Sparking Still

Big Steps for Small Friends in First-Day School

My current Quaker malapropism is referring to the Quaker First-day school book Sparkling Still as “Sparking Still.” I think the mistake is justifiable when you consider the First-day school program I have somehow found myself leading. After surviving COVID and making it through several years of moves, transitions, deaths, and grief, my meeting’s First-day school met on odd weeks for a story, an activity, and a lot of free play. It was the honest best we could muster at the time, and it worked until we had something else.

Something else happened because I was following a rabbit trail from Spirit and ran my mouth during a second-hour program. As we considered the state of our meeting and did a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), I paced along the back of the room, working out an agitated hip and an agitated sense of something inward. The ink was barely dry on my mortgage paperwork, and the boxes were still piled around our new house when I popped off this “grand idea” of being the other adult to help lead our children’s First-day school program. Had I run it past my wife? Absolutely not. Had I run it past my own common sense filters? Again, no. Spirit zipped by with an idea, and I grabbed on for dear life.

But something happened with that wild hare of an idea. Our meeting—which averages 30 worshipers on a given First Day—went from two to ten children (and a teenager) in less than six months. All of them aren’t there every week (whew), but they are all there enough to be known and recognized. We have young Friends as small as 18 months and as big as 12 years. We have one very able and engaged teenager who has been roped into joining our tech team, climbing on the roof, crawling into tiny spaces, and asking the smaller children silly questions. We have shy sisters and boisterous brothers. We have very loud tomboys and very quiet genderqueer kiddos. Of course we have siblings who spill each other’s business, but the same siblings will lean over to whisper compliments to each other just because.

What we’re doing in our little corner of south Texas is the actual textbook definition of a religious revival: “mass movements which are based upon intense religious excitement”. What we do in First Day school at my meeting is messy, flawed, and decidedly human. But it is also a real and living thing for our children and their families.

My own practice of leadership is imperfect, at best, often writing lessons on Thursday night and scrambling to find all the pieces I need. The children’s librarian at my local public library recognizes me, and we hunt for books together. The young Friends and I tell stories of Bayard Rustin’s travels and what simple Christmas is like in Quaker homes. We have dance breaks and put Mentos in Diet Coke. We sit on the rocks outside of the meetinghouse and shake cans of seltzer to think about stress building up inside our hearts. We make candy and get loud, a lot. We have two rules for playing outside: treat others with the care you want to receive, and remember that we share our property with people who are in waiting worship. There may or may not be a badger living in the gully behind our property that we go visit. (I am still unclear about the badger.) There is a vulture who stops by sometimes but has not (yet) eaten any of the “sacrifices” the five-year-old girls have left out for it, which includes piles of berries and fallen leaves. But mostly, we show up together.

Can I tell you with certainty that any of these kids will grow up to be Quakers? No. But I can tell you what I tell myself over and over: no child of the twenty-first century will become a Friend because we browbeat them into it. Those days are long gone. (Looking at you, early-nineteenth-century Friends.) Sharing the joy of Quaker faith and practice is the mission of this little First-day school program. That mission may result in exactly none of these kids growing up to be Quakers, but it has resulted in each of these kids thinking about the world differently. There was the young Friend who spoke during afterthoughts, then confessed to me that her voice was really shaky and her hands were trembling. (Welcome to quaking, kiddo!) There was the mom who passed a story back about one of her kids hesitating before a candy bowl, musing that they’d already enjoyed one and wanted to leave enough for others “because integrity.” There was the spunky younger sister who announced that she’d tripped her brother on purpose but was “probably sorry.” These small humans are excited to show up to meeting and see what nonsense is waiting for them. Big steps for small Friends!

Cover of Sparkling Still, a Quaker Religious Education Collaborative Curriculum for ages 3–8.

This is not an advertisement for any one way of doing First-day school beyond chasing authentic programming. I sit in worship, holding the program in my hands as I consider what we’re doing any given week. I carve out extra time for worship because it’s made a difference for me. I also chase my authentic Quaker self when I’m with the young Friends. I no longer question the wisdom of letting myself—a Friend with a face full of piercings and several half-visible tattoos—teach the kids. I let curse words slip, laugh in the middle of jokes, roll around on the floor like a possum, and read books that the big kids say are “too babyish” (but then secretly listen with rapt attention). I bring my whole flawed self to hang out with Spirit, and I see what happens. It’s usually pretty okay.

What we’re doing in our little corner of south Texas is the actual textbook definition of a religious revival: “mass movements which are based upon intense religious excitement.” Revival is often messy, flawed, and decidedly human. What we do in First-day school at my meeting is messy, flawed, and decidedly human. But it is also a real and living thing for our children and their families. It is ten minutes of waiting worship, even if that waiting is “waiting to leave for religious ed” as one of the kids recently told me. It is 50 minutes of Quaker education a week in a state that has long embraced guns, guts, and gore in the name of godliness. It is trying (and sometimes failing) to use quiet walking feet as we sneak back into worship to watch the clerk close our weekly waiting worship. In the grand scheme of things, this little wedge of time is a tiny spark at best. It is not going to shake the foundations of the heavens, topple capitalism, or cure a major disease. But this tiny spark—the revival of our young Friends—has meaning and power in our meeting. We’re sparking still.