Advent: Love Candle

 

"Four more days until Christmas!"

The kids say it over and over and over again, giddy with an excitement that still keeps careful track of one another. Tracks presence and movement and mood like a whirlwind of a barometer.

Christmas is coming, but I don't hear a single set of lips spill over with wishes or gift lists or plans for new belongings. Instead, they watch each other - carefully. Make time and space for seeing and being seen. For taking care of each other.

And, they remind me, in their constant shadowing of these lessons that we try to teach them, what it means to love in a way that prefers others.

Agapé.

My 5th graders keep eagle eyes on the door to make sure that I catch each new arrival. Stuff three little girl bodies into every two chairs. Send off the phone case with a boy who loves the R2D2-ness of it, while they cradle the vulnerable electronic in their hands, passing it between them, taking turns at games.

Laugh as we discover that our *shl*y's share all three initials, born on the same day but different months. Jump in and out of conversations as we cross the parking lot, graciously giving each other the space to speak. Listen to stories about Brucho and rotate through drawing and filming in a two-directions-at-once pattern that ought to be completely confusing but somehow isn't.

This is how they know to love.

A 7th grader who pops in with an uncertain, "Jessica, watch me win!" glad to be back, but not quite sure where he fits in this motion filled room that is just like he remembers it - but also so very different.

The quiet 8th grader who leaves his normal place to come sit down, to sandwich the returner between us and declare that he was missed. Pulls him into a group for the game and keeps him close for the rest of the morning. Gives him a place to belong.

Girls who vocalize the parallels between what they're learning at school and what they're learning at church. Books that they're reading. Papers that they've written. Class discussions that have been had.

We talk about The Outsiders with middle schoolers in the morning and The Lord of the Rings with high schoolers in the evening. A wildly goofy group of kids who are bursting with this need to laugh, to connect, to simply be together in the midst of the holidays, they race through the assigned questions with the half answers and blunt sarcasm of a group of Gryffindors whose brains are anywhere but where we're trying to take them. The silence of Ravenclaws who are feeling the same.

And, I remember the flame that my eagle eyed littles watched this morning, tempting each other to run their fingers through the heat, the way that the curious have for centuries and millennia.

Love. Agapé. Others preferred.

Reason enough to let the questions slid. Drop the leader "should's." Follow the conversation to wherever they need to take it. To Tolkien and Lewis. War and creation. Faith and competition. And, the stories that change us.

Because, they are at that perfect age. Knee deep in the process of sorting through childhood stories. Deciding what is true. What is true enough. What is worth keeping.

Let them learn to step forward in the defense of Hobbits, and they might begin to see the value in shepherds. Might begin to believe that the powerless have worth. That a small act is enough. That there is good, Glory that shines brighter than any light they have ever seen.

That there is reason to love.

These are story kids on their way out of a roller coaster year, and I have to think that there is a reason this is the second Inklings conversation that I have had in the past week with separate but overlapping groups of teenagers. The second time today that we are tying stories to Scripture and Scripture to stories.

A reason for blending theology and imagination, as if the two are ever truly separate.

Perhaps, is has something to do with the idea that every story is about Love.

And, so every story is about God.

"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage."
- CS Lewis

Advent: Joy Candle

"I get to light the Joy Candle, today!"

The girls come into Sunday school already certain of this one thing. They don't yet remember the word "Advent," but, they know what it means. They know that these flames mean Hope and Peace. That today we are adding Joy.

So, they circle up in our space under the arc of the stairs, and we do.

Sit for a moment around three flickering lights. Explain how we are going to spend the rest of the morning. Blow them out. And, start working on a project.

They draw and film and talk and laugh, and I treasure the casual intensity of these moments, where they are filled with a joyful purpose, and we don't have to separate the relationship building from the "go out and change the world." This is open ended work, unhurried, go however far you happen to get. The story of David and Goliath isn't going to change between now and whenever we happen to finish it.

These stories are written down. Unchanging.

David won. The angels came. The Messiah was made flesh.

Joy.

The Greek suggests "joy because of grace" or "grace recognized," as if our joy is tied, not to the circumstances around us, but to our eyes to see those circumstances. We take the time to look for Grace, and Joy is there waiting for us just around the corner, like a faithful sunrise, alternately bright and gentle in morning tired eyes.

Today, we are looking. 

Carving out time. Or, perhaps, simply noticing when time is carved out for us.

For M*t** to run up behind me on our way into the gallery and to take a few stray moments just before he has to leave. 

"I hit you [with the playground ball]. That means that you're it."

We pick up another kid along the way, and barely get started before their families are ready to head home, but this is grace recognized. This is conversation in an athletic language that I fumble through with a thick accent and terrible grammar but hopefully communicate in anyways. This is a simple spending of intentional time, which is a language that I speak more fluently. Chara.

Grace.

Grace when another group of them is wild and goofy during music, each of them for their own reasons and in their own way. Acting out until they can get a leader's hands to settle heavily on their shoulders, prove that they are seen and known and understood.

"Get[ting my] kids under control" would easily take hours of real talk that they aren't yet ready to have, so we do our messy best instead, one of the boys physically skittering away from me when I ask a seemingly simple question that pushes too far. Hands on shoulders. Eye rolls. Laughter. Intentionality about letting them use behaviors to draw closer.

Even, occasionally, letting things play out when they manage to attract not-quite-the-kind-of-attention-they-were-looking-for from other leaders.

They glance at me, and I know that it isn't what they intended. Didn't mean to get in in trouble. Didn't have the words to simply ask for the things that they needed. They're eighth graders this year. Sometimes grown up. Sometimes still little.

Always honest with their behaviors, even when they are not always truthful with their words. Because, today, a lie during the game communicates more openly than anything else that they could think to do.

Today, we need to run full tilt into this Charis. Body slam to see if it will hold us.

And, we make it through, standing on the edge of Grace. Recognizing it. Rejoicing in the moments where it rushes over us.

I bite down on the questions that are burning on my tongue and simply let them be. Shoot hoops with M*tt** when he hangs back after Ignite. With K*r*n and J*s**h and D*n**l before we get started. Pour in before holiday travel pulls them across oceans and state lines, as if we can somehow build up a stockpile for the moments when they are going to need it.

Joy in the fact that they are asking, making needs known in the best way that they know how. In the odd sense of trust and community to this mess. In the fact that God is bigger. Great. Gracious. Glorious. Good.

Old lessons remembered. Grace found in these ever changing eyes and restless bodies.

Grace in the stance of the high schoolers as they crowd around a table to read through question cards with joking seriousness, and it becomes clear that they really did miss each other last week when part of the crew was gone for a performance. Missed being together in a way that, really, has very little to do with us as leaders.

There is a balance of personalities and peer groups that they thrive off of, and I think how lucky the next youth pastor is going to be, to inherit these kids.

Sit in a circle as we fiddle with the rug and talk about anxiety and the ways that we combat it. Tell the truth that is also a promise, "I pray for you guys at 8:45 and 2:45 every day [as I drive past a local high school]." Help a stray phone find it's owner, and pray for them for easily the dozenth time today.

Prayer like breathing as they catch on my thoughts or tug at my heart.

Because, somehow, in the midst of all this, in the ups and downs of everyday moments, this is where we find Grace. This is where we find Joy, waiting, close, just around the corner.

Advent: Peace Candle

 

We lit the Peace candle yesterday, watched yellow flames dance near the fingers of fifth grade girls who struggled to listen to directions. Sat with a heart that wanted to whisper to me of anything but peace.

Four white emergency candles in an empty cake pan. A borrowed lighter. Fumbled explanations.

Peace.

When I don't have my stuff together. When I'm tired and my heart hurts for my kids. When my head is foggy with the disconnect of too much information all at once. It is still December, and the Christ is still coming, and I still remind myself in the simple act of lighting these flames of Hope and Peace. Because. He. Is. Still. Coming.

Because, He came.

And, He promised to leave us with a peace that passes understanding, a wholeness to stand in contrast to the brokenness of the world around us. To stand in contrast to our own brokenness.

Eiréné.

Wholeness. Peace. Quiet. Rest.

All of the things that we feel the absence of so acutely in this second week of Advent, as if life itself is a reminder of the things that are to come, a shaking until we settle into this rhythm of prayer like breathing.

And, maybe that is what we are doing. Maybe we are smoothing out the wrinkles that a year of life has put into us. Straightening out the four corners of Shalom. Peace with God. Peace with self. Peace with others. Peace with Creation. I think of a talk from the Justice Conference in 2012, and I see the hints in the ways that we do this jumbled up day.

Like the slow process of untangling the Christmas lights and deciding which bulbs are broken or burned out, we do the slow work of sorting through our own brokenness as we prepare for the creation of something beautiful.

For the coming of Light.

"Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. The glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all the people will see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah 40:3-6

These may not be mountains or valleys that we are struggling with today. There are brothers and sisters around the world - and around the country - who are receiving that distinction. But, this rough ground shall become level too.

I think of summer camp three years ago, stepping out of the hubbub of a game to stand by one of my sixth graders. Stand by a puddle. In silence. Dropping in rocks, bits of gravel, one by one. Slowly finding the words that needed to be said. Until the hole was filled.

And, one by one, all too often in silence, we are dropping pebbles into these low places. Stepping out of the hubbub of the "game" to stand together and fill in the gaps that need to be filled.

Pray through with the one who isn't there but wishes he was.

Drop.

Settle on the floor with three from very different groups, who are all here to be honest. To be raw one moment and laughing the next. To be wide eyed exhilarated and drooping framed exhausted. To maybe not be doing this thing right, but to be intentionally doing it.

Drip.

Listen as one, who was long convinced that no other leader cared to learn his name, sings the praises of the man who invited them over for pizza and Fellowship of the Ring, swords and shields and helmets. Watch as, for one of the first times in three years, he sits away from me for music and lesson - with that very same leader and group of boys.

Drop. Drip. Ping!

Do youth group, once again, without a youth pastor, without a dozen of the kids who are out of town for a gig. Come. Hearts raw. Ready to sing when we don't know the words. Talk when we don't know the answers. Be silent when there is nothing to say. Wonder at this church in the second chapter of Acts. Listen to the uniqueness in each of them that connects with different aspects of the early Way. Pray like breathing.

Splish. Drip. Drop.

Because, this peace candle has a second name. Some traditions call it the candle of preparation. Prepare the way of the LORD.

So, we'll align ourselves with creation, with the heat and smoke that comes from these simple flames. With the Divine, through these unspeakable reachings of our hearts. With ourselves, as we take the time to admit that today is a struggle. And, with each other.

Fill in the gaps. Raise the empty places.

Shalom.

ID Night

The high schoolers plan a pre-retreat night, and I am not sure how to capture the everythingness of it in this concrete form that we call words. Because, it wasn't perfect. And, they weren't perfect. And, we weren't perfect.

But, it was good.

It was good to come together in the midst of Advent, to remind each other of the Holy that is coming, the Grace that surrounds us now.

To bring what are essentially three different youth groups together and find the tension - and hopefully the Divine - in our unique ways of existing and overlapping. Because, we each know the feel of our own version of this thing, and it is good, for a moment, to step into anothers' shoes. To hear the stories that come out of it. The ways that we strive, as a story telling people, to make sense of it all.

The kids in the back of my vehicle laugh at crowded spaces as they double buckle to fit an entire team, "This is just like Haiti! At least no one is sitting on any soccer cleats this time!"

It is cold. December. We're wearing ugly Christmas sweaters and jeans. Running a scavenger hunt that they put together. Shuttling less than five minutes from the church to a coffee house.

But, it is just like Haiti.

Sort of, in that story telling way that draws out connections and meanings. A crowded van. Packed full with energy and trepidation, frustration and excitement. People they knew and those they had just met. Working together. A team.

Unexpected plot twists and community despite it all. Protests on the edges of our consciousness. Hope and pain carried with us like precious cargo. Uncertain footing but a certain God. Parallels that we feel, even if we couldn't put the words to them.

In some strange sense, this is "just like" Haiti.

The Gryffindor kids in the back of my van tell stories, draw connections, let each other in. The Ravenclaws go back over the scavenger hunt, what they've done, what they have yet to do, how they can best finish quickly.

Several of the Slytherin boys give up on waiting for the shuttles altogether and simply run the short distance instead.

Fearless. Grace filled. Brave.

They started planning this thing with the youth pastor, finished it without him, and this brave is a stubborn choice that they are making. A choice to jump into the jumble and the mess together, to keep moving forwards even when things don't go quite according to plan. To tell stories and to trust that there is a bigger picture.

And, as the room clears out from these eighty-five teenaged bodies, the leaders linger to tell our own stories. Stories that stretch back through youth pastors and well over a dozen sets of kids. Years of doing this, loving this way, watching them grow and learn and stumble and hopefully get back up again.

Unspoken, it is a promise.

A stubborn choice that we are making to stick it out through this thing too. To join the kids in the midst of their brave and hurt, their energy and trepidation, frustration and excitement. To do our level best to ensure that, no one has to do this on their own.

Because, we're getting ready for retreat. Looking to the other side of Advent. Preparing for moments where we paint community in bold strokes that they can look back on all year. Living out stories as we get ready to create dozens more. And, the theme is a steady reminder that, although we might not know who is going to be coming we with us, we do know Who will be there.

We know that we have an identity that can not be shaken, an unchanging Creator, a shelter in the midst of any storm.

We know that this is Just. Like. Haiti.

And, just like Haiti is good.

Advent: Hope Candle

November 30th.

The first Sunday of Advent is an interesting one, and I am reminded with a sort of gentle force that there are no easy answers. That we are waiting. Lighting the Hope candle, even while we read passages of prophecy - confession and lament.

Looking to a better day to come.

Reminded that it is okay to be mixed up and muddled and watching grief play in their eyes, to create a safe space and allow them to begin to name it. That actions sometimes communicate louder than words. And, that time is precious.

Because, one of my fifth graders comes spilling over with half formed words about a family hurt. One of them whispers questions about sin and grace and mental illness that I can't help but answer, even while the presenter continues to talk. All of them clasp hands and elbows - and occasionally fall full to the ground - working through team building challenges while we read the verse.

"For I am convinced that...nothing has the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Over and over again. Until church is suddenly out 10-15 minutes early. And, we're weaving through bodies to find a lost Bible. And, it doesn't matter what else we had planned. Because, time is up.

But, time is also a gift.

An in between services that stretches long and gives us precious time to connect. To watch them play in the octagon until they are stumbling with exhaustion. To verbally pull in the ones who have been hesitant lately, too busy trying to find the fuzzy eighth grade line between grown-up and still-little. To laugh with them and have nonsensical conversations and make sure that they are seen. To talk and be and let them slip my spare name tag around their neck, where it will stay for the rest of the service.

Because, when my name is on one side and theirs is stuck to the other, it doesn't matter so much who is claiming who. It's Advent, and we're doing this together.

Slipping into leaders' meetings and back out again. Sitting behind the octagon to talk. Jumping in to play. Being body slammed by a slight seventh grader who hasn't been here for months, his everything coming a hundred miles an hour, and my name tag almost instantly over his head.

So that there are two extras of "me" wandering around this crowd of middle schoolers and a half dozen stray tags littering my actual back.

Game time, where we Google on someone else's phone, because one of the sixth grade girls is playing with mine. Where we take turns following the ones most likely to know the answer, and the girls who spent so many hours notebooking with me last year clump up during the Bible questions, instinctively sure that someone has the answer buried in their heads. That I know, even if they don't.

Music. Lesson. Filtering back to the places where we 'always' sit, as if there was a magnetic pull to this habit, a silent need to be close. Together.

Goofy at first, in that manic sort of way that means trying to forget, trying not to think about it, like an over tired two year old running wild lest they find themselves suddenly asleep. 

Sometimes, they don't need words to say what they want to say. Sometimes I am paying enough attention to do goofy when they need to. To know when to make eye contact and when to acknowledge their sassy comments. To let them peel the extra names off my back and to sit quietly when the talk gets hard and there are silent tears that don't quite fall from eighth grade eyes.

Because, there is unspoken grief here, even when the girls use breakout groups to begin to put words to it.

"Hold on, it get's better."

"Hold On Pain Ends: H.O.P.E."

"Jesus went through greater suffering than we have, and He knows what it's like."

They stay close when they need to feel safe. Wear my tags and chase each other across the giant room. Relax a little every time someone teasingly calls them by my name. Body slam and then slow until I can catch them. Stay until little sisters are fidgeting with impatience to go home.

Not because I am magic or because this place is, but because this is what we do with our heavenly Father.

We pull close. Slip the identity of Christ around our necks. Call each other by this name, 'Christian,' a thousand times over, until we begin to remember. Throw ourselves into Divine Grace and slow just enough to see it slip into the in betweens. Stay and wait, even when the world around us fidgets with the impatience to just 'make it better already.'

Wait for the already, not yet coming of the Christ. The Redeemer. Rescuer.

Hope in the midst of lament. 

Jesus is Coming

"Advent means coming." 

We used to read through the children's liturgy by candlelight, long before any of our Catholic baptized, Protestant raised ears had begun to process the word 'liturgy.' "Jesus is coming!"

"Prepare the way of the LORD."

Call and response. In the midst of this broken world, prepare the way of the LORD.

When the boys in my classroom at the middle school sing made up songs about Ebola the way that children must have sung Ring Around the Rosie during the Black Death.

When we huddle on the floor during lockdown drills with silent kids who desperately want to joke to relieve the tension.

When Syria and ISIS and a dozen other "issues" float in and out of the national conversation.

Jesus is coming.

The Kingdom has come, is come, will come.

And, I hear voices reminding us to #StayWoke. To watch. To hold vigil. To remember. To speak the truth that this isn't the way that things are meant to be.

Because, I know what it is to hold privilege in the palms of my hands, to be straight and educated and mostly white, to be employed and clothed and warm and safe, to have clean water coming out of my faucets and food on my shelves.

It is privilege to sit and talk to a thirteen year old whose only frustration in leaving the house revolves around crashing his penny board, who knows that the only thing out for his blood is the pavement.

To carelessly litter our feeds with photos of firearms.

To step into the midst of their dislikes and prejudices with intermittent reminders that, if we only knew, we would understand. To postulate that our lens is not the only one.

Privilege to watch my kids flounder through the messy mistakes of adolescence and know that, while they might be taken for punk teenagers, they will rarely be assumed to be thugs.

I live in a world where their hearts are more likely to be wounded than their bodies.

And, I don't know.

Even on the other end of town. Where Spanish comes as often as English and my school kids are ensconced in a life that my church kids will only ever dance on the periphery of. It isn't the same.

I know what it is to sit with middle schoolers who keep track in that way that only the young can, who mutter their convictions that this teacher or that administrator are racist, who up the ante simply because they refuse to bow to felt injustice. 

To carry the tension of knowing that their protests will be seen as rebellion, of seeing the necessity, but also of breathing the prayer to, "Please, bud. Just this one time. Let it go."

Nothing feels like 'just this one time,' though. Not when your heart is already raw and bleeding at eleven.

But, I still don't know.

I know what it is to fear alcohol in their lives, or drugs, or gangs, or the neglect of parents.

But, I don't know.

I don't know what it is to fear a system that responds with violence. To worry that a brush with law enforcement could end their lives. I don't know, and that would make it so easy to say that it isn't true.

But, it would be more honest to check my privilege. To listen to the witness of Scripture. To hear the voices calling out, making a plain of these rugged places in our nation's history.

"Advent means coming. Jesus is coming!" 

In the midst of whatever comes, prepare the way of the LORD.

Shoebox Kids

There is something about this space, where the work of our hands is worship, where grace smells like fresh cookies and homemade dinner, and where the everyday becomes a space for the miraculous.

In the midst of a crazy world, there are moments where this is Church as it is meant to be. Just as it is whenever God's people come together around a common goal, put in the hours, and simply exist - together.

And, I love, as I have mentioned before, that there are children growing up in this.

Upper middle class American children who are learning what it is to trust for simple provision. To have "stuff" problems that can't, or won't, be solved by their parents' wallets.

When the Build a Box room is sparsely empty and we talk about closing it down, they understand that we pray. That we wait to see what God will do. And, that, sometimes, we come in the next morning to find that someone has been in the building ahead of us and filled it back up.

Provision. Faithfulness. Trust.

A simple picture of what it looks like to give without fanfare.

When a carton goes flying off the back of a truck and it seems like carefully packed boxes are lost to the side of the freeway, they have seen that we extend grace, even if it is given from a hurting heart - and that we pray.

That, sometimes, strangers call the church the next morning to say that they were driving into town and noticed a familiar red and green on the side of the highway. That they stopped to pick them up. That some of the boxes that state patrol said were gone were actually still there, still coming in, still wrapped in rubber bands that never should have held. But, did.

Sometimes, friends go back out and scour through tumbleweeds and dead grasses along the sides of the highway to recover checks and shipping payments.

All the time, God is bigger than our mistakes.

Forgiveness. Mercy. Community.

They clean and bake and pack and sort alongside adults. Probably work harder than we do, because they simply never stop.

But, they do stop, because they have learned the balance of pouring out everything. The inhale and exhale of this. The heartbeat of quiet days and leaving things for others to do. The time in the prayer room and running silly errands. And, the always giddy joy that, "Sunday's coming."

Sunday.

When churches pour in with thousands of boxes and my hands fly in rhythm with an eleven year old's, filling carton after carton. Together. Red and green Go Boxes face this way. This kind of plastic fits that way. That kind goes this way.

The final two boxes drop in together, waiting to use 'the trick' that we have taught them since they were little. "The trick is..." "Do you remember the trick?"

And, I love that 'the trick' we remind each other of daily is simply that two boxes, working together, turned just the right way to complement each other, can fit into a space that they couldn't on their own. Because, as our two sets of hands work together to settle them into their place, what a beautiful picture it is.

Two are better than one. A team, a body, that works together to complement each other. To accomplish together what we could never manage alone.

Sunday.

Monday.

Monday, where we use a different set of gifts. Where I stand in a truck with middle schoolers who joyfully lift and haul and push cartons that just barely fit within their arm span. With adults who take time off of work simply to come to move heavy things.

Where we laugh and tease and call numbers and move with a steady efficiency.

Where paperwork is just as important as muscle, and the littles practice astounding grace when we tell them "no" or "not today."

Rapid movement interrupted by long stretches of waiting. Talking. Praying. Playing. Talking some more. Praying again. Because, somehow, even in the midst of it.

People still come first.

And, they know it. Just like they know that we pray and we trust and we work, they know that we rest and that we enjoy one another and that we talk, over and over and over again, about the things that God has done.

That we let our nine year olds learn about forgiveness and hope and reconciliation in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. That we fill their heads with stories of the moments that Love broke through. That you don't have to turn eighteen to do astounding things.

These are our shoebox kids.

Taking a week to practice how you do Church.

(16,814 times.)

Repetition

It's the second week of November, but it feels a little like Advent has already passed us by. Epiphany in the rearview mirror. January fully upon us.

Until I look back and remember that, year after year after year, there has been this slightly quirky intensity to the second week of November. Something more in the air than the hint of coming snow that the kids are buzzing with the possibilities of.

And, I don't pretend to understand this corporate repetition, the way that the same kids seem to engage in slightly-more-grown-up versions of the same behaviors that they used fifty-two weeks before.

But, it helps my pattern seeking brain to make a little more sense of the world.

Especially, when I am a part of it too. I ask *nn* to set something in our breakout room, and it isn't a box of pencils or a stack of index cards - some pieces of butcher paper to lay out and a bag of markers instead - but, her shoulders lift with the same pride, and it becomes so much more than simply a task completed well.

This is second week of November. This is connection.

The kid who walks in ahead of me, spots his friends, but then stops in the middle of the floor until I catch up. Waiting for me

The extra games of gaga ball.

The clumps of middle schoolers who sit together in a mixed up hodge podge of friends and families, more concerned with being together than anything else.

One girl holding her space in a group of boys. Eighth graders who want proof that I will separate them when they start kicking and punching at each other during the message.

An alter call and quiet prayers with quiet kids.

There are differences. We're not stuck in Groundhog Day, and I don't even register the similarities until I am looking for them.

But, as we split off into breakout groups and M*dd** and I glance over the edge of the balcony, checking on the boys, trying to figure out what's going on inside their heads, there are echoes, echoes of whatever this day is.

Echoes and precious time.

Because, the fifth grade girls feel brilliant when they figure out the connection between our activity and our verse; drop two packs of noodles into the donation barrel with quiet confidence; help with skits; play duck, duck goose; and don't bat an eye when I am busy helping littles find their small groups during music. But, complain emphatically when I leave right at the edge of service to help with shoeboxes.

They help me clean up our space, return my phone, and I slip away.

Carve out some margin that ends up being used for conversations with high schoolers in the hallway, as if a river of humanity isn't pressing past us as we talk about past, present, and future.

Skip the middle school leaders' meeting when the clock declares how late I am running, and just hang out with middle schoolers instead. Get in those extra games of gaga ball. Play a large game of something that involves testing the endurance of our crab walking skills.

Talk, as always, about past present and future. Enjoy my growing kids who still whisper vaguely connected stories during the talk and have to draw Crush the turtle beside the word "righteous" on our island hopping page, the girls responding in colored ink to the things that other people have written or drawn until we quickly overrun our allotted time.

Eat. Sleep. Pray.

Head back to the church for the youth pastor's final Sunday.

And, it is hoedown dancing to "Oh, Happy Day;" pulling in close to pray for the transition, for the old youth pastor, for whoever is coming next; gifts; stories; cake and ice cream; and leaders who linger through the clean-up, talking about used to be's and where they are now's

Because, there's not a script to this. But, the God who kept us before will surely keep us now.

We have the patterns to prove His faithfulness.

Honest

We're in an interesting spot this Sunday. Maybe it's the time change or the change in seasons. Maybe it's the sunshine after a rainy week. 

 Light. Goofy. Tangibly aware of the Grace that surrounds us. 

And, it's honest, but it isn't the entire truth. 

 Because, it slips sometimes. And, then, there is a different kind of honest. 

Silent. Unspoken. Dealt with as gently as we possibly can. 

 A thousand things going on under the surface, these remnants of a long week that we can't seem to shake. Perhaps aren't meant to shake. 

 If there was any place that we ought to bring ourselves broken and tired and joyful and transparent, this is it. This community designed to look like Christ. 

Church is the place where we come honest. 

And, it's odd, this sense that we can come honest without necessarily using words. Odd, but, for today, true. 

 When our silence and our presence are the most true things that we can offer in the quiet moments. When even in our play, the silent connection of a laughing glance is of highest importance. 

 We play Duck, Duck, Goose at their own impetus, listing off the books of the Bible with each tap on the head. Interrupting the litany of the Old Testament with a, "Jesus!" before running, laughing to a new spot. 

 Build shapes out of groups of middle schoolers. Circles and squares. Vehicles and Thanksgiving dinner. The color blue and the Eiffle Tower. 

 Let them slide across the floor like rockets and collect a stack of half a dozen name tags. 

 Shoot rubber bands at empty pop cans and play the drums on empty tables. 

Sing with unguarded hearts. 

 Noisily quiet. But, honest.

Island Hopping

There are a few conversations that we keep circling back to these days, all for their own very unique reasons.

Winter retreat. The coming youth pastor. And, the identity of this eighth grade class.

"I feel like we've always been the 'other' class." 

One of the Gryffindor girls air quotes it in the midst of sharing sixth grade memories, her gaze flicking around the room to take stock of the people she is talking about. Make sure that they haven't changed in the last few days. That she she has the right to say it. That she is still speaking the truth.

Truth about these eight graders who are spinning on the floor in the gag pit. Curled up against the wall to talk. Making stories. Telling stories. Always telling stories.

We've told a dozen stories in the last five minutes. Jumping intuitively from the last set of stories to this abstract line of thought.

This idea that her class has never been the ones to sit down and have a long and focused cabin time. Always been sound and movement and hours spent together.

So, we talk about it.

I talk about it with another leader on Saturday. And, H*l*y brings up again the next Sunday.

We're sitting on the floor, just myself and half of the group of girls. Discussion questions asked and answered. But, stalled out before we could get anywhere deep.

"Jessica says that our class is -- oh!"

She finds a sticky name tag on her elbow and the sentence ends abruptly. But, yes. They're already pretty sure that they understand.

"We were talking last week," we laugh; I pick up the train of conversation, "about how your class is either discussing the meaning of the universe in some strange place or just totally everywhere."

They nod. Taking just long enough to picture their friends. Decide whether it could be true.

And then, we're off. Island hopping from one concept to the next. Telling about the junior class that is so much like they are. Understanding that "they" encompasses the twice as many guys sitting downstairs just as much as it describes the girls who are sitting here.

"They'll be your guys' seniors next year. You'll feel right at home."

I share snippets: boomerangs brought to church, bean bags broken open in the parking lot, roofs climbed, late night conversations under Haitian skies. Watch a little of the tension release at this idea of being no longer alone.

"That makes it every third class."

The girl who started the conversation makes the leap from point A to point X. Goes back and forth with me for a few sentences, at the same time that another girl in the corner has gone from W to H. And, within moments we're talking about camp and ministry trips.

John Day. Haiti. Belize.

What they're going to do with their freshman summer.

We stalled out on a question about purpose in a dark world. Took a detour through class identity. Touched briefly on winter retreat. And, ended up here.

This is what it looks like to pile twenty intuitive thinkers in the same room. The tiniest bit of what makes them who they are.

And, it fills my head with all sorts of ideas for next week. For the weeks after. Ways of making this small group thing something that their brains and hearts can understand. Ways of doing better by my Gryffindor girls.

My very non-linear island hoppers.

Waste My Time

One of the sixth graders veers off course just a little when he sees us sitting on the library couches, slipping his arm over my shoulder in the half pat that is a school version of a side hug, each of us snaking one limb out and giving an almost squeeze.

"Yes," he nods to no one - or to anyone who happens to be within hearing, "I'll waste my time for this."

Every few days we cross paths between classes. And, every time, every time he spots us. Veers off course. Decides on a new way to get to his class. Strikes out on his own for a moment.

"Stay there."
"I'll be late for this."
"Yes!"

His words remind me that we are doing so much more here than teaching math and science and history. That test scores will never define children. That their response to one teacher will not be their response to every teacher.

That there is a deep desire in these little lives to know that they are loved.

Worthy. Seen. Remembered. Enough.

The same things that draw us to the Kingdom are the most important things that we can communicate at school.

 Because, there is this echo in all of us. This quiet voice that murmurs that we were not meant to be alone. That we were created for more than this. That there is a Love and a Mercy bigger than the heavens that desires to be known by us. That designed us to be known.

 And, they hear it. Feel it. See it. Taste it.

 They know, with the guarded and yet vulnerable eyes of middle schoolers who know all too well what the world is but are not yet resigned to the reality of it.

 They know what it is that they are looking for. Know what it is that they need to see.

 The power of the everyday Holy.

 The Holy that interrupts the constant cycles of our lives, the hurrying from one place to the next, the constantly growing piles of tasks and accomplishments. Not loudly. Not with any fan fare.

 Just shows up in the midst of the everyday. Asks us to notice. To pay attention. Be always on the lookout. To deviate from the course for just a moment.

 To waste our time for connection.

 For the Kingdom.

 And, I wonder how often I miss it. The quiet, powerful love of a God who guards like a mother. Like an eagle.

 Do I waste my time to notice stars? Clouds? Moments of peace and silence?

Or, am I too busy keeping my head down and getting on with life to spend time on these most important of lessons?

 Because, people may be quirky, frustrating, hard to understand. But, they are beloved by the Creator. Carefully formed to be worthy, seen, remembered, enough. Imperfect, but designed in the image of perfection.

 Loved so deeply that the Holy, Perfect, Timeless Son of God handed himself over to suffer on their account.

 This is a story, the Story, of Holy Love.

 And, it is is worth wasting time for.

The -Ness of Being Human

"It seems like," one of the high school girls marks it in brown ink on the edge of the verse that we are using for a corporate meditation, "living in the flesh goes from a state of action and a state of mind to more of a -ness."

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Crucified with Christ. The way that the thieves on the crosses were crucified with Him. Crucified with a God-man who gave Himself - betrayed Himself - for me.

Living. Still in this body. But in such a very different way.

Four simple letters of explanation. The blueness of the sky. The flesh-ness of being human.

This idea that our flesh-ness is simply another attribute. Another Adjective. My eyes have brownness. My heart courageousness. My body slenderness. My soul timelessness.

None of these things are the entirety of who I am, even the entirety of that aspect of my being. My eyes are also white and black. Flecked with shades of color. Nearsighted. Contact wearing. They squint up when I laugh or smile. Skim quickly over pages of text.

My eyes have brownness. But, they are so much more than brownness.

Nerves and cells, rods and cones, a hundred little intricacies of DNA and genetics that come together to produce this -ness.

And, yet, this -ness will never be all that I am.

This flesh-ness is an attribute rather than an identity.

And, there is Grace in that.

Curl up close. Scream to the stars. Dance in the foyer, Grace. Because, if I am more than the sum total of my parts, then so are you. So are we all.

A muddle of attributes. Fears. Joys. Quirky ways of dealing with emotion. Silent languages. Favorite foods. Proud moments and regrets.

The -ness that resides along with Christ in us.

Sometimes fallenness. Sometimes holiness. Always human.

And, it makes space for the everyday Holy, the mundane that whispers, "Holy." Doesn't shout it. Doesn't sing it the way that we will someday. Someday, when the -ness is transformed and we suddenly look like Jesus.

Instead, it whispers.

Through elementary school hallways filled with costumed kiddos and middle schoolers who want to serve, want to play, want to be.

Through carmel apples in the church kitchen and forgetting to care who's winning the game. Youth group schedules that we make up on the fly and running hunched over through mazes designed for much smaller people.

Half formed conversations. Unexplained tears.

Rain and sunshine and brilliant gaps in the clouds. Fog and wind and imaginations that can take us to places that we have never been, send us on grand adventures across the globe and remind us that stairs can be made for running up.

This is Holy.

This is the -ness of being human.

Fearless

Sunday morning comes in windy, our very desert sort of announcement that, yes, fall is here.

We settle into rows for music and story, the two groups of fifth grade girls piled together. Too many bodies in too few chairs. But perfectly content to stay that way, because, well, yes.

Because it was windy. Because they are tired. Because the need to be together is stronger that the need to actually have your entire backside safely on a plastic surface.

Because, this. This is courage. Or, this is stubborn. This self aware wildness inside of them. This dig in your heels, find a different way, relentless grit that will make them such a force to be reckoned with.

This is what their brave looks like.

It looks like a thirteen year old who finds me standing in a hallway during the fall frenzy and decides to dub himself the hall monitor's assistant. Weaving through rooms with me to find candy baskets that need to be filled - and learning the art of the candy tax. Reading the class projects that are posted to dozens of different bulletin boards. Running through mazes and putting stacks of chairs and desks back to where they belong. Posting a selfie from my phone and grabbing a friend to play catch with a leftover pumpkin.

 It looks like an eighth grader who carves out a space beside me during Sunday morning music, when he wanders back in. Thinks to ask for the definition of a "cornerstone" while we stand there. Sits in the front for the first time since elementary school. Chooses to listen. To think ahead, around, and vaguely connected.

 Like girls who gather around to talk about winter camp. About Noah staffs and fabric markers and wads of deodorant. Marshmallow wars and the world's shortest cabin times.

 Fifth graders who hop around with me like crazies in the hallway to learn the books of the Bible and repeat the verse a dozen times as we work together to scribble it across a page. Drop a can of food into the donation bin with overdramatic ceremony and fold hearts and pig faces from flat sheets of paper.

 Juniors who pop up to move the TV stand out of the way. Do whatever needs to be done. Simply because the youth pastor isn't here, and someone ought to do it. Sit in circles to break apart a John Piper talk. Listen and watch and do their best to buy in. Even when their bodies are tired from Homecoming and their hearts are a little wigged out by this week's differences.

But, always together.

 Because the bravest thing that a Gryffindor can do is allow some one else to come alongside. Expose a little of their mess and walk through it in community. Pick up the slack. Let someone else guard your back. Brave.

 My Ravenclaws are bravest when they wrestle with ideas and concepts. My Slytherins when they actively work to change their world.

 When they are scared, they isolate. They lose their curiosity. They become passive.

 Fear makes them the opposite of what they truly are.

 And, yes. That means that their defining factors are the very things that require the most fearlessness. But, I think that that is way it works in the Kingdom. Here, in the Holiness of the Presence, peace becomes the plumb line. Courage becomes standard. And, the things that our flesh finds difficult become the new normal.

 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

 This is the One who makes us fearless.

Stories and Purpose

Fall comes, busy and consistent in a way that my summers are not. This steady tumble of hours upon days, days upon weeks. And, I remind myself of the beauty that is here. Remind myself of the need to rest.

Because, once again, there are pieces of my life scattered across my floor. Once again, I need to slow down and find the stories here.

Part of my fabric stash sits in the middle of the room, jumbled and spread around by playful kittens, and a dark green scrap catches my eye, white letters still brilliant against the background. A twice worn shirt from an 11th grade trip to Atotonilco Los Altos, Mexico.

A trip where I began to form my ideas of how I would someday lead a team. The value of music and conversation on starlit rooftops. Of time taken from the task to be with, play with, hear stories. Of the power of roadside food and unwashed fruit to lock a place deep into your bloodstream, to make it home.

I learned the value of simple rules and the natural balance of late nights and early mornings. The divisive power of a grumpy leader and the feel of a team curling in on itself for protection, not from our hosts, but from each other.

The power of water to soothe and to process and to heal, and the homecoming that sometimes begins long before the plane ride home.

So many of the things that have been Haiti, I learned in Mexico.

Off to the side, half buried under Bible study notes on the life of Moses, the flip flops that were Provision right before middle school camp, a narrative that stretched through our week when one of them was left behind -- somewhere in a bush, near the edge of a field, in the dark and adrenaline of a night game.

A night game that we still reference when we talk about camp, when the kids gather around and we repeat the stories that make them feel real. When we talk about trust and leadership and the Body of Christ. When we remind them of a time that they were Brave.

When they were kind enough to lend an extra pair of flip flops to a shoeless leader. Clever enough to find it along the side of the trail where I could not. United enough to know of a need that had never been spoken directly to them.

A little more worn, lightly chewed by my parents' cat, a silent reminder.

The jackets that indicate a change of season, socks that mean a school year of tennis shoes and walks during gym class. 

Things that aren't. Shorts that are tucked carefully away in drawers until the weather changes again. A sweatshirt still with the 7th grader who borrowed it at camp.

Echoes of Kenya everywhere, of Haiti; of cluster, Sundays, camps and school. That always tension of being ready to leave and yet thoroughly grounded to this place. The quiet whisper of a three years ago conversation with God, a promise to stay "until."

That word that stretched out into the future and echoed through countless conversations with the Divine. "Are you sure, God?"

"Yes. Stay until..."

Until. Until a seemingly arbitrary event that might be soon, could have come any time, might not be for years or seasons.

Until.

Until three weeks from now.

But, not.

Not that I am getting on a plane three weeks from now, or three weeks after that. 

Simply that the "go" that I have been waiting for from God, the fleece, the Macedonian call, the "stay here until..." came two and a half weeks ago. Becomes reality in three more. Simply that I can see the pieces gradually falling into place.

That something has changed to the feel of it all, something that has nothing to do with the physical changes that are happening all around me. No longer a staying until. But, a staying in order to.

And, I find myself acutely aware of this choice to stay. To be present with and for these kids one more day, one more week, one more hour at a time. To be faithful to a bigger calling that has nothing to do with my timing or my specifics and everything to do with the overarching plan of a God who is Great, Gracious, Glorious, and Good.

Because, in this season, the first step of "go" involves not leaving.

Transition - Peace and Fearlessness

We're going through transition with the high schoolers. Dead center of that space between when the youth pastor announced that he was leaving for a different job at a different campus of the church and when he actually leaves.

Muddling our way through this place. Looking forward. Planning for the future. But, not too far forward. Because no one knows what, who, comes next.

The leaders have done this before, walked through these transitions, these fuzzy gray areas between one youth pastor and the next. Five during my student years. Two more not long after. And, then this long space.

By some miracle, these kids have never faced a transition that wasn't precipitated by a change in grade. Since sixth grade, they have known the same middle school pastor, the same high school pastor.

A sameness that has shaped their view of church, themselves, of God.

And, I'm not certain how to write about it, because every week, every day, is a little bit different. Rife with the uncertain endings that make me so hesitant to put things down in black and white. Moments that come like the uneven rise of the tide. Pulled and buffeted by forces that we cannot see.

Nature's reminder that our small bay is a part of a bigger ocean.

That knowing the details is an attribute of the past, not the future. That it would be just as foolish to attribute everything that these kids are walking through to this transition as it would be to give it no credit for what is going on in their lives. That this is little more than a heartbeat in the scope of eternity.

So, I'll lay out the moments as they pass, memorial stones on the beach to mark where we've been, where we're going.

The first few awkward days where some people knew, but not everyone, not yet. And, we spent cluster fumbling through half conversations and knowing looks with student leadership girls who had had their rug yanked out from under them. While the rest of the group continued on as normal.

Holding those ones back at the end, and having a quiet, shell shocked conversation.

Excited for the youth pastor who is moving on to something that he loves. Sorting through what will change (as little as possible for now) and what will stay the same. Visibly relaxing at the news that a woman who they love and trust will be at the head of the transition.

Waiting. Sitting on this silent knowing.

The Sunday where he tells the rest of the kids. The student leaders tense all evening, waiting for this blank space in the schedule, carved out but unnamed.

A Haiti kid settling next to me on the floor. Another conversation that is half formed words and loaded glances. That checking in that makes things better, easier to face when you are not alone. Nerves that are 30% the youth pastor and 70% the rest of us. The moment where it ceases to be a secret.

A clump of kids in the front of the room. A clump of leaders talking it through in the back. Always coming around to that all important question, "How are the kids doing with it?"

The kids are fine. The kids are a mess. Every kid is different in every moment. Heedless of the change at one breath. Flipping out at the next. Grieving long before they have figured out what it is that they are grieving. Long before they have begun to put words or thoughts to these feelings roiling up inside them.

Determined to stick it out. Wanting to run from all of it. Hurting. Uncertain. Moving on with the resilience that is humanity.

Normality for a week or two. Unnamed undercurrents as processing continues.

Leaders' meeting. Strategy. Questions.

Cluster with beautiful girls who watched this video a few weeks ago and now arm themselves with paper and markers to dissect a verse. Delve into the tenses and the translations of Greek words. Cross references. Personal application. The agency of Divine sacrifice.

We're going through a "Fearless" series as a church. Exploring the concept of peace as a cluster. A God who will be glorified in all things.

Trust. Community. Honesty. Peace.

Memorial stones on the shore, even when the unknown comes in like the tide.

Colored Grace

"Colorful."

We're talking about characteristics of God in large group, and one of my fifth graders starts with the suddenness of having an answer. 

"God is colorful because He loves everything and everyone."

"Earthquake" doesn't make much sense, even when I try to whisper explain the story mid song. She knows what jail is like. Dad is in jail for a long time, and it isn't anything like that. Better not be anything like that.

The presenter keeps asking "easy" questions like "Could you trust your father to keep your money for you?" where the expected answer is "yes." Even though, clearly, it should be a "no." Dad is not a man who should be trusted, not like that, anyways.

But, she knows this.

Knows that God is colorful and God is Love.

My mind flashes to the "adventures" I/we've been going on on Tuesday nights with a group of kids, the imaginary trips around the world. Pink lakes in Australia. Rainbow mountains in China. Beautiful places that couldn't be real. Shouldn't be real. But, are.

Yes, God is Colorful. Yes, God is Love.

How could the Creator of color not be?

We go outside and half freeze, half thrill in the sunshine, knowing that this won't be an option much longer. Smile and brush her off when she rolls down the hill and comes up soaked and grass covered. Curl up into our space under the stairs. Donate candy to the community outreach bins. Play with markers and cardboard and take ourselves far less than seriously.

Because, she's only been with my group once before, but she already knows that this is how we do Sundays.

Grace and Love and patterns in the midst of the unpredictable.

Patterns that we fall back onto so easily around here. The pictures that my eighth graders take on my phone, knowing that I will post them later. 

Even though my Inst*gram feed tells me that it's been twenty-three weeks since they've last done this, this particular group of them. Since they've used the camera on my phone as proof of reality, connection.

The way that they scramble into line for a game that we don't actually end up playing. Content to let one of the boys throw away the needed game piece (okay, it was a tissue) so long as we're circled up here, together.

To sit tucked between the gaga pit and the wall before service while they talk about next year, about high school and dances and no longer all going to the same private school.

To rip sticky tags into more pieces than ought to be possible during the talk and fidget like we're making them sit on hot coals during this lesson on suffering, but silently hand them over when I begin to pile the trash on my phone, add to the pile themselves when they find more.

And, Grace washes over us like salt waves.

A hand beside me slips up during music. They remember what we've said about breakouts and take us at our word. Connections are voiced between suffering and what they've learned about mourning at school.

It's not perfect. There are missteps and moments that I would go back to change. Other kids that I would have pulled into our dance if I had enough hands to hold them all. But, there is Grace. There is laughter and there is honest conversation.

Because God is Colorful and God is Love.