Where the Little Ones Sing and Provoke the Women into Dance

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

My first time visiting the Bethel Youth Facility was shocking. Not in the, oh my, this is a jail for kids, or oh dear, what have they done with their lives, sorts of ways. No, in the surprise that here are five or so teenage boys, who want to sing songs, religious songs, songs with silly hand motions. So we sing. And we laugh. And I go back again soon.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Word’s got around that I visited the detention unit of the kiddie jail. But every week, on Friday nights at Supper Club at the Covenant Church, it’s the program unit side I see. We stand side-by-side ladling moose stew and dried fish, chopped onions, vegetable casseroles. On any given Friday evening, two or more of the guys come to do community work service here. The one with a Mohawk turns to me and asks me about my visits. “Do you want me to visit you guys, too?” An emphatic “yes” response. So much for too cool.

Sunday, November 7, 2009

Bounty. I was taken out to lunch with the UUs. A friend brought over caribou stew. An organization gave us fancy leftovers from their event. Another friend brought his chain saw over to help us cut up the donated wood. Here, as winter is in full swing, we have much opportunity to learn to live in gratitude.


The chain saw. As some of my roommates would have liked to awe, we didn’t stop to admire. Hauled wood pallets, stacked the already sawed, and all had a chance with the ax. Certainly some more successful than others.




After the wood was cut, the food consumed, we went out. He gave me brief instructions and then away we went. I’d never felt the wind like that, seen the world lay out so flat, with access points to all the Bethel neighborhoods. Sometimes I still can’t believe the tundra is frozen enough that we could pause above it, ride along it, on a typical Bethel transport: the snow machine.


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The snow has melted and frozen. The roads are treacherous and I tiptoe to work. After awhile, I’m only twenty feet from where I was. But someone I know is driving slow, and picks me up, and away we go. Wheels, I shouldn’t be surprised to find, are faster than tiptoes.


Saturday, November 14, 2009

As I find again and again, my chosen friend group outside my housemates tends to be middle-age women. So I go to their quilting retreat, retreat into colors, textures. Of course nothing too subtle; the cowboys pass the pine trees and soon-to-be-sewn tea cups in my nine patch.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

In Fairbanks for a conference for both advocates and law enforcement. Segregate ourselves by tables. But over the days, work to learn to connect to listen. An officer presents. He understands the subject better than I and he explains it understandably. He says, think about a bank robbery. Do we scold the bank? Blame them? Do we say, well if you didn’t have so much money in here…? If you weren’t so well decorated…? No. We blame the robber. And so it is with domestic violence.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The reprieve from wind is noticeable, along with the negative sign not too familiar in Bethel yet.


Here in Fairbanks though, the windless, frigid streets, dark before five pm, feel like another world, like walking through a frozen deserted Western.


Being only out in the dark because of the conference I attend, I take in what sights I can by riding the public bus to the university; seeing a movie with an advocate, a cop, and a trooper; and eating prepared food in the basement of a church. At the church, I practice not being behind the table and sitting at it instead. Meet two men. While they are there to receive a free hot meal too, they are far from free from being of service to others. As they leave, one hands me a card about the street ministry they are involved in. And I learn to appreciate more and more how the world can be flipped; who helps whom and whom Jesus served and serves through.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Drive on the "highway".


Wind around and arrive at the strip of Bethel airports. Park the white pick up truck and jump a few feet to get out. Walk in and ask if they have extra wood pallets that TWC (Tundra Women’s Coalition) can have. (Don’t know what we’re planning to use the pallets for since we don’t have wood stoves, but assume it’s for a good cause because we’re TWC). Get directed to the back. Drive through held open tall, tall chain link fence. Now I’m on the airstrip reversing in the white pick up. (Hope no planes run me over. Even though they would be small bush planes, force is force). Man from airport loads maybe fourteen pallets stacked high onto the bed of the truck. Tells me to drive slow. I look at him and look at the pallets stacked ten feet high on the bed. I look at him again. He asks, will you be all right? I ask, earnestly, no sarcasm, do you think I’ll be all right? He says, earnestly, no sarcasm, no. Then proceeds to adjust everything. And I hope he laughed later, as I drove away slowly slowly, obviously not from here, with the wooden pallets for our unknown project.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The mother reads aloud something somber while her daughter saunters to and fro blowing bubbles.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

House hop for Thanksgiving. First at the house we live in where we make salmon and eggs for our breakfast and remember what we are thankful for. Next at the house of a woman from the Catholic Church who knows me from the kiddie jail where I go every week now who is friends with the UU group women who knows how this town all knows each other. Then at the house of the women who try to make a home out of the shelter where I bring my guitar where the little ones sing and provoke the women into dance.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Finally, we sit down to our own Thanksgiving, the six of us. And we’ve prepared dishes. And I only had to call my mom a few hundred times to learn how to make green bean casserole.


Monday, November 30, 2009

Ups and downs and yards and yards and Jill tries to explain, but I really don’t understand football. No ups she says, only downs. Doesn’t what goes down always come up? Not in this game the Patriots loose, loose, loose (poor, poor PJ).

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

A quick phone call sends me searching our mud room (the entry room where gear is stored). Luckily I find a hidden gem. Some may argue hidden on purpose, the green snow suit, with fake (?) fur on the hood and a high-waisted belt magically fits. All green and ready to go, we gather our Former Jesuit Volunteer friends and ski across the frozen Kuskokwim River. Over the river and through the sloughs. Collapse at the outskirts of someone’s fish camp and stare at the stars.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Maybe it’s this Saturday, probably one before. I visit the guys at the kiddie jail. I’ve already been informed that they have sold assaliaq (fry bread) to raise money to send to Sudan. I exclaim praises at them for this and they shrug. But they are knowledgeable about what’s going on there. And so I read with them a sermon from my pastor from Grinnell; providing during someone else’s dry spell, provoking one another to love and good deeds. At the end, they realize, that’s them. And they’re finding their own place in a larger narrative.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

We attend a Christmas party we interpret to mean: wear-the-crazy-sweaters-you-find in-your-house party. So we do. And then I make them all celebrate Hanukkah with me the next week. Happy holidays indeed.


Thursday, December 17, 2009

A Haiku for the Tundra Women’s Coalition’s new building.
New; Grand Opening.
Hectic first, then refreshing.
Make chocolate bar.


Saturday, December 19, 2009

Fly to Anchorage, fly to Chicago. In Oak Park for nine days. See the family, run around, eat different food. It’s noisy, delicious, homey. And leave again. Surprising, at this point, I look forward to my Bethel return, to my housemates, to the glorious sunsets, to my work, to the kiddie jail, to Supper Club, to quilters meetings, to slow quiet evenings in our home.


Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Flown from Chicago five or so hours to Anchorage, large plane. Overnight with JVs in Anchorage. Flown Anchorage an hour to Bethel, plane half seats, half cargo. Picked up from Bethel. Unpack, repack. Tea and sandwich at Grant Coffee at Grant Aviation in Bethel. Then fly with Hageland Aviation, a nine-seater plane, over frozen tundra to Pilot Station, a village on the Yukon River.


Arrive on a gravel runway on the side of a mountain. One of maybe two white people in the community center full of people. Stand up with a coworker while she presents on healthy relationships and role models. Listen to others’ stories, some through a translation device. Within three hours, get picked up and driven back to airstrip. Fly back to Bethel. In twenty-four hours, Chicago to Pilot Station; 2,853,114 people to 596.


Friday, January 1, 2010

One of the last places in the world to bring in the New Year, we watched the fireworks on the river. Because of the way the sun turns, there is too much light in the summer to have fireworks for July 4th, so there are many rounds of them tonight.

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

We wait in their house for a little while until the rest show up. And then they come. First the boy with the star, then everyone else files in. We fill their living room. They sing in harmony. In English, Russian, Yupik. After a half an hour or so, we all sit down and the host passes out candy. And then they file out and the last night of Slaaviq, Russian Orthodox Christmas, is done.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Mid-afternoon, the rest of us pick up our box, which includes frozen chicken, a delight we rarely indulge in, and pile into an SUV. We’re dropped off at the airport. Report our weight, and hand over our bags. We follow our pilot out to our plane. Our little, little plane. He says, if you have a beard or are an elder, you enter this door. In goes Joe and Nels Alexie, the race official going with us. If you don’t fit those characteristics, you go in here. I climb in over a folded seat, PJ follows. The pilot closes us in, walks around, uncovers the engine, and climbs in his door. He explains some safety features, and off we go. As we drive toward the runway, I see another small plane about to take off. It looks like an insect, stringy legs, wide wings. We follow, take off, and bump along on the wind above Bethel.



We arrive in Upper Kalskag and there is no one there. The race organizers in Bethel warned us that things may be less organized up here this year. The Kuskokwim 300, a mid-distance dog sled race, always goes through Kalskag, but in years past the check point here was at the school in Upper Kalskag. This year, it will be at the school in Lower Kalskag. We grab our bags, are assured of good things by our pilot who takes off, and look around at unfamiliar mountains and trees.


There is no one around. A truck drives by. Nels assumes we are to walk the couple of miles to the school. I see the post office across the way. So we split up. Nels and Joe begin the walk down one road, PJ and I check the post office for a phone.

At just past five pm, we’re lucky the post office is still open. The woman there calls the school for us, and reports the principal is on his way. We thank her, re-gear, and head out to find the other two.

Joe and Nels had found a ride with a Kalskag resident while walking down the road that does not actually lead to Lower Kalskag, and came back for us. Just as we were picking up our bags at the fenced in airstrip, the principal drives in. We split up again, and all make it in to the school. Once there, we meet the vet for the weekend and the radio personality. As the sun sets, we don our head lamps, and go out to move hay and food for the mushers to use when they stop here. So heavy. I drag one bag of frozen food to the other side of the building, and have to rest and laugh at myself. I resign myself to alphabetizing the bags while the guys bring the others. Going back in the building, we rub our fingers against the lasting cold, and try to prepare ourselves for the lower degrees to come.

We eat well. The cook for the Upper Kalskag school always prepares the food for the people at this checkpoint, and we are not disappointed. Dry fish, akutaq, pasta salad, moose stew, turkey and noodles. We read left over newspapers and put in a dollar in guessing when the first musher will arrive.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

I win the guess. At somewhere around 4:30 in the morning, Lance Mackey pulls up over the hill into the school parking lot. Record the time from my watch, hanging from a lanyard around my neck. Have him sign in on our clipboard. Watch as he turns his dogs around, parks them next to someone’s house. He prepares their food, beds them in with straw, and then rests himself during his mandatory six-hour layover.

One by one, the next twelve mushers come in over a spread of six or so hours. And we are out there for all of them. We anticipate them based on when they left Tuluksak, the previous checkpoint where the rest of our housemates are. But they rarely come right at the five-hour mark of how long it usually takes to get from Tuluksak to Kalskag by dog sled. So we wait. And wait. And take turns. After each comes in and is recorded, I waddle as fast as I can into the refuge of the school and call in their numbers to headquarters.

We were told we would never have been colder. Maybe true. We thought we were prepared. PJ has his grandfather’s military mittens. Joe has a new facemask. I have new puffy purple gloves from my family. But none of it really cuts it, standing out there on the ice, waiting. At least the wind is less than Bethel’s. But with the wind-chill, it’s still negative fifty something. In fifteen minute intervals, usually someone has to go inside due to the cold. But there are almost always two of us out there.


I was waiting with Nels. Nels is not cold. Ever. He has a muskrat coat and rabbit mittens, each the size of my thigh. He tells me to pace, to walk around, to move my fingers. He beckons me and tells me to take off a glove. He takes his own warm, warm hand out of his mitten and takes my hand. He says he could chip my fingers right off, and he laughs, shaking his hand.


Inside, when the mushers are there, they are lounging, eating good food, napping and waiting for our wake up calls. By the early afternoon, mushers are leaving, every half an hour or hour. We time them to the minute and send them off. They are tired, and so are their dogs, but they’ll be worse upon their return.


Then one musher left. Mitch Seavy. He has frostbite in his cornea. He scratches the race. He leaves. He won last year.

All the mushers seem to have something to say about the trail this year. Very little snow, lots of glare ice and wind, sand in some places. Not an easy race this time. So then there were twelve.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

From our checkpoint, the mushers race up to Aniak, then Napaimute, and turn around. As we wait, we nap, chat, read, eat salmon tempura, check the times of the mushers online. In the middle of the night, we pack gear on again, the radio personality lends me his moose mittens to put on over my store-bought gloves, which he has to help me put on because they’re too big. All bundled. Walk over to the hill overlooking the river. All’s dark. See the lights of Upper Kalskag a few miles away. Then a head lamp. And another. And another. Martin Buser, Lance Mackey, and John Baker, all together coming down the trail. In five minutes, they’ll make the quick climb up our hill. And they arrive, 3:01 am, 3:01 am, and 3:03 am. Baker turns right around and leaves again, Mackey drops a dog or two, then heads out. Buser parks, feeds his dogs, and leaves a half an hour later.

Over the next many hours, the rest of the mushers stream in. They no longer race up the hill, but make it up in a walk or a little faster. Some leave right away, some stay longer.


When they leave, we watch the computer for their arrival back in Tuluksak, where they have another mandatory layover. Quinn Iten and Pete Kaiser still haven’t gotten there. Middy Johnson still hasn’t left Napaimute. It’ll be longer still.

When Mike Williams Senior, comes down the trail, I am missing PJ and Joe. I stand at the top of our hill, watching him. I call over our radio personality to stand with me so that he can help if needed when Mike Senior comes in. The others are bringing dropped dogs to the airport by way of a teenager on a borrowed snow machine and attached rickety sled.


We turn back to the trail. The dogs are pulling the sled, but Mike Senior is no longer on it. He’s walking several feet back, then several more feet, and then more. The dogs turn up an embankment and disappear. Luckily, Pete Kaiser’s father is nearby in a truck, about to head down to Tuluksak, and we send him down to help Mike Senior recover his team. As they disappear up the embankment, we turn around, head back toward the school, past it and toward the playground decorated with the left over hay. And here comes the team, right up to his previous parking area, and Mike Senior trailing. He stops them, parks them, tells us he’ll rest awhile here, and beds in his dogs.


As we sign him in, he doesn’t care about his time, but is more interested in how his son is doing, who came in and left hours before. Mike Williams Junior is training for the Iditarod this spring and Mike Senior is running the B team to test them out for his son. Many of the mushers are testing their dogs for the Iditorad, but no one else’s father is for their son, and certainly not with as much pride and good-heartedness as Mike Senior is.

By the time Mike Senior leaves, the last musher has still not made it in. But three hours later, Middy Johnson leads his team in, quietly and with much control. When I go out to meet him, I ask him if he plans on staying awhile. Three hours he muses. So he beds in his dogs, feeds them, and comes in. It’s Sunday evening, and the cooks have already left since they have school tomorrow. We share what food they left, and then we share Middy’s snacks as he tells us about his hometown, his family, and his mushing style.

As we talk, I remember yesterday’s date, exclaim how it was my half birthday, a tradition I celebrate with my family. PJ rolls his eyes as mine grow with humor. Middy discusses the possibilities of half birthdays with 365 days in the year. And then, six hours after he arrived in Kalskag, Middy determines it might be time to head onward.

Meanwhile, our vet and our radio personality have been plotting. Trying to leave tonight, unlikely. Over the weekend, they’ve been sharing stories of all the years they’ve been out at checkpoints together, and certainly more impossible things have happened to them, or near them at least, then trying to leave a village (a difficult task…so we may find). So, as luck is in their favor this evening, they get out with the last of the dropped dogs. And as Middy leaves at 11 or so that night, it’s just PJ, Joe, Nels, and I left, wondering when we might get our own plane out and make our way to our beds, exhilarated and exhausted.

Monday, January 18, 2010

At 8:30 in the morning, we go to meet our plane. The principal drives us over in his green jeep. We pile out. He says he’ll check later to make sure we actually left and drives off to work. We wait. Nels tells me not to wait until I’m cold and start walking around now. We all walk around, except Nels, content in his rabbit mittens. We check out the small two-person planes parked on the other edge of the fenced in area. And we don’t leave. The principal comes back after awhile, having heard on his radio that the plane never left Bethel, and so we all go back to the school.

The school is in session, we’re offered a breakfast of cereal and milk, and watch the 30 or so students of the high school walk class to class. PJ makes calls to headquarters for a new plane.

At 10:30, we go back to the airfield. The principal drives us. We pile out. He says he’ll check on us later and drives off. We wait. We walk. We watch the sky. And we don’t leave. Again we’re picked up, taken to the school, and wait. This time, we hear the terminal in Aniak burned down. A reasonable reason for delay. Except the plane is supposed to come from Bethel. So we keep waiting.

At 12:30, we hear the plane has left Bethel, so we go out to meet our plane. The principal drives us. We pile out. Again he says he’ll check on us. Again we wait, and walk, and watch. Forty-five minutes after the plane should have been there, the principal is back, picks us up, and decides there’s no use waiting for that long in the cold, however many negative degrees. As we drive, he calls in the radio. Twenty minutes until our plane is supposed to arrive. So he picks up some things at one school and then drops us off again. None of us can feel our appendages, except of course Nels Alexie.

Like Manna from heaven, the plane finally comes out of the sky; the pilots greet us as if it’s a summer day. We file into the caravan, collapse into our seats, and eye the frozen tundra tiredly as we fly back to Bethel.

We arrive after our other housemates. So they’ve already built a fire in one of our wood stoves. We swap stories while we take turns showering. They tell us how Middy Johnson said he met us and talked about my half birthday. They tell us how Jackie Larson’s dog handlers remembered me, saying she was nice, but she didn’t seem to really like dogs. They tell us how Abby played monopoly for hours, how Jill accidentally convinced Quinn Iten’s dad that she was a musher, how one of the Klejka kids broke an icicle off of Justin’s beard.

At the K300 banquet that night, we heard from each musher who finished. We saw the unique trophies awarded to the winners; John Baker, first in the K300, received a painted native drum. We took a group picture under the Subway banner ($8 footlongs). And as Nels spoke his piece, he named us the three stooges, which our vet and radio personality agreed with, and Middy emphasized with bringing up my half birthday again during his speech. At the end, we left laughing and toting eight left over lasagnas.

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

As I sat in the waiting area, not knowing what to expect, I hear one side of a conversation. There’s something about a gun, alcohol, two people, and an address. And then it’s time to go—there.

It’s Wednesday night and I’m working a four hour shift from the passenger seat of a police cruiser. It’s my first ride-along with the Bethel Police Department and there is no time to spare right at the start. I follow the sergeant into his cruiser, and we drive to the address the dispatch relays to us. I wait in the cruiser while the sergeant and an officer respond. After a long while, the situation is diffused, the sergeant speaks with dispatch, and we drive on.

From 7:00 pm until 11:00 pm, I observe, ask questions, and listen. The sergeant and I drive all over Bethel, on the ice road between Tundra Ridge and Larson Sub, over the winding road to Hanger Lake, and across the frozen Kuskokwim from the Slough to behind new YK. We respond to a handful of calls, all of which I observe from the cruiser, and almost all of which involve alcohol. After four hours, I am dropped off at my house. The street is quiet and my housemates are already asleep. But I know for the sergeant, his night has barely just begun as his 12 hour shift continues on.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Forty degrees almost all weekend, about 70 degrees warmer than Bethel. We’re in Juneau for retreat. We drive around downtown a bit, among the unfamiliar again, mountains and trees. Here is the Alaska most people picture that is so unlike Bethel.

A few hours later, we drive up to The Shrine of St. Therese. On the ocean where we’ll see far away whales and circling sea lions. I pick my room for the view and for the quilt on the bed.


Saturday, February 13, 2010

We cook, we pray, we eat, we reflect, but we don’t think critically enough about social justice. How to make this vague concept concrete? By the stories we tell of the encounters we have had. And so we tell them.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

It smells like wood, some type Justin probably knows. And it rings magically when we sing. The chapel at The Shrine is cozy and majestic. I still feel like a foreigner during Mass, but this time, I have my part; playing guitar, singing songs I’ve known for years. As we lead the first song in Setswana, the Bishop looks a bit uncomfortable, but still serene. And God is praised in peace and joy.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Driving to airport in Juneau. Pit stop. A glacier.


The touch of two buttons and I can reach my dad. Usually, it’s a couple dozen with my calling card. Ah, Anchorage. Between that, groceries from Juneau at a third of Bethel prices, and chicken nuggets at airport prices, we’re ready to depart again back to Bethel.

Friday, February 19, 2010

The last and only other time we tried before, we were, well, unsuccessful. Needless to say, I am nervous now as I slip over the packed-down snow to crawl my way to the other side of the back seat. We pack in, back up, and drive over by the Lomack building, turn down by the river next to the sea wall, and, with no fanfare, drive over the trail of other cars on the bank and onto the river. No one else is nervous or excited. No one else is from somewhere else either. This is nothing new for them, nothing strange, different, or potentially terrifying. So here we go, just past noon on a regular Friday in Bethel. We are driving on the Kuskokwim River, maybe 42 inches thick of ice, heading downriver toward our destination.

The way is not difficult to determine. It’s the path clear of snow, wide enough for any pick-up truck to fit across. The banks lead to more and more tundra, covered in snow, patched with brambles. The ice road is marked by large branches, placed straight up in the ice, with reflectors dangling from them for the headlights in the dark. The ice is brown now, then navy, and turquoise. My coworker pokes fun, soon we’ll see the hookers, she says. What? Oh—people manaq-ing, ice fishing. We see others pulling up nets through holes they’ve made in the ice. We move to the side as other cars slow down to pass us going back to Bethel. We pass the bluffs known for the little people, famous in Yupik stories for getting travelers lost, especially those on snow machines.


In an hour and twenty minutes, we arrive in Nunapitchuk, a village on the Johnson River. We are here for tribal court advocacy for our client. Since we are early, she takes us to her sister’s house, brimming with children and cable TV. We’re fed dry fish and akutaq—“Eskimo Ice Cream”, made this time with Crisco and berries.

Just before three, we walk out of the house, over the soggy boardwalk, through too-early-for-February slush, and onto the river. I think of the months to come, after break-up, when this river will be flowing. But today, we walk on water. Follow more boardwalks. Pause again for our client and my coworker to hug more people they know. And enter the building where tribal court is held.

Tribal court is unfamiliar to me. But how welcoming then; to be in a place of slight discomfort, to be humbled by being there to support, yet so foreign to the proceedings, to sit there, listening, it’s almost all in Yupik, and I glean what I can, and I know the lawyers on the telephone are gleaning what they can too. Finally, the white people come second.

When the hearing is done, we stop in the village’s store. Crowded with goods because a delivery truck made it up the river, and so also crowded with people that our client and my coworker all know. High, high prices. And frozen chickens where ice cream bars would have been stored.

We wait for our ride back a long time. But where else would I need to be? Sip tea with pilot bread and jam around her sister’s kitchen table. There’s a little boy. I ask him how old he is. He understands some English, but looks to his mother, who repeats the question several times in Yupik. Then he looks at me with a toothy grin and holds up his pointer finger and pinky. Two? His mother says he can’t wait to be three because then he can hold up his fingers in the full form of Spiderman, thumb out, two fingers up, two fingers down.

On the couch in their living room, we sit. Look at their family pictures from the vantage point of my black cushion, and the cracking linoleum floor. Look at the Olympics happening, people jumping off hills with skis and spandex. And we chat about how suicide is becoming more of a problem for the young people in the villages.

When our ride does come, we gather our things, wobble down across the ice onto the river, and slip into the same car that brought us. We drive into the gathering darkness, no manaq-ers out now, and follow the road through 27 bends on the Johnson River and onto the Kuskokwim. Eventually we pass the other villages, Atmauthluk, Napakiak (the teenager next to me asserted, Na-party-ak), Napaskiak, Oscarville. The two red lights from the Bethel airport come in and out of view as we wind our way down the Kuskokwim. We drive off the river with no consequence and are dropped back off at work. With two hours past, it’s the longest I’ve been in a car since who knows when. I told the teenager next to me that this is like where I come from where we go on long road trips through the Midwest. But we don’t usually drive on the river. She says, we do here, and laughs.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

I call in ahead of time to see if they have the net up. They do. So I bring Jill with me. We go in, wait for the cross checks and assembling, and finally enter the gym. They split up teams, two on two, and I stand in the corner, hoping to not get hit, and watch. As they play volleyball, I watch to make sure I cheer equally for each person. When visiting hour is over the other two guys come in, join teams. At the end, I make them all come and sit with me in a circle, as usual. And we pray. Around the circle. Each person for the person next to him or her. And when a couple of them feel uncomfortable praying out loud, the rest of us take turns again. And so, each is prayed for. And then we laugh about what we’ll do next week since two are preparing a song. And then we go. Jill and I go. They stay.

Jill and I drop off a car at her work, and trek home across the tundra. The snow is beginning to fall fiercely, and when I look around, I feel like I’m on another planet. We follow the snow machine trails right up to our street. I am in no hurry though; I am still lifted by the joy of my young friends praying together at the Bethel Youth Facility. And Jesus said, where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am also. Nothing feels truer today.