Meeting in the Middle

As the Montpelier Atrium continues to expand and grow at break-neck speed, the lessons this work has to teach me are also coming at me at the speed of light: or rather, like a windshield to a bug (I’m the bug).

It is hard work. Really hard work. In more ways than one, but the way I’m experiencing it so starkly these days is in my spirit. I feel very spiritually tired because of all the exercise my soul has been getting through this work, and there’s not really an end in sight. I truly believe that it will be like all forms of exercise—consistency builds muscle builds resistance expands capacity—but rarely have I so keenly felt the edges of my spiritual capacity and I’m sore all over.

I’ve talked about Catechesis of the Good Shepherd as an intentional work of spiritual formation for kids, but it’s also an intentional work of spiritual growth for adults and in nearly the opposite way. Let me try to explain.

The kids enter a space made beautifully and maintained carefully just for them. Everything is already prepared for them upon their arrival, and their job is to engage with each work in all its intentionality, listening for the Creator speaking through it to their hearts. “The world is their Oyster” so to speak: they have loads of freedom to move about the space, choosing what they will, and working on that thing with little guidance and interruption as they are led from within. They practice each work following their instincts and the Voice’s leading, and then try their best to restore the work for the next child (but not always succeeding!). They are in the driver’s seat in the room. Their destination is the knowledge and revelation of God to them as a uniquely made, infinitely loved person—the speed, method, tactic, style is all up to them, and it is simply the job of the adults in the room to get out of the road.

”Getting out of the road” is a full-time job for adults and, I am coming to believe, resides at the core of our spiritual work as participants in the space. We are invited to work in a great many ways that are counterintuitive to the rest of our life systems and rhythms. Here are just a few that I’ve encountered of late:

”You are Invited!!!!”

…To a practice of unreciprocated service
We are preparing a space for someone else. Nothing that we make or do is for us personally: the gathering, cleaning, refurbishing, painting, purchasing, arranging, restoring items are all gifts for the good of the children. It is a constant work of service and any personal gain is all non-material. It requires a constant laying down of one’s own desires, wants, and priorities—from the time it takes to make the materials to the money we spend on them to what we experience as we observe the children’s work in the space.

…To develop a necessity of letting go
The precious gifts we offer— material, physical, mental, emotional—are being made for (one might say careless) little people. It’s not their fault that they are what they are—it’s how we all start out. Not unlike the wobbly legs of fawns as they take their first steps, these small limbs are inexperienced. They are not yet prepared to appreciate the preciousness of the materials we lay out before them. The clay and glass items we make are very likely going to need superglue to reassemble at some point. The tiny collage items we painstakingly cut out of paper for hours on end will inevitably be pasted liberally on a piece of paper that will then be thrown away moments later.

I’d venture to say that at some point, permanence becomes sacred to most adults. We delve deeply in the practices of holding on—attempting to capture our lives in the quantification of definitions, numbers, materials, snapshots, things on shelves or in bank accounts gathering dust. The atrium defies all this kind of behavior. It is an ocean of possibility and its temporary nature is as predictable as the ocean itself. Nothing in the space is meant to be timeless, but it is meant to be priceless. The price is just not what we might imagine. There are deep, unfathomable riches gathering in the atrium, and (spoiler!) none of them are man-made.

…To hit your brakes
From training in the program and writing your own teaching manual to preparing an atrium and its materials, by design Catechesis of the Good Shepherd takes time. Oh how much this irks our sensibilities as adults! We immediately want to employ machines and manufacturers to expedite the process. We want to cut corners and get it done in the name of efficiency, optimization, even stewardship!, but these practices circumvent one of our greatest invitations towards spiritual growth: to slow down. To be trained in CGS takes an incredible amount of time and resources (on purpose). To have access to the teaching materials for the work in the atrium takes an incredible amount of time and resources (on purpose). The hand-writing, hand-crafting, hand-cutting, hand-tending of the materials in the atrium takes an incredible amount of time and resources (on purpose). I’ve already briefly touched on our posture towards material things above, but what about this call to hit the brakes?

Slowing down is a precious, precious gift that comes very naturally to children and is generally a struggle for adults. While the kids are being called to engagement, noise, movement and activity in the atrium, the adults in the space are implored to do the opposite: stop, observe, stay quiet and still, decrease output. Perhaps this is why I feel so at peace in the atrium: I have worked so busily and diligently to prepare the space beforehand, but when I am in it with the children, it’s time for me to slow towards a full stop. In the beginning, the children need us to introduce materials, but once we have shown the way, we step out of that way completely.

We don’t have a lot of places in our lives where we are allowed (or allow ourselves) to come to a full stop. At least with me, the rest I choose often has to be meaningful, purposeful, justifiable (and I frequently feel guilty for it anyway). But there are so many gifts in slowing down. Noticing is one—we gain the opportunity to see the tiny marvels that we miss by flying hither and yon. And in tandem, we get the gift of truly seeing. Not in a glanced-over kind of way, but in a straight-to-the-heart kind of way, where we glimpse the inner workings of (perhaps even the magic of heaven in) what we are encountering. Slowing down also gives us the chance to recognize and honor our limitations—this may not seem like a gift, but it is a place where healthy dependence and trust can grow, instead of being pushed out of the way for self-sufficiency and control. I know it’s hard to believe, but those things tend to bless our whole self: body, mind, and spirit.

So, in the atrium, the kids are coming from the East (so to speak), and the adults are traveling from the West, and if we are true to our paths and/or unhindered in our journey, a beautiful thing happens in the atrium: we meet in the middle. There is a communion that happens in the space between these two perspectives when they are properly engaged with and honored. If we will just open our ears to truly hear and our eyes to truly see (the kids are also naturally gifted in this way, too!), we will learn from one another, enriching each others’ lives in that beautiful cosmic design of human connection. We need each other. Children are painfully aware of it, can’t escape it, and maybe sometimes even resent it, but for our part, we adults have almost completely forgotten (alas, even rejected) that need. We have come to think too much of our skills, our intelligence, our gifts, our experience—you name it!—and have often made children to feel inferior—as if they have nothing to offer (at least, until they get to where we are!).

The atrium is a place where both life stages can be recognized for their value, and they can intermingle at a common “table” in a way that edifies both guests. To put too fine a point on it, that table is the table: the meal is the body and blood of Christ. And through our individual work in the atrium, we have the stunning opportunity to gather from our various points along the journey and share in that precious Meal that allows us to see each other through the eyes of our Host.