I'd never heard the phrase "creative communication" until I took one of those "which churchy gifts do have?" style quiz things for my internship last summer. But the minute I read it I knew it was true. I've always loved theatre and movies and music, and I've recently discovered that I'm actually pretty descent at drawing provided we're not going for realism. So the creative part is something of which I've always been highly aware. Putting that creativity next to an idea like communication though, is new.
Most members of my family will tell you that I talk. A lot. Most people I'm meeting for the first time would probably tell you that I'm fairly quiet (provided we're not talking about something I love to the point of obsession), but I ask a lot of questions. I like to get to know people, to hear their stories, and to ponder their reasons and motivations for just about everything. In short, I love story. People's stories, fictional stories, sacred stories (as we call them in Godly Play). Any kind of story. I like to tell them, hear them, laugh at them, cry at them, be utterly suspensed by them, hate but accept that things didn't work out in them, and breathe a healthy sigh of relief at them when things turn out fine.
So of course I'm drawn to film and theatre and fiction. I love movies for their look or feel or characters, but I watch and enjoy them for the reasons behind the look, why it feels the way it does, and how the characters change and grow as they wander through the amazing worlds that surround them. I watch the commentary and bonus features immediately after I see a movie because I want to know how they did it, and more importantly, why.
Which makes my choice of Fuller Theological Seminary both an obvious and odd choice for my graduate degree, which is now looking more and more likely although I'm fighting it at every turn anyway. Obvious because they have an amazing Theology in Arts program which I hope to sign on for in the coming years when I can actually give up my time at UPC and move to Pasedena, which I'm also fighting, but not as much. And odd, because I'm starting with my grad school career off by taking one class at a time toward a Certificate in Youth Ministry.
Not only is the rate at which I'm taking classes all I can pay for at the moment, I'm also maintaining my 40 hour a week internship and volunteer position as a youth leader for our mid-high program, tacking on a small group bible study for the same group and co-leading a daisy/brownie troop that's starting up in the fall. All while restarting an academic life that was dying a slow and painful death when it ended last May. My hope is that beings as I'm actually interested in youth ministry and the subjects of study that go with it, I'll have an easier time caring about homework and papers.
Which brings me to the thought that's been plaguing me for weeks. I don't actually know if I even want to go into youth ministry. Despite the initial excitement of studying something I've been back burner interested in since high school, the length of time between applying and being accepted for my program and actually starting it has left a certain amount of excitement to be desired. Combine that with the stress that goes with helping to run a 350 kid VBS (all of whom were 6 and under), a fairly major upheaval in church politics, and general fogginess as far as where my life is headed in the next year+, and why you can see my enthusiasm for grad school has been less than stellar.
Enter in the single most profound weekend I think I've ever had.
Two of my long term friends married each other. I saw more people from different parts of my life in the same place than I am likely to ever see again (short of my own wedding which will be far in the future despite the fact that I saved the girl standing next to me from the boutique). I sang in front of extended family members of my own accord and without prodding. And I got to experience, for the first time in my life, my sister clowning. Yes, clowning. In full makeup and costume. Allow me to explain.
My 18 year old sister has been attending MADD (Music, Arts, Drama, and Dance) camp at Twinlow since she was about 14 (maybe younger, I can't rememeber) Meaning for the last 5+ years (yes the math checks out) she has been singing and dancing up a storm once a year and then putting on a worship service at a miscellaneous church in Spokane only to come home and tell me all about it. This year was the first year I have ever been able to attend. And it's by the grace of God that I did.
This year's clown (apparently she has several) was bouncy, extra smiley, and dressed in a sort of typical clown/jester style that reminded me just a little of my sister's recent gypsy/belly dancer leanings. As did her dotted, swirling makeup. She spent much of the skit playing a bubbley but deeply caring mime who lightened up some of the sadder, darker moments of the short resurrection scene the kids performed. I sat watching the brief drama as clowns provided care for one another, just as Jesus would have done. Then Jesus himself, complete with white face overlaid with the three crosses on the hill and a single tear, was crucified, had all our sins (characterized by pieces of paper with applicable words like Gossip and All Our Sins written on them) literally thrown at him, and miraculously disappeared from his grave after the third day.
I was in awe. It was unbelievable simple. It wasn't even my first time seeing a similar sketch performed, but the potential hokiness of kids dressed as clowns pretending to be Jesus was completely absent from their production. Because they cared. Because they had spent a solid week using their gifts to give praise to God in the only way they knew how. And because they had used those gifts to show others what Jesus was really like. Without big fancy bands and big fancy flat screens with big fancy words on them. Without big fancy preachers with big fancy ideas and big fancy congregants with big fancy checkbooks. Silently, with a bit of humor and a lot of grace, a community of barely grown children showed a congregation in Spokane, WA why Jesus and his story is important.
After the service (which also had a sermon about Jesus calming the storm that I was too busy thanking God for revelation to listen to) I went and found my sister. I congratulated her on a job well done and related to her my recent misgivings about my impending grad school program.
"You can't not go! I already told everybody you were going into youth ministry. I was all excited and stuff." That last bits not verbatim, but that was the idea behind it. This from the 18 year old that had spent my entire high school and post-Kennewick years telling me I was weird and avoiding contact unless she needed something or I had been away for long enough that she actually missed me.
If my heart hadn't already been a puddle, it probably would have melted more.
I then continued my thank you with how happy I was to have made it to what was most likely her last MADD camp performance because it had completely blown away my fog. While I still don't know exactly what my life holds in the next few years, I do know that it will involve learning how to youth well, moving to California to undertake the singularly hardest but hopefully most fun years of my life learning everything I can about faith, film, the arts, and Disneyland, and eventually combining those two crafts into a camp/church group/book/inspirational speaking tour concerning using creative modes of communication to help teenagers foster community and discuss and deal with problems in those communities.
I am searching for an extremely big pair of shoes.
Hopefully I will meet people along the way who will help me fill them, but I'm not too concerned about it. For one thing, I have every bit of faith that God will make it happen. Probably not how or when I necessarily expect, but it'll happen. For another, I have been hearing God's voice through every medium known to man tell me that big things are in store for my life since I was old enough to understand what that meant (and probably before then). Those shoes have been waiting for me since before I was born. And I can't wait to fill them.
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