Connection & Community

 July 14, 2026
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          “Whose grandma are you?” demanded the tiny barefoot girl the moment I waited for my grandgirl to be ready.  Twice more by other kids, “Who are you here to pick up?”  Not a smile among them.  It felt more like a security checkpoint than the preschool classroom I’ve been in and out of since 1994.  Turns out these kids had just joined this class from another as the school rearranges age groups.  They’d interrogated adults all day, matching us to their playmates.
          Amazing, I thought.  All this time I assumed that a room full of 3, 4 and 5 year-olds were ignoring me, when in fact they were silently keeping track of who belonged to whom.  What else are they tracking, I wonder, what other data is being organized and filed in those tiny brains when all we see are kids painting and playing dress-up?  They feel safer knowing who that mama, daddy, grandma, grandpa is and to which friend they belong.  I feel safer when I know who is in my space and why.  I also love how their enquiry designates the classroom as their domain, not mine.  I am a guest, my presence there conditional on whose grandma I am.*
          Community is everything to us, isn’t it, from the time we begin realizing we share the world with other humans.  The members of a strong community, like a preschool classroom, protect each other and their bond of belonging.  They have a healthy suspicion of outsiders and practice the clear boundary-setting we adults pay therapists to teach us.  
          They are welcoming once connection is established.  I can learn so much from them for my own grown-up life, where I can be so hesitant – so afraid, that is – to tell the truth when it comes to belonging for me.  Simply, the tribe I want to be part of is a tribe of people chasing the ways of Jesus, in study and in practice, enjoying this life and working together, grateful for the preciousness of being alive for such tender moments as when a 4-year-old Chinese girl asks me for some identification.
          I pray you have time with your people today and are strengthened by it. 

~peace & prayers,
pastor annette

*  I thought it hilarious and not a bit startling that I was immediately recognized as a grandma.  I am working on embracing this identity.