Sunday school, the emerging church, and the Donut Man

I've been thinking.  (Whenever I tell Tim that, he says, "Again?!")

We missed church two Sundays in a row (once because our movers were moving our stuff in and once because we were on our way back from a weekend trip to Maryland), but we finally got to start our church hunt this past Saturday.  There is an Episcopal church not too far from us that I was interested in trying, and a couple of churches that Tim had found and liked the sound of, so we decided to start with the closest one and go to the Episcopal church.  We were a little unnerved to pull into the parking lot ten minutes before the service was due to start and see only two cars.  I suggested hopefully that maybe a lot of the congregation walked.  At about that moment a woman dressed in church clothes (this is definitely a dress-up-for-church kind of community!) did come walking into the parking lot, and when asked, assured us that there would be a church service happening at the appointed time, and walked us into the building and introduced us to the people who would be leading the service.  The pastor--excuse me, priest--was on vacation, so it was to be a "service of prayer" rather than a "eucharistic service."  We sat in the second pew, only to find when the rest of the congregation trickled in that nobody sits further up than the middle.  The congregation that day consisted of us, a woman who (I think) used to attend there but now lives in Florida, a family with two high-school-age children who were also there for the first time, and something on the order of seven church members, whose average age I suspect was over 70.  There was (obviously) no children's program.  I had brought Esther a puzzle book, but had not remembered her notepad and not thought to bring food, usually the most reliable method for keeping her quiet in a formal setting.  The service itself was lovely, lots of responsive readings and scripture passages punctuated with hymns.  The "homily" was short, but I got as much out of it as I have many longer ones.  Esther got really into the readings, earnestly studying her bulletin and "reading" along with us in nonsense syllables.  She also enthusiastically "sang" the hymns.  For one of them, the music stopped and she kept going for a few beats, then suddenly realized that no-one else was singing and ceased abruptly.  It was very cute!  At the end, though, there was a long series of "collects" (short prayers) which were read one after the other by a reader and did not involve congregational moving or vocalizing.  I missed most of these because Esther was squirming (as in, opening and closing the kneeler, wandering from one end of the pew to the other, and dropping down on her tummy and heading for the aisle), and then whining audibly when I sat her in my lap.  I have mixed feelings about having Esther in a church service with me.  On the one hand, I want her to experience church.  Whenever I'm in a church I feel a sense of being home, and I want that for her.  On the other hand, I worry that I run the risk of introducing church as a place where she gets in trouble for being who God made her to be.  But I can't simply let her behave as she normally would, because others would be distracted.  No-one complained on Sunday (in fact, one person complimented me afterwards on her good behavior!), but Tim and I talked later about how we really want to be part of a church that is in some way geared for children.  (It would also be really nice to be part of a church where some people aren't of European descent.)  We asked Esther over dinner what she had thought about church and she said she liked it.  We asked what she liked about it and she promptly answered, "I liked the God."  If we only knew what experience was described with that statement!

So after going to church, I was already thinking about children's church vs. children being in the adult service.  Our former church a couple of years ago went through a whole visioning process about the role of children and youth within the body, and one of the key values that came out of that was wanting children to feel, especially at important times in the church calendar like Christmas and Easter, that spirituality was not just a grown-up thing, but something that everybody does.  And segregating ages, while it does allow for more targeted teaching content and styles, can also lead to children viewing adult worship as a) incomprehensible and weird, b) boring and irrelevant, or c) an elite club that you have to earn membership into.  From my own experience, I've attended all-ages worship services since about Esther's age.  Many of those times most of the service went over my head, particularly since it was often in a language I didn't understand.  But I did witness people of all ages valuing God and honoring God in different ways.  And these ways went deeper than the platitudes (God wants us to be helpers.  God wants us to obey our parents.) that are "the point" of many a Sunday-school lesson.  Not that the above statements aren't true and important, but being able to recite "the point" and give an example of it from a Bible story never went as deep for me as watching adults I respected actually helping others, or actually wrestling with what it means to submit to authority.  I'm sure most of my spiritual formation happened through spending time with my parents, and most of the rest through watching and being with other adults who had deep relationships with God.  Very little if any came from Sunday school.  (And honestly, in cases where children are deeply influenced by Sunday school, I suspect it has more to do with their relationship with the teacher than it does with the curriculum.)  The curricula that I've taught in the past have more to do with being able to repeat dos and don'ts and Bible story plots than they do with learning to wrestle with God, and God's word, and our complex lives, without the guarantee of coming up with a pat answer over the course of an hour.

Meanwhile, a friend forwarded me an article co-written by the former pastor (now a full-time writer and speaker) of my former church.  He and several other scholars and church leaders wrestled with the question of spiritual formation for children in the emerging church movement.  The article talked at length about the role of community in spiritual formation, and argued that however children's participation in church is structured, children need to spend extensive time with adults (not necessarily being taught by them, but experiencing how they live and relate to God) and need to feel like full citizens of their community.

The same afternoon that I read that portion of the article, I sat down with Esther to watch an old "Donut Hole Repair Club" video.  I first ran across this series of Christian children's musicals in high school, and despite some hokey acting (think "Barney"), and the fact that they were geared for younger children, I really enjoyed them.  The music is fabulous, and the Easter episode routinely moves me to tears as it makes Jesus' triumph over death feel so real.  Watching this one as a parent, I was moved to tears again to see spiritual formation in action.  The plot was that the Donut Hole Repair Club (a group of kids), led by the Donut Man, were trying to refurbish the Celebration House, a place for anyone to come and find a place to sleep, someone to talk to, or a great meal.  When they despair at the size of the job, the Donut Man is reminded of the story of Joshua, and leads them in a rousing rendition of it, followed by a prayer asking God's help for this overwhelming task.  When one boy confesses that sometimes he doesn't feel like helping, the Donut Man shares that sometimes he doesn't feel like it either, but when that happens, he prays for God to change his heart, and God always does.  And so it goes: insights from the Bible, personal experience from a fellow traveler on the spiritual journey, and lots of opportunities for prayer and praise, all beautifully intertwined with the details of what would otherwise have been just a noble chore.  I so want to teach Esther that way!  And as a necessary foundation, I so want to be the kind of person who lives that way myself!  I do some...but I want to do it more!

None of this, of course, answers the question of where we'll go to church, or even exactly what we're looking for.  But I'll keep thinking.

a new mommy

Today at dinner, out of the blue, Esther looked up at me and declared, "If I had a new mommy I would cry and cry, because I want you."  I don't think this is the kind of thing that most three-year-olds think about.  Then again, one of her favorite books right now is an adoption story where a baby is described meeting her new mommy and daddy.  She didn't sound worried, but just in case, I assured her that she won't have any more new mommies, that when we adopted her it was forever.  And I was reminded again of the enormity of this transition that we expect children to make easily because they're little and adaptable.  And they are...but I don't think we often appreciate just how much.

A little later on in the evening Esther was out of sorts because she wasn't allowed to eat dinner while holding her blankie in her chair.  She pouted dramatically, explained, "I have a mad face," laid her head down on her blankie, and then asked me to pray for her head so it would feel better.  I'm not sure in what way her head was bothering her, but was encouraged that she herself thought of praying as a way of helping her situation.  She did seem to feel better afterwards, although she was obviously very, very tired.  It appears we are still in recovery mode!

It's over!

One extended power outage (think packing with no air conditioning or lights, while cooking with no oven and piling dirty dishes in a stopped-up sink with a non-functional garbage disposal), two weeks of gymnastics classes for Esther and "vacation" days for Tim, three nasty colds (one for each of us), four professional movers, and countless hours later...we're moved!  Moved out, that is.  We're now staying at the home of generous friends while we wait for our new house to become available and deal with the stuff that the movers didn't take.  Some of it is slated to be given away, some is food items that we are still trying to use up, some consists of items that we deliberately saved out so that we could have the use of them as soon as we move in (the moving company we used gives themselves a rather large window of time to make the drop-off), and a rather larger amount than we would have liked consists of items we could have sent with the movers but didn't get sorted and boxed in time.  It took us two and a half days after the movers left to organize our remaining stuff and get the apartment cleaned.  We finally locked our door for the last time and dropped our keys off on Sunday night.  Yesterday was all about recovery--and trying to manage the tasks of daily living when we couldn't find anything!  Today I am doing loads of laundry and trying to reorganize our belongings.  Tomorrow we'll drop off our giveaway stuff at the various locations that it's slated for, and have a farewell lunch with Tim's colleagues.  Saturday will most likely be the day we make our drive down to our new house.  Our mortgage has been delayed yet again--there are some things about the house that the mortgage appraiser is requiring to be fixed before we can be approved--but the owner is allowing us to rent in the interim, and we can move in on Saturday.

Anyway, the biggest hurdle of our move has been accomplished.  Unpacking will be a lot of work, but I can take my time about it, and most of the boxes are pretty well organized.

Esther has done remarkably well with this move.  She went through a period right before we found out we were moving where she was having significant issues with what looked like separation anxiety--she couldn't fall asleep at night unless one of us was sitting where she could see us, would wake up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep at all for several hours, and had a couple of meltdowns over being apart from us (something she did only very briefly at the age where that's usual).  So I was expecting her to have the same issues and then some the whole time we were packing and moving, but she has been fine.  Just in the last few days she has been a little extra clingy and wanting to be carried everywhere, but after all the disruption and transitions I think she's entitled to that!  (I am SO glad I went ahead and ordered a new mei tai carrier for her, as there were several times I really had to get something done and she really wanted to be carried, but willingly accepted being up on my back in the carrier while I packed.)

Esther is awake now.  I asked her what she wanted me to write about moving and she said, "Esther and Daddy.  And you!"

She also wanted to type herself.  Here is her contribution:

  v f'flhki,bvialhbihnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn".
eSxz'sswkswot6[--                   nn  mmm    frk>o6     epZS'DF;KOPKKI

conversations

Here are some conversations I have had with Esther recently:

Esther and I make a weekly visit to an assisted living center near us, which is named Sunrise.  On our last trip back from our new hometown, we stayed in a motel midway.  Esther woke up very early in the morning (not unusual for her when she's off her routine), so in order to let Tim get his sleep out I took her on over to breakfast.  The TV in the breakfast room was on, and as the program moved towards a commercial break, the news anchor announced something like, "This is 9 News at Sunrise."  Esther looked around and protested, "We're not at Sunrise!  We're at a motel!"

Esther is getting as much enjoyment from plans for the new house as we are.  One day she asked if we could have a play structure in our back yard.  I answered that we would have to figure out whether we had enough space and how much money one would cost.  She volunteered, "I could help!  I have a piggy bank!"  (Actually she called it a monkey pig, but I figured out what she meant--there is a Curious George episode about a piggy bank, hence the monkey.)

She sat down on my bare leg one day when I hadn't shaved recently and complained, "Your spines are prickling me."

We were watching a downpour out the window one day, and Esther asked where all the water was coming from.  I explained that the clouds got full of water and then it had to fall down.  She giggled, "Yeah, the clouds are wetting!"  (Wetting is our family term for urinating--she thought clouds wetting was pretty funny.)

Sadly, I don't remember the context for this one anymore.  I think we might have been watching someone interacting with their dog.  Esther said seriously, "I don't have a dog.  Or a baby."  (Sometimes I wonder if she understands the distinction between babies and pets--any time she sees a baby she eagerly asks, "May I pet it?")

One day on our way home from the library, there was a woman standing on the sidewalk outside of our apartment complex talking loudly and with great feeling to the air around her.  As we passed, I heard her say, "My daughter is dead and [something I didn't catch] killed her...".  I didn't know how to respond, so I ignored her, but I didn't feel good about that either, and Esther either caught my discomfort or felt some of her own, because she clearly was unnerved by the woman.  As we got farther away from her, Esther asked, "Why was that woman so angry?"  I didn't want to introduce the concept of family members dying, so I told Esther just that something really sad had happened to the woman, and sometimes when people have really sad feelings they use angry words because they think it makes them feel better.  Esther answered, "When I feel sad I cry, and then I feel better."  I thought that was quite an insight for a three-year-old, especially since I distinctly remember realizing that myself in my late teens!  Or maybe I did know it when I was Esther's age and had forgotten in the interim.

Back when we first knew we were going to move I got Esther some "moving day treats" (chocolate candies) that she could eat one of every day to count down the days until our move.  She has mostly lost interest in them recently, so I had to remove several to maintain the correct number in the container.  Having just watched me fill a bag with stuff to give away, Esther fixed me with a stern eye and said, "Don't even think about getting rid of those!"

One week to go!

Now there is only one week to go until we move out!  I'm beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but there is still a lot of packing to do.  Esther LOVED her gymnastics class this week, and I think we will invest in sending her again next week.  It just makes it so much less stressful to pack when I have chunks of uninterrupted time to do it in.  And I'm glad that she's having fun!  She was a little disappointed to learn that tomorrow is Saturday and there won't be any gymnastics class.  But I'm sure she'll have fun with Daddy.  Last week they went scooting in a park and played in the river there for a long time; tomorrow is going to be too hot for outdoor activity to be comfortable, but they will find something to do that is fun and that doesn't involve being in the house.  I went with Tim to pick Esther up today, and her teacher was commenting at how well she does on the parallel bars, and how she can almost do it by herself.  I'm not exactly sure what "it" is that she can almost do by herself, but I know she has a lot of upper body strength.  She can almost do a pull-up already, which is something I don't think I've been able to do my entire life!  Or maybe I did it once, sort of.  I remember trying, but I was pretty pathetic!

Unfortunately, although our move-out date is fixed, it looks like it will be a while before we can move IN.  Mortgage paperwork is starting to feel like adoption paperwork: there's always something that takes longer than you project, or just plain goes wrong!  Not being local, we've been mailing stuff back and forth with our lender.  So first UPS didn't have our apartment number, which cost us a couple of days receiving the papers we needed to sign.  We finally got them on Monday, signed everything that night, and returned it by express mail on Tuesday morning.  Our lender (or someone in his office) received the paperwork Thursday morning, and this morning he contacted us to say that he didn't see the personal check that he needed to pay for the appraisal.  Tim remembered that the clerk at the post office had switched the papers into a new envelope when he mailed them on Tuesday, and sure enough, we found the check still sitting in the old envelope along with his receipt.  So we conferred over the phone, and ended the conversation with Tim thinking I had agreed to go to the post office with Esther and mail it this afternoon, and me thinking that he didn't want me to.  It will get mailed tomorrow morning.  Sigh.  So the appraisal won't even be ordered until next week.  We had already figured we wouldn't make our target closing date of August 2nd, but as Tim put it, this latest development pretty much put the nails in the coffin.  The moving company can store our stuff for up to a month at no cost, and we have had multiple offers of places to stay in the meantime, so we're not in dire straits, but it would be nice to know when we will get to actually start living in our new hometown!

missing piece

This doesn't have anything to do with Esther.  No, that's not quite right.  It doesn't describe Esther, or any of her activities.  But it does affect her.  And while the experience I'm about to relate is so particular to me as to sound bizarre, in another way it is nearly universal. 

To give a bit of background, Tim and I have spent the last year participating in a prayer training at church.  Specifically, this kind of prayer is called theophostic prayer (theophostic means God-light).  I like to picture theophostic prayer as resting on two theoretical pillars.  Once is the psychological theory, I think a fairly standard one, that the cause of our emotional distress in a current situation often has less to do about the details of the situation (my husband asked me what I'd been doing all day) than it does with our belief about the situation (he thinks I'm failing to accomplish what I should), which in turn may have its roots in a conclusion we drew about ourselves in some earlier, formative experience (my mother "fixed" a picture that I had worked hard to draw and been proud of, and I felt like I couldn't do anything right).  (The above example, by the way, is not personal!)  The other theoretical pillar is the idea that, if we can identify and confess to God the false belief that is causing us pain, God is in some mysterious way able to replace that belief experientially with God's truth.  In some cases we may know very well that the false belief is false, and know what the truth is, but there is something different about experiencing that truth as it is communicated by God.

We are being trained to facilitate theophostic prayer for other people, but as an important part of our training (and also, now that we have learned how to do it, an important part of our own spiritual development), we have also been receiving as much theophostic prayer as we can for ourselves.  On Monday night I got the chance to have one of the other trainees facilitate for me.  I chose to focus on the anxiety I feel about driving, and found myself revisiting a memory from when I was in elementary school and my family used to take family bike rides.  Between our village and the next village over (Yakadee, for those with enough geographic background to picture it) there is a particularly long and steep hill, with a one-lane bridge at the bottom.  On one ride, my dad was ahead somewhere (I think already across the bridge), my mom had reached the bottom of the hill and was standing just before the bridge, and I was just starting down the hill.  The bike I rode at the time had pedal brakes, so that you pedaled backwards in order to brake.  I got up a little more speed than I could confidently control, so I pedaled backwards.  Nothing happened.  I looked at my mom standing between me and the bridge with her back turned.  I wanted to scream to warn her that I was coming, but nothing came out of my throat.  And for a split second I really believed I was going to kill her.  I wouldn't be able to stop, I would come careening down the hill with nowhere to go but the bridge, she would still be standing with her back turned, oblivious to the danger, and I would kill her.  And it would all be my fault because I didn't know how to brake, or scream, or do anything to protect her.  A second after that I turned my bike into the ditch by the side of the road and averted the catastrophe, and a few minutes after that my dad checked my bike out and showed me how to push backwards harder and more than once if the brake didn't catch the first time.  But the panic and shame of that first split second lived on in my subconscious.  Working my way back into the memory on Monday night, I felt like I was defective, missing some crucial piece that I should have had.  As I confessed that out loud, and as the person who was facilitating for me invited the Holy Spirit to bring truth into my memory, I gradually began to see myself as the bicycle I had been riding in that event.  At first, the bicycle was definitely missing a piece.  But as the picture continued to emerge, I saw that Jesus was riding the bicycle/me, and it/I was working just fine for him.  I looked for the missing piece to see if he had fixed it, but I couldn't tell anymore if there was a piece missing or not.  Amazingly, it had ceased to matter.  Either Jesus had fixed the missing piece or he was working around it, but the outcome was the same: he was riding the bike, and it was responding perfectly.

As that truth sunk in, I thought of how much it would mean for it to feel true in every part of my life.  Because there are places where I really am missing something--where, for that matter, all of us are missing something (I told you it was a universal experience!).  I come up short, as a parent, as a teacher, as a friend, as whatever.  And even knowing that shortcomings are part of the human condition, I anxiously measure the size of each shortcoming, trying to judge whether or not I should be condemned for it.  But what a relief if I could leave off judging and measuring, trusting that the outcome of a situation doesn't depend on my capacities, but on Jesus.

Normally I don't talk much about my theophostic prayer experiences, even to Tim.  They're very precious, but so personal that afterwards it seems hard to put them into proper language.  But I left on Monday night feeling strongly that this particular one was meant to be shared.  So I'm not sure who I'm writing this for, but if it blesses you, and honors God, I'm glad!

Just two weeks

I have just two weeks to get everything packed up before movers come to load it all.  AAAAAUGH!  Don't worry, I have already started--but the amount already packed seems inconsequential compared to the amount yet to go.  Yesterday I was feeling really discouraged because despite my best efforts I made no headway on packing and didn't even get to interact with Esther as much as she needed to feel attended to.  Then today I got a lot done, and took Esther outside for over an hour, and took her swimming.  I guess I have more time in my day when I don't have to wash my hair, go grocery shopping, do laundry, or fix a big dinner.  It's unfortunate for packing progress that on most days I have to do at least one of those things!  Tomorrow I'm hoping Tim and Esther can have a fun Daddy-daughter outing and I can get another gulp of packing out of the way.  Next week we have her enrolled in gymnastics camp in the morning, which should help a lot.  But boy, I'll be happy when this move is over with!

Tonight was our last night to attend our Chinese fellowship.  We were prayed for, and took a group photo, and said lots of goodbyes, and didn't get home until nearly 11.  It still doesn't seem real that we're actually leaving.  In just two weeks!