A., you're missed, you're missed!

here's to a sweet two weeks for you in the Bronx...

Merry Christmas, one and all!

gutsy guilt.

To the fallen saint, who knows the darkness is self-inflicted and feels the futility of looking for hope from a frowning Judge, the Bible gives a shocking example of gutsy guilt. It pictures God’s failed prophet beneath a righteous frown, bearing his chastisement with broken-hearted boldness. "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light" (Micah 7:8-9).

This is courageous contrition. Gutsy guilt. The saint has fallen. The darkness of God’s indignation is on him. He does not blow it off, but waits. And he throws in the face of his accuser the confidence that his indignant Judge will plead his cause and execute justice for (not against) him. This is the application of justification to the fallen saint. Broken-hearted, gutsy guilt.

(john piper. here.)

The Bills We Post.

James Thurber, in 'Let Your Mind Alone' :
"I remember that, as a boy of eight, I thought 'Post No Bills' meant that the walls on which it appeared belonged to one Post No Bill, a man of the same heroic proportions as Buffalo Bill. Some suspicious-minded investigator cleared this up for me, and a part of the glamour of life was gone."

*******************************************
The other day, I was Christmas-cleaning -- a good and healthy thing for one to do, scrubbing things all day, aerating dingy corners and swiping layers of yuck off baseboard after baseboard. A song came on, one from a little animated film, a song that once swept me up in childish transport, and I suddenly realized that now, by a series of quite delightful events and encounters, it happens that I actually know the person behind one of the voices in that song. She is very famous, as a voice, and it's an honor to know her, and she is most marvelous... and, funnily enough, I know her.

My worlds of higher-than-me myth and daily meetings have intertwined. The untouchable world of movies and music and swirling story that shaped my imaginings as a child... now I actually know people from it.

Starstruckness is long-dispelled from a mind that's been called to more important things and harsh realities; still, still it curled a brainstring and made me laugh in incredulity to think 'I know that voice! I know that woman.'

When do we make this transition? When do we have to step out of the role of rider-of-winged-Pegasus ( , soaring in the realms of sweep-you-up mythology, ) and into the realm of practical adulthood? Some people never do. Never start thinking critically about what comes out, about what they see: some stay immersed in roleplaying universes for decades, bleary-eyed dwarves occasionally forced to emerge into the bright lights of grocery stores and bookshops, returning as soon as possible to wield invisible swords in dark caverns of computerlight. Some of us wanted very much to become critical thinkers, s t r a i n e d our brains again and again to try to be un-enchanted, when we were children. I remember trying. Trying to understand "People made this!" Watching behind-the-scenes bits and being almost hurt to see how inorganic 'creative' atmospheres could really be. How very unlike the familial story-birthings I thought they were.

I wanted to be free from the spells movie magazines would seek to cast, wanted to be able to look at the truth of things. I'd practice. I'd try to make myself awake. And one bright day, I guess, it must have worked. I don't think it was by my own doing. But I find that I now realize that I will never live in the world of 'White Christmas,' though as I child I took the film somehow as an intimation of things to come--the world ahead, the United States, adulthood, something. ...

Not all I've met had to make this trip. It seems that some always saw stories, films and music as trinkets, as side-items. Take-'em-or-leave-'em. But for those of us with imaginations tuned to some particular height of frequency, it's a jolt we have to trip through.

I've been thinking about this off and on lately, just in sudden clips of nostalgia, wonderment -- I watched 'Finian's Rainbow' with a dear friend who'd never seen it before; I didn't envy her being an adult when she got to see it for the first time. If I'd waited till adulthood, the ochres of those hillsides would not be an indelible part of my mind's eye, my heart's palette.

And I wondered, when does it end, the viewing of things with such intensity? You remember every line of the illustrations in that book you had as a child. The particular blue of that elephant, the richness of the fruit on that painted table. You can recall, if you try for just a moment, every expression on the villains' faces in that old movie, or every look of warmth between Big Bird and the little Chinese girl in that television special. (so dear!)

We wander, as children, unwittingly, under the illusion that something in the world -- not everything, but something -- is as it should be. That someone is in charge of all the decisions. It is the misted perspective that says that people, Some People, know exactly what they're doing, that there are some sort of all-wise, brilliant Shapers, unfallen adults, somewhere in the world ... Even storefront signs, I was thinking the other day... we look at them as children and think, 'that store is supposed to be there. This is the way the world is. Someone wiser than I decided that.' Someone wiser than I.
Now, granted, there are so many wiser than I (especially in the area of setting up stores). But the strange, unspoken certainty of a child that everyone was doing things The Best Possible Way, doing them in the way that I was supposed to learn... is well-dispelled.

How does this happen in other cultures ? It would be interesting to know which realms of life make appearances in this transition from fullbodied trust to hopeful skepticism. Is it an innocent trust in how your village is ordered? Or in your father's stories?
It's a little scary to realize you're part of the adults now, to realize that there's no stable How-it's-Supposed-to-be, but only an invitation to come participate in forming what Is.

(Ah, but we who know the One who created things as they were supposed to be, who made things good, who made good things....

we know that there is a How-it's-Supposed-to-be. Here in this world, it may not show up everywhere yet; it may not be all around us, in every facet of life's aesthetics and organization. But we can go to the Book and see, see and hear, so much about the How-it's-Supposed-to-be.

And we, we're being made how we're supposed to be, every day a little more. )

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. --2Corinthians4:17-18.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. --Romans12:2.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. The myths that helped shape my dictionary definitions of beautiful, exciting, love, adventure, fearful... these old garments served a purpose, for a time. As they've been put aside, as they've grown shabby, threadbare, right before my eyes, the Story of all Stories has welled up big and loud all inside me. By the grace of its Author, who wrote Himself on my heart!

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." What! the whole of it vanity? O favoured monarch, is there nothing in all thy wealth? Nothing in that wide dominion reaching from the river even to the sea? Nothing in Palmyra's glorious palaces? Nothing in the house of the forest of Lebanon? In all thy music and dancing, and wine and luxury, is there nothing? 'Nothing,' he says, 'but weariness of spirit.' ... if you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Saviour's face." (Charles Spurgeon. dec. 2's evening.)

No, the pattern for perfect is not to be found in the fabric this world generates. The real stars, the real authorities, the real to-be-trusted are all in Christ. All the shimmering hints of glory in the myths are not to be compared with the golden, glorious Lamb at the center of the throne.

Never again will they thirst
who come make their home in him. !



***********************************************

Just found and am looking forward to reading: The Christian Imagination


Interested in (books): The Power of Words and the Wonder of God ; The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth; The Children's Culture Reader; Children's Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory ; Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children; The Gutenberg Elegies ...

But probably won't get to them all, not yet, or to all the ruminations on 'media ecology' (happy gift of a term to twine some things together... ) I'd like to undertake. So enough to say, for now,

take very seriously the responsibility you have to any child you meet; they are in the midst of a delicate process; they are soft clay, developing film, canvases-in-progress.... pray for the children. The media are vanity by their own power. The True message is anything but, and what joy to redeem the media a bit by melding them with most perfect message, as wisely as we're enabled to do.

read it.

insanity and spiritual songs.

shout-out to E.

Looking back with dear roommate E., we compiled a list of 'gifts from New York' over the past year... not all of them done together, and I'm sure we forgot some things but:

Danielson Family, Cryptacize, Dan Zimmerman -- our first outing together, and it was a doozy.
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot (Henry V)
Gypsy
The 39 Steps
Irena's Vow
Mary Poppins
The Phantom of the Opera
Wicked
The Wizard of Oz
The Marriage of Figaro (opera)
Romeo & Juliet (ballet)
voice lessons with Someone Famous.
African film festival
The Earth Room
Sara Groves (twice!)
MOMA (we loved it. Free Friday nights.)
walking the Brooklyn Bridge and the GW Bridge
The Met, many times.
The New York Symphony Orchestra (no, not the Phil.)
Brazilian Day!! (with Lili!)
Museum of the Moving Image
Museum of Folk Art
The Big Apple Circus, at Lincoln Center
Jake Armerding
'It Might Get Loud' -- the movie.
Empire State Building
Statue of Liberty
Ellis Island
'little' things--puppets, jazz, breakdancing, in the subway or at the park. And just wandering neighborhoods together.
High Line Park
Carnegie Hall's high school choir-fest (Jessye Norman spoke!)

we probably forgot a few things. "Dirt Cheap in NYC" books gave us plenty to try for.

But the greatest gifts I got in New York City
were the Eagle's Nest I landed in,
and the Household of Faith that turned into home.
And, E., you.
I am so happy for you in what's ahead.
For you, the first video ever embedded in this blog. Ready? Here we go :

notes from the wood between the worlds. 1.

I've thought much about my tendency to want to see something TRIUMPHED over. Something utterly completed, all won.It's not all bad, this tendency. It's a seed of hope for the ultimate triumph, I think,
which is Christ's -- which will indeed come!! Until then,
We will not eliminate injustice in this world. It won't be done.
But we can interrupt its patterns.
We can participate in interrupting patterns of injustice,
speaking the Gospel all the while--the news that our only real and LASTING hope is reconciliation with God through Christ.
And we've food to feast on, every day, as we walk. The most delicious.


" The ordinances of the LORD are sure
and altogether righteous.
They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the comb."


Last night, I saw a change in eyes that look mostly asleep,
even when they're open.
I saw them snap awake as my grandfather sang Spanish songs he learned
long before I did. I saw him sing out the memories that have lasted,
the ones that were strong enough, important enough.
When people get old, and have less control over what they can show,
I think (sometimes, anyway) you get to see what's really fed them and sustained them.
The deep bass notes of the melody of their lives.

I'm so proud of my grandpa. His bass (and base-) line is prayer. His bass line is Scripture, is speaking the solid hope of Christ,
and his bass line is music that sings that hope into a world-weary spirit. I pray these are the things I'll sing out, too, when everything else I can do and say and be busy about fades away...
and long before.

"No hay Dios tan grande como Tu,
No lo hay, no lo hay..."
"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word...
The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never, no never, no never forsake."

revelators.

"The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems." (A.W. Tozer)... Never doubt that the Gospel proudly preached will prove 'relevant' to the problems of those you preach to.
What we believe about God affects the gait with which we walk, the expression on our face, the rhythm of our every moment, and every moment makes up every day.
I know my gait is not yet fully in step, in rhythm, with the Gospel. With the truth about how God sees me and what He has done for me. Adopted! Chosen before the foundations of the world! I do not embrace all the freedom that is mine. Do you find that as you get older, you do not seem to find your magic niche, as you thought might happen, but rather you see more and more your weakness and limitation?

I was thinking recently about how we are revelators. We are people who reveal. Reveal our God through the cracks in our vessel-ness. Reveal the Kingdom of God here on earth. We do not build it, or make it, or spread it. God does. We reveal it. It's coming. And it's here.

The Olympics are coming to Rio! (RiOlympics?)
Please pray that this will be a vehicle of blessing for the poor. Please pray that this will be a chance to give a voice to the poor. How wonderful it would be to be able to reveal a bit of the Kingdom to the watching world, by the grace of God. Pray for the street people who fear the police. Pray for the police who think 'cleaning up' means pushing around. Pray for administrators on every level, that they would use their power wisely. Pray for favela-dwellers and leaders and their relationships with both druglords and the government. Pray against corruption. Pray for Word Made Flesh in Rio, that we would read the times wisely and take opportunities to step in to glorify our God. I'll live in this city. But I don't understand it yet. Pray for inspiration, and a way I cannot see. God is mighty. God is Sovereign. May His people pray!!

Poverty, the Cantalamessa book-- I did end up having some issues with it, a few points on which I'd diverge from the author's theology and interpretation of Scripture. But. One thing I liked: the way he tied together material poverty and spiritual humility, as they're presented in the Bible: "two contrasting categories of people...on the one hand, the rich-powerful-satiated-wise, on the other, the poor-humble-hungry-small." Material wealth is often used as a symbol of self-satisfaction, putting your faith in temporary things. Poverty is often used as a symbol for humility. This doesn't mean every rich person is really lost, or that every poor person is humble. By any means. But there is a mysterious way in which these things very often weave together on this earth,
and our God is a beautiful writer.
He knows how to evoke truth with imagery, and how to weave stories together to reveal truths deeper than any simple maxim could express. (Though He includes nice simple maxims once in awhile too... )
Scripture is unplombable -- there's always going to be more to see in there!

Sometimes people -- like Israel -- are brought to humble contrition and dependence by being brought physically, materially low. Made poor.
Material poverty can be a powerful gateway to a deep understanding that we are indeed completely dependent. We are debtors indeed. Saved by grace alone, and created to show the glory of His grace.
May all we who are poor, however we are poor, come to seek refuge in the name of the Lord. Salvation belongs to our God, and unto the Lamb.

I've been noticing ways that spiritual and material are very tightly interwoven lately.
Like the miracle of feeding the 5,000, and the declaration "I am the bread of life... I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." He who gives physical bread and physical life is also the only Source of unending Life. Life and life -- spiritual and physical, capital and lowercase -- they're not as separable as we think, in the end.
Like the new heavens and the new earth.

Reveal the character of God today -- only He can do this in You. You're not building the character, you're not inventing the character. But if He is in you, as people peel back layers, He is what they will see. May this be true of our persons, our work, our homes and our friendships.
The supernatural is penetrating the 'natural' every day; the spiritual is touching and transforming the physical; submit the material to the Lord of All. Watch Him work.

what spheres of thought we enter.

Come in, come in! I'm reading again! Can you believe it? It's such a strange thing to do, entering other peoples' minds and being hit by truth, and having your thoughts twisted and reshaped

through words on paper.

Books recently read:

1. St. Francis. Chesterton's tribute. "St. Francis is not a proper person to be patronised with merely 'pretty' stories. There are any number of them; but they are too often used so as to be a sort of sentimental sediment of the mediaeval world, isntead of being, as the saint emphatically is, a challenge to the modern world." This is a good book. A rambly book. Chesterton wanders. I like to follow him, though. Good words on seeing the world 'upside down,' i.e., losing all self-worship and living in total gratitude...

The “fool of God” is, it turns out, the servant who gets to know her (his) Master’s business – the one who gets to know the secret of what is truly valuable, and what is not.

To cast off all that hinders. To stand on our heads and see all history and all present and all future as Christ-centered, Christ-preserved and Christ-directed. There is none beside Him.

2. O Ye Jigs and Juleps! Silliness sweet. Chomped up in one lazy morning. Thank you, Heidi. Revive us again, Selah and Amen.

3. Pictures from an Expedition. More froth, but this time chosen to remind me of a landscape. I miss the West. And I bought this book at Wall Drug (South Dakota's #2 attraction).

And... books now in progress:

1. My first Moltmann. I'm enjoying it. Lots of gem-sentences. Like: "The true front on which the liberation of Christ takes place does not run between soul and body or between persons and structures, but between the powers of the world...and the powers of the Spirit and of the [redeemed! Kingdom!] future. ...in every sphere of life, the powers of the coming new creation are in conflict with the powers of a world structure which leads to death."

2.

by Raniero Cantalamessa. Humbly written, wise, incisive by its simplicity. so far, a treasure.

3. I wasn't drawn to this when it was bestselling (is it still?), and it's still not the kind I run to naturally, but I am enjoying it more than I thought that I would. Reading it for a discussion group, which makes me chew on it harder, and appreciating the simplicity and clarity of its arguments. God gives reason and is most reasonable... but I do hope we're all still willing to admit our reason can never swallow His. Ours isn't big enough yet, and never will be. Good words from Keller: Self-aggrandizement is at the foundation of so much of the misery of the world. It is the reason that the powerful and the rich are indifferent to the plight of the poor. It is the reason for most of the violence, crime and warfare in the world. It is at the heart of most cases of family disintegration. We hide from ourselves our self-centered capacity for acats of evil, but situations arise that act as a 'potion' and out they come" (p.82). Also appreciate his exposition of how concern for 'social justice,' improving the world, bettering lives, etc. is ultimately groundless and meaningless apart from a Scriptural worldview which sees an ultimate Restoration, sees Justice ultimately done by the only Just One, sees a future beyond death! Resurrection is not only proof of Christ's identity as Son of God, but also the seed of our hope. Firstfruits!

4. This one I read every day. Or catch up with when I've slacked off. Wonderful. Wonderful! C.H.S. is a poet and a preacher, a theologian who speaks in image-words and draws me in as few 'devotional writers' have ever done. Today's was about the 'two pillars,' the two halves of an arch, equally indispensable: (1)a life of godliness and (2)the faith that must be the root of it. Light and heat both proceeding from the sun...do you picture a hot and fiery arch when you read this? Something about it...

And finally,

a plug for a book I read over and over and all the time. I think you'll love it.

p.s. I went to the Museum of Modern Art last night. (Free Fridays!) It was fantastical.

I want to go to junk shops and collect all manner of strange materials to speak about the world in objects.

(on the left, Giacometti's Palace at 4 a.m. ... he said it was about "a period of six months passed in the presence of a woman who, concentrating all life in herself, transported my every moment into a state of enchantment. We constructed a fantastical palace in the night—a very fragile palace of matches. At the least false movement a whole section would collapse. We always began it again."

we always began it again. do you think they really sat up nights building toothpick houses? or is he speaking about the fragile nature of relationships and the dreams they're built around? )

57th Street, and so on.

I just want to write.

Alison Krauss is singing “restless” on the stereo, and there’s a tree growing taller than a five story building just outside the window,
and I am thinking about goodbyes, and aching from it a little—goodbyes to come, and seasons passing.

This morning, I thought of how my friends’ and my situations have changed so over the past year or two, how we are no longer people who would meet anymore, perhaps.
But in God’s providence we did. We did meet. And now we are diverse adults, with lives I never dreamed for us.

Today we drove around Manhattan (a wild and ridiculous thing to do) and I knew that I love to ride around observing. That this is my favorite place to be. In a car, watching. Thinking, with music on, perhaps, to help me enter. Synthesizing and streaming in and streaming out, watching and wondering and wanting to write the stories and beauties of each person that I see.
To see how they are woven and to worship with them the Holy Weaver who can intricately draw their story into the wonder-world that is His Kingdom of Right-ness and Worth and Meaning, through Jesus. Through Jesus.

How they need Him. Skinny girl in latest leggings and chunky heels wandering through the retail forest;
tall and weathered black man in chalkdusty boots and floppy hat who works so hard. And has a Southern accent (when did you come here? Why? The looks of you make me want to do manual labor. You look solid and strong and smart--like a father. I hope you are one. I hope you’re a good one, poured through by God. )

Nesting-doll-shaped Korean woman in the tight grape-purple dress, lilting, limping down the street with a smile on your face. Where are you going, I wonder?..
Boys on skateboards in the park; are your parents rich? Or do you come from somewhere else in this strange city to fly on wealthy concrete? I wonder if you know Him—do you know Him at all?

Smoking businessman in lavender shirt and mauveish tie. You match the Gucci window displays behind you, and you look unhappy. You’re slim and young, and here you are, in building-canyons…Do you want out? Do you know the world out there? Did you come here looking for something? Do you not believe the lie anymore that tallness makes a place more worthwhile, that crowdedness and higher price tags make you feel powerful if you’re involved? You drop your cigarette and take three steps at once back into an unlabeled glass office building.

Someone Important is having his photo taken. He looks like a caricature of a 1950s mogul-man, with horn-rimmed round glasses and the sharpest suit. He is short, nearly bald, but with hair long in the back, and glossy. He looks Italian, and very seriously proud of himself. And very silly as he stands posing Noble for the cameraman. A young guy holds the bronze reflector screen. They wait while our car is in the way. They look at us. We look at them. Big buildings all around us. In a magazine this will look Very Important. Central. Influential. Who is this man, and how is this enough for him? I’d laugh if I were him.

Dear people. Dear people. And there are people even right below, down in the subway tunnels. Living there. Did you know? I want to meet them.

Reality doesn’t fit inside my words at all. It’s bigger; sometimes I picture it dark and swirling, like blood. Not gruesome, but alive and inexplicable and unexpected. I try to teach myself that I’m not taming life by putting it in words. Why do I want to write so much?

Whom do you stop and talk to, when you love everyone? Where do you go, and what do you do? How do you pick one place and way? Praying for those I see is like food. I need it.

I’m going : to Brazil.

We went on a road trip, did you know? My Emilia-friend and I. It was just wonderful. Thanks for having us.

Roads, roads, roads, roads. Even when you stop, there are roads you're going down, just vertical maybe, instead of horizontal. Deeper instead of farther. Like oil wells.

4th of July weekend, 2009.

I rode five hours on a train yesterday with a most remarkable woman.
I doubt you have met anyone more remarkable than she.
I bless God for the blessing
Of serving her,
Of knowing her,
Of loving her
And watching her love Him.

Reading Psalms to you, K. C., is one of the highest privileges I have known.
Knowing your friendship and getting your hugs are some of the most unexpected blessings my life has been seasoned with.

She cannot speak with her mouth; she cannot walk with her feet.

We spent Thursday in the hospital.
“People make assumptions,” I said after the doctor left the room – he did not speak to her; only to me.
“Like about Jesus,” she said back. She speaks by spelling things out with her finger,
one letter at a time on a laminated sheet of alphabet letters and commonly used words. I make guesses to save her the effort of moving her finger more… the guesses are not always right. She puts up with a lot.

"Someday all the masks will come off," I say. She spells out:

S

O

O

N.

Soon.

When she sleeps, she is perfectly still, as she can never be while she’s awake.
And as she lays there I see all her afflictions as garments;
Garments that are put on her when she wakes,
Garments that the world sees wrongly and judges foolishly.
I know, I said to her, that God loves you so unspeakably much;
There is just no way that He would give such a trial to any one of His people that He did not make
Beautifully strong; and if He has given me trials, much slighter, to refine me and draw me closer – and I know He has – then how close He must want you, K. How refined you will be.

“Jewels in the crown!” were my last words to her, as they drove her away in a van from the train station. Her patience, her forgiving, her laughing through the hardest and most awkward of situations… her faith in His Word, in His promises. When I see a crowned head most blindingly bright approaching me in heaven,
I will know that it is K.,
And she will be walking, and talking, and praising God with all her might,
With all the might that He has given her.

****************************************************
Tonight, I’m back in the Bronx. The bewildering Bronx,
Where I cannot stay now,
But I can’t understand leaving.

Monday: a road trip! The grandest and most far-ranging I’ve had since childhood! Hurrah! And it’s with a prayer partner, a knowledge-thirster, a dear friend who’ll help me grow and be renewed. That’s a blessing I’ve dreamed of for a long time. Pray for us? Thank you.
Whole lot of packing
Going on.

The last day of Kindergarten.

(our room .. in october.) (parachuting .. in april.) (i wish i could show you more. their beauty, the small ones. but their faces are not mine to share.) I have no pictures of the last day, except in my mind.

Today I am home with strep throat; I was supposed to be there setting up for tonight's big graduation. Adding to the strangeness of a season's end

is my m.i.a.-ness today from the last hustle-bustle.

But it allows me to stop and see,

to try to understand that it happened, and it's done,

and to pray for the effects of the love poured out to ripple on and on and on,

in me,

in them, and outward.

"Who stole the alphabet?" my F. murmured low yesterday, looking upward.

I'd taken down the beautiful handmade paper picture-alphabet that dear Lizbeth crafted for me back in August. Passed it on to another teacher for use next year. That alphabet was a coveted item.

We started the day with Bible review. We looked at our four-column chart (1-before Abraham; 2-the age of Israel pre-Christ; 3-Christ's life on earth; 4-after Christ's life on earth till His second coming and the full restoration of His Kingdom) and sang songs that we'd learned for key parts of it. "God of Wonders." "Generations." "Baby Jesus." "I Come Running to You." "Worthy is the Lamb." "He Reigns." They remember a lot. "Why are you standing there looking up into the sky?" my little A. kept repeating. She remembers the ascension lesson best. They all blew their imaginary trumpets again, imagining the real Last Day. "Someone's coming..." we whispered, remembering the promises that preceded Jesus' birth.

I'm thankful for how God guided us through our Bible-study.

I hope that above all, the atonement and the invitation to relationship with the great Giver of Himself

are what stick.

They visited first grade the other day for an hour. I popped in to drop off a latecomer, and ever-eager-on-the-edge-of-flipping-out-with-excitement J. bounced in his chair. "We're in first grade!" he gushed. Skip a beat. His expression changes instantly to concern. "Do we get to go back?"

Darlings. What is ahead for them? We had a special thing going. They didn't really know it. But I pray for beauty to thrive and blossom in their hearts. The last day, and J. and J.-girl bring me tiny green leaves while we're in the park. "Can we put this in the Beautiful Box?"

Tonight, we say goodbye. Me, possibly in sign language, due to throat swelling. It hasn't hit me yet how much I love them and how finished our season together is.

It's been hard. Every day. I don't know how to explain it if you haven't felt it. The hurt and the frustration and the exhaustion. The apparent fruitlessness and the self-doubt and second-guessing. The disobedience. Teachers are Amazing People. Amazing people, they are. And I'm not speaking of myself, for I am walking to something else. Please go commend a teacher. Please pray for a teacher. Please go into an urban school and offer to pray, and to help.

God is faithful. God is sovereign--trust Him to redeem. There's a wideness in God's mercy beyond man's imagining. And when something is worth the pain, it doesn't mean the pain goes away.

that's a year of Kindergarten in a nutshell.

Glory to God in the highest! Amen.

...two...one.

Two left...

And my parents are here for a day. My father has long talks with M. about Sasquatch, a mutual interest. They look at pictures online. Footprints and blurry long-distance views and hypothetical sketches. M. is delighted. He gives my dad his last Oreo. This is big.

We've been reading some stories from 'Tales of the Kingdom' at naptime. Today's was 'The Baker Who Loved Bread.' Kind of inaptly named, but a really vivid story about denying shelter, bread and love to those in need -- and this really being denial of all this to the King Himself. Wounding the King Himself when you wound a stranger.

I had forgotten all about 'Tales of the Kingdom.' Until I saw the books again, and all kinds of memories came shooting back. The strange, almost gruesome pictures. The smell of the pages. The realism of the stories. A little disjointed, but all making a beautiful sense, too, somehow.

My parents read them aloud to us when I was very small. And I remember leafing through the books myself...

'The Apprentice Juggler' is a favorite. 'A Girl Called Dirty' is a powerful one too, especially if you ache for anyone struggling against God. (And she is all of us.)

The metaphors are resonant. I think you might like them.

I'm so tired. The fuel seems to be totally drained from me. Sinus infectionishness not helpful...

My children. My children. Your children. Your children, oh Lord.

One left.

"The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience..." (C.S. Lewis.)

It's family field day! But there are thunderstorms. The sky turns green as I stand outside for morning traffic duty, and suddenly it feels like night. Lighted windows call 'welcome' as they do in the dusk-time... but it is 7:45 in the morning...

So: no trip to the park. We have field day at school. Taking turns in the gym, computer lab, etc. Most kids don't show up. Of those who do, about half have parents with them. It's a strange day. Isn't it funny how the end of something can turn out to have so different a character than what it's had all along? This isn't how school's felt at all, for nine long months. Nine months of building routine, of following the rhythm, of keeping them carefully penned in with invisible fences... and then you say goodbye in a whirlwind of totally-different-ness. Who are we? What have we been through?

There is the feeling

of losing one's children.

Not like the real thing, I know. And there are so many reasons it's good that this is ending. But the feeling comes nevertheless,

because I love them. What a strange season this is.

"In looking back, it would be wrong to deny that we have been in the Slough of Despond, and have crept along the Valley of Humiliation, but it would be equally wicked to forget that we have been through them safely and profitably; we have not remained in them, thanks to our Almighty Helper and Leader...The deeper our troubles, the louder our thanks to God, who has led us through all, and preserved us until now. Our griefs cannot mar the melody of our praise, we reckon them to be the bass part of our life's song, 'He Hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.'"

(Charles Spurgeon.)

a lot of catching up to do...

but then again, I rarely feel 'caught up' these days. Today I realized you could tell me it was February, April, or June, and I would really, truly believe you, so out of it do I feel at given moments of a day. So much like a long dream does a school year feel to teacher-me. The days blur together, full of little logistics; events of September and December can feel like they happened only last week; events of yesterday can be a total blur, undiscernible, hazy and out of reach.

There are two more school days left. Two! If I keep saying it, will I believe it. Two! Plus graduation evening. I am in a whirl within. What's going on? The promise of freedom from what's chewed at me for months and months and months... the promise is dangling there, but I'm not sure whether to snatch it, to stare at it, or to just walk right through it. Or hit myself over the head with it to make it real.

Highlights from the last many days of not-blogging:

Thursday, May 28: The Best Day of School Ever.

I took my kids to Central Park. I felt like their mom instead of their teacher. Away from the closing-in walls, and the eyes and ears of more organized and systematic people. It was how education should be. They climbed trees! For the first time! (Then Central Park people came and told them this was not allowed. But we had a good solid thirty minutes of tree climbing first!) The Ross Pinetum is a wondrous place.

To address their humanity, to get to see them as people, small people, instead of a cluster that needs managing. Blessing.

J. found himself rather stuck in his tree at one point. "You'll just have to live there until your legs grow long enough to climb down, then," I said. "We shall bring you a pillow and some snacks, and when you're thirteen, you can come back down again." The story-making in this vein continued for some minutes.

One chaperoning mother looked at me like I was marble-less.

Another laughed and enjoyed the look on J.'s face. He seemed to be mulling over the merits of the plan.

J. also made it his mission today to pet every single dog we passed. You pass a lot of dogs in Central Park. And on the way to Central Park from the train. And on the way back to the train from Central Park. Once he learned the etiquette of the thing -- asking "may I pet your dog?" he was the charmingest little pet-petter the West side has ever known. This made me happy.

The aforementioned chaperoning mother once again seemed ill-at-ease with my management (or lack thereof) of J.'s life.

Another J., my J-girl, fell off a stone wall she was balancing on and cut her lip rather badly. This was sad and pretty gory. She wailed. We bought an ice cream sandwich. After cleaning her up in the bathroom. I hand-fed it to her on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "You can go home and tell your family about how you cried so loudly, they could hear you all the way in Haiti!" I tell her. She smiles through her pout.

We found dandelions. Lots. Talked about seed-spread. Walked through a tunnel within which two gentlemen with saxophones were playing The Pink Panther Theme -- just for us.

We saw the Bethesda Fountain and terrace together. What a place to be with my wee ones.

They learned the word 'bark' today as it applies to trees. They did not know the word 'bark.'

J.girl would ask me when she saw an open patch of grass, "Can I roll in it?"

(I had promised them we'd be climbing, running, rolling in grass and open spaces.) "Of course! Go for it." "We can roll, guys!" she'd call out, as if this was the greatest thing ever to be allowed.

We didn't make it where I planned for us to make it within the park, but I didn't care a bit. They were out, they were free, we were exploring, we were touching living, growing things. They climbed rocks. They can run. ALL. Day. And THIS is what I'm having to keep cooped up in the white-brick bowling alley we call my classroom? No wonder we go wacky back at school.

Treasures

in rooms of clay.

the following Monday...

D. remembers that he hit me in the leg with something last Friday. "So," he asks eagerly, "Are you blue?" I check for the bruise he's hoping to see. "Nope. Sorry, bud."

I praise God for the transformation in my floppy, funny F. He is so proud now of how quickly he does his work, a different boy from the F. of October, who spent every moment calling out for attention from the rest of the class and completely ignoring me. I welcome my F. to school with a giant, running-start hug, and his grin delights my heart. He's in his own world, this boyling. And I love it.

Tuesday...

J. has taken to saying "...and paint the walls" at the end of all my directions. It does make me smile. Every morning we stop outside the classroom and I ask what we should do when we get inside. "Line up our bookbags, hang up our coats, and stand on our spot," replies the dutiful child of the day. J. is chomping at the bit to add his bit:

"...and paint the walls."

Today we made a mural (on paper, not directly on the walls -- sorry, J.) of a bakery window. i've been wanting to do this for a long time now. Bakery windows are magical things.

This week we are talking about seeds being planted in the soil of our hearts. Today as I told the parable of the sower, I had to stop and pray over them even AS they were in the very act of ignoring the Word of God, choosing instead to play with some piece of lint from the carpet, to mess with each others' hair, to squabble over position... oh, God. We are so blind. They are so blind. Open their hearts, Lord. Only You can. If today all they got was that I'm desperate to see You do this, and that You can, that's enough. That's enough.

Wednesday...

This one goes out to a certain remarkable friend who suddenly appeared at the top of the 1 train stairs at 207th Street this afternoon.

This one goes out to our Mel from Arizona. She suddenly appeared here in my uptown world, and the world is better for it.

We started learning the 'tongue song' today. It's more of a chant really. It involves clicking your tongue first, in a certain rhythm... then "The tongue (clap clap) is like (clap clap) a bit or a rudder. The tongue (clap clap) will steer the way that you go.... Are you spouting clean or dirty water? You're sprouting the fruit of the seed that you sow..." there's more. That's all I went for today. They like clicking their tongues. This is a subject we've long needed to talk about. I love the Biblical metaphors of clean and dirty water, of tongues bearing fruit. Of the power of this tiny muscle -- the power of death and life. The kids resonate with this. I'm thankful.

Thursday:

We started today with an orchestra moment. Each child picked something in the room to make 'music' with, and then beat it along to the Tongue Song. This was nice.

Today I was pleasantly surprised

by my troops, my dears. It just takes me aback whenever we can do any activity without an extreme amount of reprimanding, redirecting, etc. Today I put them in their reading partners and asked them to read a book together...

and they did it. They did it! I can't tell you how quietly flabbergasted I was. They must be growing up.

We also measured stuff. Measurement is my favorite Kindergarten math unit, I think. Just because they like it.

I started showing them 'Follow That Bird' today. We never watch movies. I think this is the second one all year. I'm excited. "One of my favorites," I say. "Don't talk! I want to hear it!" This seems to work. This is a really well-made kids' movie. It holds their attention. It keeps moving. They're in suspense... I love this movie. It's full of vivid atmospheres, almost-tasteable and -touchable memories. Waylon Jennings in a turkey truck. Two farm kids on an easy-going day. Haystacks and car chases and a big map. It's wonderful. I've always wanted my kiddos to see it.

My urban kiddos who resonate so naturally with Sesame Street itself, the location. I love old Sesame Street. It looked kind of dirty. There's a kind of run-down family clinic in view in several scenes of the movie; everything's a bit grubby... and beautiful. Lit up by the friendships and the love of life all around it.

I wondered today

how much of my passion for urban redemption and relationship

is rooted in old Sesame Street. Is it what I'm looking for? Is it why?

I guess I'll never know.

He works in mysterious ways. He plants so many things in our hearts.

Tonight I saw the dramatization of an extremely remarkable story. Irena's Vow. It's on Broadway. If you're in New York, go see it.

Friday.

Today was my little O.'s last day. My first goodbye.

Today we planted pumpkin seeds in bags of soil. Each child with his own bag, and each child had to speak a kindness, plant a beautiful 'seed' verbally to another while planting the actual seed in that person's bag o' dirt. There's just nothing more exciting, apparently, than a bag of dirt

when you are five or six years old.

"Run for your LIFE, Big Bird!!!" cried my F., who was in such suspense he could not keep his seat during the second half of Follow That Bird today. I grinned.

They SQUABBLED today. It drove me Berzerk. Tense. It's senseless. Pointless. ENDLESS !

Today I was reminded about the waters of Meribah, where Moses struck the rock... will I strike the rock? Cry out "You rebels!"? Or can I believe that serving the sinners, speaking truth faithfully to them, is enough

for You to work through

in their lives ?

God, give me a faith in Your sovereignty

that is as unshakeable as YourSelf.

11. Spillorama

At lunchtime today, everything that could be spilled was spilled. Icees. My iced coffee. (Yes, I find myself suddenly becoming overly reliant on sugary liquid fuels.). Milk. "Emer-gen-cy. Emer-gen-cy," D. walks around reciting like a robot. The rest are going nuts all around me for different reasons. "Please, please, D., stop," I plead. I command. Ah, but it's his robot-call for help that actually gets someone from the outside world to pop her head in and ask if she can call for a maintenance man for us. "Oh, yes, please!" say I, weary of sending Kindergarteners on treks to the bathroom for more and more paper towels, having exhausted our classroom supply.

It was rough today. I just feel spent.
But here's a blessing: they're reading! When I think back to many of them not knowing their alphabet,
and now see all but two reading simple sentences and books well,
and one of those is on his way. The other needs some extra love and care and time.
...
I think: this is a neat thing. They are reading. I hope they love it. If not yet, then someday.

This week, we're talking about the sheep and the goats; "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in..." how to wait for Jesus well. How to thank Him with our lives.

12. A Tuesday.

After a holiday weekend, coming in like a sleepwalker,
except not, because aren't sleepwalkers rather energetic? To walk in your sleep, that takes some determination and excessive get-up-and-go.
I was out of gas.

Fuel of choice:
Today, when I told him I had to go to the eye doctor after school and therefore could not do 'Insectos' (tutoring in the alphabet using insect names) with him after school, M. declared, "I can check them." He looks in my eyes briefly. "They are fine. They look great!" Hours later, it is apparently still on his mind. Out of the blue: "I have an idea." "What's your idea, M.?" "I can check your eyes for you, very fast, and then you will not have to go to the doctor, and we can do insectos, very fast, before my mom comes!" He announces this like it's the perfect solution. Eureka!

13.

Today, the restoration of the Crumpled Kingdom. I unveiled a copy of the Kingdom drawn on new, uncrumpled green paper. "How did you fix it??" they ask incredulously. We talk about all things made new and restored. We review all the truths heard this week. Trumpets. Judgment. Covered in His blood, His righteousness. Dead rising. Redeemed taken up in the clouds. Worship forever. And then we watched a clip of things changing rapidly, miraculously. Just a tiny, tiny, imperfect idea of restoration. But they were awakened to wonder. This was good. We made little 'trumpet' necklacesn with tiny bells, paper clips and string to serve as a reminder: "So then, you must also be ready." Tell someone else! The King is coming back.

My hope this week
must be in
what I have been preaching to them.
They are, again, so disobedient. So hard-hearted toward learning
and toward authority. So selfish.

It hurts, it aches, it stings, it wears
to be angry. At the small ones and their disrespect. At their parents. At the world that is pushing them into its image. At the opportunities they are missing
every day,
by choice.
(God, forgive me for where the anger is too much. God who angers PERFECTLY, RIGHTEOUSLY, help me live with this.) You KNOW this anger. You feel it and You speak about it. And You answer it.

"The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers,
the exalted of the earth languish.
The earth is defiled by its people;
they have disobeyed the laws,
violated the statutes
and broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt."
(Isaiah 24:4-6a)

In a trumpet blast,
in a coming King,
in a righteous Judge who makes all things right,
God, ignite my hope.

"In that day the LORD will punish
the powers in the heavens above
and the kings on the earth below.
They will be herded together
like prisoners bound in a dungeon...
(and "...if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea..." Matt. 18:6)
The moon will be abashed, the sun ashamed; for the LORD Almighty will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before its elders, gloriously."
(Isaiah 24:21-22a)

For now,
You are a refuge, in driving heat and wind. A tower in which we shelter.
But one day, we'll feast on a mountain,
wide open.
Ruthless rebellion silenced at last.

"...as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich foods for all peoples...
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken."
(Isaiah 25:5b-8)

God give your people -- give me -- the power to endure.
And to endure a-shouting,
shouting out Your praise,
declaring all Your Word.

14: "Smell my bookbag. It smells like fish."

The above is the quote of the day. Spoken in all sincerity and with a bit of a confused grimace by my sweet S. in morning assembly, just as we were supposed to be standing to attention and looking forward.

This morning we spoke of worshiping forever. With people from every tribe, language, nation. We spoke praise in the four languages of our classroom. We learned the rest of 'Worthy is the Lamb' and talked about the sacrificial lambs of Old Testament Israel, and our own dear Lamb who spilled His blood.

And then,
it was another very rough day. Kids in the office. Me aching inside.

15: A Crumpled Classroom.

We spoke this morning about the last judgment. A day both terrible and wonderful at the same time. The All-Knowing Judge on the throne.
We have a behavior system in our class, the classic green-yellow-red cards thing. You start on green in the morning, then change your card when you disobey, and there are consequences for changed colors. As we spoke about the Great and Terrible Day, I revealed their card-holder, with every card flipped to red. Gasps. This is very important to them, the color they are on.
Every one of us is utterly 'red' in His sight.
(I'm glad I don't have any kids who are denying that they're sinners. That's a good thing. Every one agreed they do wrong.)
We should tremble at the idea of judgment, at the knowledge that every deed will be revealed. We talked about those deeds.
And then we witnessed the wonder
of being covered by the 'green' of Jesus. The only perfect, truly 'green' one covers our red card with His perfect righteousness. And God sees green. We talked about how to know this will be true of us.

And then the rest of the day began.
They were HORRENDOUS. ALL DAY. To a level I've not experienced for a week or two now. I cried a little once I'd dropped them off at their outside class. So did my aide.
They seem
impenetrable.
Fortresses against learning.
Battlements against obedience.
Every. Word. ignored.
Every action unspeakably wild, cruel, disrespectful, or immature.
Why, oh why, are there Kindergarteners who know the F-word? Lord, save us.
And why do they look for evil in everything?
Oh how they need the clothing of Christ.
Oh how I need the clothing of Christ.
God, forgive me for when my heart gives up on these children.

I long for them to be more inquisitive. More articulate,
as I KNOW children their age can be.

Wild lumps of disobedience and foul thoughts -- is this all they want to be? All they will let themselves be? God STOP their self-destructive behavior.
God, get me through this with some glimmer of hope.

16 left.

Two days that feel like coasting... they just...went by. That's rather amazing.
Today we made badges to point people to our King, to remind ourselves of the call to be part of the true Kingdom, while we're here in the crumples. "To the King!" they wrote, and glued their little construction paper crowns on green circles, then slapped them on their shirts with masking tape. Hurrah! In the twinkling of an eye, we heard today. With a trumpet blast, we heard today! We made our own trumpet noises. And dreamed of a sound the whole world can hear. Be ready, be ready, be ready....

At naptime today, i heard a sudden trumpeting from the carpet zone. I trip-toe over chairs and feet to get to F., who's sprawled among the beanbags. "I'm glad you're trumpeting," I tell him, "and we might hear God's trumpet any time now. But naptime is not the right time for YOU to make your own trumpeting sound. Please wait till we're outside." He wants me to make him a trumpet. I improvise with yellow construction paper. Human trumpets just don't last. We need the real one.

17. (19 lived and written.: The Crumpled Kingdom.

Monday. I'm to be blessed by what I'm teaching them in Bible this week. We are looking at the world through the True Paradigm of the King and His Kingdom. And then we are celebrating the coming return of the King. A celebration with a warning. "So then, you must also be ready, for the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him."

We start with a beautiful Kingdom. Beauty sketched in simple symbols with pastels on green construction paper. Stick figures. A river of fish. A yellow sun. A flower. And then, the Kingdom is crumpled. All disfigured and vandalized by our rebellion, by the actions of our now-filthy hearts. Oh how the King of this Crumpled Kingdom is saddened. But He still speaks. And a few still turn their ears to hear. From within the crumples, their ears incline to the Creator-King. And then, one day, He sends His Son, His representative, His beloved, Himself, into the midst of it all. Down into the crumpled kingdom. Incline your ears, Kingdom-people, King-followers. Are they open? Do you hear? The King Himself is here. . .

And here, here He took upon Himself the punishment, the payment, for the terrible vandalism we have done to the King's beautiful work. The terrible pain we have caused the great King's heart. So now the Kingdom is among us. within us. The Kingdom is here.

And today, after the Son has returned to His Father, and left the gift with us, left Himself in His Spirit, we who still long for the King wait for the Kingdom to be restored in full. In FULL.
We live, dear children, in the last chapter of a story. The story of the Kingdom. And we're waiting for the King to keep His promise
to come back.

"To the King!" we holler together.
And we pray to be big-eared people. Listening for the voice of the King
here among the crumples.