire church, the sort of thing that fills up conversation after conversation and somehow still leaves the entire thing still sitting there to be talked about all over again.

Camp is name tags and magic and hurt and healing, not-nearly-enough-sleep and already-ready-to-go-do-it-again.

Camp is beautiful and camp is messy.

Camp is life so smashed up together that it might just be a tiny glimpse of heaven.

(Because, sometimes I doubt that Forever is going to be a peaceful sort of quiet place, and I think that it is going to be a whole lot more rough and tumble rubbing together of lives, with all of eternity to work out the differences. Forever might turn out to be just a little bit like a less exhausting version of camp, which Jesus right there to fill us up 'till we overflow.

Because, the leaves of those trees will be for the healing of the nations.)

"It Was a Good Day..."

It's grad weekend in this part of the desert.

A staccato whirl of intersecting with many of the same people over and over and over again, eating a little here, and then there, and then at the next place. Finding new things to talk about and old things to say. And, loving these people enough that we all keep going to just one more party and then one more and one more again, even when drooping, social kids have just about reached their limit, moving place to place in the weekend's 100+ degree heat.

Backyards in neighborhoods old enough to have shade trees see circles of grateful bodies settled on the grass, watermelon slices in hand and cups of some from of flavored water balanced nearby - because you can't have a summer grad party without watermelon.

The graduates patiently answer the same questions over and over and over again

And, in between, we take the time at church to graduate up a class of 5th graders and a class of 8th graders.

It's a little bit haphazard, but somehow carefully marked. Donut holes and sunshine for the 5th graders, one last week to run up and down this hill, to laugh, and to prove the things that they have learned to these 6th grade girls who have come to join us for our final week. Come back to the space under the stairs that they occupied themselves just twelve sort (long) months ago.

"They do so much Bible." The 6th grade leader who was with us mentions afterwards as we sit in the cool across the parking lot, waiting for high schoolers to trickle into this safe space after yet another whirlwind round of parties. "It challenges me to push them more in middle school, to be more about God things and life things."

Pushes us to grow and to change, to find the things that they need and to pour into them with everything that we have.

Because, kids have a gentle way of forcing grown-ups to be better.

"Can we go play ninjas?" The eighth grade girls make the request that I haven't heard in years, since their fourth and fifth grade years, when it was still sort of, kind, almost, not quite acceptable to trail lines of scattered children giggling silently through the empty places of the church. And, it's yet another facet to the way that we say goodbye.

Like the sizing up to determine if they can fit a no longer so tiny person through a very tiny window and the wandering down to the courtyard that they had forgotten they knew existed, the taking of pictures and the wrapping in toilet paper.

Eighth graders are always wrapped in toilet paper before they leave, sent off with all of the love that a crowd of middle schoolers can pour into the act.

Donut holes. Toilet paper. Parties.

These are the liturgies that mark the slow end to one season and the beginning of another.

It's quirky and it's odd and it probably wouldn't work quite the same anywhere but here, but this is a little of what grad weekend looks like in this part of the desert.

Brownie (Trinity) Sunday

We're flirting just on the edge of normal time. 

Trinity Sunday. These uncertain days where heat gives way to thunderstorms and desert bred teenagers stand out to talk in the rain as if their very skin needed to soak up this liquid, this refreshment that comes warm and gentle from the sky as a reminder that growth can be soft, change can be bright. Fiery colors that paint the clouds, orange and red, brilliant, tumultuous.

Because, our kids are brilliant and tumultuous in the midst of it, one moment steady and close as a summer sky, the next so wildly variegated that neither my head nor my heart can spin fast enough to keep up with them.

And, I am reminded, once again, of the visceral way that we respond to change around here, the way that we seem to stretch moments until they are shallow and thin and somehow briefer than all of our poking and prodding would suggest. And, yet, not.

There are only two 5th grade girls this week, but they ask to stay our own group, to sit in the sunshine on this familiar hillside and talk about summer - shallow conversations while their fingers tap at simple games of my phone. Mad Libs in the hallway while they wait for the moment that I slip away to serve brownies and ice cream with the high schoolers. Nothing. Everything.

In three years, they will have forgotten the verses and the lesson plans as thoroughly as the 8th graders who don't recall that they used to be the small group that had memorized more answers than anyone else. But, they will remember these moments. They will remember that church smelled like warm grass and felt like sloped ground beneath their feet. Remember that we played games and we laughed as often as we prayed, that we learned each other's hearts even when we couldn't remember each other's names. That church is a place to be safe and be known and be loved.

That the same sense memories that bring the middle schoolers in and out of these familiar phases will prove powerful to them as well.

Because, really, that's what Church is, isn't it? A place to put hands and feet and sights and scents to the intangible wonder of Grace.

To wash dishes and carry tables, to scoop ice cream until our hands are tired, and to simply sit and wait. A place where, sometimes, our mess comes rising to the top, and things are beautiful regardless. Fragile, soft, almost translucent in the daylight, but glowing strongly in the dark.

We have another candidate for the youth pastor position visiting with his wife, and the whole lot of us - kids are leaders alike - are amped up an extra notch or two at the anticipation of it. Quick to jump in to play games with him, to pray for him from the stage, to laugh at all of the appropriate places. A little more snarky than normal during the senior interviews, goofier, less serious. Generally falling all over ourselves like a pile of puppies in a pet shop window.
"Here we are!"
"Do you see us? Do you like us?"
"Love us! Take us home!"

Until the sky thunders and the glass doors, always loose in their frame, rattle with the wind. It's been doing this around here lately, filling the sky with pillars of sunlight and sunset and towering black clouds that combine like a shot from an apocalypse movie playing out before our eyes. Because rain always seems to befuddle the desert dwelling.

But, they scramble up the stairs after the game, out the door, into the parking lot.

And, then they stop.

Hands out, heads up, under this warm, gentle rain that falls against a brilliant orange and red sunset over the roof of the church building across the parking lot. As if Grace itself were dripping down into their hair and the cracks between their fingers. Too soft to clean the smears of ice cream that mark the asphalt. Perfect for standing and talking, about books and stories and listening to voices that are different than ours. Perfect for breathing. For remembering, that, even though the next few weeks promise to be a whirlwind of graduation and end of school year and grief marked anniversaries...

Grace falls like rain.

Then do not marvel, o Master,
that I question You at night!
I fear that by day
my weakness could not withstand it.
Yet I comfort myself that You will take up and claim
my heart and spirit for life,
since everyone, if only they believe in You, shall not be lost. 

Be encouraged, fearful and timid minds,

take hold of yourselves, hear what Jesus promises:

that through faith I shall achieve heaven.

When this promise is fulfilled,

up above

with thanks and praise,

I shall glorify Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

who are Three in One.

Bach's Cantata 176 - For Trinity Sunday