Brains and Boxes

Nine years ago, I sat on a dark rooftop with an uncertain and frustrated team. Frustrated by the four walls that seemed to be hemming them in, with having to stay still and contained. Uncertain of the rules about movement: where could they and couldn't they go that was helpful or safe or even allowed?

Uncertain what to do with the physical reminders of a country that had been changed by things outside of its control. Uncertain what the immediate future looked like, let alone the future future. Frustrated by confusion from the ones who were "supposed" to be in charge and by an ever fluid stream of information.

Frustrated by words that they used to know being combined in new ways that they only half understood. Frustrated with too much time spent in too close quarters and with things that weren't going according to their plans.

Frustrated by new rules and expectations -- and by not being sure of where to find more toilet paper if they needed it. Inundated by information about hand washing and hand sanitizer and new tricks to keep germs at bay.

Uncertain what to do with this unfamiliar sickness that hovered on the edge of everything. What should they be worried about? Should they even be worried? How worried?

Frustrated with themselves and each other for overreacting, under-reacting, ignoring the rules, or bring too strict.

Frustrated with adults who didn't seem to see them, didn't seem to see the ways that they were trying or triumphing or struggling. Staying up too late working to make sense of all of it and waking up too early for another long day of not knowing.

Uncertain what to do with emotions and reactions that seemed to rear up suddenly and without their consent. Frustrated to find even familiar feelings so much stronger or weaker than they should have been.

Tired of pretending like all of this chaos and unfamiliar was okay. Tired of pretending like they were okay. Cut off from many of their normal coping skills. Missing their people. Dropped suddenly into a world that seemed to be putting no effort into matching their expectations.

Stay inside. Listen to your leaders. Don't be a jerk to other humans.

We sat there, under a bright blanket of stars, and watched as clouds rolled towards the Dominican. And, we stumbled towards the phrase that would become so familiar to late Haiti nights, would become such an instinctive part of these high school teams.

"I love you guys, and I'm proud of you. Nothing about this is simple. What you're doing is really, really hard."

We sat on warm, rough concrete, and, we talked about brains. The last argument was about wearing shoes, but we chose instead to talk about brains. We chose to hold space. We chose to let it be hard.

And, the more that we talked, the more that they melted, bits of the tension and frustration and shame slipping off of their fifteen and sixteen year old shoulders. It didn't make it better, but it helped it to make sense.

Human brains, we discussed, are wildly effective sorters and boxers. We love neatly labeled categories and organization systems that make sense to our own internal world. New things are okay. New things get their own box or get examined until we decide that they fit into a familiar space after all.

But, too many new things, and the entire system can start to seem like it's falling apart. Brains don't like it when the system doesn't work. But, brains are also not particularly good at instant response.

The sorting (and all sorts of other things) might come to a screeching halt as we run around looking for a sharpie and a stack of empty boxes.

We might ignore the new things and tuck them up onto a high shelf somewhere, out of sight and out of mind -- until the shelf gets bumped (by something as simple as an adult asking you to put on a pair of shoes), and they all come tumbling back down on our heads.

We might scream and shove and force the new things into old boxes, and then find ourselves with arms full of old "stuff" that has been displaced by the New.

It's a mess. It feels like a mess. And, even if we keep the garage door shut, so that no one else can see the ways that we are struggling, the New is still there.

---

It has been nine years since that particular group of kids sat in that particular circle, but it feels like the conversation still applies. The last few weeks and months, there has been a lot of New.

There are things that you were hoping for, planning for, dreaming of, that suddenly aren't. Things that you never expected suddenly are.

Some of us have frozen. Some of us are ignoring it and then yelling in frustration at whoever came in and bumped the shelf. Some of us have found ourselves fighting old battles on top of these new ones. Some of us are carefully (or not so carefully) pulling out the boxes that we labeled during the last "thing," and realizing that not all of the New is as new as it might appear.

Even without social distancing, you are scattered too far for me to ever gather you onto a single roof. Some of you are in middle school or high school. Some of you are adults, doing your thing out in the world. Some of you are going to work. Some of you are staying home.

Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing today,

"I love you. I'm proud of you. What you're doing is really, really hard."

When nothing seems to be happening the way that it should...

When you can't conjure up how it felt to be that brave, bold little middle schooler who stood in a dark field and let themselves be knighted...

When it doesn't seem to matter how many times you've sat under those same stars and heard Jessica say those same words...

When the waiting is making you want to climb the walls...

When you're frozen or yelling or fighting...

When you don't remember how it was that you sank, defeated, to a Portland sidewalk and then stood back up, together, determined to try again...

When the New is overwhelming, and you are standing waist deep in the mess of your garage...

Pull out your mental sharpie, and let's label this first box together. Big, bold letters, so that you can see it from across the room.

"I love you. I'm proud of you. What you're doing is really, really hard."

Transition

Our second graders get to try their hands at making a mandala under the mango tree, and, like children everywhere, they run off without question, already certain of where to find the brightest flowers and the greenest leaves, even in the midst of this cool, dry season.

Some of them kick their shoes off to run through the short grass, while others collect fistfuls of just the right sized rocks, bringing them to the art teacher with far more care than what they use to keep track of pencils and notebooks.

Kids are kids are kids, some days focused in like laser beams and some days wiggly and talkative and doing their unintentional best to drive their teachers up the wall.

Two of the first graders act up just enough to get themselves sent out of class and then run down the road to buy cookies and toys that are quickly confiscated when they return. Because, they are eight years old, and, without the popsicle lady at her normal place by the gate, the money is burning holes in their pockets.

The third graders are reading through books faster than we can get our hands on them and they laughingly race to beat the American on their geography quiz, not the least bit flustered when we borrow their teacher to talk through the technology (three Am*zon Fire tablets for the school) that we are slowly adding into the classrooms.

And, we're all very human and all very messy, and the teachers are gracious enough to wait a few extra days for their supplies when the airline neglects to put my bags onto the same flight as my person -- because both of our governments are in a bit of a quagmire over how, exactly money should be spent.

It's a quick trip, just long enough to join in on the filling out of report cards and the giving out of a hundred hugs and share bites of a dozen popsicles. Just long enough to wrestle with contact paper on the kitchen floor and put up new blackboard paper over the middle bit that is too slippery to really be used. To sit with one of our school grandpas while his grandson picks moringa from the tree, and to rest in the shade with some of the staff when the preschoolers leave and the afternoon fades into relative quiet.

Long enough to take part in the gluing and the cutting and the constant scheming of ways to make it better -- because, these rockstar teachers, like rockstar teachers everywhere, are constantly full of ideas to make it better. Long enough to share cinnamon tea or hot chocolate with a dozen kids at once and for my water bottle to be used as a communal cup. 

Long enough for all of the jokes about how, exactly, the four year old is getting back to the States with me. And, long enough to watch him change his mind when he hears that, in the United States, we have ice on the ground!

Long enough to be very certain that, as much as I love these people, these kids, this school -- and as nice as it is to be warm for a few days -- my season here is finished.

There are other hands and minds and hearts that are better suited to this part of the task, other adults who are ready to take this school and continue to mold it into the best that it can be. Teachers and a director who have the power to take this so much farther than I ever could. This is their time.

This is a season where I focus instead on a crew of equally incredible kids in the States. Kids who find beauty in unexpected places. Kids who are some days laser focused and some days drive their teachers up the wall. Kids who read and study and play and laugh and sing. Kids who are preparing for and in the midst of trips and transitions of their own.

And, y'all, I am just as excited for that adventure as I was for this one.

Growing

The first day of school there are eleven kids.

By our third Wednesday, we have fifty-six, and we've capped all but the second grade class with its age range that stretches from eight to sixteen. 

Fifty six blue t-shirts. Almost seventy eggs cooked each day for students and staff. Seventy-five bowls of fortified rice, so that we always have extra when the bigger kids ask for more.

Sixty six pairs of shoes that slip on and off at each doorway, our floors kept clean enough for little people to sprawl out on, their work spread on mats or clipboards out in front of them. 

Because, of course this the kind of school where we work barefoot or in our socks, where we sit on the floor, where we share Jessica's phone and water bottle, and where, when the teachers ask, we say an emphatic, "Yes!" to staff wearing jeans and polos.

We count marbles to practice subtraction and flip over clip cards to see if we got the answer right. The reading teacher hides alphabet rocks and sandpaper letters in the grass and we use our fingers to trace on laminated cards and makeshift sand trays.

We draw and color and begin to let the big kids experiment with paint.

The tinies build the letter D out of foam pieces and rock it on their shoulder like a baby, and the PE teachers chalk lines in the hard packed dirt under the mango tree to play endless games.

Some days they run around with stickers decorating their arms and foreheads or wear rainbow colored scarves like super hero capes, and, on Fridays, we play musical chairs and have dance parties until the lunch supervisor begins looking pointedly at the clock.

Every day, he reads them a story while they eat, and, every morning, we start by gathering together in a circle to let a child choose a song and lead us in a prayer. Some days they choose a church song. Some days we sing the days of the week. Every day we tell them that Ms. Jessica thinks they are the hardest working kids in all of Haiti, and, three weeks in, they have begun to repeat it with confidence.

"I am one of the hardest working kids in all of Haiti!"

They are rewarded with the occasional lollipop, with stickers, with lavender oil rolled onto the backs of their hands, and, when they turn in their homework, with an overly exaggerated handshake ceremony in front of the whole school.

Because, to get from where we are right now to where we need to be by the end of June...they are going to need to some of the hardest workers in all of Haiti.

We have little ones who always want to finish first, always want to have the right answers, and ones who have never been to school before, still mystified by these squiggly lines and shapes that the big people seem to expect them to know.

Teenies who just turned three a few weeks ago, and fourteen year olds working to get each other up to speed. Math and art teachers who tailor lessons for preschoolers who work on one number all week and sixteen year olds who pick up the concept of subtraction in a single forty minute block.

Mix and matching a dozen different kinds of education and brainstorming each day after school as we search for ways to make it better. Ways to combine Haitian and American strengths, to reach all of our kids, to have fun -- and to keep the flies from overtaking.

Some days, there are an awful lot of preschooler tears, and, some days, the tears come from twelve and thirteen year old boys. Some days, half grown humans find themselves sent for a time out, and, some days, we have a lot of conversations about how they have good hearts and they are so smart and they can use good manners at school.

But, most days, the twelve year old helps me to bring lunch from the kitchen, driving his serving tray like a monster truck and making the cooks laugh when he "beep beep's" his way into the kitchen. Most days we give out dozens of hugs and high fives and exclaim over the kindergarteners' straight, quiet line, and the teachers run at 112% until they melt onto a flat surface for their break.

It isn't perfect, and no one is pretending that we don't still have a long ways to go -- or that I'm not still confused by the slight difference in the words for "pencil," "crayon," and "chalk" -- but it is the start of something good.

Something full of giggles and victories and kids who are slowly learning to ask for help when they don't know. Who are learning that we are more proud of their effort than their perfection. Who grin with pride when they ask for the soccer ball in perfect English.

Messy. Goofy. Active. Testing.

Always growing.

Learning Grace.

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Fire By Night, Cloud By Day

Some weekends, I am reminded why we treasure these stories of the Children of Israel, this frightened, anxious, impatient mass of humanity feeling their way forwards in the wilderness. Ten steps forwards. Twenty steps back. Singing as often as they complain and hurting as often as they were healed.

Waiting, each morning, for manna to fall.

We gather the middle schoolers for a gym night, spend the evening running in circles, throwing things at each other, and pulling children off of the bleachers. Jump into the chaos and the emotions and the thousand different things that are going on in their lives right now. Let go of the idea of organized games or planned events, and simply be.

Because, this is manna after a long week. This thing that looks not quite like church, but seems like it might be food anyways. This, "What is it?"

The kids laugh and recognize the strangeness of it, "I would feel bad for anyone new who came tonight."

There are a few new ones here, easy to locate by their focus on actually playing volleyball with a few leaders, while the rest of the gym pulses with movement and this only half verbalized language that they are speaking. The physicality that is Bethel kids on the cusp of things that they don't understand.

We bend hula hoops out of shape and then quietly re-form them. Tie shoelaces together and carefully finesse them back apart. Group and re-group and re-group again. 6th grade, 7th, 8th, boys, girls, the lines between us all summer camp fuzzy, as if, maybe, we can wear family like a second skin, can stay here forever.

Or, at least, until the cloud moves.

They've had a lot of practice at transition, this particular crew of them. Watching as leaders follow that pillar of fire wherever it leads. Well versed in uncertainty, and, hopefully, just as sure of that perfect Love that casts out fear.

One of the 6th grade girls informs me exactly how many miles I will be moving, and we rehearse, over and over again, when I intend on coming back.

Because, we're all a little raw this weekend, the spaces between us fuzzier and filled with echoes of "we" rather than "I."

5th grade girls are indignant, the next morning, at the thought of me leaving, hands on hips and lion cub fierce, as they declare that, "You can't leave. We just got you." as if they can stubborn me into changing my mind.

So, instead, we talk, and decorate covers with wash tape, and scrawl the word "Cherished" onto the next page of their notebooks. Accepted. Beloved. Cherished. If we only have a few weeks together, we're going to fill their heads with the reality of who they are.

This is church. This family. This is mess. This is Grace. This is Love.

These are middle schoolers who are collectively certain that they are my favorite. Royal Family kids who pop forwards when they are given the chance to lay on hands and pray. 6th grade boys who carefully fashion a bracelet out of the toilet paper that is our traditional goodbye.

These are high schoolers who somehow manage to make me cry, who stay late to help with dishes, and who gather on DQ benches until it is later still, leaned in intently as they work together to navigate life.

By morning, the entire nation will be aware of this night with a piercing sort of clarity. But, for now, our griefs and our joys are quieter, more private, more open to this nebulous space in between.

It's hard, sometimes, when you are in the middle, to see the Provision that has come before.

The lectionary reading pulls from Psalm 78. We look back on the Children of Israel, and, with them, we remember.

Remember a God who splits seas and rains manna. Who has spent these years tying us together and building memories. Who forges unlikely kids into family. Who is present in our ever moving mess.

There is ebb and flow here. There is Faithfulness. There is Grace.

Advent: Hope

The first Sunday of Advent surprises us a little, sneaks up on us before the calendar can change over to December, before we have quite had a chance to clean the Thanksgiving leftovers out of the fridge. And, there's something perfect about that.

Surprised by Hope.

My 5th graders lit the first flickering candle this morning, and there is a giant piece of string art in the sanctuary that spells out the word in endless loops of thin white thread.

The littles help me to draw a swirling Jesse Tree onto the back of a cardboard collage of "God's Heart," and we spend the last of our small group time coloring and cutting two dimensional ornaments for our two dimensional tree.

One by one, they point out their piece and take it in turns to tell these familiar stories. Genesis stories. Exodus stories. Beginnings and in betweens and no-one-quite-knows-what-is-happening-yet's. Messy humanity surprised, over and over again, by Hope.

Hope that turned out to be a baby, a rescue, a victory. A long and restless waiting for the One who would be all of those things and more.

"By faith Abraham..."

The youth pastor talks to the high schoolers about faith forged through trials, talks about the hard things in his own story with greater transparency than he ever has before. Challenges them to do business with God about the hard things in theirs. Challenges them to trust. To be open, to be honest, to tell the stories of when brokenness gave way to Hope. The mountains that were moved after they came to the end of themselves. The broken pieces that make them real. Make them human.

And, they do. They have those God moments that ripple from one to another until it settles over the room, a blanket of Holy presence that would be stifling if it weren't lit by that same flickering candle of Hope. Hope that changes their attitudes and puts a spark in their eyes.

They pray and they sing and we split off into conversation groups where my few trace the carpet with thoughtful fingers and promise to find someone, this week, to tell their story. Not here. Not now. Not in this room that seems to swallow their words and muffle them into silence. But, sometime.

Here, we are stories just by being, their past and their present tangled up together in the messiness of knowing that who they are here, tonight, may not who they appear to be tomorrow, or even a few hours from now. Hopefully, knowing that it doesn't matter. Hopefully, knowing that they are loved. Strong or weak. On top of the world or being crushed beneath it. This is the sort of place where we just keep picking up one rock and then another and another and another. Until, eventually, we look behind us and discover that the mountain has shifted.

Surprised by Hope.

These few are hesitant to close our time in prayer, worried about stuttering or using the wrong words, knowing full well that I won't let them out of this room until someone does. They avoid eye contact, barely moving, as if that will help them blend in with the couch.

"It can be super short." The stubborn in me keeps pushing, "Just, 'Jesus, help us to find someone to tell our stories to this week.'"
"Oh!" one of my sophomores lights up with sudden confidence, "I know what to say."

Surprised by Hope.

The tension melts from his shoulders, and we bow our heads to pray.

And, we come back together talking about ministry trips, Bridgetown kids near the wall, Haiti ones near the pews, spilling over with memories and plans and the powerful sense that, the last time that they felt this sort of Holy, they were somewhere else. Somewhere where it was okay to be broken. Somewhere where God's people worked together to heal.

Something deep in these kids has built a connection between service and the Holy. Between hard stories and the Holy. Learned to see God in the eyes of a person who is homeless, in shooting stars and giggling littles.

Discovered that they can find that same God here.

When you don't have all of the answers and you can't work hard enough to solve all of the problems. When there aren't enough hours in the day, and when you fall asleep not knowing what comes next -- except that you are surrounded by family that is walking this same path. When God shows up anyways.

These are the stories we tell.

Washing feet under an overpass. Cramming into a room filled with sweaty volunteers. Bouncing along in a bus. Wiping down dusty floors. Twining together orthodoxy and orthopraxy into a worship that is as simple as breathing.

Sometimes they have to find the Holy in the unfamiliar before they can have the eyes to see it here. Before they can dig through the mess of our broken humanity and find themselves surprised by the audacity of Hope.

Kingdom Come

The fifth graders are a mess of glue and scissors, sharpies and paper scraps, sprawled out across the hallway with a piece of cardboard that is nearly bigger than they are.

"Make a collage of things that show God's heart."

They quickly overflow the tiny space that I gave them to fill, and I spend part of my morning rummaging through a recycling dumpster for something large enough to contain the truth that is spilling off of their scissors. Favorite Bible verses, quotes, images of children and animals, adults, and nature. They create a pile of sunrises and question marks and decorate the top of the piece in metallic marker.

It isn't finished yet, but we tuck it away into a corner for next week, give them a chance to weave their prayers into the loom, circle up on the floor for a speed version of our Books of the Bible game, gather up the pillows and highlighting pencils and Kenyan scarves that make up our space, and send them off with their parents.

We're practicing abundance here. Practicing what it looks like not to worry about someone else getting your favorite color of pen or finding the Bible verse before you. Practicing putting socks in the donation bin and celebrating those few who managed to get their brains, and their paper Bibles,  together despite this rainy morning, without worrying when we will be celebrated in return.

Because, when our world is bigger than ourselves, when we can trust that there is "enough," the justice that we are studying comes like breathing, prayer comes naturally, and there is space to ask the questions that bubble at the lips of these little Ravenclaw girls with their brains that are constantly spinning, trying to "figure it out."

Space for my 6th graders to begin to shift their loyalty to people over process. To decide that they don't really care about collecting name tags as much as they care about having the leaders who belong with these pieces of fabric and nylon. To become, for a few minutes each Sunday, the things that a strong, healthy Slytherin class should be.

Loyal. Ambitious. Digging up details that no one else knew existed. Passionate. Bold. Stubbornly self reliant, but fiercely protective of anyone they consider their own. They are constantly playing the angles, moving the pieces, discarding the things that they deem to be extraneous, and trying on new ones for size. And, it's just about as much of a whirlwind as it sounds like.

This crew is constant movement and words and physical contact, always trying to "do it right," sorting through unspoken rules and relationships and unconsciously forcing us to put words to them. Slytherins guard our traditions, Gryffindors our stories, and Ravenclaws our ideas.

These three classes that twine together in a dizzying web of social media contacts and real life friendships don't have scissors or glue on hand this morning, but they are making their own sort of a collage, their own sort of a living picture of the heart of the Creator.

Unique. Gifted. Imperfect. With abundant space at the table for anyone who wants to come.

It doesn't solve the problems of the world, but it may just bring the Kingdom a little closer.

When high schoolers share their testimonies at athletic events, I am reminded of how far we have come in one year, in two years. Of the hurt and healing and honest conversations, of the questions that they are asking and the questions that they will continue to ask.

Of worries over friends and family in Haiti and the constant prayers that form as I spend my weekend driving and hiking through the Olympic National Forest, where, predictably, there is rain. But, rain that is so much gentler than that which has flooded churches and houses and fields.

Here, I hike for a few minutes alongside a woman who is well into her seventies, umbrella held confidently in one hand and trekking pole in the other, tisking over her "young" friends who have sped on ahead of her and in awe of a waterfall that surges with brown flood water, the bridge that we stand on swimming with fallen rain.

Here I am reminded by the Makah permit that hangs in my window that I am a guest on someone else's land. Here, I am reminded of the constant, unrelenting power of the ocean and the faithfulness of a God who sees. Who sees the twisting tangled mess of human history and chooses to enter in. Chooses to walk alongside us. Chooses to Love.

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
- Arundhati Roy

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A Prayer

 "If there's life on other planets, did Jesus die for their sins too?"

We're flopped on our backs under a brilliant net of stars, and the nature of this team quickly makes itself known. These kids, and their leaders, are questions and certainty, faith and doubt all tied up into the most intricate and beautiful of knots.

Theology and missiology, soteriology and dating. Our nights are filled with unanswerable questions and open handed issues as kids present their cases and admit their sticking points. And, in a way that is unique to this team, our days overflow with more of the same.

Pulling weeds and moving rocks is a perfect time to talk about Calvinism and Arminianism. Long van rides are for discussing prophecy and tongues, the recent socio-polital history of Haiti, and some of the finer points of what it means to honor and hold space for your spouse.

They teach each other how to solve Rubik's cubes and sudoku puzzles, discuss the age of the universe and arguments for a local or global flood. And, occasionally, they fall silent, and the journals make their way to the porch, and they introvert together, reading out an important line from a book or passing a puzzle that has them stumped.

On the basketball court, they watch each other like hawks, absolutely determined that we will not have a repeat of last year's adventures. The returning girls walk back and forth with me, arms full of Nalgene bottles that are scooped up and refilled almost as soon as they are emptied. You sweat hard, you take electrolytes. You feel sick, you tell Jessica. Take breaks, sub out, push hard, but remember that we still have a week yet to go.

VBS after VBS with kiddos who want nothing more than to see your face spark to life the way that it does when you see them. Hours of chase and beach balls and made up games. Wires to be twisted around rocks and skits to be performed. Songs to dance to, hacky sack to play, and endless streams of babies and little ones to be picked up, held, rocked to sleep, fed crackers, or played peekaboo with.

The 'thing' that we've come to do is slower this year, smaller, and our kids respond with the same gentle honor and courage that they work so hard to show each other. Play with snapchat filters and let their phones be passed around by small people they have just met, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have your camera roll filled with selfies or group shots with a finger halfway through the screen. Color pictures. Filter inside when it gets too hot to sit quietly and play hand games until it is their turn at crafts. Play outside games that echo back inside the building with shouts and laughter, because, sometimes, duck, duck, goose and shoulder rides are competitive sports.

Shine with a peace and joy that transforms every moment of putting others before self into a pure act of worship.

Washing water bottles. Saving plates of food. Quietly guarding the steps, so that conversations can be held secure and private. Basketball games at six in the morning. Unloading and re-loading lumber and sheet metal. Being early to the gate for a sober family meeting on the way home. Playing a giant game of chess or snorkeling at the resort. Getting a haircut. Trying genips and fresh sugar cane. Worship becomes an action, is an action, the thing that you would give up something for.

Wake up early to sanitize hospital beds and sand walls before breakfast. Stay up late to sweep and wipe down floors by hand and then to mop them and then mop them again. Move equipment, pick up trash, sanitize and sanitize and sanitize some more. Dislocate a shoulder or get mowed down on the basketball court and pop back up to try it again. Circle up tight on the roof when we've had a night with all of the emotions and sing until until the guitarist's fingers are raw.

Lay hands and pray over each other 'Haitian style,' with twenty-one voices layering over each other in a constant stream of sound, because there is One Who Hears. One Who Hears when they are frustrated because they expected it to be harder, and One Who Hears when they didn't expect it to be this stinking hard.

One Who Hears their faith and their love, their doubt and their questions, their unity and their hurt, their beauty and their mess.

One who watches them more carefully than they scan the night sky for shooting stars or threats of rain. One who knows their goofy comments and their honest conversations long before the words fall from their lips. One who has been preparing their hearts for this thing, this messy, beautiful jumble of an easy, hard, sleep deprived, throw your expectations out the window, sort of a thing.

We're caught up somewhere in that tension again, somewhere part way between fear and peace, just far enough along to see Faithfulness in the road that we've walked, but still tangled up in the darkness and the violence of our own humanity.

Because, there are nights when 1:30 in the morning is beautiful, star lit, gentle, honest. Nights when it is painful and terrifying. Nights when we talk circles around ourselves only to admit that we don't have a stinking clue. And, nights when we simply do not sleep at all.

Days when we work for more hours than there is daylight. Days when we play in a brilliantly blue ocean, and days where it is enough to join in on the dedication of a partially finished surgical center.

Because, really, none of those days are as simple as that -- and none of those nights are either. Sometimes there is snot in the face masks and ugly dead patches in the coral and jelly fish that want to sting you. Sometimes play days have some of the most serious conversations, and sometimes work days are the ones where finger jousting occurs.

We fall. We misstep. We fumble our way through bringing a new youth pastor along on this journey and through reaching back to find closure for old stories. And, somehow, we stumble our way into astounding, sacrificial Grace in the midst of it all.

Because, right here, right now, on this planet, Christ walks beside us.

And, that is enough.

Grace Upon Grace

Royal Family Kids Camp has a way of making the rest of the world come to a halt.

Shootings and protests and the world's new found ability to wander around and 'catch' imaginary creatures all stop at the gate, or, perhaps, somewhere a little farther down the highway, where we first pick up cell signals again.

Everything focuses in, centers, becomes about this moment and these campers and the things that are happening right here, right now, and nowhere else.

"That's why you go to a big training before camp," my eleven year old leans in close with a soft shake of her head when the half dozenth pause in the movie pulls a frustrated groan from thirty-six campers, "so you can learn how to not get angry at kids and to smile."

She doesn't have the word for it, but I know what she means. She means that these red shirted 'grown ups' are overflowing with Grace.

Grace for littles who get stuck, who get sad, who get angry, who get anxious, or happy, or excited, or overly tired. Grace in counselors who let their little boys comb through their hair with dinner forks and who curl the hundredth strand of little girl hair for fancy dinner.

Grace when kiddos wake up belting out Gold in the early pre-coffee hours of the morning (Proverbs 27:14) and when we stumble our way through dances that the kids have learned at Breakfast Club. Grace when we stay up late putting together scrapbooks and writing letters and Grace when we get up early to shiver our way to a Polar Bear Swim.

Camp is marked by counselors who help to 'hunt' chipmunks and catch every spider that we come across, by hands gently cupped around moths that made the mistake of resting on the nurses' cabin and peering into branches for hidden caterpillars.

Camp is hula hooping and tea parties and costumed children who wander through meals and activity stations as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It is CITs and staff members who drop whatever they are doing to walk us to the bathroom or watch us make our way back to the cabin, counselors who end the week realizing how very little they have found the time to shower, and campers who manage to have a 'great day,' even when the big feelings are trying take control of their little hearts and minds and bodies.

It's girls who trust enough to let you save them from bees and who ask to sit with their brother for a meal, because they don't get to live with him right now. It's kids who lean in close for the scary parts of the movie and who finally, on the very last day of camp, decide that you are allowed to braid their hair.

And, it is re-doing those braids three times before lunch, so that they will still look 'perfect' when she gets home.

When your camper who spent last year blacking out every word of her letters to you finally sends ones that you can read, because it's less scary to claim you, now that you aren't quite so close. When you spend hours practicing the hand motions to the eleven year old's favorite Music*lly and the nine year old doesn't have the patience for you to braid both sides of her hair at once.

When the bobble heads have been painted and the birdhouses/bug barns/tool boxes have been built. When there isn't a single screw left to undo in take apart and when dress up is wet and muddy. When their earbuds have been practically glued into their ears since Birthday Party and their name signs are rolled up into purple trash bags for the trip home.

When camp is over, we can only pray that they remember Grace and Love.

That they remember that not all grown ups get angry at kids. That some grown ups smile and ask them how their day has been and make sure that they always have enough to eat.

That, no matter what comes next, there will always be a place in the mountains where time comes to a halt.

Flinging Yourself Godward: Grace

 There is a picture saved, somewhere a few weeks back in my camera roll, a phrase that caught my attention. It talks about Mary, that teenaged girl who responded to the impossible by bursting into song. Mary, it says, "flung herself Godward."

As if God were a direction, or every direction, that we could simply stumble into when we were too tired, too frightened, too overwhelmed for a graceful decent. As if the Holy were waiting for our unsteady feet, ready to catch us with the gentle breath of a lion and the solid warmth of a golden mane.

Flinging ourselves Godward.

As if it were as simple as that. Throwing ourselves towards the Divine with the easy faith of first graders who lean forwards, heavy, into the cradle of our hands, sixth graders who bump past or drop their head onto an arm, seventh graders who kick at feet, freshmen and sophomores who drop a shoulder in a younger, not quite forgotten, way of greeting. Littles and not-so-littles who draw close when they don't know what comes next.

Human enough to know that there is Someone waiting to catch us. Or, at least, human enough to know that we need Someone there.

One of the wonderful things about working with students is that they force me to learn in order to be able to teach. To research answers to questions that they haven't yet asked. To put words to thoughts that rattle around, unarticulated, inside my head. And, to remember.

To remember the power of proximity. To remember that sometimes having the right words isn't as important as they things that we say with our bodies. That sometimes it is worth more to stand elbow jostling close, to steal hats or examine pocket knives or hold out an arm for these dizzying circles that accompany the words to "Happy Day."

To stand outside in the snow so many times that our ears ache with the cold of it. To slip and slide on powdery sidewalks and make snow angels in the parking lot because it hasn't yet fallen enough to stick to the grass.

To light candles and watch movies and crowd into noisy basement circles where the world is a mess and we are a mess, and yet we are flinging ourselves Godward together.

Praying over the top of each other in a tangle of thoughts and voices. Talking about the future and the present and the past. Playing these games on Sunday evenings that are no more than a circle of chairs with more bodies present than our two years ago selves would have dreamed possible.

It certainly isn't polished or perfect. There are dancing through wildflowers moments and slogging through mud ones. Times where everything seems right, and times where we are certain that we are doing everything wrong. Long hours where we wrestle in prayer for these kids, for ourselves. And, longer ones where we lift up our heads, fling ourselves Godward, remember that there is Grace for unsteady feet.

Last year's word was courage. Courage to sit and wait for a youth pastor and courage to do so much more than sit while we waited. Courage for always changing plans and high schoolers who let Haiti adventures burrow deep into their hearts and souls. Courage for doubts and questions and truth. For making space to listen to each other speak.

This year's word is grace.

Grace that is a direction, every direction, waiting for our feeble attempts at humanity to push us, stumbling, into arms that fold over, protect, turn on the lights and send the darkness scattering to corners.

Grace that will surprise us and startle us and leave us frustrated, because, surely, in this situation or that one, Grace is not the answer.

Because, Grace isn't easy.

Every impatient corner of my soul wants to trade in this lavish Grace for Solutions, instead. Don't tell me to love my neighbor. Don't tell me to look closer when I'm already squinting and I can't see the beautiful past the ugly. Don't whisper that there are some questions that don't need to have answers, that the asking is the most important part of the game.

But, do.

Because, I need the reminders.

I need to remember that Grace has been out of hand since the beginning, since "Bereshit bara elohim," since the moment, long before man, when God chose the world, the universe, set it apart, appointed it for this great drama of Incarnation. Grace has been out of hand since Creation.

Stumbling towards Grace, flinging ourselves Godward. Becoming a better story.

"She flings herself Godward," says Elizabeth Johnson about Mary's Magnificat. "Flinging yourself Godward" is faith defined in 3 simple words

— Alethea Allen (@AletheaAllen) December 21, 2015

Unnecessary Miracles

First Sunday of Advent.

7th grade girls come to church with Bibles and journals and grocery bags full of art supplies. 5th graders carry Bibles and go together to dig through the prize box. High schoolers decorate and make popcorn and bend down to clean always more feathers off the floor.

And I am reminded that hope comes in the middle. When the world is mixed up and messy and topsy turvy, there is always a moment. There is a moment where you gather around a flickering candle flame and let your fingers trace out silent prayers, the way that these 5th graders do.

"Jesus, I hope that so-and-so or such-and-such..." as they weave their dizzy fingered way into the center of the labyrinth, and, then, as they come back out,

"Thank you that they already..."

I challenge them to pray for three different situations, and, for a holy moment, there is nothing but the whisper of fingerprint to paper.

The same fingers that run down Bible pages to find verses before the presenter can ask for them, that trace old last names and new ones on book covers and name tags, tap through my phone to find Inst*gram and pause, just there, over the tiny image of a college freshman who was at RFKC with us this summer.

Little girls who make the space to hope. When they are waiting for an elementary aged brother to maybe, someday, learn to walk; watching a sibling struggle; building new stories out of a tangled past; simply doing this very complicated thing called life; we light a candle out in the shivering cold and bring it in to the scarf covered floor of our space.

The story today is about Abraham, and the slight blond on my left side is restless, doing and undoing the green buckle on a pink, leather Bible. We first met at Royal Family, our two cabins walking, running, stumbling, leaping up and down the same steep hill together often as we trekked the distance from cabin to bathroom and back again, and I can see this lesson digging deep, prodding at tender wounds in her soul. "And, then, Abraham," the presenter uses his future name for simplicity's sake, "packed up everything that he owned, left his family, and went, even though he didn't know where he was going."

The words are too familiar. Leaving everything. Not knowing what comes next. Bio home. Foster home. Foster home. Adoptive home. She asks to go to the bathroom. Fiddles with the buckle. Counts down the minutes until the story is over. Folds her feet into the corners of these chairs. Anything not to think.

Middle schoolers are a swirl of stories and questions, a handful of girls that stay back after service for yogurt and granola that they drown in pomegranate seeds and chocolate shavings and colored sprinkles. Bowls full of popcorn. Cups of coco. Mandarin oranges that they pass to leaders for peeling. Paper and scissors and glue. Paint and glitter and patterned tapes. Christmas music and Bible verses added to their journals for a quiet hour, two.

The mess comes through in pictures. The Holy doesn't. And, maybe that is simply the point of it all.

To hold to Hope in the midst of this.

O, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel.

Come when we fill these warm rooms with our hiding from the cold, when we share spider videos and talk about nonsense and decorate high schoolers to look like turkeys. Come when our kids ache with uncertainty and untold stories. When they stand close or surround each other with protective layers of presence, Gryffindors bristling and Ravenclaws searching for just the right answers. 

Because, even the "easy" draws in the global lottery echo with the brokenness of humanity. Leave us searching for Hanukah lights, Joseph's incense, Advent candles. Unnecessary miracles.

Bottles of baby oil that ought to run dry, but don't. Not until we should have used twice as much as we physically pulled out of the bags. Not until the last child has completed their craft and the wooden pews ripple with little faces and brilliantly colored sun catchers. "Ale jwenn Seyè a pou l' ka ede nou. Toujou chache rete devan li," the papers read. "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always."

The story was about Elijah and the widow, the jar of flour that was never empty and the jug of oil that did not run dry. Our team repeats the words as we shake this plastic container, a few precious drops still clinging, just there, at the bottom. Repeats the words and counts the adult heads file into the church. Too many heads.

The baby oil may not have run dry, but the cooking oil will. We are certain of it long before it happens, these well rehearsed numbers running through a dozen heads. There aren't enough bags of rice. Not enough beans. Even as we scoop these spilled ones off of the polished concrete floor, chasing them down where they've hidden in the pits and the cracks. There isn't enough. Won't be enough.

A white lace table cloth brushes at my face as we pinch up the last of the beans, prepare to load back onto the bus and bounce our way towards lunch while people walk away empty handed. A table cloth that holds that not-quite-empty bottle of baby oil.

An unnecessary miracle.

It doesn't make sense. It is incense on a camel's back while you are led away to slavery. It is oil for lamps in a temple that will eventually be destroyed. Fish and loaves multiplied for a people who will still wake up the next day hungry. It is a toddler boy, born to an unwed mother, fleeing as a refugee to Egypt whiles cries of loss echo through the night.

It is this candle that we light. This tension of the in between. The knowing that there is more. A Rescuer. A Champion. A healing that has already come and is yet still coming.

It is Hope.

And, It Whispers, "Holy"

The second week of November comes with its usual intensity, as if this particular time of year were determined to keep my head spinning, keep me on my toes, never let me forget that this is a dance with steps that I may never perfect.

Second Sunday of November means that we come with fewer masks than we usually wear. It means that we're close and we're honest and Glory and Mess go hand in hand to create this turbulent whisper of, "Holy."

Last week we started Sunday school with coloring pages and conversations about a potentially infinite universe and the likelihood of other life. They journaled prayers for the hungry, and then they filled a donation bin with grocery bags full of food.

This week, 5th graders with struggling siblings tell me that life is, "kind of sucky," and our presenters  share what it means to look for Grace in the midst of hard stories, to trust in Goodness, even when healing may not come. We mark down the names of those we are praying for and fill the corner of our pages with a soft fabric cross, as if there could be comfort in something that brought so much pain.

Because, there was. And, there is.

And, in this second week, we need to remember.

Remember that Jesus is enough. Remember that there is Grace and Mercy to cover. Remember that Love stepped down, and that that is both the beginning and the end of the story. Remember that it doesn't end here.

It doesn't end with middle schoolers who ask to stand outside in the cold drizzle of rain or the ones who pinch my sides and repeat my least favorite words for the sake of the laughter and the smiles and the connection that it brings. Doesn't end with these goofy hand motions or the wiggling, whispering 7th grade bodies that surround me during the lesson.

But, it also doesn't end with the sticky notes that the girls bring home scribed over with truth.
"Chosen"
"Loved"
"Righteous"
or the moments when they duck behind leaders for safety during games. Even these things are only shadows. Only hints of Glory unveiled, of Truth that has the power to speak life into being, in some ancient and unfathomable way that our best math and science can not begin to comprehend with any certainty.

And, I need that reminder.

Because, sometimes, being a high school leader is a dizzying cacophony that all boils down to loving these kids, exactly where they are and however they come.

It means jokes about the finer points of Calvinism in one moment and searching for wandered off children in the next. It's a dance of knowing when to leave them on the far edges of the room and when to pull them into the circle. It's a dance that I might not always get right, but one that we're teaching each other as we go, these kids and these leaders whose lives have been twined together for however long this season lasts.

It's about relationships and safety, relationships and safety, and relationships and safety.

There are whispers of, "Holy," in the words of this high schooler who is giving the message tonight, in the truth and the vulnerability, in the knowledge and the hard fought wisdom. Holy in his confidence and Holy in his uncertainty.

Holy echoed in the eyes of the freshmen who disappeared during the game but texted their location without second thought, who slip into the edges of my breakout group and watch until they are certain of their place in this jumble of words and truth and quirkiness that circles up in a house of prayer that is really nothing more than an almost empty portable and a couch.

Because, that is enough.

It is enough that there is forgiveness here, and grace.

Enough that these not-quite-growns of all ages come to this campus ready to speak truth with their words and their actions, ready to trust, even if only a little, that we are here to catch each other when we fall.

Faith is messy. Theology can take us down long and convoluted threads of conversation as we struggle to put words to the Other that is Divinity. Life is a tangle. But, somehow, in the midst of it all, there are these whispers of, "Holy."

Holy when we are honest about the lies that we tell. Holy when we look our pride in the face. Holy when we can draw close and trust that our leaders will meet us with the love of Christ. Holy.

They hoedown to, "Happy Day," and I am caught by the wonder of just how far we have come, just how far we have been carried by this grace. A year ago, we sang this song and huddled on this carpet to pray for the man who now walks across dark and dripping parking lots to bring back our prodigals.

We have a youth pastor.

A year ago, they stood close because we were about to jump into the unknown. Today, they are close with the nervous anticipation of what will certainly be a very good night.

They are growing and learning and blooming with a newfound ability to express this confidence.

And, they are right. Today is messy. Growth and truth always are. But, it is good.

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 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.