The Stuff of Stars and Dirt With Eyes to See

If you follow Route 8 east out of Port au Prince, past Fond Parisien, almost to Mallepasse and the Dominican border, there is a little town called Fonds Baillard and a school house full of people who don't exist. Refugees, deportees from the DR, who are living here until classes start again in the beginning of September.

And, they very much exist.

Their kids join 150 others in a dirt floored church building where workmen mix concrete as we sing and teach, smoothing a new floor onto the half of the room not currently filled with children. They play games outside or stand to talk with us, listlessly befuddled when we suggest running during a game, as if, surely, even the crazy blanc yo understand that it is too hot to think about running in the middle of a drought.

Water is precious here, and the parents scold that the children shouldn't play games right now. So, we talk instead, in a wild mixture of Creole and English and Spanish that is differently accented than anything that I have ever heard before. Names and ages, families and favorite colors and anything else that we can manage in this mix of children who haven't come with labels identifying their primary language.

A young teen in pink alternates bites of popsicle between the four year old running around at her feet and the baby perched on her hip. 

"You can take the baby." She offers the American staff member who is standing beside me. "Her mama is dead, and her papa is gone."

The gesture is off towards the Dominican, and I am reminded of the complications to every bit of this situation. Because, it is entirely possible that Dad is Haitian, living and working in the Dominican, while these Dominicans are living in tents and empty school houses in Haiti.

How foolish we must look sometimes to the Divine, othering each other and sniping over bits of paperwork when there are mouths to be fed and bodies to be housed and hearts to be loved.

The half finished church, this refuge with its haphazard roof and drying floor and chalkboards that double as doors, rings with the persistent squawks of two hundred paper cup roosters, damp sponges scraping down cotton yarn in the sort of absolute cacophony that seems to be an international source of childhood pleasure.

Snack and water, and the adults whose names are on the refugee list filter back into the church as the kids clear out. Silent. Waiting. Familiar with the routine, certainly wishing that, in this tiny camp, there was an alternate way to feed their families. Crisis means relief work, and relief work is what they have found themselves a part of. Sit down and listen as the indomitable Ms. Betty gives a short sermon, and we arrange ourselves with the interpreters in quiet whispers. This is only the second food distribution for our team, but, already, our habit creating students have settled into roles.

These ones pull the food from the bags. Those ones hand it in careful stacks to the translators to distribute. These ones stay up on the stage with duct tape and extra baggies in hand to repair rips and salvage anything that might be left in the bottoms of the sacks. And, always, always, if we can help it, the food goes from Haitian hands to Haitian hands.

We may be an excuse to be at these churches this week, the way that we used short term teams in Kenya as an excuse for building desks or running clinics. But, an Excuse is a far cry from a Savior, and our kids are astute enough to try to keep it that way. Confident enough in their relationship building to realize, without being told, that simply being fully present is far more important than a job description on a piece of paper could ever be.

So, the next morning, they slip their feet into sturdier shoes for hiking, and we, once again, load the bus with rice and beans, oil, water, snack, and a light, easily transportable craft that was surely Grace preparing a way for us long before we set foot in Haiti.

West, towards Port au Prince, for just a few minutes, and then south down 102, up into the mountains. Past Village of Faith and the vista of the empty river bed. Turns and switchbacks until the blue of the lake no longer watches over us with it's steady eye. Past the cluster of elaborate voodoo graves and into the town of Thoman, where we park the bus and unload into a cluster of bodies.

Part of the congregation has come down to help carry, and forty sets of hands - and one set of hooves - make light work of a twenty minute hike further up the mountain, while our bad back, back knee, bad hip, bad ankle, bad toes collection does their level best to keep up with the crowd. Through empty fields and under a papaya tree, past workmen filling in the worn away bits with fist sized chunks of limestone and up the steep parts that could almost be stairs. We're still eyeing the top of the mountain, uncertain of how much further we have to go, when music breaks out around the corner, and, instantly, we have arrived.

Arrived to middle school aged hands that jump in to pass gallon bags out rice out of American back packs into this tiny church that will surely not hold this many people, already full to overflowing, as more and more littles arrive to be squeezed in the front door while the adults ooze out the back.

And, our kids who don't fit into the building barely offer a word of question, let alone complaint. Simply get down to work holding babies and making friends.

There is good soil here, rocky but rich brown, and, for the past two years, too dry to allow anything to grow. So, the fields stand empty, hundreds of kids and adults joining hands to play Kopye and Hot Potato, to laugh and talk and tease and practice stupid human tricks in places that ought to be covered with beans and corn.

Not all of these kids can read or write their name, but their eyes light up with creativity and curiosity, with compassion for each other, and it is clear that there is a richness here that goes deeper than the soil. Children in Bertrand are highly valued, and they value one another highly in return. Snacks and water never touch adult hands, and kiddos break open cookie packets to share with those who were in the back of the church and didn't get their own.

Older kids find us again and again for simple, repetitive jokes that are the best our broken language skills have to offer. Little ones instinctively curl in when the wind whips up clouds of heavy, gritty dust-that-is-really-soil, well accustomed to bigger hands that shield and protect. And, mama's stay close, to keep a watchful and yet trusting eye on their babies.

Generations have built roots deep into this mountain.

There is poverty, sure, mud walled construction and broken benches, simple homes and oversized, well worn shoes. But, there is also a wealth that would spend hours simply talking and playing with these visitors, even long after any hope of food is gone. That would have us collecting our kids from around every possible corner when it finally comes time to leave, would bring them down the mountain still busy with the act of holding hands and memorizing faces, would fill their heads and hearts with memories of bright colors and gorgeous landscapes and let them feel so very at home in a place so different from any that they have ever seen before.

Beauty.

When they are wide eyed and searching for beauty, they can be at home anywhere. In Fonds Baillard,  Fond Parisien, Thoman, Bertrand. The places don't matter so much as the people, these walking, talking, breathing glimpses of Glory. Stardust indued with the breath of God.

Someday, eternity will stretch long before us, and we will see the temporal ends to each of these stories. But, for now, it is enough to see stardust and rich soil, clear blue lakes and the pale cut of limestone. Enough to wonder at these carefully formed images of Divinity that laugh and cry and bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Enough to have eyes to see.

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

26.

When we counted off this year, one voice chasing after another in a careful accounting of bodies present, we got up to twenty-six. Higher if the interpreters joined into the count, as they often did, Annie or James or Junior grinning as they claimed whichever number came next.

Twenty students. Six leaders.

Fifteen girls. Five boys.

And, this impossible to explain sense that they truly enjoy one another. Love each other with a raw and steady courage that seems determined to glue this team together in a way that nothing can pull apart.

This is love. Grace made present. The Church as it should be.

Five boys, going into their senior year of high school, who sit for an easy hour, listening and absorbing the stories and realities of these girls who are circled up on this rooftop with them, sitting and laying on a loose clump of mattresses, letting the stars catch their words. #YesAllWomen, tonight, is truth spoken without a hashtag. Less than, or perhaps so much more than, a social movement or a response to an event, these are friends who simply sit and listen, without the faintest breath of anything that sounds like #N*tAllMen.

This is love.

Kids who gather in the living room to sing worship songs and RFKC songs, their voices bouncing across the tiled and concrete acoustics of the room. Sing on the rooftop, where the night wind whips away the sound, and on a bouncing bus as fine clouds of dust drift in through open windows. In the early part of the week, we sing, process through music, find answers in familiar words that feel a little as if they were memorized just for this moment.

Sing and sing and sing, until the week wears on and their hearts and minds and schedules are too dangerously close to overflowing to leave space for the vulnerability of the habit. Because, we're asking some pretty incredible things out of them. Asking them to pour out everything that they have into these 200-300 kids who attend VBS each day, to learn names and ages and personalities, to stretch their Creole beyond its limits and to find ways to build relationships regardless.

To carefully make sure that each child gets a packet of cookies and a bag of water on the way out the door, knowing that many of them will be made to give the food to older family members instead in a tangle of stories that we haven't begun to be here nearly long enough to unravel. To tell hungry children "no" when they beg through church windows for rice and hold out empty hands to adults when the food runs out a dozen families too soon, and our kids are forced into the reality that handouts are a stopgap, not a solution.

And, then, like so many who have gone before them and will continue to go after them, they wake up the next morning, square their shoulders to load the bus with yet another round of carefully portioned rice and beans and cooking oil, and set off to do it all again.

This is love.

This space that they carve out for each other to talk about every possible aspect of life, the dance parties in bedrooms and on the roof when there are too many feels and not nearly enough words to express it all, the almost wordless way that they gather tools and divide into teams to separate rice and beans into carefully sealed and counted Ziplock bags, the pools of hand held light as they scatter for quiet times under the early darkness of an equatorial dusk.

This is love.

The worried puddle of girls waiting near the couches for news on the night that basketball turns into unpleasant variations on dehydration for two of the boys and the overlapping of twenty voices as we hold hands in this circle and pray out the worries that are coiled tightly around the sweetness of homemade cake, because, somewhere, in this whirlwind of an evening, there was also celebration and rejoicing and words that come spilling out as we debrief in the never silent darkness.

Boys who wake up in the morning, roll an IV stand out into the hallway, and head back down to the courts to help with a coaches' clinic, after breakfast under the watchful eyes of teammates who come back to me with pinpoint accurate assessments.

This is courage. This is love.

Language classes, both formal and informal. Basketball tournaments. History museums. Campus tours. Church services. Soccer games. Opportunities to preach. Countless hours spent with Haitian and American friends.

There was not a challenge thrown down that they did not meet with outstanding love.

Love made real as they gathered water bottles to bleach and clean, hunted high and low through bedrooms and finally picked the unsalted cashews out of tiny bags of trail mix so that the girl with detergent burns in her mouth could have something to eat while we waited for plantains from Port au Prince, and hauled each other's mattresses in and out of bedrooms every morning and night. Because, Haiti, for these kids, means late night talks and falling asleep under a brilliant curtain of stars.

It wasn't an easy trip. Simple to lead. Complicated to experience. Up and down and world turned sideways, like the Eternal had dumped us into a bottle of Italian dressing that needed to be mixed thoroughly before it could be poured out on the salad.

The kid who let his heart get ripped to shreds day in and day out, along with the rest of the team, got stung by a bee while preparing for the last day's VBS; spent a solid chunk of time hemmed in by those of us carrying epi pens, pretending like his external calm was an actual reflection of what was going on with his insides; and still hopped into the bus with the rest of us, loopy on antihistamines, to teach the story of Lazarus to a tent full of eager littles.

Nothing about that is easy. But, it probably isn't the first story that he would tell you if you asked him about Haiti. In fact, I have heard him share, and I know that it isn't.

There were shadows, dark spots, hard things. As the walking pharmacy and regulator of both bedtimes and early morning wake ups, I can tell you that these kids had every right to be sick, sweaty, miserable, tired bundles of raw and anxious nerves.

But, when the world is lit by this kind of quiet, steady, courageous Love, the shadows only prove the sunshine.

The Mountains are Calling and I Must Go

Somewhere up in these mountains there are a thousand stories, a hundred thousand moments of unfailing Grace, but teasing them out, one by one, feels a little like trying to pluck the center strand from a cotton ball without destroying the entire thing.

When we spent twelve days awash with new faces and places every time that we turned to take a breath, how do I begin to know which stories to center?

I could tell you about a twelve year old named Pascal, who shruggingly suggested that I could be the mom to his eleven year old best friend, because Benito's mother was dead, two sets of dark eyes watching me with a careful mixture of truth and mischief, folded coloring pages tucked into plastic baggies and clasped in quick fingers, each of them leaning one hip on the small table by the bathrooms where we are talking, tilted towards each other the way that best friends do. I could tell you about the rumble of the engine pushing us back towards the vehicle or bright cloth against smooth skin or the always divided attention of being a leader and a team member at the same time. I could stay with them for a month and tell you every bit of every moment.

But, even that would leave so much out of the story. It would leave out the drought hunger of this place, but also the glimpses of hope, of life.

The crates of empty pop bottles stacked behind a small, half wall, waiting to be returned for a deposit, exchanged for full cases to start the cycle again. Because, Fond Verrette is still a town where people buy and sell. Where mama hens are moved carefully from one spot of shade to another as the sun crawls across the sky, her chicks huddled safely under her wings in the one moment and slipping down her back feathers like a giant slide the next. Where we walk out the door to a little boy chasing a donkey down the road, the dusty rope just inches in front of his running feet.

A church so new that the scent of fresh cut roof timbers still lingers in the air as we tumble out of a rented tap tap and brush off our very dusty selves. Plastic chairs not yet cracked with use and straight lines of desks still in proud possession of clean varnish and tightened screws.

Sassy, laughing conversations marked by that very pull-your-leg style of Haitian humor, as if we are somehow laughing at and with each other and saving face at the exact same time. Dancing with the tension of a people hungry enough to ask for help but proud enough to do it with heads held high and fire in their eyes. These are kings and queens. Mountain people. All too aware of the stereotypes that come with pale skin and blond hair.

So they tease us about the best way to sneak their babies onto an airplane when we go home. Determine exactly how long we are going to be staying and if we are coming again. Laugh in surprise when they ask for skirts straight off of bodies and our kids sass back the way that they have been taught.

"Give me."

"You give me."

We grin, but there is a discomfort to being the ones who show up with food, to sending people to talk with pastor, already knowing that there will not be enough. A discomfort, as there should be, to coming in as benefactor. To not being able to shrink back unnoticed, invisible, as we pass these bags of rice to pastor to distribute to his Church and to those waiting still outside.

Because, these mountains seem to have been tasked with teaching us just how much we do not know.

Less than two miles from the Dominican border as the crow flies, the Creole is differently accented here, the kids buoyed by the presence of crops and running water.

"I'd forgotten that babies did that."

The high schoolers compare notes as we bounce back down the mountain, two hours to cover almost sixteen miles of roughly unpaved roads, past riverbeds bright with the laundry of dozens of different families, towns, graves, quarries, trucks that lumber along, and the pastor's motorbike that zips along behind us for an easy mile as he grins and waves goodbye.

This is only the fourth out of seven sites where we will run VBS. But, our kids, our drawn to littles like magnets, always with a tiny in arms kids, have already forgotten that babies coo, babble, kick their feet, play with their shoes.

But, here, babies do.

Because, today, the mountains are teaching us never to assume that we know what waits around the next corner.

Which, ironically enough, seems to be one of the lessons that life itself is working to pound into our heads. Never assume. Keep your face towards the mountains. And, stand, wide eyed, watching, as you are covered, time and again, by Amazing Grace.

Gathering

Sunday evening, high school youth group, breakouts:

"Which is easier for you," we read through the question for the third time, a sophomore's phone flying across the circle to be caught and squinted at by a second pair of eyes, "the Church gathered or the Church scattered?"

"The Church gathered."

They are certain about their answer to this one, a silent exclamation point behind the words, fourteen voices answering in unpracticed unison. We're sitting out on a rarely used balcony off of the main building, circled in tight and not quite hot on one of the coolest days of the summer; a dead bird just there, behind some of the kids, busy fingers lifting and dropping the playground rubber tiles that make up the floor, sending up tiny clouds of gritty desert dust. And, it's a gathering sort of a Sunday.

Gathered in hallways before church ever starts, for quick hugs and simple conversation as we go on our way. New 6th graders, still tiny enough to fit head and shoulders beneath my arm pit, slip off to work in the nursery and early childhood rooms, their shirts emblazoned with the logo from the middle school ministry trip, "Siente el Fuego."

They've spent the latter part of this week just a few minutes from here, serving at the mission and the crisis nursery, working hard, being goofy, and building up the stories that they're holding behind their eyes, saving for youth group.

7th graders pop in and out for the same quick greetings, one of them stepping away from her work station in the children's hallway, "I just needed a hug." She doesn't do the chaos of middle school ministry, Ravenclaw to the core of her long and lanky self, but shruggingly tells me that she might come back in high school, when things are a little calmer.

"Guess where I was this week that you were not."

It's part accusation and part question from a pair of 8th grade girls, who, like many of the kids, keep a very short list of acceptable reasons for Jessica not to be at a church event. As far as I can tell, it reads:

1) Actively being with another group of older or younger kids
2) There are no other options

Some sort of serious illness might also get me a pass, but house sitting and childcare are met with raised eyebrows that are quickly smoothed away by the dozens of stories dancing across their faces. They haven't been back long enough to piece it altogether yet, but I can tell that they are working on it, caught up in the familiar ebb and flow of processing, grateful for a morning spent here, where there are once again teammates waiting at their elbow every time that they turn around.

Together.

It's a gathering sort of day. Where the most important question is, "Are you going to be at Ignite/Intersect/why-do-all-of-our-youth-group-names-still-sound-like-the-2000's?" as if  we're stretching out the moments and curling in tighter to this space just by thinking about it, planning for it. As if we need each other. Because, duh, of course we do.

Need to sit on steps after church to talk about steel drum trips and birthdays, walking sticks and hermit crabs. Need to call by last names just to prove that we know them. Need to not be in a hurry as we spend this precious time.

Nasty tasting lollipops with freshmen who are still young enough to admit to being entertained by things that are bacon or pizza or popcorn flavored when they really, most definitely should not be. One of the boys glancing at me for confirmation before he tries it, as if my mere presence is promise that we are closer to the "slightly nasty" side of the scale than to "run and spit this out the second it hits your tongue."

Sophomore and junior boys with pockets full of T**tsie Rolls tossing snack sized bags of chips at each other and grinning ear to ear like oversized five-year-olds when one of the junior girls scolds them into picking up their mess - smiling while she does it. Because, this is just where we are tonight. Antics driven. Filled with pent up energy. Needing to be seen.

It's one of those evenings where we might be able to short cut everything by simply piling them into a group hug and keeping them there for a few moments. But, group hugs are right up there with pedicures on Jessica's list of unconformable things that ought to be avoided, so it's probably for the best that we stick to doing things the normal way around.

Music. Lesson. Breakout groups.

And, we've ended up here, on the balcony, led by a sweet goofball of a blond, who, over the last several weeks, has proudly declared to us that his favorite Disney character is Elsa, and if he could only eat one desert for the rest of his life, it would be jello. But, he would also prefer to sit outside on the floor than inside on chairs, so, I'm down.

Aladdin is fan favorite amongst the rest of the crew squad (oh my goodness, they love this word), and we take a moment to establish that Eeyore is, in fact, a donkey and not a hippopotamus, for the same kid who once learned how to spell "whore" in elementary Sunday school.

And, that's a little bit how our time goes. A moment of focus for each question, then random side conversations with fourteen and fifteen-year-olds who are graciously willing to be reigned back in.

Grace.

Grace for the mixed up, muddled up, crazies of this Gathering time.

For little ones who compact further and further into their own skin as we move through the night in this unfamiliar room, not cowering, not hunching, but somehow becoming smaller, edging towards invisible.

Grace that is a circle on the balcony. As if we've marked out a space. Here, it's okay. Here, no one will blink an eye when you settle in as close to Jessica, to each other, as it takes to feel anchored in this sea of newness. When you discover that you can breathe again, unfurl to fill up the whole space that your body was meant to occupy. No one will care when you discover that the floor tiles can be lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped, lifted and dropped again. And, when you toss a friend's shoe right off the balcony, two of the sophomore girls will volunteer to get it for you, even before one of the boys jumps easily onto the roof and brings it back like it is the most natural thing in the world.

Because, this is what it means to gather.

To come into a space where we can learn and grow, where we can bring our fears and trust that others will be gentler with them than we would be ourselves. Where our actions are heard just as loudly as our words, and, we don't have to have our stuff together, so long as we show up.

It's not perfect. Honest things never are.

They'll scatter for the rest of the week. Show back up again on Sunday for baptisms. Do a thousand other things in between. But, today was a day for gathering.

Talk About Them When...

Kids' Camp is the tug and swirl of crystal clear water as it flows past us in its powerful, unhurried way. Icy cold. Strong enough and deep enough to bruise my legs against these rocks where I stand buffer between current carried littles and unyielding earth.

Jumping. Clambering. Swinging. Sliding.

Deep sensory input through the long hours of these days, until they fall asleep, exhausted, within moments of freshly washed heads hitting pillows. Miniature zip line. Rope swing. Horse back lessons. Hikes to the swimming hole. Hot sauce in the dining hall. Even the heavy Bibles that they cart back and forth to the barn for chapel are preparing their bodies for these conversations that spill off of our lips as we walk and swim and learn to cross the suspension bridge without fear of toppling off into the rocky stream bed below.

And, we really do talk about almost everything that you could imagine, as if the cathedral of the outdoors is enough to magnify the bumping up of life against life, to set loose the endless questions that bubble up like the hot springs that feed a sulfur smelling pool.

We practice eating family style in the dining hall. Practice passing to the right. Practice taking just enough, so that we don't have to wait for refills before everyone gets fed. Practice drinking enough water and being good sports and conquering our fears.

Talk about the crazy way that God made our bodies to interact with the world, about how we have minerals inside of us, about how hot springs work, and the natural consequences of not getting enough sleep.

Talk about grace and grace and more Grace. Talk about honoring one another and being the boss of our own body. Tell stories about seeing God in people's actions and gender bend the characters in our skit to adjust them to this crew. Talk about homesickness and courage and trust in a faithful God as we walk and swim and swing and eat.

Blast Skillet in the cabin and let them wander around with a speaker in hand to play Disney music or Imagine Dragons or the Cha Cha Slide, the horses watching them sedately, as if clusters of dancing children are the most natural thing in the world. Sing camp songs over and over and over again, and listen to them fall in love with the music team, even as they butcher the high schoolers' names.

Coordinate shower times and braid hair and help them cover the room in scraps of ribbon that tickle their noses at night and seem to constantly be falling to the floor.

Because, here, the most coveted changing spot is reached by climbing over the top of an empty bed and down the other side into a curtained closet. Here, we plan out every afternoon's schedule like we're coordinating a presidential visit and then spend in the in between chunks with kids who have been set free to simply play.

We talk about the things that they should say out loud and the thoughts that they should simply keep in their heads. We give out a thousand hugs and run our fingers through a million strands of hair. We watch them do that awesome thing time and time and time again, and we step back to let them spend a rotation in the pool coordinating the sale of seahorses to their fellow mermaids, caught firmly in this tween-ness of being almost-not-quite grown up.

Wade in the stream and jump in to swim in the deeper parts. Squeeze the water out of water plants to perch like parrots on our shoulders and then watch as we submerge them and they slime up again. Clamber up onto rocks and hold tightly to little hands to keep them strong against the current.

Set thirty-three elementary schoolers loose in this vast swath of campground and walk alongside them as they discover God.

Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are [in your cabin] and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed, and when you are getting up.
Deuteronomy 11:19

This is camp.

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

Kept and Keeping

"Save me some pizza." One of my dark haired ones shrugged, lengthening limbs all eight grade swagger and innocence. "You can bring it over tonight. You'll be just across the parking lot."

He was there, tucked into my circle of girls-coming-over-for-pizza, sharing strange laws about lollipops and train crossings and the harassment of Bigfoot, and, I think, half expecting that I'd change my mind and decide to let the boys come over too. The girls uttered the same thing a half dozen times before we finished.

"When are we having the boys over?"
"We should do this with the guys sometime."
"You should do a day where it's just your [private school] kids."

As if it would be the strangest thing in the world to think of doing life separately from the boys.

And, there is something about the asking that is so clearly this group of kids, these ones who scramble up the rocks in my backyard and tell old stories over and over and over again. Who waited patient weeks until the weather promised to be warm enough for an afternoon in the park, because my house is small, and their combined presence is large and loud and overwhelming to unsuspecting roommates.

Who looked at me funny when I offered two dates and told them to choose. Both. Of course. Are you crazy, Jessica? Lunch the Sunday after their already graduation picnic. Dinner three Sundays from now, just before they start their official first night of high school youth group.

Together. Always, together.

Even on this long weekend, when the smallness of the middle school group is loose and uncertain in our suddenly giant space. They pull each other together, slowly; haphazard, loud, goofy, in and out, stretching my ability to keep track of who is where and when and why.

Just like they always have.

Up and down trees and on top of roofs before we even leave the parking lot, the fourteen of us parade through the neighborhood. 12 kids and 2 leaders in a scraggly line that betrays us a little, shows to the world the way that we have pieced together this crew from separate but intersecting groups of friends. Unpracticed unity that laughs, runs, walks, sheds shoes, stops to wish a cousin happy birthday, and manages to talk about everything and nothing in the brief distance between the church and my house.

Grace for climbing rocks, eating popsicles, making popcorn, and eventually getting out of my roommate's hair as we load up waiting arms and make our way back down to the park.

Basketballs, water jugs, pop bottles, bags of chalk and sunscreen and bubbles, a giant bowl of popcorn, and boxes of pizza and otter pops; we must make quite the sight as we wander down the street. And, we wander quite a lot. Back and forth from the house for dry t-shirts and bathroom breaks. Further down the street to another park. To a coffee shop, drinking fountains, basketball court. Along the bike path that leads to the church.

We get a little quicker every time, a little better at gathering things and bodies, a little smoother at anticipating which direction needs to be walked, at pacing ourselves to wander together.

Because, mainly, they are simply together.

Wandering is old habit, long practiced. They talk about trees and bushes and recycling dumpsters. About playing ninja through the building and donut fights in the grass and spying super quiet on the middle school group that they are now about to leave. About not having been meant to be in my group, but ending up there anyways.

And, I am reminded of just how far they have grown up.

These kids who are sitting in this cool grass, under this tree, content with popcorn and popsicles and drinking fountain filled water jugs. Somewhere in the process of mess and beauty, screeches and music sets, long wanders, and laughter mixed with worry, they have grown into this.

Into these humans who can sit and have real conversations about the things that are filling their heads, real conversations with actual words that don't have to be interpreted to be understood.

Into kids who are signing up for ministry trips without me.

We're moving past the eighth grade stuck, that strange phenomena where thirteen robs them of all of the words and expressive emotions of seventh grade and tucks them into the back corners of minds that are whirling with a thousand things that never make it out of their mouths. Small miracles to remind me of larger ones. Of stories that stretch farther than their fourteen years of life. Tie us together with faces that we have never seen and names that we have never heard.

Because, stories tie these kids together, even when they are still learning each others' names.

It is Pentecost. A day to remember roaring winds and tongues of fire and frightened disciples suddenly made bold. To remember the thunder and fire of Mt. Sinai. The completeness of being known and holy before this Knowing and Holy God. The making of a people. Law overtaken by Grace.

It's Pentecost. Gentle breeze and burning sun and bold words falling easily, casually, into the grass of these parks.

We talk about ministry trips that they are going on without me, these once littles who, a few short months ago, balked at the idea of a journey the distance of camp in a separate vehicle, even knowing that we would both be standing together on the other end. About Haiti and why they can't come and, yes, I would have taken you if I could.

Pausing along the road to pour water into thirsty mouths. Soccer in a dark room with an empty popcorn bowl. Tired, sweaty, suncreened-hopefully-not-burnt kids. Fourteen people so busy with this act of being that we collectively forget to take any pictures of the afternoon.

Known and holy. Made a people. Law overtaken by Grace.

The world may be swirling wild around us, but, for today, this is Pentecost in the desert. Another step in the long line of promises that we have kept and are keeping. This is living memory.

This is Grace.

Moving Forward

Sunday morning.

The 5th graders are overwhelmingly full of words and giggles today, barely making it through names and plans for the day in time to play an outside game.

But, we talk about the soon coming move to middle school ministry in the midst of it, these words and stories that fold over top of and around each other like a tangle of Christmas lights. Talk about camp and high school ministry trips and 8th graders moving up and trips to the hospital to have an appendix removed. All in this intertwined world of siblings and families and layers of connection that make a sizable church not so large after all.

"You should be a 6th grade leader!"

We talk about it in the way that 5th grade classes always do, these ones bonus certain that, since 8th grade siblings are moving up, I am the free floating leader, who they might be able to steal if they just wish hard enough.

But, they're also okay with the idea of another leader, in the same way that this crew is rambunctiously casual about just about everything. They want to be together, and they want to be moving - and talking. Anything else is pretty firmly optional.

So we run up and down the hill until they are breathless and sweating. Skid and slip and laugh, and will the sunshine to stay. Just stay.

Transition to middle school, where one of the boys is diligently attentive in making sure that all of the 8th graders are invited to the picnic. Where another one plops down in front of us on the floor in the careful in and out that will be his standard for the day. Close enough for long enough to determine who is going to be present for the next step. And, then, far enough away to keep the emotions coming off of all of them from overwhelming him completely.

Because, it isn't their last week, but it is the start of their goodbye, and these ones have never shared the 5th graders' nonchalance.

"Are you moving up with us?"

A third one stands a hair's breadth from my elbow during music, as if we've momentarily forgotten all of the years of growing up that they've done in between. Falling back on this familiar question with it's echoes of their much smaller selves. They're grown up young today, all swagger and sunglasses, brightly colored leis and elementary school parachute games. Old questions and habits that we've somehow carved deep and wide and certain.

They picnic in the afternoon, create new stories and wrap each other in new ones. Listen as leaders call them out for their compassion, for their differences and their somehow constant unity. These kids love well, passionately, consistently. Stronger together than they could ever be apart.

Wander in the shallows of the river. Skip rocks. Climb trees. Discover thorns.

Play volleyball. Lie in hammocks. Give nicknames. Wrestle with the frozen t-shirts that they are handed for a game.

Eat hamburgers. (There are a lot of hamburgers this weekend.) Unscramble letters. Pile into cars to take pictures and show up for a preview of the high school youth group.

Half the boys are missing by the time we settle onto the red dot carpet to to start, herded back in by their high school accompaniment and a teenaged middle school leader who knew to count heads and go looking. Because, there is a Grace to middle school leaders. An always-know-where-your-kids-are Protection that tracks them, even when they are out of sight, and keeps an accounting of each and every head.

And, they look at us a little sideways when My Redeemer Lives devolves into linked elbows and spinning bodies, as if these larger humans have somehow, inexplicably lost their minds. But, join in - sort of, kind of, mostly - one of the boys finally dropping to the floor in protest the third time through the chorus.

There is a megaphone during music and goofy games that involve shaving cream in the grass and Cheetos thrown at faces. And, when they get into the globs of it leftover afterwards and chase each other through the field, it isn't anything that the already-in-high-schoolers haven't been doing while the game was going on.

So, the bathrooms, and the kitchen, every sink, mirror, towel in the building are being used to wipe shaving cream out of ears and hair and noses. Pulsing with that sort of oddly off kilter life that is our high schoolers trying to make other people feel welcome in a space that they are suddenly less comfortable in themselves.

Noisy. Vibrant. Grace Filled and Uncertain.

They have three weeks left to grow into this place. Three weeks for this place to grow to make itself ready for them.

Neither side of the equation is quite certain of itself yet, but they'll get their feet under them soon enough. And, youth pastor or no youth pastor, it is going to be a powerful year.

Ascension

Feast Day. 

Ascension comes on either Thursday or Sunday, that strange moment with clouds and angels and a levitating Christ. With promises that seem counter intuitive, "I'm leaving, but...I'll be with you always," "Go to all the nations, but...wait here in the city."

And, I wonder what kinds of questions the disciples must have gotten afterwards, "'Ends of the earth,' huh? Are you leaving today? Tomorrow? Do you want help packing your donkey?"

"What's the plan? What do you mean you don't have a plan?"

"You're just going to hang out together? How long are you going to wait for?"

"Shouldn't you have some idea of what you're doing?"

I wonder if they got the same kinds of looks that a presenter gave our kids on day two of their short term trip training, when the 'easy' question was met with silence. 

"What are you going to Haiti to do?"

*crickets*

"Okay..." He glances out over the room to make sure that they are still awake, as if perhaps they are simply being taciturn, "When you're in Haiti, you'll wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, and then...?"

A few of them shrug minutely, and I can see the "Something," that they are trying to formulate into a more coherant response before it comes off their lips. It was a well practiced answer a few weeks ago, when things were even more uncertain than they are now.

"We are going to Haiti sometime, to do something, with some group of people."

Did the disciples get this look? This puzzlement washing over confident faces as the people around them began to realize that they fully intended to continue following the orders of a man who was no longer around. This, "How on earth did you get anybody to sign up for this gig?"

How on earth did they get anybody to sign up for this gig? We're easily six hours into a ten hour training, and I see the truth of the risen Christ in these kids, the desire to heal and to be healed, to reach deep into a messy world, to find the Divine in the faces of teammates who they are just meeting and already-friends in Haiti.

Passion that would put them on a plane right now, and temperance that would sit in this cold room for hour after hour of waiting, learning, and letting information wash over them, light their imaginations.

Because, we gather afterwards for a feast of sorts, hamburgers and playful laughter as a fundraiser to help send Haitian kids to leadership camp, much the way that the church here helps to send these kids to Haiti, John Day, RFKC, middle school camp, retreats. What goes around comes around, and they are more interested in time together than any hoorah over "doing the right thing."

These kids who were drooping and exhausted before we even started jump in to learn new games, play old ones, and create oddly twisted versions for no other reason than that they can. Why not play four-way, blind Connect Four with the pieces all mixed together? Why not try Operation with your eyes shut or have a fight with thrown ping pong balls?

Because, this is Holy.

There is Grace here and Truth, sacraments lived out in that casual, irreverent way that Baptists have for decades. Love Feasts of hamburgers and pop. Water thrown and sprinkled and dumped in a way that is not baptism into the faith, but baptism into the here and now, into the fact that we are alive, together. The confirmation of laughter and teasing and trying again.

Healing, not when they anoint one another with oil, but when they administer the questions on these well used conversation cards and make the space to truly listen to answers given, when they make the simple act of hearing a sort of common prayer. Holy orders, gathered around these small tables to continue to prepare for Haiti in the simple building of relationships, to breathe in the commonality of their sent-ness.

"[T]he truth of Ascension is to be lived out in an earthed spirituality that joyfully embraces the deep pleasures and wonder of our lives and world, that grieves and seeks to heal and mend where disruption and despair are known, that affirms “the natural world of sea, rock and earth as being redolent with divine glory, and recognizes Christ in the faces of friends and strangers." [1]

The movie starts, and they don't move for a long moment, this circle of them gathered in the back of the room, as if there's a spell that might be broken by standing up, a wisp of the Divine, once sensed, that might fail to return. As if we've wrung the last bit of everything right out of them.

The sort of stillness that doesn't move again when the lights come back on, bodies and brains that are as exhausted as if we had yanked them several time zones ahead, made ten o'clock at night hours later than it objectively is.

But, they clean up without question. Ping pong balls gathered before we could think to ask. Volleyball nets that we struggled to put up in the late afternoon wind untied and wheeled back across campus. Garbage bagged. Food put away. Rooms returned to normal. These kids who serve as if Jesus washing the disciples' feet was the most natural sort of leadership in the world.

Play. Serve. Lead.

Heal. Laugh. Learn.

Together.

It's Ascension week, where we celebrate the messiness of humans being left to once again stumble through the holy and the mundane. Looking forward to the fire and the power that was to come. Gathering the way that the disciples might have, had they lived in 21st century, northwestern USA, rather than the 1st century Roman Empire.

Spending time together while we balance the "go" with the "wait."

"Redolent with Divine glory."