Water and Case, the Singing Barista, and Water and Baptism

Today was the last day of my current stint as a "Discovery Land" worker serving in Toddlers 1.

It's been quite a ride, and today was not a mild finish. We had seventeen kids. Tyler of the wood-brown eyes, acute intelligence, and strong will, was relatively well behaved. Carson, my sweetheart to whom I have given the Indian nickname "Lazy Goldfish," smiled up at we Toddlers 1 workers as he always does---radiantly green-eyed. Ty is a "screamer" (his yells can shatter eardrums) and Carson is a "snuggler" (never happier than when in your lap with a book)... but today, as always, most of my attention went to Case. Why? To keep him from hurting somebody.

Case needs to be watched all the time, unless we want an "incident" to occur. He is a wrestler. He's also stubborn, unbelievably energetic, fights for keeps, sulks when corrected, throws fits when his parents drop him off, pushes little girls, yanks toys out of other boys' hands, ignores the requests of adults, and can be a complete loner. Who would have thought that a porcelain-white child with dark floppy hair and dark blue eyes could be such a menace? And who would have thought that I'd love him so much?

Why do I love him?

I've been asking myself this a lot lately, because after this week I have a choice to make. Do I follow Carson and Ty into their new class, thus keeping two of my three little musketeers? Or do I split off and go with Case? It's not as if Ty's adventurousness wouldn't keep me busy... it's not as if Carson's sweetness wouldn't provide me with plenty of warm fuzzies...

But really, in my mind, there's no question. I'm going with Case. The only thing I can't figure out is why. He doesn't sit still; he doesn't listen; and he's quite willing to choke me (he thinks wrestling is a normal form of play and is remarkably good at the strangle-hold). He kicks and has tantrums; he's selfish and extremely difficult. I spend more time correcting him, breaking up his fights, and generally watching him like a hawk than I do any other kid in all of Discovery Land.

So why don't I want to leave him? Do I have an affinity for difficult children? Is that it? Today he was as complicated and unpredictable as ever, and just as unaffectionate. He's a regular Peter Pan: heartless. But that can't be my reason for loving him. Ty is difficult too, and also heartless. Why, therefore, not keep Ty and Carson, and let that dangerous little blue-eyed child fall to someone else's lot?

For so many reasons. Carson is lazy, and Ty is intelligent in a mechanically-minded way, but Case knows about things that the other two do not realize exist. Example: In an attempt to distract Case today, I turned on the water in our classroom sink and let him look at it. We do this sometimes because it seems to fascinate the children. But I've never seen a child respond as Case did.

He didn't put his hand in the water and squeal, or splash, or pull back. He just held it there, staring at the stream flowing over his white skin as if he could not tear himself away from the shimmery fascination of it. He murmured comments to me that I could not hear well, but my heart was full, watching him play. He did with the water as I would; as I have. He understands water. And I understand that.

I don't understand Case. On many occasions I wish I could shake some sense into him. I only know that his complexity is of a sort that appeals to me, and his flaws, however many or serious, only make me want to help---to admonish, to pray, to explain, and to pray more. I love his beautiful eyes, yes; but the simplest thing to say is that I love his soul and all the personal characteristics of it. I love his quick intelligence and huge grin. I love his love of laughter. I love his gracefulness of motion. I love his daredevil recklessness. I love the look on his face when he is playing with water.

In short, I love him: flaws and heartlessness and all. I couldn't help myself. I won't try. I'll just go on protecting the other children from him, go on upholding his truly excellent and devoted parents in their efforts to discipline him, go on praying, and go on holding him on the rare occasions when he wants to be held. It is a sort of love that expects nothing; he doesn't care that I'm alive and probably never will. Children are like that. But this fact wouldn't keep me from taking a bullet for him, and it won't keep me from caring for him as his shoe size expands into one more year of growth.

I left the first service pondering all these things, and went on pondering them as I waited in line at Starbucks. Each Sunday I must arrive at church by 8:30 AM and spend the time until 10:45 constantly at watch over little ones, so it happens that I am often weary by the end of our shift. This Sunday one of the mothers kindly gave us Starbucks cards as a thank-you for our year's work. This Sunday I was also unusually tired. I decided therefore to get coffee before attending the second service.

There was a singing barista.

I kid you not. I stood there for five minutes waiting for my coffee and admiring this man. He wore a wedding ring but was probably not more than 10 years older than I. Watching him was like watching a wizard or a dance. Each movement of his was paradoxical: careless yet precise, easy but efficient. Actually, "singing" is the wrong word. He didn't sing exactly; he hummed and talked to himself. But the effect was musical. Snatches of songs hung in the air around him, punctuated with his soft conversational remarks to himself and others:

"What's next... next... ah! Milk. The mocha latte? No, this."---then to a customer---"Hi there, shall I start on your venti hazelnut latte? Of course you're having it! You've never had anything else all year!"---then to himself again---"Next... next... quick, quick, quick!"

I watching him with something like amused awe. All I could think was, "That's the kind of person everybody should have working at their Starbucks. Now that's a barista!" He was a craftsman and an artist, a knower of people and a liker of them, a bundle of energy that did not grate and cheerfulness that did not seem forced. He was, in short, a master.

Coffee and a muffin was all I had time for, and even so, Brittainy and I walked into the second service a minute or two late. We slipped into our family row. For the last month, the worship part of the service has been punctuated with baptisms. These are always a highlight of the week for me; I can think of nothing more exhilerating than watching person after person declare their faith in God and their commitment to Him.

The baptismal is a large pool in the middle of the stage and it throws radiant light up, dancing, all across that wall. I recently met with my pastor, Isaac, to discuss my own baptism or re-baptism (long story, look for it in a future post). He asked me to describe my conversion. Sitting in his office, staring at nothing in the present but so much in the past, I broke into a smile. "Isaac," I said, "it was like 'the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.' Before that day, I wanted to go to Heaven in spite of God. After that day, I wanted to go to Heaven because of God. It was illumination---I felt as if Heaven itself burst open and I saw..."

I went on, trying to describe all that happened to me on that day. At last I trailed off, tears in my eyes, grinning like a fool. Isaac grinned back. "Wow. Maybe you should just go get baptized right away." We laughed.

Remembering this, I smiled again during worship, tears in my eyes again, looking at the water-light on the wall of the church. "What would I say," I asked myself, "if someone asked me to describe the difference in my life now that I am saved?" I thought, "I would say that now my life is like those reflections of water. I feel like light and motion." And as I watched the water break and gather into shining ripples, as person after person confessed Christ as Lord and rose from death to newness of life, I thought, "How beautiful are the people of God, and the practices of God, and the character of God! How beautiful you are, Beloved! How shining you have made my life, and how I love the reflection of you in it!"

It was a radiant morning, gentle reader, and in it my worship was the worship of adoration.

Curse God and Die?

"Give us now our daily bread," Jesus taught us to pray. But what if our daily bread is bitter? Sin doesn't just complicate everything; it doesn't just obscure truth. It also hurts, and is a slap in the face of faith. It seeks to put to shame God's claim that He is both perfectly sovereign and perfectly loving.

There is nothing easy about the sight of a person rocking back in forth in incoherent tears.... especially if it is a person whom you love. There is nothing easy about hearing the voice of your beloved--spouse, parent, child, or dear friend--speak words like "I have no strength," or "I feel absolutely alone," in a tone that reveals a shattered heart. Oh, my soul, there is nothing easy about hopeless eyes. Oh, my soul, why are you not flogged to death by the lashes that evil multiplies on your bare and quivering nerves? At what point, oh my soul, will you curse God and die?

Gentle reader, what do you do when it seems that there is no other recourse but to curse God and die? Dear and gentle reader, do you know what it is to hear a groan too deep for words? Have you ever heard the cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Do you know the tone in which such a cry is voiced? It is the tone of unendurable suffering, and it kills the soul.

What would you do, gentle reader? What would you say to such a groan or such a cry? Would you ever respond, as Job's wife did, "Curse God and die"? Would it ever seem to you that such advice is the only honest word to give to a soul drowning in its own blood?

What innocents we are until the moment when we see the grinning face of evil in our own terrified eyes, as in a mirror--how naive we are until that hour of crisis! Then, if ever, faith is tested. Then, if ever, we choose either to curse God or to bless Him.

I have known several such hours: one very recently. Shall I describe it for you? The mind, which has been scrambling perhaps for days after any shred of comfort, logic, or reason, ceases to function at all. From somewhere in the pith of being, a keening wail rises to fill the sudden silence. There may be tears, but the tears are incidental; what is felt is beyond such ordinary expressions of sorrow. There is nothing but the lament. There is nothing to know or experience except the deepest conviction of evil's presence and comfort's absence: a sense of total forsakenness.

Are you frightened by this picture, gentle reader? I assure you, it is a faithful one. But see, in such a dark night of the soul there are only two things that one can do: curse God and die, or bless God and go on living. Of the two, the latter seems not only supremely idiotic, but also infinitely more painful. To live is not a great adventure, at such a moment; it is an unendurable torture.

I said it is a dark night of the soul; a stormy night, whipped with burning acid instead of rain and lightning that never misses its mark. Blind, lacerated, and left alone in the howling stillness, the soul is ready for slaughter. Only one thing is needed to damn it to Hell.

And there is a certain voice in the stillness. "Curse God," he says. "Do it. Say the words and give yourself some satisfaction. They are true, aren't they? Say them and die."
Your soul opens its bleeding lips, unexpectedly filled with a question: "Why should you be so eager to have me curse God? Why should I not just die?"
"For the sake of justice. Tell everybody the truth about Him." Comes the persuasive reply.
Your soul wonders, "If it is true that God cares nothing for me and that He has forsaken me... if this is really so self-evident a truth, why need I say it? Doesn't this whole world's suffering condemn Him sufficiently?" The voice tries to say something, but your soul sweeps past it: "Or is it just barely possible that I should not curse God? Why did Job reply 'The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord'? What does such a statement mean?

"It must mean that, to Job, the circumstances of suffering were insufficient to prove that God had forsaken him. It means that he was unwilling to accept the mere giving or taking away of concrete physical entities (from life itself down to leather thongs for his sandals) as evidence in the case against God. It means that he considered such things irrelevant, actually irrelevant, to the situation."

Your soul is staggered by this conclusion, which not only shocks but also spreads a thrill through every filament of your being. The thrill is hope. Perhaps... perhaps all the suffering you have known is not proof that you are forsaken and unloved. Perhaps it is only proof of something you have long known: that God's ways are mysterious and His means of loving are not like yours.

And then your soul begins to see how it could be possible, even inevitable to bless the name of the Lord. For the Lord has not forsaken--He has only chosen another route. He has not ceased to love--He has only chosen another way of expressing that love. And He may be as tirelessly concerned as ever with His stated end of bringing your soul to utter radiant gladness.

But then your soul asks: "If all this is so, and I think more and more that it must be so, then why must I bless God any more than the voice urged me to curse Him? After all, it now seems self-evident that God is both perfectly good and perfectly loving even when I suffer. Why need I say it? Isn't it perfectly obvious?"

Recently, a dear friend said something to me that answered this question. She said, "I think that I have never seen anything more beautiful than a Christian who is suffering and yet chooses to bless God."

I smiled. "So it all comes back to beauty, does it?"

But isn't that the point, gentle reader? To bless God in the midst of suffering--to line up every lash of pain, consider and weigh each, and then reject them all as utterly unworthy of the title "evidence against God's claim of loving sovereignty"--is to declare that God's ability to do what is best, desire to do what is best, and knowledge of how to do what is best for His children far exceeds such petty considerations as circumstances.

In short, to bless God in such a case is to display His utter worth and beauty. And, according to certain footnotes on the prophet Isaiah, to glorify God is an idea synonymous with the idea of displaying God's beauty. To demonstrate God's love and loveliness is to glorify God.

And my end is to glorify God as well as to enjoy Him forever. When I can bless Him out of my pain, I glorify Him; and more, the feeling of foresakeness is abolished. How can I feel forsaken when I am drawing attention to God's inability to forsake me? How can I feel alone when I am shouting of His nearness? And how can I not rise swiftly from the depths of woe to the very heights of adoring enjoyment when I am fixing all my spiritual senses on His excellence?

That is why, gentle reader, I choose to bless God. Bless the Lord, oh my soul! That is why I choose to live, and find living transformed in an instant from joyless pain to an almost painful joy--almost painful because of its exquisite intensity. Curse God? Oh, may my soul never entertain the thought! Spirit of God, you indwell me; you prompt me to ask why I should curse God; you lead me gently by step and step to the other end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death; you show me the swift sunrise and the healing light. Comforter, Helper, you are one more proof that I am not forsaken. How can I say "forsaken" when you are with me? And you are with me always, to the end of the age.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Marco Polo Quizzes Are More Scandalous Than You Think...

“Okay. Let me bring my genius brain to bear…” – Dad, who has dropped everything and come over from his office to help Casey.
“Um… I really just needed a subheader.” – Casey

“Well, Nate deserves it. With my computer, I’m trying to help him.” – Casey on the relative values of beating up Nate or her computer.

“As we grow and diversify our products, if we ever get to the point where we have a Lampstand Dating Service, can our tag line be ‘all you need is a match?’” – David, being completely random.

“You know, I’ve decided to accept this whole cockroach thing. Instead of fighting it, I’m going to train them up as my Legions of Terror.” – Nate
“I’m a big fan of that.” – David

Yvonne, peering at David’s “updated” website: “You call this ‘enlarging the text’?”
“You should try asking him to bold the text!” – Mom, from the other room
“I’m going to write a book: ‘Don’t Make Me Search.’’” – Yvonne, muttering
“He doesn’t believe in saying ‘Look you here, Sir!’” – Mom
“So, what are you saying?” – David

“May the Force be with you.” – Mom
“It is. I feel it.” – David, happily

“It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to kill yourself.” – Mom
“I was actually just going to get toilet paper…” – Christy
“Okay. That’s a fair trade.” – Mom

“The child is in a blue fuzzy [fuzzy: an overall skintight garment made of terry cloth, popular for children from the 1980’s to the present]! That’s anachronistic!” – Christy, on David’s depiction of Marco Polo on a Tapestry quiz.
“It looks like a blue bunny!” – Casey
“We’re going to go petition the blue bunny department” – Brittainy, going in to speak to David
A few minutes later…
“Look, even naked would work. Cherubic naked children are correct for that time period. You just have to adjust the little kicking legs for modesty. But they didn’t have fuzzies!” – Christy
::David and Brittainy give Christy horrified looks::
“We can’t have it naked!” – David
“Well, how about a christening robe?” – Christy
“See, we’re trying to make it look like a baby…” – David
::They try around a few more ideas::
“Well, if you just drew lines at the feet and hands and turned the middle different colors, it could be clothes.” – Christy
“Or a diaper…” – Brittainy
“Yes! A diaper! That’s good!” – Christy
“Oh. My.” – David, putting a diaper on the baby image.
::Brittainy and Christy, satisfied, exit. Several minutes later….::
“I designed a perfectly good baby. They mocked me and then had me turn it naked! This job gets creepier and creepier all the time.” – David
“Hey! It has a diaper!” – Christy

Children's Ministry Trauma and English Professors

If it occurs to anybody to wonder why my posts for the last few months have been mostly about children's ministry experiences, the answer is: "Because Sunday is the only day that I'm not working and have time to post." Am I apologetic about filling pages of internet with the life and times of my kids? Um.... no. Why would I be?

Today was traumatic for me. Really. In our room we have four workers and are supposed to be able to collectively handle 12-14 kids.

Today we had 20.

You never realize what a difference the number 6 can make until your units of measurement are two-year-olds. It wasn't that anybody cried much--it was just that most of our kids are boys and, well, you know how that can be.

Samuel and Joel are brothers of apparently similar ages, since they are both in Toddlers 1. Sam is black and Joel is white, and their parents are white, so we gather that Sam is adopted. These two adore each other, call each other "bubba," etc. Which is wonderful. The only problem is that they also roughhouse like brothers, and there's this policy that if at any time a child receives any kind of blow to the head, that child will be removed to the church office and the medical team and the child's parents will be summoned from the main meeting.

So guess who won the award for head-knocks two weeks running? Joel. And guess which two kids have to be pulled apart throughout a given morning? Bingo.

We also had a variety of visitors, which is where the trauma begins. Just before we started sending people to Toddlers 2 and 3 because we had become absolutely full up, we accepted a pair of twin girls: absolutely beautiful Asian babies in red-and-white matching outfits.

The only problem is that apparently these girls would put Attila the Hun to shame. One of them, whose name for the moment escapes me, kept trying to pull a toy away from Case. She is a strong little girl and she wouldn't leave him alone. She backed him into corners, chased him across the room, etc. I pulled them apart a couple of times, but was engaged in separating Sam and Joel (round 34 and still going strong) when IT happened.

I have never seen Case lose it like that. A scream from the other side of the room made me turn around. He had her down on the ground with a strangle-hold on her neck and, as near as I can tell, his teeth pressed into her cheek just below the eye (not biting, thank goodness, but enough to leave a mark). Her face was red and she seemed hardly to be breathing, though I couldn't tell whether that was because of crying, anger, squeezing, or a combination. My general impression is that Case had simply had enough and chose to fight fire with a much bigger fire.

Well, we whisked her down the hall and they called the medical team and her parents and his parents and it all turned out fine, nobody much hurt and all parents quite understanding. But I tell you, it shook me.

I guess I've gotten to the point where I figure I can prevent things like that. From the minute we have a child until the minute we are down to one child, I try hard to be constantly on the alert. I've caught a lot of things as they are developing and prevented a lot of injuries, sure. It's my job. However, I've become overconfident about how many children I can watch at once.

Today a little girl might have been suffocated. Granted, it wasn't my fault--I'm not the room leader and I don't choose when to stop accepting kids. But through the experience I realized that I have limitations and I've been arrogant in assuming that I personally can prevent things like that from happening. I realized all over again the precious charge represented in each child, and it scared me silly to think that one of them might have been seriously hurt on our watch.

I was also, frankly, a little shocked. Case has always been playful and always a wrestler, but I've never seen him go after somebody like that. He was mightily provoked, I know, and frankly my sympathies were in some ways with him. However, that doesn't excuse such violence. I guess we're each capable of murder, even as small children. And that's another kinda traumatic idea.

Come to think of it, trauma of one sort or another has marked this entire week. On Monday it was the trauma of dealing with a situation at work which left me in the end (and PURELY by God's grace) with a satisfactory answer to the problem, but also with sixteen hours lost and a night in which I had 3 hours of sleep (Note for the uninitiated: I never get that little sleep. I simply can't function well on less than 6-6.5 hours).

When it turned out that the problem was solved and the moms were happy again, I went around dancing and singing all day Wednesday. Nevertheless, Monday and Tuesday were heavy days both in terms of workload and in terms of bearing emotional and mental burdens. In fact, Brittainy and I worked most nights last week and I can't remember feeling really lighthearted except on Wednesday and late last night.

Mix into all this the trauma experienced this week by three former students of mine: my younger sister and two others, who at the collective ages of sixteen, seventeen, and seventeen are attending college classes for the first time.

Let me rephrase that: in particular they are attending an English 101 class taught by a twenty-six-year-old graduate student who happily accepts slang in papers written for his class "because slang is a legitimate form of self-expression," and seems to adhere to a theory of language which I can only describe as relativistic-existentialist. In other words, he is a non-Christian muddling along through life and language theory without God. His situation arouses my compassion, just as his ideas arouse my interest, if by "interest" we understand "intellectual stimulation and heightened awareness of the issue."

He left Jack, Tarra, and Marjorie exceedingly puzzled--not shaken in their faith, just puzzled--and turning to me for answers, since I was briefly their Lit teacher. I'm still in the process of sorting out their professor's worldview from secondhand accounts and trying to explain, especially to Jack, about semiotics (their professor spent time on this term during their first class) and the relationships between sound-patterns, meanings, relative truth, absolute truth, and society, all from a biblical perspective. Phew!

Marjorie, especially, is rising to the challenge of demonstrating her faith in a secular environment. I'm all kinds of proud of her, but at the same time I recognize the difficult tight-wire that she will have to walk. I shall be on the edge of my seat to see how she gets on in this English class particularly, and to know more about this professor's ideas, especially if I'm going to be placed opposite him as a kind of apologist for Christian language-theory.

Apparently he freely admitted to his students that he doesn't enjoy teaching English 101. I hope very much for their sakes that he will eventually begin to teach them writing and leave the semiotics alone. Not that I think it's bad for them to wrestle with these questions---just that I'd like them to get a little practical skill out of this class as well as a challenged worldview.

SO, all in all, it has been a very interesting week. I'm hoping that next week will be significantly less interesting, but, to paraphrase the ancient Greeks, "that lies in the lap of God."

Just Writing To Say "I Can't Write" :-P

Am up to my ears in writing and supporting what I have written for Tapestry.... why are you not surprised? Hopefully the current big hurdle will be passed by the end of this week. Meanwhile Brittainia and I are having a splendid time prancing through the workload. We worked most of Friday evening and then stayed up until 2 AM watching Quo Vadis (a very silly and delightful experience). In the past week we have also seen Stardust with the family (not as good as Princess Bride, but definitely an experience if seen with the right people), rearranged the entire basement (oy!), and on and on. I even found time to order a splendid set of maple bookshelves for my study (GORGEOUS).

So things are progressing and life has its fun moments, and in general I'm really not as much of a workaholic as I appear. Honest. <:0) I just don't have time to write.

A recommendation, however: the High Queen showed me a trailer for Enchanted and I nearly fell over laughing. I can't say "see it!" because I haven't researched to make sure it's clean and good, but I can say "go do the research and find out if you can see it, and then tell me so I can see it too!" Amazing trailer, and a really fun premise for a movie.

That's all for now. Minutes snatched and spent on this post.... I'll be glad I did it when the dust settles. :-)