All weekend, the youth pastor makes coffee on stage in front of the kids, good pour over coffee, black or with liquid flavorings, distributed in some of his favorite mugs, and, all weekend, a few of my girls sit on the floor to be able to see.
Listening, watching, thinking things through. Climbing up onto top bunks for conversation and filling the time largely with the sound of crickets.
Our first cabin time is silent and forced, but, in the few words that come, the other leader notices how quick they are to disagree with one another, how comfortable they are with holding different opinions, how it is done without vitriol or tension. And, it is good to have fresh eyes, because, I might not have even noticed.
This has become so much a part of what we do, of who they are, of how they process. Wrestling through questions and doubts, holding space for never being certain of the answers.
(And, we do figure out how to have cabin times that are a little more natural conversation and a whole lot less silence -- although perhaps no less disagreement.)
"Love God. Love people," one of the girls sums it up afterwards. "The end."
They are loved. Loved enough to think nothing of voicing their frustrations, because they don't have to be perfect. Loved enough to ask wild questions and circle back to familiar conversations, and loved enough to opt out when they feel like they have heard it all before.
Loved enough to sit and talk on these couches until a more conscientious leader reminds us of curfew, and loved enough to gather back here before the sun comes up to watch as the weather cycles through rain and snow, sunshine and fog, all in the long hours before breakfast.
Loved enough to sit and talk on these couches until a more conscientious leader reminds us of curfew, and loved enough to gather back here before the sun comes up to watch as the weather cycles through rain and snow, sunshine and fog, all in the long hours before breakfast.
Loved enough to do this thing in a different way than we have ever had cause to in the past.
Middle school ministry is without a full time director, and, so, there are smaller people running around all weekend, holding their own camp alongside and intertwined with the high schoolers', bouncing by for hugs and hip bumps every time that we see each other. Making my older ones smile with off beat singing and dancing on the sidelines of worship.
Trying to carve out their own space, teasing each other, laughing, playing, and a little off kilter, because this new way of being means that not all of "their" leaders who are at camp are actually their leaders for the weekend. Instead, we are there as high school leaders and students, trying to find balance without sacrificing one retreat for the other.
Holding space for different groups at different times, building patterns and rhythms in that compressed sort of family time that camp creates.
Mealtime lines become sacred spaces, my phone travels, as it always does, and a little person tucks herself shamelessly under my arm during worship, ready to curl up on the floor and fall asleep at about the same time that the high schoolers are ramping up for the night.
Little cousins are flipped upside down in the breakfast line, and there is this blurry space where "ladies first" gives way to this mixed gender, mixed age, group that somehow finds itself often together. Sixth grade, twelfth grade, adult; leader, student, all of the above. Family groups overlapping with family groups, overlapping with family groups.
They play their own games, have their own snowball fights and prayer times, but discover that you can crowd surf, when there are high schoolers waiting to catch your tiny, flying self, and that, sometimes, those same high schoolers will let you steal the chips off their plate and squeeze into the tiny space left at an already overcrowded table.
Sunday morning, we forget about the divisions for a little while and fall into easy, middle school leader patterns: fly up, photo sharing, phone stealing, being jumped on, tackled, and dragged from one end of the room to the other. Twenty minutes of every middle school language that we can think of to reassure them that they are loved.
So loved that one of my high schoolers complains early on in the weekend that, "Jessica, I think that you love them more than you love us."
And, I am 99.9% certain that she doesn't actually want me to roughhouse with her after chapel the way that she has just caught me doing with one of the 7th grade boys. But, she does start asking for the hugs that the middle schoolers assume are theirs for the taking, learning from their easy freedom the same way that they learn from the high schoolers steady grace.
Grace for when we cross the line from the slightly ridiculous to the utterly absurd. Grace for when our outdoor game becomes an indoor one. Grace for when the things that they have been talking about for a year don't turn out like they had planned. Grace for moving cabins and loud corn hole games that drown out conversation. And, grace for when our familiar patterns give way a little to make room for everyone at once.
Because, we're more Venn diagram than cohesive whole, this year, overlapping circles of stories and habits that all center on this God thing, this Jesus thing, this business of being poured out and filled to overflowing with Grace.
Haiti kids who ask for a morning wake-up, even as they hold a phone in their hand; recognize my water bottle when I leave it sitting places that it shouldn't be; use the snack bin in our cabin as an illustration for the dozenth Haiti story; and come looking for lotion and EmergenC, cough drops and melatonin, already confident in the contents of my bag.
Haiti kids who can identify the arc of a familiar conversation by a single overheard word or phrase, who know each other's triggers, who talk about team members who aren't here almost as often as they tell stories about the ones who are, and who are only mostly joking when they ask to spend the night on the couches in the cafe, rather than splitting back off to our cabins.
Cluster girls who lay hands on each person in turn, voices falling over each other in a prayer shower, as the leaders take turns washing feet; who revel in this place where Bridgetown and Haiti collide, even if it isn't the way that we are supposed to be doing it at all. Girls who wash our feet in return.
Girls who pack up on Saturday night and spend the extra time on Sunday morning throwing out trash and cleaning up the random bits of this and that that have left our mark on this place; haul things out to the trailer before we tromp through the snow and jump over puddles in order to get a cabin picture; make a point to meet my middle schoolers; claim the longest table for our cabin and then fill in the gaps with every extra person they can find.
Underclassmen with their own history and stories and expectations. Old youtube videos, vines, and random conversations; a crouton given in celebration of a facebook-friendship anniversary; the counting of years that I have been one of their many leaders; memories gone over and over and over again.
Clapping games and card games; boys who come to tell me when they feel like the youth pastor has said something particularly brilliant during cabin time; and a seat for Jessica on the bus ride home, saved by the same child who has been doing so since he was a tiny sixth grader who had yet to decide whether girls or kaleidoscopes were a more interesting thing to talk about.
This time, we talk about slightly more weighty things, God things, life things, draw the youth pastor into yet another theology conversation that is deftly flipped back on them. And, even still, I know that there are things that he is thinking and feeling that we haven't had the time to say.
Bridgetown kids, breakout group kids, college kids who appear on Sunday morning, new ones who somehow still fall into these ever shifting groups. Middle schoolers with their own layers of history and complexity.
We could use at least another six retreats just to begin to sort through the surface layers of it all.
It's a little bit like a giant family reunion, where everyone is mostly certain that they are related, but no one is 100% sure how.
So, instead, we stretch out every moment of every hour for as long as the clock will allow, jump up and down like crazy people, lift our hands in the air, and crowd surf through what might have been cabin time.
"Grace that brought me to the throne of God!"
They've turned the song into an anthem, a party, a celebration, and I'm not sure that they realize how right they are. There is Grace here. Grace that weaves together our complexity and our mess. Grace that walks the balance line between the instinct to wear a leprechaun hat all weekend and the instinct to stay up for "real talk" until all hours of the night.
Grace for kids who gather for quiet times far earlier and longer than what the schedule asks of them, for encounters with the Divine, and for the practical questions of living life like Jesus. Grace for throwing together a wildly disparate group, and Grace for learning to live a little more like family.
Grace for kicking coffee mugs and trying not to slip on the ice. Grace for tromping through knee deep snow by way of a "hike," and Grace for a cabin of strangers who learned to be a cluster.
This is the God who comes in tenderness and love. The master who washes the servants' feet. The one who was filled to be poured out. And, as these overlapping circles join together to take communion, this is Grace that draws us to the throne of God.
Trying to carve out their own space, teasing each other, laughing, playing, and a little off kilter, because this new way of being means that not all of "their" leaders who are at camp are actually their leaders for the weekend. Instead, we are there as high school leaders and students, trying to find balance without sacrificing one retreat for the other.
Holding space for different groups at different times, building patterns and rhythms in that compressed sort of family time that camp creates.
Mealtime lines become sacred spaces, my phone travels, as it always does, and a little person tucks herself shamelessly under my arm during worship, ready to curl up on the floor and fall asleep at about the same time that the high schoolers are ramping up for the night.
Little cousins are flipped upside down in the breakfast line, and there is this blurry space where "ladies first" gives way to this mixed gender, mixed age, group that somehow finds itself often together. Sixth grade, twelfth grade, adult; leader, student, all of the above. Family groups overlapping with family groups, overlapping with family groups.
They play their own games, have their own snowball fights and prayer times, but discover that you can crowd surf, when there are high schoolers waiting to catch your tiny, flying self, and that, sometimes, those same high schoolers will let you steal the chips off their plate and squeeze into the tiny space left at an already overcrowded table.
Sunday morning, we forget about the divisions for a little while and fall into easy, middle school leader patterns: fly up, photo sharing, phone stealing, being jumped on, tackled, and dragged from one end of the room to the other. Twenty minutes of every middle school language that we can think of to reassure them that they are loved.
So loved that one of my high schoolers complains early on in the weekend that, "Jessica, I think that you love them more than you love us."
And, I am 99.9% certain that she doesn't actually want me to roughhouse with her after chapel the way that she has just caught me doing with one of the 7th grade boys. But, she does start asking for the hugs that the middle schoolers assume are theirs for the taking, learning from their easy freedom the same way that they learn from the high schoolers steady grace.
Grace for when we cross the line from the slightly ridiculous to the utterly absurd. Grace for when our outdoor game becomes an indoor one. Grace for when the things that they have been talking about for a year don't turn out like they had planned. Grace for moving cabins and loud corn hole games that drown out conversation. And, grace for when our familiar patterns give way a little to make room for everyone at once.
Haiti kids who ask for a morning wake-up, even as they hold a phone in their hand; recognize my water bottle when I leave it sitting places that it shouldn't be; use the snack bin in our cabin as an illustration for the dozenth Haiti story; and come looking for lotion and EmergenC, cough drops and melatonin, already confident in the contents of my bag.
Haiti kids who can identify the arc of a familiar conversation by a single overheard word or phrase, who know each other's triggers, who talk about team members who aren't here almost as often as they tell stories about the ones who are, and who are only mostly joking when they ask to spend the night on the couches in the cafe, rather than splitting back off to our cabins.
Cluster girls who lay hands on each person in turn, voices falling over each other in a prayer shower, as the leaders take turns washing feet; who revel in this place where Bridgetown and Haiti collide, even if it isn't the way that we are supposed to be doing it at all. Girls who wash our feet in return.
Girls who pack up on Saturday night and spend the extra time on Sunday morning throwing out trash and cleaning up the random bits of this and that that have left our mark on this place; haul things out to the trailer before we tromp through the snow and jump over puddles in order to get a cabin picture; make a point to meet my middle schoolers; claim the longest table for our cabin and then fill in the gaps with every extra person they can find.
Underclassmen with their own history and stories and expectations. Old youtube videos, vines, and random conversations; a crouton given in celebration of a facebook-friendship anniversary; the counting of years that I have been one of their many leaders; memories gone over and over and over again.
Clapping games and card games; boys who come to tell me when they feel like the youth pastor has said something particularly brilliant during cabin time; and a seat for Jessica on the bus ride home, saved by the same child who has been doing so since he was a tiny sixth grader who had yet to decide whether girls or kaleidoscopes were a more interesting thing to talk about.
This time, we talk about slightly more weighty things, God things, life things, draw the youth pastor into yet another theology conversation that is deftly flipped back on them. And, even still, I know that there are things that he is thinking and feeling that we haven't had the time to say.
Bridgetown kids, breakout group kids, college kids who appear on Sunday morning, new ones who somehow still fall into these ever shifting groups. Middle schoolers with their own layers of history and complexity.
We could use at least another six retreats just to begin to sort through the surface layers of it all.
It's a little bit like a giant family reunion, where everyone is mostly certain that they are related, but no one is 100% sure how.
So, instead, we stretch out every moment of every hour for as long as the clock will allow, jump up and down like crazy people, lift our hands in the air, and crowd surf through what might have been cabin time.
"Grace that brought me to the throne of God!"
They've turned the song into an anthem, a party, a celebration, and I'm not sure that they realize how right they are. There is Grace here. Grace that weaves together our complexity and our mess. Grace that walks the balance line between the instinct to wear a leprechaun hat all weekend and the instinct to stay up for "real talk" until all hours of the night.
Grace for kids who gather for quiet times far earlier and longer than what the schedule asks of them, for encounters with the Divine, and for the practical questions of living life like Jesus. Grace for throwing together a wildly disparate group, and Grace for learning to live a little more like family.
Grace for kicking coffee mugs and trying not to slip on the ice. Grace for tromping through knee deep snow by way of a "hike," and Grace for a cabin of strangers who learned to be a cluster.
This is the God who comes in tenderness and love. The master who washes the servants' feet. The one who was filled to be poured out. And, as these overlapping circles join together to take communion, this is Grace that draws us to the throne of God.
