Confirmation Quiet Time, Part Two

So, a long overdue update on how “quiet time” in confirmation went: Overall, it went really well.  It was definitely something different for the kids, that took a lot of getting used to.  In the beginning, they really didn’t like the “rules” part of it – the “no, you really have to be quiet, and not talking, and not moving around.”  The first time, I made the mistake of letting them sit/lay near friends, so long as they were quiet. Well, proximity breeds noise and activity, so…yeah, that didn’t work so much. 

The first time we did this, I gave them 20 minutes, and it was 15-18 before they really got all of the giggles out - longer than I expected.  Then I brought them back to the chancel, and we talked – one by one, I had each kid share his or her experience – what they liked, didn’t like, etc.  The kids who are “busiest” – who have the most jam-packed schedules with sports, etc had been going crazy.  They were “bored” without something to “do.”  The ones who are least busy – but still busy – had almost immediately fallen asleep, and they talked about how great it was just to have a few minutes of down-time.  Those three sleepers then turned to the group of giggliest girls and announced that it was really hard because “people” were talking and whispering and laughing…ahem.  Then we had a conversation about the Sabbath and its purpose, and about how each of us needs rest – rest for the sake of rest.  Not a painful, tortuous rest that involves sitting on your hands and biting your tongue, but an actual relaxing “rest”.  We talked about  “hearing God,” and they allowed that constant busyness, constant talking and moving and doing could probably prevent us from hearing God.  In the end, the 2-3 who were most opposed to this from the get-go offered – entirely on their own – that we could do this every week as long as we did the actual class stuff first.  

I’ll take that as a win.

We only had two weeks of class left at that point, but we repeated the exercise each time.  The kids agreed that they liked it, and that they felt it was important.  But what surprised me – what I absolutely didn’t expect – was that parents communicated to me how much their kids liked it, and some even asked, somewhat jokingly, if they could join us. 

So, I’m thinking…next year confirmation class will be over the Small Catechism.  I’ve decreed that parents must attend with their kids, and I’m working on getting other adults to join us as well – doing kind of a cross-generational confirmation.  I can’t decide if I should go with actual silent time before class, or having us all pray Vespers together before we dig in.  I really like the idea of Vespers, but the quiet time thing was such a success…thoughts, anyone? 

Rest For Bodies and Souls

So, last week in confirmation class, we were going around the room doing “kyries and alleluias” (highs and lows) and it occurred to me that a goodly number of the kids in my class seem to actually hate school.  Just in general.  They hate their classes, they hate the books, they hate the subject material, they hate their teachers, they hate that they have homework, they hate that they have tests, and on down the line.  A good number of them even hate the organized sports that they choose to play!!  

I started pondering, as they were talking…and I noticed that the ones who most hate school also most love gym class…

And then I asked every single kid when the last day was that he or she had “nothing to do” – no plans on the calendar, no place they had to be, no homework, no sports practice, nothing. 

And the ones who most hate school, and most love gym class, were also most likely to tell me that they simply couldn’t remember the last day they didn’t have anything to do. 

Conversely, the kids with the least jam-packed extracurricular schedules seem to like school more, and were more able to identify their last “day off”.  

Now these kids – all of them – are smart, good kids.  When they are focused, they can laser in on some awesome stuff (once, one of them called me out on saying “God” when I mean “Father” or “First Person of the Trinity” because it sounds like I’m saying Jesus isn’t God).  So it’s always been a mystery to me why they are so opposed to school and to learning, and why they are just so…restless…all the time.  

But that evening, the whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks.  They hate school because it is one more place they “have to be”.  They hate homework because it is one more thing they have to “do”.  They hate teachers because they are each one more person who “expects performance”.  They hate the sports because even though they enjoy them at some level, they don’t ever play for fun, they only ever play to win.  Or the sports that they actually do not enjoy at all, they play because “everyone else does” and everyone else “expects” them to do so, as well.  And I think the thing about gym class is that it’s very low pressure.  It’s activities they enjoy, without a teacher grading them or a coach challenging them to better.  It’s a relaxed environment, with no pressure.  

And so I tried an experiment.  We blazed through the lesson, hitting the high points, and then, I told them to be quiet, to put everything – books, papers, pencils, bags, capri sun packages – everything down.  Put it all down, and we are going to rest.  We are going to rest, and relax, and have quiet time for 3 minutes. 

Three minutes was not nearly as much rest as I needed, but I sat on the floor, watching the clock, and praying for these kids.  They, however, were fidgety as all get out.  Constantly changing position on the couch/chair/floor, sighing, tapping their feet, looking at the clock.  Now, I know that three minutes is not enough time to truly get in the relaxation “zone” – but this whole experiment was telling for me.  When a person is exhausted – just done, burned out, no more gas in the tank – 3 minutes of quiet is glorious.  When you’re that tired, you know exactly what to do with 3 minutes of quiet, and it goes by in the blink of an eye.  When a person has no idea how to just. stop. for 3 minutes, that 3 minutes feels like an eternity.  Which is exactly the feedback I got.  When I finally called time, what I heard was, “That wasn’t 3 minutes!  That was 30 minutes!!!”  No, honey, it was 3 minutes.  I promise.  And so I responded, “You guys just don’t know how to relax,” to which they replied, “Of course we don’t know how to relax!  We never get to!  There’s no time to relax!”  

Wow.  Okay then.  

These kids are so far beyond "tired" that we'd have to peel back several layers to even get to "exhausted."  Which leads to me to wonder if perhaps the greatest faith-gift we could give our “youth” is the gift of rest.  My kids don't harbor objective hostility toward “church”, God, confirmation, the Bible, etc – at least no more than any of the rest of us poor in curvatus se souls do.  But when “confirmation class” and “memory work” and “going to church” and “taking sermon notes” and “doing service projects” and even “fun” events like bowling or pizza that they are “expected” to do and attend and “take seriously” and “put effort into”, then the more turned off they are likely to become, just as they are about school, and even the sports they claim to enjoy.  

How many of the so-called Biblical heroes heard from God in their sleep?  Off the top of my head, I can think of: Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Elijah, and NT Joseph.  Even Jesus took time to get away and rest.  Are we stunting our kids’ spiritual growth (and by extension, our own) because they have no downtime, no ability to relax, no way to hear God in the quiet and still – because there is no quiet and still in their lives, and even if there was, they wouldn’t know what to do with it?  

My plan for this week is to start in our normal classroom with kyries and alleluias, followed by devotions, as we always do.  Then I’m going to take them into the dimly lit sanctuary, and give them time to relax.  The only rules will be “no talking”, and “no touching or otherwise disrupting other people”.  They can sit, kneel, lay, stand, on the pews or on the floor.  They can read (Bible or hymnal), they can sleep, they can pray, they can just be there quietly with their thoughts.  

I want to give them 20-30 minutes.  My thought is, they’ll be stir-crazy for the first 10, and after that, they may be able to settle down a little.  Then I’ll bring them all back to the chancel to talk about the experience. 

And then I guess we’ll see what happens.  It’s an experiment, and it may fail, but it doesn’t strike me as a foolish idea.  What if we made it a goal to teach our kids that “here” – church, the Body of Christ, Christ Himself – you will find rest for your souls, and for your bodies?  If that was their “takeaway” from “youth ministry,” their heart-knowledge about Jesus, that He’s the one who gives them rest when they are tired and weary, well, I’d put that one in the win column.  

What do you all think?  Am I crazy?  Is this going to just not work?  Or am I maybe on to something?  Feedback, please!

Feminist Rant

Dear Editor,

Recently while visiting my parents for a few weeks, I had the opportunity to watch my dad and sister play softball in the coed rec league that plays Sunday nights at Anneberg Park.  Although I enjoyed watching them play, I was dismayed to learn that in a coed league, women and men are required to bat using different sized softballs.  According to my dad, this is to prevent men from hitting the ball "too hard" or "too far" or some such thing, and thus avoid the men having any sort of competitive advantage over the women, who, apparently, are not able to field deeply hit balls.  There are several issues that come to mind with this situation: 1) Softball is a team sport.  It is not as though men are hitting balls to exclusively female fielders.  Further, the teams switch every half inning.  If the men on one team are sending hard-hit balls over the heads of female outfielders, the situation is likely to be reversed in the next inning, thus negating the competitive advantage that one team would have over another.  2) The very existence of a coed league says that men and women can play ball together.  It seems that the sense of competition and team camaraderie, as well as the argument that men and women are sufficiently equal to compete together, are destroyed when one half of the players require their talent and ability to be suppressed (or enhanced, depending on one's perspective).  If women are truly "equal" to men, then why do they require special accomodations?  3) Where are the feminists?  My understanding of feminism is that we women wish to be respected for who we are, and for the fact that we do indeed have just as much talent and ability as men, in any given field.  Ladies - do you not find it offensive that you are essentially being told that your natural talent prevents you from competing on an even field with men?  4) What is the point of even calling something a team, if each "team" is essentially two separate teams that play by different rules?  In this Olympic year, as we prepare to cheer on our athletes who compete only against others of their own gender, perhaps it is time to ask what we expect from coed team experiences and examine the implicit assumptions that this rec league policy makes regarding male and female athletic ability. 

Signed,

Elizabeth of Hungary