Joy.
We never do quite get the candles to light this week, defeated by the cold desert wind that buffets every corner of the building. And, I have to wonder a little at the folly and the strangeness and the beauty of this all.
There's a sticky hand in the candle tray that belongs to a child who is already counting down the weeks to her next prize, even though the last one was never brought home. We play a different game, because I have yet to laminate new books of the Bible cards, and they protest at the change, playing, but still asking for the other one, the old one. Smash booking happens at the speed of light, but the new girls settle in afterwards to spend long, quiet moments duct taping their covers.
We talk about kids' camp and Royal Family Kids' Camp and stumble our way through Christmas carols, and the birthday girl leads us through the Advent liturgy.
Joy is such a strange word to use for this often harried process.
When we trail long chains of connected middle schoolers up and down these stairwells in search of paper puzzle pieces and this video is probably the only thing that they will remember from the talk. When they are sassy and full of life and when they quietly explain that they weren't here last week because their dad was too mad to go to church. When we're right in the center of this muddle that is the holidays.
Joy is 'grace recognized'.
Grace that piles up like these burned out matches. That echoes through little ones who pop in and out of range.
The 6th grader, who sets himself down one step below me at lunch, as tentatively close as school rules allow, narrating the important movements on his game and fully expecting that I am watching the rest of them, is vibrating with fear. Fear for break. For transition. For a thousand big and little things that a crowded cafeteria doesn't lend us the space to go into.
And, it doesn't look like joy.
But, I can see the Grace. Amazing Grace. Because, transitions haven't always been this easy for him. As we sit here and talk about the games that we used to play in my reading group, the cookies that I once brought them from Cambodia, the matching bracelets for all of us, Grace makes the space to remember.
Once upon a time, back in the cookie, bracelet, game playing days, when I had a different phone case and went by a different name, he was a tiny little second grader who responded to a temporary change of rooms by climbing up onto the table, curling into a ball, and screaming like the zombies were coming. Terrified.
To sit here now, almost quiet, so different from the little one who refused to let go of my sleeve once he was finally coaxed off the table, is Grace upon Grace upon Grace for this kid who still hasn't quite figured out the art of making friends in a world where you change schools several times a year.
He's working on it. Always trying new strategies. New groups of kids. And, I am reminded once again of the not yet-ness that is the point of Advent in the first place. The waiting and the growing and the hope that there is something better yet to come. Doing our best and trying new things and finding Grace in the places where our healing still looks an awful lot like a broken world.
When the wind blows out our match before the tiny flame can quite do what we thought it was supposed to, as if we could control wind or fire any more than Holy Spirit, there is still Joy.
Joy is 'grace recognized'.
Grace that piles up like these burned out matches. That echoes through little ones who pop in and out of range.
The 6th grader, who sets himself down one step below me at lunch, as tentatively close as school rules allow, narrating the important movements on his game and fully expecting that I am watching the rest of them, is vibrating with fear. Fear for break. For transition. For a thousand big and little things that a crowded cafeteria doesn't lend us the space to go into.
And, it doesn't look like joy.
But, I can see the Grace. Amazing Grace. Because, transitions haven't always been this easy for him. As we sit here and talk about the games that we used to play in my reading group, the cookies that I once brought them from Cambodia, the matching bracelets for all of us, Grace makes the space to remember.
Once upon a time, back in the cookie, bracelet, game playing days, when I had a different phone case and went by a different name, he was a tiny little second grader who responded to a temporary change of rooms by climbing up onto the table, curling into a ball, and screaming like the zombies were coming. Terrified.
To sit here now, almost quiet, so different from the little one who refused to let go of my sleeve once he was finally coaxed off the table, is Grace upon Grace upon Grace for this kid who still hasn't quite figured out the art of making friends in a world where you change schools several times a year.
He's working on it. Always trying new strategies. New groups of kids. And, I am reminded once again of the not yet-ness that is the point of Advent in the first place. The waiting and the growing and the hope that there is something better yet to come. Doing our best and trying new things and finding Grace in the places where our healing still looks an awful lot like a broken world.
When the wind blows out our match before the tiny flame can quite do what we thought it was supposed to, as if we could control wind or fire any more than Holy Spirit, there is still Joy.
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