VBS for people who 1. are kids, 2. aren't churchy, or 3. will probably go to hell

In a strange twist of reality, I coordinated VBS this year.

The church is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel by thinking having me do this was a good idea.

They have never come to book club when I host, or they would know that I am not an "entertainer."
I am not a hostess.
I am not well-planned
or well-decorated
or anything of the sort.

The first step in finding a VBS theme was to find one I could tolerate.
Some of these kits cost over $100, and I just can't spend the church's money like that.
So I found a free one about missions, but I didn't like how much it focused on kids and sin.

Kids have a lot of figuring out to do, and I really don't think we need to belabor the fact that they are sinful on top of everything else.
I don't even like the word "sin."

I have always felt that if God is omnipotent, he/she should have created me better in the first place if he/she wanted me to be sinless.
I cannot be held responsible for the acts of my great, great, great, great, great, great....and so on grandparents, Adam and Eve.
Sure, it's a matter of semantics, but I prefer "flawed" to "sinful."
Am I flawed?
Of course.
Am I sinful?
Hell-to-the-no.

So I cut that out of the VBS thing on missions, and then I cut out the part about missions (because I believe in missions that are to serve but I'm not evangelical so I can't promote preachy/preachy when that isn't my thing.)

I more or less created my own VBS about being a neighbor to others.

I lead the children's Worship & Wonder occasionally, and it really is the best place for me because my understanding of God is like a child's understanding.
I need the most basic, simplistic information because once it starts getting more complicated, I can't believe anymore.

I'm on board with 'Love your neighbor as yourself."
I get my panties in a twist with anything more complicated.

One of the best things I learned when I started teaching was to keep the rules to a very, very small number because 1. kids don't like them and 2. if you have too many rules, it's impossible to actually enforce them and 3. kids don't like them.

I'm like that with church.
Two rules: "Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself."
Done.
I'm good.

Any of these "Don't drink alcohol" and "Don't show your body" and "Don't be gay" and "Abortion is always wrong" and "Don't say the word God unless you are talking about God" rules is where I shut down.

Because sometimes saying a good and loud "G*ddammit" feels excellent and sums things up more succinctly than any other word in the world.
And if I'm going to go to hell over saying that word....
Well, ok then.

I digress.

So it occurred to me today, when a friend texted me about how VBS had gone last night, that I didn't pray once with the children.
We didn't have a formal "Dear God, blah, blah, blah."
And it's mostly because I'm not a "Dear God, blah, blah, blah" person.

But we had fellowship and fun, and the kids felt loved and welcomed.
And we talked about caring for our neighbors who experience all the things we experience, like home, and family, and clothing, and food, even though our neighbors' homes and families and clothing and food might look a little different from our homes and families and clothing and food.

Because that is its most simple form: We are all flawed people who want love and acceptance. We all share common experiences and feelings.
And I believe the majority of us want to be good but some of us struggle at it more than others.

One of the church members spoke to me last week about being gay and how his father has never accepted it.
It broke my heart to hear this because you could just feel how much pain it causes this individual.

And I think God is in the space between people's pain and what other people do to ease that pain.
That being a good neighbor part.

Mortality reckoning

Mortality hit me in the face yesterday.

Not my own mortality, of course.

I'm not writing this while deceased.

Since the end of February, my family has dealt with...

• the death of my uncle's longtime partner.
• my dad's open heart surgery, pacemaker implantation, and soon-to-follow defibrillator implantation in July. 
• my mom's breast cancer diagnosis and surgery (and to-be-determined treatment plan).
• my nephew's surgery for pectus excavatum.

Up until yesterday, I had emotionally handled all this stress just fine until my dad texted me that my aunt (his sister) had only hours to live.

We knew that hospice was being called in, but we had been told on Saturday that it would be weeks.

By Sunday morning, it was hours.

She passed away in the wee hours of this morning.

My parents, my brother and I went to the hospital yesterday morning to see her a final time.

And my sadness wasn't for my aunt.

She was 86 years old and had a good run.

She had been in declining health for at least six months (as had my uncle's partner, who I considered an aunt).

But what hit me, and still hits me now, is the reality that I am having to deal with all of these "grown-up" issues.

Because inside, I don't feel my age. 

I am still the young child Carrie.

I am not the 45-year-old Carrie with parents in their late 70s and early 80s who are beginning to have health considerations. 

Watching my aunts pass away, women I saw fairly frequently during my childhood, means watching that childhood slip away. 

It is fast becoming, truly, a thing of the past. 

A piece of history.

Seeing my cousins come unglued at the hospital weakened my resolve and sucked any reserves and composure I had felt all these months.

When my brother and I left the hospital, I started talking in the elevator and just couldn't hold back tears.

They were, of course, tears of sadness for my cousins and for my dad and uncle.

But they were also my fears coming out, knowing that my brother and I will be in the midst of actively dealing with this situation in the coming years.

Aren't we just kids, me and K?

How is it possible that we are grown?

A love letter to America

I'm late (as usual) to all that is cool, hip, and trendy.
I mean, I knew what Hamilton was before seeing the traveling Broadway show.
I even own the soundtrack (although I had forgotten that I downloaded it).
I follow Lin-Manuel Miranda on Twitter, for pete's sake.

But I wasn't, like, gone over Hamilton.

I figured I would enjoy it.
I wanted to see it.
And so I did.

It blew my dang mind.

My neighbor (with whom I see the shows) encouraged me to listen to the soundtrack.
While I had listened to some of the most popular songs, I didn't listen to the entire thing for a couple reasons.
1. The school year is not over yet, and I'm still subbing, and DEAR GOD, when will this year end?

2. I have learned in my freelance work that I do a better job paying attention if I go in not knowing a whole lot. I don't do a ton of prep work on the front-end of interviews because I ask better questions if I don't do research and "know everything." I fact-check on the back-end. It seems to work for me. (I make a lot of assumptions otherwise. Also, thank goodness I'm not an investigative journalist because I would suck.)

I don't know that I would have "gotten" anything any better had I pre-listened to the entire show's soundtrack because there are so many performer subtleties (in the form of body position and facial expression, etc) that make the lyrics even better.

And then there was that moving floor, which made the choreography and execution of the choreography mind-blowing.
I just kept thinking about how much practice the performers had to do in order to keep the song lyrics in their heads and keep their feet working in sync and not tripping over the moving floor at the same time.

So, I was gobsmacked, to say the least.

What I left with was a musical that is a love letter to the United States.
That's how I think of Hamilton.

That may sound sappy or sentimental, but I feel like the emotions it left me with, the pride it led me to feel in this country (or at least it's origins since the current state of things is lacking in.....ahem, intellectual rigor and exquisite communicative ability), makes it more profound than any national anthem I've ever been part of or witnessed others half-assedly sing
and any Pledge of Allegience I've said by rote.

Watching Hamilton made me proud to be an American and to believe in the American dream (even though I know the union is flawed and America is not perfect and has sometimes been downright cruel to its own citizens, when it deigned to even consider them citizens and not property and that politics has been nasty and brutish.

Hamilton made me see the ideal for a few hours on Tuesday night.