Duct Tape is Like the Force

Sunday.

School starts this week. A new youth pastor is coming. (Did I mention that they hired a new youth pastor while we were in Haiti? Or, that their heads and their hearts are spinning a million miles an hour at the thought of it?) We're signing kids up for clusters. And, the whole lot of them have that just under the surface energy that means change is in the air.

Senior boys spark with the challenge of small groups breaking apart to duct tape someone to a wall. John Day kids tell their stories, just as Haiti kids spent last week telling theirs. Microphone in hand. A thousand things left unsaid. Speaking truth. But, not quite the entire truth.

Trusting that there will be future. An entire year to tell these stories. And, then, new trips to jar them loose and send them spilling from our lips and hearts again.

Because, we do healing in layers around here. Debriefing Royal Family under a hot Haitian sun, cross legged in these long skirts and curled close into this tiny strip of shade. Kids' camp under a sheet of stars. Old trips in the midst of new ones.

And, this summer has given us plenty to talk about.

Stories about fires and rainstorms and fear and hope that crowd for space behind their eyes, jostle with wishes and worries for the soon coming school year.

We pull in a little tighter on this type of day, whether they realize that we are doing it or not, crowded in tight around the red dot rug where we go over the schedule, far too many bodies for the "toes on the edge" habit that one of our graduated seniors worked so hard to instigate. Slowly mixing and shifting clumps of humanity, as we move back to being a youth group rather than these ministry trip teams. Closer together than the space requires us to be.

We talk and pray and sing and count heads. We duct tape children to walls.

Gently.

Somehow, that is the truest word that I have to describe our kids tonight. They are gentle.

They function together in a smooth mix of classes, the freshmen watching and mimicking the things that they see the upperclassmen doing. Seniors splitting from their friends to join younger groups for prayer. Stepping out into the parking lot to cut duct tape off of willing victims. Gathering around to watch as the last team finishes, names falling from their lips like quiet talismans. "Oh, this is so-and-so's group? They're going to figure out how to do it."

We're figuring out how to do it. Loose inside this transition as we always are, peering at the unknown edges of a new year, curious. But, also, perfectly content to draw close and stay right here.

To pray quietly for our schools in these circles where freshman and senior mirror each other's body language so perfectly that another leader simply nods when I point out the symmetry. Fully convinced, as only a youth leader could be, of the precious power within the lives of these kids.

If souls could have twins, these two would be cut from the same cloth.

Our freshmen mirror our seniors, the mass of sophomores and scattering of juniors settling comfortably into the space in between. They are gentle. They are wise. They have tasted some bitter fruit this summer and still held to the conclusion that God is Good.

God is Grace. God is Mercy. God is Love.

In the midst of fire and drought and fear and want and heartache: God is.

In the midst of goofy games and everyday life: God is.

It is going to be a good year.

But the wisdom that comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality or hypocrisy.

James 3:17

(If youth groups were birds, this would be how we do transitions.)