Wonderful in an Easter kind of way

Lenten link-up update

2012-02-29T23:30:00.000+02:00

We're a week into Lent, and a week into the Lenten link-up that I am co-hosting with Sheila. She's now made us a "button", which you can see on the top of my right-hand side-bar. I am thrilled with the response! We've had twelve posts linked up to us already, from eight different blogs as well as Sheila's, most of which were unknown to me before we started. It's better than I could have hoped. It's been interesting and inspiring to read about the varied ways in which families with children are observing Lent.

I was also very interested to find reference in one of the blog posts about using Godly Play in community, at L'Arche. This post from Featherglen explains that they're using the Faces of Easter materials. From the moment I started my Godly Play training I've felt (as many others have as well) that this was not something for children only. It's been a surprise and a blessing to find myself working with children nonetheless. But I always have my eyes open for those who can tell me about their experiences of using Godly Play in other situations, too.

L'Arche de Noé (image source)

Featherglen commented,

We were quite a big group - more than 25 people, so I didn't have a formal time of wondering. But there was plenty of out loud wondering during the story - that's the gift of adults with learning disabilities - no polite restraint - but rather plenty of (often) playful participation.

This was actually not in the post itself but in the comments, as a reply to me! Thank you, Featherglen, for engaging with my question straightaway and for sharing your experiences. And thank you, too, to everyone who has linked up with us.

There's still plenty of time - we're running this for the whole of Lent. So to repeat, we'd like to link up with anyone Preparing for Easter with:

art projects,
nature projects,
Montessori methods, &/or
story-based religious education

Just click on the link at the bottom of this post (the blue, Add your link button) to create a link from our party to your blog post. You should then be prompted to give the URL of the specific post you want to include (not the URL for your blog's front page), the title of your entry, and your email address. Then please add links within your own post to me and to Sheila.

making do - desert sand

2012-02-28T09:42:00.003+02:00

Seethroughfaith asked yesterday about the photo I'd used in a recent post:

learning Sacred Stories (Godly Play training)

This was a photo I took during my Godly Play training course. I wanted a photo of the desert bag, which for my purposes was a lot more manageable than a desert box:

exploring materials during the training course

That reminded me that I've wanted to start a series of posts here about Making Do. There's a certain tension in Godly Play between the ideal of a room full of beautiful materials dedicated for children's spiritual use and the practical realities of limited budgets, limited space, and limited time. Sometimes we have to make do.

When it came time for me to get and fill a desert bag, it was winter - not the right season for collecting sand at the seaside. (Besides which, it's best to have very dry sand for your classroom.) The smallest quantity we could get at the local hardware store was FAR too much. (Also I have since learned that there can be health concerns about children playing with industrial-grade sand.) But I found a solution:

my desert bag

I bought several kilos of cream of wheat! Cream of wheat is farina, or ground wheat, which can be cooked into a breakfast porridge. It's lovely - light-colored, and a beautiful texture to work with. And best of all, do you know what the Finnish for "cream of wheat" is?

Manna.

The Gathering of the Manna (15th c. image source)

Lenten link party

2012-02-22T07:00:00.000+02:00

What are you doing with children for Lent this year?

How do you prepare for Easter in your family?

Will you be telling the Faces of Easter story,
about the One who was (and is) Easter?

Sheila, from Explore and Express, and I are co-hosting a Lenten Link Party, and we would love you to be a part of it! Now if you already know all about link parties, skip to the next paragraph, but since this is all very new to me I figure it might be new to some of you as well. The idea is this: if you write a blog post that fits our theme (or if you've written one in the past), we will link to it with a little thumbnail image here (and on Sheila's blog, too). In exchange, we ask you to add a link back to both of our blogs. It's all in aid of sharing ideas, discovering new blogs, and finding new readers.

We'd like to use this theme of Preparing for Easter to link up those who work with:

art projects,
nature projects,
Montessori methods, &/or
story-based religious education

All during Lent (from Feb 22 through Apr 7), you can click on the link at the bottom of this post (the blue, Add your link button) to create a link from our party to your blog post. You should then be prompted to give the URL of the specific post you want to include (not the URL for your blog's front page), the title of your entry, and your email address. Then please do add links within your own post to me and to Sheila. Every Wednesday, Sheila and I will each post a party update. Welcome aboard!

another two-minute video lesson

2012-02-21T22:09:00.003+02:00

If you enjoyed the two-minute explanation video for Advent by Busted Halo, you might like to know that they've done another for Lent:

enter the story and hear the song

2012-02-18T10:55:00.000+02:00

The God of Israel and the claim that God makes [upon Jews and Christians alike] can be known only by taking seriously the full reality of the imaginative language through which that God is presented in the biblical text. Narrative and poetry are the central forms of this testimony about God. Even the nonstory elements of the Old Testament characteristically assume the framework and knowledge of Israel's story about encounter and relationship with God. We are invited, indeed required, to enter the story and to hear the song and to respond according to the shape of the story. In that encounter with Israel's imaginative language we find perspectives on the claims and witnesses of our own experiences as persons and communities.

Birch, Brueggemann, Fretheim & Petersen

A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament

2nd ed. 2005, Abingdon Press (Nashville)

condensed by Storyteller from page 8

de-briefing

2012-02-12T19:08:00.001+02:00

On a day like today I miss see-through-faith, who is living in England this year. She used to be my regular Godly Play companion, as close to a "proper" door-person as I've ever had, and we would debrief together for a short time at the end of each session. Usually we'd also meet sometime during the following week and talk things out some more.

I feel that I wasn't as fully present in the story as I ought to have been today. I was telling the story, but not really experiencing the story as I told it.

Today's lesson was "the Great Family", which was too long last year. So this year I warned the circle in advance, and asked if they could cope with a long story. But even so, I suppose I was nervous and distracted. Suddenly I was telling about the birth of Isaac before God had even promised him to Abram! I apologized and gently took Isaac away again (but kept him in view, beside the edge of the desert bag), while I told about Abram and Sarai wanting a baby, and God's promise.

photo from last year (by see-through faith)

Even then, though, I forgot to tell about their names changing! *shakes head* Fortunately, that came up during our talk at the end because today's helper asked about the meanings of Abraham and Sarah. (I didn't find a meaning for Sarah in our classroom Bible, but I did read out that Abram had meant "exalted father" while Abraham meant "father of many".)

So, I'm disappointed with myself.

Happily, amongst any disappointments of a session I can always find something that has gone well. This week, the children seemed to work very well once they were dismissed to Response Time. One had to overcome great disappointment at not being able to join in with the work of another, but eventually decided to draw, and worked very independently. Another came up with the idea of turning the Advent basket upside-down as a pedestal for the Risen Christ to overlook the whole spread of Advent materials.

A nice reminder that the "success" of a session is less dependent upon the Storyteller than upon our God.

"I wonder about that, too"

2012-02-11T16:39:00.000+02:00

Upper Room Ministries published an article about

Sharing Lent and Easter with Your Children

Here's an excerpt:

How in the world do we explain to our children that Jesus was dead and in the grave for three days, then lived? Younger children may not ask the questions of “how” and “why” expecting detailed answers from adults. Older children do want to know how and why. Can you explain the resurrection? Probably not. It is a mystery and a wonder—and a statement of faith.

Saying “I believe” does not always mean understanding fully and event or happening.In talking about this with children, it may be helpful to say, “I wonder about that, too.” You may want to share other things that happen in the world that you do not fully understand. Invite your child then to reflect on times when they might not have factually understood an event but felt it to be real.

What really caught my attention was the response, I wonder about that, too. What a useful Godly Play phrase, not just for Good Friday and Easter but all year round.

Library of Congress photo

[You might also be interested in my post from last year, Telling Children about the Crucifixion]

setting up a Godly Play room - link

2012-02-10T19:43:00.000+02:00

It's nice to see, on Pinterest, that one of my photos is being used to link back to a post by the Spiritual Child Network on Setting up a Godly Play room. They got in touch a while back and asked for my permission to use the photo, which I was very happy to give (but also happy that they asked first). All the photos there are beautiful, but it's a real boost to see that at least some folks, in linking to it, have used mine.

I hope the SCN pages are an inspiration to others working to set up Godly Play rooms in what they might perceive as "less than ideal" environments!

in the chapel

2012-02-06T21:35:00.000+02:00

This past Sunday our usual Junior Church space was in use as a polling station for Finland's presidential election. So we met in a chapel instead, within the same building as our adult congregation was meeting (in another chapel).

Thank you, children, for making no complaints at all about the lack of story materials or the reduced choice of art materials (a small amount of plasticine - without tools or trays so it could only be manipulated within one's hands; colored pencils, crayons, and two sizes of paper).

It was not a great surprise, since Junior Church had met there two weeks earlier (during the first stage of the presidential election). On that Sunday two mothers had led the children in a tour of the chapels. They and the children had together pondered the artwork hung over this altar. My understanding is that this chapel is, at least partly, designated as a Children's Chapel, which makes me disappointed that this piece of art is hung far too high for children to see properly.

apologies for the reflections!

detail

The children were able to make out the heads of several animals peering out of the door, and concluded that it was a depiction of Noah's ark. One mother asked, "Well then what is that small white thing at the bottom?"

"A candle," was the verdict.

The mother later reported this to me, adding proudly, "I didn't tell them ..."

"... what you had assumed the picture was about," I finished for her, grinning. "Good for you!"

Candlemas - links

2012-02-06T21:09:00.001+02:00

(Apologies if you just got an unfinished post about Anna & Simeon. I'll be finishing that up soon and posting it properly, I hope. Boy do I wish Blogger would ask, "Are you really ready to publish?" before going ahead.)

Sheila and Browniesmoke have asked about my Candlemas lesson and materials. This is perhaps the impetus I need to start a small series of posts about "making do".

But there's so much I'd like to say about Candlemas, too, that I'm going to try to split it up into two or more posts. I'll edit the links here as I publish the relevant posts.

Candlemas

last year's post, including much of the (very short) "script" I wrote for the lesson itself

the One who was, and is, the Light

first Candlemas post for 2012 (very short)

Anna & Simeon ("making do", part 1)

more info about the Anna & Simeon figures, specifically

the conclusion of our congregation's Candlemas procession

the one who was, and is, the light

2012-02-05T21:47:00.000+02:00

In the story we remember on Candlemas,

it says that many, many years before Jesus himself told people, "I am the light,"

a man named Simeon said that Jesus would be a light to the People of God

and to everyone else, too.

And so even though this is a green week in the church calendar,

today the color is white.

different understanding

2012-01-30T11:59:00.000+02:00

Do not think that because the child cannot understand in the same way that we adults understand that it is useless to allow him to participate in our religious practices.
(Maria Montessori)

Remarks about scribbles

2012-01-27T22:17:00.000+02:00

Sheila has just posted links to two very interesting guides to children's art development. While I see my own role exclusively as a Godly Play storyteller and facilitator (NOT as an art teacher), I nonetheless found several points of interest there.

Here's great advice along the lines of the kind of feedback we try to give in Godly Play anyway:

As the [under-3-year-old] child starts naming his or her scribbles, listen to the child’s comments and use the meanings offered by the child as a source for dialogue. ...If the child says, “I’m running,” ask questions like “Do you like to run on the playground?” or “Where are you running?” Encouraging the child to verbalize his or her thoughts, feelings and experiences independently shows the child that you value what he or she has done. This sort of thoughtful praise will help children to be enthusiastic and imaginative in their future art encounters. (Craig Roland)

And this is a reassurance for those who might be disappointed not to be giving pre-set crafts to our preschoolers:

At four or five, the child begins to tell stories or work out problems with her drawings, changing basic forms as needed to express meaning. Often once the problem is expressed, the child feels better able to cope with it. (Susan K. Donley, citing Betty Edwards)

For these quotes in context, and much more, click through to Explore and Express: Art & Child Development: Two Great Resources.

very much the 'present'

2012-01-19T13:05:00.000+02:00

From ASBO Jesus by Jon Birch, used by permission

Name this child

2012-01-11T23:30:00.000+02:00

One girl who started attending Junior Church this past autumn has speculated several times that the baby doll under the focal shelf probably represents the Baby Jesus. I neither contradicted nor confirmed this, but usually tried to respond with something like, It could be.

So when I started reviewing the baptism lesson last week, it struck me that this girl might propose Jesus as a name for the baby. (As the storyteller gets ready to demonstrate what would happen at a baptism, the script calls for us to suddenly interrupt ourselves as if - oh, I almost forgot. What are we going to name this child? And the first suggestion offered is supposed to be accepted immediately.)

But I thought, "There's no way I'm going to feel comfortable saying, Jesus, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I was glad that I had thought about this in advance, because yep - when I asked about the name of the baby this girl was in first with, Jesus.

I replied smoothly, Yes, that's a good name. And in America when somebody is named Jesus we usually pronounce it "Jesús" [pronouncing it like the Spanish name]. She started to object that that sounded more Finnish than like American English (which is somewhat true), but I was already continuing with the lesson. Perhaps it wasn't completely fair, and not completely in the spirit of Berryman's advice to accept the first name proposed, but it was a solution which didn't exactly reject her suggestion and yet kept me happy, too.

Next week, if all goes as planned, the children will hear a story-book version of Jesus's own baptism.

Baptême de Jésus (Tissot) (Brooklyn Museum)

a small milestone

2012-01-07T23:38:00.001+02:00

Today the 20th person signed up to officially "follow" this blog. I'm so thankful for everyone who reads this blog, and especially for those who leave their mark by becoming an official follower, by commenting, by linking back to me, or just by getting in touch to mention that they've had a look.

I value your comments and feedback. But whether or not you get in touch, whether you sign up with your real name or a pseudonym - thank you to everyone who's dropped by, and thereby contributed to the number of "hits" that Blogger tells me this site has had. (Except the spammers - please don't bother linking back to me anymore. But you, too, are welcome to read my posts!)

Thank you!!

How can we Remember?

2012-01-07T23:25:00.000+02:00

Our pastor contacted me early this week to say that on Sunday, when she comes as usual to administer communion and blessings, she would also like to do with the children what she will have done with the adults during the service - that is, to offer everyone the chance to dip their fingers into blessed water and bring it to their foreheads as a memorial of their baptism.

And so, although I had initially been planning to do the Epiphany lesson this week, I've changed my plans and will be doing the Baptism lesson. And there's one reason in particular that I'm glad about that.

Last year, one mother reported back to me that her child had come home somewhat concerned about being unable to remember the child's own baptism. The baptism lesson tells us to Remember the day of your baptism! This child was apparently distressed not to be able to do that in a literal sense.

Tomorrow, our pastor will tell the children that this touching of blessed water to their foreheads is one way to Remember your baptism.

You might also like to revisit these past blog entries, which mention:

my baptismal doll
a little about the baptism lesson, with a description of the other materials I use for it
a quote from Berryman about adapting the baptism lesson to your own church's practice
some differences between Finnish Lutheran baptismal practice and that described in the Godly Play lesson

"She rode and she walked"

2012-01-05T23:30:00.000+02:00

Before we leave Christmastide for Epiphany, I wanted to post a few photos from our Response Time after the Christmas lesson. They're blurry, but I love so much what they captured that I wanted to share them anyway.

It is hard to ride on a donkey when you are about to have a baby. When she couldn't ride another step, Mary got down and walked.

She rode and she walked (Jerome W. Berryman, "Advent II")

It was only after I'd snapped these pics of Mary riding and walking and riding and walking that "seethroughfaith" pointed out to me that all the figures had been turned to face Bethlehem. The shepherd is even leading the sheep!

Let's go with the prophets, the Holy Family, the shepherds, the angels, the Magi and all the rest to make the journey (Jerome W. Berryman, "Advent I")

5 children, 5 candles

2012-01-02T23:13:00.000+02:00

The children know that only the adults in our room use matches. And our normal practice is that at the end of a lesson using candles, it is the storyteller who changes the light by snuffing out the candles. But at the end of the Christmas lesson on Sunday, I noticed that we had five lights to be changed and five children present:

all photographs taken by seethroughfaith & cropped by me

materials - familiar and unfamiliar

2012-01-01T22:09:00.001+02:00

Today three sets of story materials got used during Response Time - that's a record for us! Some children who had never worked with the church clock before wanted to have a look. But my explanations were too long-winded and they quickly lost interest!

photo by seethroughfaith (cropped by me)

One of the children chose to work with the Advent and Christmas materials instead. The other set off to draw. Meanwhile another child noticed seethroughfaith getting out the desert bag, and asked if she could look on and/or work together with her on the Great Family story. [This is the rule with story materials - you must always ask permission because the person might want to work alone.] They realized they couldn't remember certain details anymore, and turned to the Jesus Storybook Bible to remind themselves a bit.

I believe that in most GP classrooms, the expectation is that if you haven't worked with materials before, you should sit and listen to the lesson as presented by the storyteller (who will be happy to present it to you during the Response Time). I have not been as explicit or strict as that, but have always said that you should ask me or any of the children who already know the story to tell you about it or help you with it. The problem is that children don't feel that they know most stories well enough yet to present them to a peer. Even "stf" felt more comfortable looking up some of the Abraham and Sarah story when working with another person. But on the other hand, children weren't ready to sit and listen to another whole lesson (about the Church Clock) right after having listened to today's Christmas lesson.

I'd be interested to know what others of you do about children who show interest in unfamiliar materials.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T01:01:00.005+02:00

"La Navidad" - a gift to the public domain, by Antonio "Aguijarro" Guijarro Morales

Advent art - initial reflections

2011-12-22T12:32:00.000+02:00

As "stf" has commented, it is worth my reflecting upon what is behind my unwillingness to let go of control over the finished product of my Advent art (presented over the past several blog posts). But I do think that a big part of it was simply that I was trying to do too many things with that one project. I wanted to give the children something to do if they got bored or antsy during the sermon at church, but I wanted that to be more than "busy work". I wanted something beautiful for Advent. I used the project myself as a sort of meditative preparation exercise for Christmas.I wanted something that would link Junior Church with the all-age Christmas Day service. I liked the idea of a mystery that would become more and more understandable during Advent, to be revealed completely on Christmas.

And my other inspiration, besides the original stained glass window linked to yesterday, was Sarcastic Lutheran's congregationally-made Advent Icon. [She's moved her blog and I cannot track down the post right now to link to it, but it was created entirely of ad circulars - a transformation of the materialistic (and rubbish) into something holy.]

All this was too much burden for a single project to carry!!

Yet this is not to dismiss stf's comment lightly. As I move into ministry, leading and serving congregations, I will come up with liturgical suggestions which congregations will dislike, or find boring, or confusing. People will "mess up" my beautifully-designed plans. I do need to remember that worship is Process, not Product. May we all feel prepared, at the end of even the most muddled and "imperfect" corporate worship, to go forth to love and serve the Lord at home, at work, in our families and our communities.

advent art, part 4

2011-12-21T12:30:00.000+02:00

It was a rush to get the collage ready for 4th Advent. I wasn't yet finished when stf came to collect me for Junior Church, so I brought the supplies with me. Once we'd got the classroom set up with our Godly Play materials, I sat down at a work table and carried on.

photo by seethroughfaith (I cropped most of myself out of it)

To my great disappointment, I realized that I had left at home the thick black magic marker with which I had planned to outline all the elements. This would have made Mary and Joseph's sleeves clearer, for example, and would have allowed me to draw in Jacob's staff. I had also still been undecided about whether to draw in windows and doors on some of the background houses, as in the original I had based this work on. But I just had to do without all that.

photo by seethroughfaith

I have now turned the work over to the pastor, along with one important additional element - a manger, with a little head just visible nestled within the hay, surrounded by a golden halo. This will be attached to the poster collage as part of the all-age service on Christmas Day. I can't wait to hear whether and how this worked in the service (I'll be with my mother-in-law across Christmas, not here), and to see how it looks with the manger added.

(In all the rush, there was certainly no time to go over it all with a coat of Modge Podge, as I'd hoped. The pastor may find that some of the scraps begin to lift or curl. They can just be carefully left alone, or gently stuck down again with glue or paste. I hope to finish it off in the ways I'd intended after Christmas, maybe even in time for Junior Church on New Year's Day.)

advent art, part 3

2011-12-20T12:30:00.000+02:00

By the third week in Advent, a good deal more of the picture had taken shape.

At least one child was pretty sure that this was going to be a picture of Jesus.

(background: part 1, part 2)

advent art, part 2

2011-12-19T12:30:00.000+02:00

(continued from yesterday)

Another problem with my art idea was that I wanted the children to be surprised by the end result. This meant not being able to tell them very much about why they were doing this cutting and pasting, and why everything was supposed to be the same color. So they lost interest fairly quickly. In hindsight, this seems a fairly obvious flaw in my plan!

And the final problem was that I found I was too invested in how I wanted this project to turn out. It wasn't primarily about the process - the final product was also extremely important to me. So I was really unable to let the children work on it freely. In the end, I did most of the work on this project myself. I did have a little help from one of the children (and another adult) on Thanksgiving Day, and three other adults gave me a little help on a couple of Sundays. But the bulk of it was me.

By the second Sunday of Advent (our first Junior Church session in Advent), I was able to place this in the room:

When asked, I explained that it was Advent art. I tried to remind them of the work they'd put into it the previous month (I'm not sure any of them really made the connection), and explained that it would be finished gradually during Advent. I wondered what they thought it might be. One suggested a boat (you can see the prow of the boat there in brown). Another said it looked like it would be a castle. Another suspected that we'd eventually see a priest in the middle.

More tomorrow...

advent art, part 1

2011-12-18T22:31:00.000+02:00

Way back when we had the children in Big Church for Fr Rupert's last service with us, I invited the children to do some cut and paste work during the sermon. I had brought background shapes cut out of heavy card and asked them to cut out and paste scraps of similarly-colored paper onto them.

This was not an unqualified success. The biggest problem was that I'd set up so that they could choose whether to work on the floor or kneeling in front of chairs, using the chair as a desk... without having thought about the fact that every time a glue stick came down on a chair, a BANG would echo around our stone chapel.

the very beginning of this year's Advent art

More of the story of this year's Advent art will be posted tomorrow!

topical response work

2011-12-11T19:03:00.001+02:00

The children in my Godly Play classroom are aged 2-6. They almost always choose to work with the art materials during Response Time, rather than story materials, and it's extremely rare that the artwork they do is [or rather, seems to me to be] related to the day's lesson, any lesson we've done, or anything to do with their spiritual lives at all!

In fact, it was striking when two new children joined us in the autumn, children who had been to Sunday School elsewhere. For the first several weeks, the older one drew pictures of Jesus on the cross, and the younger one often copied this. It seemed likely to me that the elder child was trying to do what s/he assumed would be expected. Otherwise, though, apart from rainbows when we do Noah's ark, I don't think any of the artwork has had anything to do with our lessons.

Most of the time I manage not to be bothered by this. I know that every week these children pay attention to a lesson, break bread together, and receive personal blessings from our pastor. They are given the opportunity to thank God corporately in song and individually in naming something that they're particularly thankful for that week. And so it's enough that in the Response Time they know that they'll be trusted enough to be left alone for a while if they want to be, while knowing that we will be happy to look at their work with them if they ask us to. It's enough that they are in a worshipful environment with adults who care about them.

That's enough.

But I was thrilled today when a four-year-old showed me this winding trail of glitter glue and explained, It's the road to Bethlehem.

EDIT: Just minutes after posting this, I was led to this Washington Post article about play, which reminded me that the more we limit the children's choice about what they do, the less it's play. And after all, the name of this curriculum is Godly Play.
h/t UMC Ministry with Children

it never rains but it pours

2011-12-06T16:58:00.001+02:00

I'm a bit embarrassed to realize that in the past week or so I've pointed my readers to two Godly Play blogs that were new to me, but I've never mentioned The Patch. I had overlooked it because I hadn't realized how much more GP-oriented it has become recently. This blogger, Kas, has recently taken up a post as a lay youth worker with YP4L (Young People for Life) in the Diocese of Leicester. And Kas also recently did a Godly Play training course! So suddenly there is a fair bit in that blog about using Godly Play.

In this post, with the GREAT :) title of "Easter Kind of Way" :) , there's a beautiful picture capturing the moment when one of the young children, having heard the GP Holy Family lesson for the first time, began retelling it to one of the adult leaders.

So Kas, too, has now been added to my blogroll in the right-hand sidebar. Good on ya, Kas!

Oh yes I know

2011-12-05T23:09:00.001+02:00

One reader emailed to say that the song I mentioned in my previous post had been unknown to her until she Googled it after reading what I'd written. I'm glad she found it despite my referring to it by its second verse rather than the first! I like to think of it as an Advent song.

Our Second Second Advent

2011-12-04T21:40:00.001+02:00

Second of Advent last year was my first full Godly Play session with children. It was held in my living room, with two children in attendance:

Now, a year later, we have been meeting in a church hall, with five children regularly attending. and the pastor comes to greet us (with communion and blessings) at the end of every session.

Today we had a new member join (and we hope to welcome another next week):

His big sister (already a very experienced member of Junior Church) was rather disappointed to learn that he wanted to work independently during the Response Time, but she rallied well, especially when one of her friends asked to work with her.

I opened the session by introducing the Holy Family figures and changing their underlay from green to purple. I wanted to teach an Advent song, so asked children if they could think of songs about getting ready for Christmas. One child suggested "The Little Drummer Boy", but the most confident responses were "You'd better watch out" and "Santa Claus is coming to town". I conceded that insofar as these are songs anticipating Christmas then we might consider them to be Advent songs. The song I taught, though, was "Jesus is Coming (O yes, I know)" from South Africa.

and yet another blogger!

2011-12-03T12:39:00.000+02:00

It's not long since I posted about Jennings' new blog, and now I've stumbled across another. The Wonder Circle (what a great title) is a blog maintained by Rebecca from South Carolina. I've only just found her blog, but a couple of things have struck me already:

She has an extensive series of pages, linked from the top of the blog, working their way through all the elements of a Godly Play session, from Preparing the Environment, Getting Ready, and Entering the Circle right through to the way they Close their Sessions. She notes that, I describe Godly Play by sharing the way our church does it. That doesn't mean that it's the best way or the prescribed way, or the only way, of course, but it's the way that suits us best. I expect all of us will see some things there that we wouldn't want to do in our own classrooms and other ideas that we'll be excited to implement for ourselves - isn't that the way blogging often works?

This post about the lesson of the Ark and the Tent she wonders whether her fourth-graders would like to turn a table on its side and cover it with blankets as a much larger-scale model of the Tabernacle. What an amazing idea!

A belated welcome to the Godly Play blogosphere, Rebeccca. Glad to have found you. You'll find some of the other bloggers I knew about in my side-bar on the right. I have found it a joy to have this circle of support in my work with children, something which is "virtual" insofar as it is long-distance, computer-mediated, and asynchronous (not necessarily instant or simultaneous), but also very real. A big thank you to all of you who blog about GP (and CGS) and to all my readers, with extra thanks to those who comment and/or email me.

Hopeful Advent

2011-11-27T09:59:00.001+02:00

Just a quick post to share a link that Leslie at Thoughts from the Sheepfold pointed me to. This is a two-minute explanation of what Advent is all about. I think it's great! I've also put a link to it at the bottom of my blog layout for the whole season. Thank you, Busted Halo, and thank you, Leslie!

another new Godly Play blogger

2011-11-21T21:58:00.001+02:00

Today I got an email message from a friend announcing her newest blog, Building Godly Play. Welcome, Jennings! I'm so pleased that you're doing this. She's only posted two posts so far, but it looks like her special contribution is going to be the sharing of her own personal variations on the scripts that she uses. And lots of helpful photographs!

I think I'm right in saying that although this blog is new for her, she's actually been using Godly Play for longer than I have and that she's also been trained in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Here's a fun pic (which I'm pretty sure she won't mind me sharing - just let me know otherwise, Jennings, and it's gone) which you won't find on that blog. This is from her church's blog, and shows their GP classroom. What a great assortment of different children and work.

Jennings and friends in the Godly Play classroom

I know she'd love to have some visitors and followers, so do wander over for a visit. If you're interested in what you see, why not click on her link to be a public follower?

* * * * *

While I'm on the topic of linking from one blog to another, I'd like to thank four bloggers who've sent lots of traffic in my direction. According to my Blogger "all time" stats, these are the top four Referring URLs for this blog.

Explore and Express

Living Montessori Now

see-through faith

(we all win when we...) all join in

Thank you all - readers and referrers!

looking ahead to Advent

2011-11-18T12:49:00.001+02:00

The first time I tried leading a complete Godly Play session was for an "away-day" for adults in our church. We used the Godly Play room and materials at a church in one of the suburbs.

But the first time I led a full Godly Play session for children, using my own materials, was the second Sunday of Advent. It was held in my living room, with art materials set out on chairs next to my dining table for the Response Time. I did the same for the third, and then the fourth Sundays of Advent, increasing the circle from two to three children, and it culminated in an all-age celebration of the first Sunday after Christmas... again in my living room, during a snowstorm on Boxing Day.

photo by seethroughfaith

Although I love our current Junior Church setting for its spaciousness and its convenience for parents, I have fond memories of those sessions in my living room. Last spring one child asked, When are we going back to your house? Liturgically, I like the fact that we started Godly Play in Advent, the first season of the Church year. It is my hope that this year again we will have some new children joining us, coming to Junior Church for the first time... in Advent.

Many people come to this blog looking for information on Godly Play materials, and the Advent materials may look daunting to those who do not have access to wood-working tools. They can be bought from Godly Play retailers in the USA, Finland, the UK, and Germany. I bought my wooden pieces ready-cut but unfinished from Johanna Kaarto-Wallin, and stained and painted them in a workshop at the Godly Play European Conference in Finland. However, if you prefer to make your own, an easy and beautiful alternative to wooden cards is to make them from felt (as shown on the Watkins Every Flavor Beans blog).

the display racks are lovely, but a basket is just fine

A quick Google image search will show you the range of variation possible when you make your materials. Some are blue, some blue-ish purple, some pink-ish purple. Some plaques are large and square, some smaller and rectangular. Some have very stylized wreathes, some look more real. But in almost all cases the first plaque has one candle on the wreath, and a pointing hand representing the prophets. The second has two candles, and shows the road to Bethlehem. The third has three candles (sometimes the third candle is pink), and a lamb. The fourth has four candles, and three crowns. The fifth has a white background, and may show a star.These plaques are laid out on a cloth underlay, something pleasant to the touch. It has four squares of purple and one of white, onto which the plaques are placed. The easiest way to do this is to use a long stretch of purple, divide it with strips of gold cord or ribbon, and glue or sew a white square onto the end.

photo by seethroughfaith

only the Storyteller is allowed
to take things from this basket

You will also need candles, ideally in the colors used by your church (the most common alternatives are four red, or three purple and one pink), and you will probably want unobtrusive candle holders for them (I have since purchased a flea-market set of glass saucers for mine). In addition to matches, you will also need a candle-snuffer. The fifth, white, candle will be the Christ candle from your focal shelf.

ready to give a hug

You probably already have a Holy Family for your focal shelf, but if not you will want one for this lesson. You don't need it for week one, though, so there is time to hunt around. Ideally, the figures will include a baby Jesus who can be taken out of his manger and has his arms spread open, Mary, Joseph, a donkey, a cow or ox, three wise men, a shepherd, and two sheep. (And the focal shelf should also hold a picture or figure of the Risen Christ.) However, you can make do with what you have. My terra cotta Christ child has his arms open for a hug but does not come out of his manger, and this has never been a problem at all.

Several times I used a nativity set belonging to my godson, in which the baby was wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes. He was also smiling. In general, we don't like to use figures with smiles, preferring to let children imagine their expressions themselves. However, I felt that for pastoral reasons it was appropriate to use my godson's set, and I just changed the words of the script on those occasions from see how he's holding out his arms to give you a hug to see how he's smiling at you.

the Holy Family, smiling

More important than sticking precisely to the words of the script is to say the words by heart. It is considered good Godly Play practice to keep to the script as well as you can, and Jerome has written some beautiful lines. But don't rely on note cards! Just gaze at your materials and tell the story from your heart. This is your story. This is our story. This is the story of our faith.

At the same time, don't fret if things don't turn out perfectly. This story officially includes no Wondering, just "enjoying the light". However, last year one young child was far more excited about changing the light than quietly enjoying the light. As soon as the candles were lit, it was Snuff them out! Snuff them out! And the children may well want to wonder or talk about the story. Great! Similarly, don't interrupt a child's intent work to make "corrections". Just enjoy the light of Christ.

"wrong" layout

For more about Advent Godly Play, try these links at Living Montessori Now or see what else I've written.

circle-calendar of the church year

2011-11-06T10:23:00.000+02:00

[I've written this post in advance.] Today, Sunday, I'm on a residential weekend for ministry training and Vandriver is leading Junior Church (reading aloud from the Jesus Storybook Bible).

As we're getting ready for Advent and the new church year, I wanted to publicize this wonderful resource from My Faith My Life.

It's a beautiful rendition of the circle of the church year in all its colors, along with the corresponding dates from the calendar year. If I had loads of time (which I don't) it would be tempting to try to put together something similar to this myself, with tweaks (such as purple for Advent) to bring it into line with our congregation's practice. But as it is, perhaps I will just print this out to have in the room as a talking point. A high-quality pdf is here. Many thanks for Jenifer Gamber for making this available to churches!

my world communion materials

2011-11-01T15:50:00.000+02:00

It was months ago that I promised Sheila from Explore and Express that I'd write about how I made my World Communion materials. Since then she's gone ahead and made her own materials in her own way, which I'm glad about for her sake. But I'm perfectly happy to describe my own - a fair amount of the "traffic" that comes to me through search engines is people looking for information about materials - it was just that I hadn't actually finished mine until this week. These were made with much love and little expense. There was no woodworking involved!

The fence enclosing the sheep fold is of plastic (by Schleich), which disappointed me at first, but it is working well for us. It's easy to disassemble and store, which I have to do every week. We use only four pieces, two of which are designed not to fasten, so it's easy to open and close the pen. My green circle bases are simply cardboard painted green. I was a bit embarrassed about doing that, but this beautiful post at What Can We Leave Out reminds me that the beauty and value of these objects is as much in how you treat them as what they're made of. Here's another photograph of a World Communion base made out of cardboard (from Godly Play in Australia), with clothes-pin people. I would encourage you not to apologize for your materials as long as you have created them with love and care.

My figures are also made of cardboard, but a very stiff and solid board. It doesn't have the holes that you can see within the base (EDIT: corrugated, that's the word. It's not corrugated) - it's just a solid stiff cardboard. I no longer remember where it came from - it was just in our recycling box on the day that I went hunting for what to use for this. I used the patterns found in the Young Children and Worship book, but my figures are like typical Godly Play figures in that they are clothed and colored rather than just being wooden silhouettes. I bought a super-basic range of the three primary colors at the craft store: blue, yellow, red, and white paint (and bitterly regretted not having bought any black, but I used a Sharpie pen for hair and definition), and did my non-artistic best to mix them into a range of plausible skin tones and hair colors. I deliberately left one man bald and gave one woman white hair, and tried to give the priest a gender-neutral hairstyle.

side view, lamb's "wool"

upholstery swatches

I had stumbled across a couple books of upholstery swatches in the flea market. What a great find! (I also used them for my "Jesus the King" Palm Sunday materials.) With them I was able to create clothing (and sheepskin) which was soft to the touch. For the lamb on the Jesus's shoulders I actually used a thicker fleece material, for a contrast with his garment. (The priest's stole is a bit of ribbon.)

The whole process of course took much longer than I had anticipated. I clothed them front and back, just using scissors and glue. A couple of hours before church I realized I wouldn't have time to finish, and decided to prioritize the children over the adults. So we had the Good Shepherd, five sheep, one priest, and five children for our first session. It was only the Shepherd, two sheep and the priest who could even stand up that day! (This was done simply by using little cardboard bases like paper dolls often have, set at right angles to the figures' flat bodies.)

(back view)

And for the next several months, that was the range of figures that we had. I did nothing else apart from provide the rest of the bases so that each figure could stand up. The unclothed adults were stashed away in a craft box at my house. We did have a communion table or altar, which was simply a simple, unvarnished dolls' house table which I bought on sale. It's not quite to scale, but seems to work fine. The "chalice" and paten were another flea market find. They were the creamer and one saucer from a little tea set. Again it's not ideal - there's a chip missing - but they do for now. In fact, if you remember, stf couldn't find them one week and substituted cardboard ones in their place (which are now lovingly stored together with these ones in their basket).

Last Sunday I presented these materials again. The story of that presentation will have to wait for another post. But it was the motivation I needed to finally finish clothing my figures. I had already tried to dress one of the girls in a shalwar kameez for some cultural diversity, although at least one person has told me it just looks like she's wearing a coat and scarf. But I gave the adults a real variety of clothing. One woman is in a cheongsam and one is in a gákti. One man is in a suit and tie and the other is in sweats (a jogging suit). One thing I don't have, though, is a diversity of mobility (at one parish in Lohja, Finland, they include a man with a cane).

It was actually a friend who was looking to do some "community service" who clothed the man in sweats - thank you!

You might also like to read the post about the first time I presented this lesson

and a short post (with a photo) about how limited my materials were then

"unwanted"

2011-10-25T14:08:00.000+03:00

Satara (photographer's real name unavailable)

Did you see the news story about the girls named "Unwanted"? I had been vaguely aware that there were places in the world where boys were valued much more than girls, but today I learned that in one region of Maharashtra, India, the ratio of young girls to boys is only 801 to 1000. And what is life like for those 801 girls, the ones not aborted or fatally neglected? Some, especially ones born into a family with several daughters already, get labelled with demoralizing names like Nakusa, which literally means "unwanted". Parents say that they didn't treat these girls badly. But it's tough to imagine being reminded every time someone uses your name that your birth was a disappointment to your parents.

Yesterday I read about Dr Bhagwan Pawar, district health officer in the Maharashtra region of Satara, who came up with the idea of an official re-naming ceremony. Officials visited the homes of over 200 local girls with this or similar names (Nakushi, Nakoshi), and asked what they would prefer to be called. Some chose the names of famous actresses they admire, some chose Hindu goddess names, and some chose names with literal positive meanings, "prosperous", "beautiful", or even "rock hard, very tough".

The ceremony was held last Saturday. (Most news coverage has included a beautiful photograph of some of the girls at the ceremony; there's also at least one news video with interviews).

students in Mumbai, photo by Bernard Gagnon

The girls were given certificates with their new names, which were also published in the state gazette. Schools were notified and asked to use the new names from now on.

Of course this made me think of Hosea's children, the oldest named for a massacre site, the girl named "No Mercy" and the youngest named "Not My People".

My devotional Bible text last night, though, was the story from the Gospel of Luke of a woman crippled for eighteen years by a spirit, so that she was bent over double. Jesus healed her as soon as he saw her, and she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue was indignant. Indignant. Indignant with Jesus. So what did that religious leader do? He began to harangue the crowd (not Jesus, but the congregation), telling them they could perfectly well come to be cured on a weekday. He was shaming this woman in front of the community, criticizing her in her moment of freedom, beating her back down. But Jesus shut him up. He called him a hypocrite and said,

Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”

Satara city, photograph by Mangeshjadhav

Jesus called her a daughter of Abraham. Which when you think about it is the very opposite of "Not My People".

There's so much to think about here, so much to pray about, and this is already a long post. But then, also last night, I read this post by Wanda at KidTrek. She says that 70% of children raised in the church leave it. And she says that one major factor in whether or not churched children keep their faith is whether or not they feel connected to the church community while still a child. And so I want to ask, are the children in your church "Not Our People"? Are any children you know perceiving that they are Unwanted?

[My first source for this news story was a link to USA-Today posted by a Facebook friend. I've since found two Indian newspapers' coverage here and here.]

learning liturgy

2011-10-19T11:21:00.001+03:00

Sunday was Fr R's last service with us before moving away. I didn't want to miss it, and I didn't want the children to miss it. And Fr R is all for having children present, so I decided to try setting up a children's area in the chapel for the day.

Vandriver was a huge help in this: he washed the tarp in advance, and moved all the furniture for me (that's our blue table and chairs - I think I need to suggest to the Dean that the Cathedral could do with a small range of child-sized seating).

While he was re-arranging the chairs, I was finishing up the And also with you -flags, following an idea that I got from The Spiritual Child Network. A good thing about them was that we had plenty, so I was able to give some out to members of the congregation as well as the children. A bad thing was that I'd forgotten to buy materials for them while I was out shopping for the craft materials - so I wound up making them out of our own chopsticks and will have to dis-assemble them the next time we have Chinese food!

Fr R was very pleased with them! He visited the children's area well before the service and spoke to those children who were already present, letting them know that although they did need to try to be quiet during most of the service, when he said The Lord be with you they could be as loud as they wanted in replying, And also with you! And at least once he cued us all - asking if the children were prepared - before giving us our prompt, The Lord be with you!

From the children's corner I'd say the flags were not an unqualified success. The children were of course most enthusiastic about the flags at the "wrong" moments, and one child made an immediate connection with sports fandom and wanted to cheer for her favorite team. But I take heart from these words (again, from The Spiritual Child Network):

The children playing during the worship does not mean they are not also engaging with what they are seeing and hearing. They will be making connections between the materials in the area and aspects of the worship and Christian faith they encounter in the service.

I plan to write more about this adventure in another post, but for now I'll close with The Peace. I wish that we didn't have security concerns about displaying children's faces in public websites, because the facial expressions are the real joy of this photo for me. The girl in red is producing a wonderful parody of an earnest adult greeting a child, and the boy in the plaid shirt has thrown his head back and is laughing with delight.

children and chat

2011-10-09T22:10:00.002+03:00

Today was a tough day at Junior Church in many ways. I'm always hoping for this kind of atmosphere (which, as this photo shows, we do occasionally have):

photo by stf, faces obscured in accordance with parents' wishes

But today the children's desire seemed to be for something like this:

photo by Eden Keller from Mechanicsburg (used by permission)

Because I'm in ministry training now, I've had to ask other adults week by week to take turns leading. We have agreed to try to keep the rough format the same and to set up the focal shelf each week, but that the lessons in their weeks would be told or read from Bible storybooks (we use the Me Too! Bible stories and the Jesus Storybook Bible (which I learned about from Sheila at Explore and Express)). That (and the fact that we don't use the door person system - again due to lack of training and needing to keep the threshold very low for volunteers) has made it harder for our new children to learn what *I* expect of them, particularly during the lessons.

I had decided to do the Circle of the Holy Eucharist lesson with them this week, despite not feeling that they were really ready for it yet, because next week we will all be in the big church for Father R's last service with us. It was a mistake. The lesson (or my telling of my version of it) was too long, not engaging enough, too factual, not numinous enough. By the time I was ready to come home I really felt like a failure.

But on the other hand, as I sat at supper and talked through with Vandriver some of what had gone on today, I realized that the children raised a lot of interesting points and topics today. And thinking over some of my experiences with them over the past several months, it occurs to me that the time we spend chatting is clearly very important to (at least most of) them.

We always chat for a bit at the beginning of Junior Church, especially if we're waiting for others to arrive. Today we didn't have to wait for anyone, but it felt as though they'd have liked just to carry on talking forever. My trainers told us, Sometimes all you do for the whole session is form the circle. Perhaps I should not have been so fixated on my plan to do the Eucharist lesson. Perhaps what they needed was just to chat!

Afterwards, during the feast, the children's talk included:

God writes people's names either in The Book of Life or The Book of Death.
One time on The Simpsons Homer had a dream about God.
Can we please start eating now?

(We always wait to begin eating until everyone is ready. But today the talk ran away before we'd even had time to thank God for our food!)

Why don't we have Junior Church every day?

image by Stannered

Another time on The Simpsons God's hand came down right next to Homer!
No, that was Ned Flanders.
We have to have adults here because children can't be left on their own.
My mother says I can travel by airplane all by myself when I'm eight.
Why aren't you (Storyteller) here every Sunday anymore?
You're going to Priest-Classes? We should go with you.
Fr. R is moving house!
(a lot of guesses as to where Fr R might be moving to - Borgå, Sweden, Japan, Africa...)
+ a couple of answers to my leading question of why it is that we [supposedly?] talk more quietly than usual in Junior Church.

Maybe one conclusion from today's session is that I need to be more clear and firm about the behavior I want to see in Junior Church. But maybe another is that I should bear in mind the Montessori principle of following the child, and carve out more space for chatting? Maybe we need a children's fellowship group! Certainly I can be thankful for that the children find Junior Church a safe environment in which to talk about things religious, and that they appreciate the attention I pay to them.

the parts we don't like

2011-10-07T20:26:00.000+03:00

Today's prayer podcast at Pray as You Go made my heart sink with the words of the scripture for meditation from Joel 2, Sound the alarm on my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. For the Day of the Lord is coming. It is near: a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. I had been ready for a more encouraging message today!

But the guidance for meditation asked, What do you think this Day of the Lord that is near is? Is it something to be feared? To be welcomed? and then went on, Joel speaks of alarm, darkness, gloom and clouds. Do you think there is a place for that kind of language when we speak about God? If so, why? If not, why not? And those questions reminded me of Godly Play. I do think there is a place for language of darkness and clouds when speaking about God. But I also think it's a very worthwhile exercise to think about the arguments for both answers to that question.

The Great Day of His Wrath by John Martin (1789-1854)

One of the things that I loved the most when I first experienced Godly Play was the fact that at the end of each Sacred Story we are invited to wonder if there is any part of this story that we could leave out and yet still have all the story we need.

It doesn't even have to be something that we don't like. It could be something we're baffled by, a detail that seems irrelevant, or just an exercise in paring down to the simple essentials (as Jill writes). But what pleases me most about the question is that it gives us room to say, I don't like that part. In fact, I wish it wasn't even part of the story at all.

And it's not just for the sake of children that I love that. Once, my father was reading a Bible story aloud to us as a family and my mother suddenly interrupted and asked him to stop at a certain point. Because I had been (Sunday-)schooled in a very Bible-based church, I knew what was coming in the story. And although I wanted to be sympathetic, I wasn't sure that a request like that was really "allowed". After all, we had been told over and over again that You can't just pick and choose from the Bible. You can't just leave out the parts you don't like.

Well, Godly Play doesn't really say that we can cut those pages out of our Bibles, as it were, but it does give us room to say that we don't like them. And I believe that that's healthy. We belong to a faith that has Sacred Stories about people who bargain with God and people who wrestle with God. And I confess to a certain amount of sympathy for Jonah, who not only got angry with God, but lectured him a bit, sulked, and finally burst out with an endearingly adolescent-sounding, I'm so angry I could die! (Jonah 4)

detail from a miniature, Vatican Library

genius? stupid?

2011-10-01T08:00:00.000+03:00

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.

- Albert Einstein

photo by Graham Horn (used by permission)

risk assessment (lighthearted)

2011-09-21T11:22:00.003+03:00

Despite today's atmosphere of risk management as imperative...

(US Navy photo, public domain)

... the danger of lice had not occurred to me.

(No, I don't think I've caught them. But one Mom kindly warned people that she'd discovered that her child had them.)

What do you mean, "in the story"?

2011-09-14T17:30:00.000+03:00

In the Wondering Time after Sacred Stories, storytellers are urged to introduce four things to ponder. These are always the same. The first is I wonder which part of this story you liked the best. Just about everyone seems to like that. It gets the members of the circle thinking back over the story, and with that question most will feel comfortable sharing something out loud (... although nobody is ever made to feel that they must speak out loud.)

The third topic is I wonder where you are in this story. It can also be asked in a different way: I wonder which part of this story is about you. But this third topic is a tricky one. Adults may over-think it. Children may be baffled by it. Yet sometimes members of the circle share very deep and personal things about themselves at this point:

I am under the flood-waters.

I am the donkey, getting tired of carrying people.

I have come back from the desert to the river where there is refreshing water.

(my own materials)

It's also interesting when this question is taken literally. Last Sunday I told the story of the Great Flood. When I asked, I wonder where you are in this story, a child answered, I'm not there! I can't remember the exact words that followed, but the child gestured and observed that there were no figures of children in the story - just two adults and a bunch of animals. It's an interesting point. We think of this as a good story for children, and yet there are no children featured in the story.

[After a pause, I did point out that the Bible story says that after the ark landed, Noah's sons, who were grown up, and their wives, had babies to help "fill the world with life again".]

Frances, at "On the Chancel Steps", explored this idea of being in the story in her children's sermon for September 11th this year:

I wonder where you are in this story: I love stories! I love to read myself into the world of Winnie-the-Pooh, or mysteries, or kings and queens, or the Bible. But not all stories are in books. Each of us has a story.

Her closing prayer begins, Dear Lord, Thank You for stories. I might pray this prayer myself the next time I feast with our children!

a group bulletin board?

2011-09-12T09:38:00.006+03:00

Dear Godly Play folk, Good Shepherd catechists, and others working with children in church,

Would you be interested in creating a bulletin board together of photographs of Godly Play & CGS materials? I've recently discovered Pinterest - an easy way to save interesting photographs that you run across when browsing. You can also use it to share photographs you have taken yourself. The resulting collections (yours and others') can be a great source of inspiration!

If there were any interest, I'd certainly be up for opening up a couple of my "boards" for contributions from others, or even creating a few new ones explicitly to be group boards. I don't think that you need an invitation anymore to join Pinterest, but I'm happy to try to send one if anybody does need one.

Have a look and see what you think.

UPDATE: (13 Sept)
I've opened up several of my boards to be group boards, but each contributor needs to be added by me individually. It seems like I can't add you unless you have not only joined Pinterest, but "pinned" at least one picture. Probably all you'd need to do is "re-pin" one of my pictures to your own board? But so far I haven't been able to add anyone who doesn't have any pins yet.

off-topic: 9/11

2011-09-11T12:53:00.000+03:00

US Navy photo (public domain)

Today our grown-up congregation is observing "Awareness Sunday", a joint initiative of many churches in the English-speaking countries, to remember the victims of violence, the conflicts that underlie it, and to pray for peace and reconciliation.

And so today I'd like to recommend Gordon MacDonald's "Reflections from Ground Zero", a 5-day diary written while he was working as a chaplain at Ground Zero, a week after the terror attacks (September 18-22, 2001). I first read them as forwarded e-mails soon after they were written. They are thoughtful musings on the work of a chaplain, the task of ministering in crisis situations. (If you're not up for reading the whole thing - it's pretty long! - you can find an abridged version here.)

However, I was distressed to see that even the "complete" version has been edited. The following paragraphs have been left out entirely (compare what you find at the bottom of this page to the "Day One" version linked above):

The Salvation Army is the only group that introduces you as a couple. It's never "we're glad to have Gordon MacDonald with us this morning...and Gordon is pastor...., etc." They always say, "We're glad to have Gordon and Gail MacDonald with us; they are pastors of..." The Army, from the very beginning, has respected the notion of women in ministry and leadership and the genius of couples working together as teams on a partnership basis.

So, literally within minutes, I decided that this was not a moment for me to preach but that Gail should join me in dialoguing the thoughts on Elijah's wilderness experience that I'd prepared. I whispered to her that I would "preach" the sermon to her and she should respond with ideas, insights and questions of her own. The result was a presentation that was twice what I could have done alone. She was just terrific. And to think that this was a woman who, twenty-five years ago, would have been terrified of getting up to do a spontaneous talk.

We started by reminding people of the familiar instruction given by flight attendants:"If you have a child with you, put your airbag on first and then do what has to be done to the child." That seemed a useful way to remind these dear folks of the importance of tending after the soul and the body as they help others.

It's particularly distressing to me as a woman training for ministry to find that these words about women in ministry and leadership had been omitted. I haven't yet re-read through the whole journal, so I don't know what else is missing, but I remember how impressed I was, upon my first reading in 2001, by the candor of MacDonald's musings on the strengths and weaknesses of different church traditions - comparing, for example, his own ministry with that of a Roman Catholic nearby. As well, of course, as his observations about the Salvation Army, who were his hosts and indeed his passport into this zone.

Let me close not with distress over omissions, but on the powerful and practical witness of the Salvation Army, with the words of another preacher who visited Ground Zero with them, Philip Yancey:

The Salvation Army has learned to meet needs at the most basic human level. They’ll certainly talk with you and pray with you if you want, and the Salvationists in the shiny red “Chaplain” jackets were in high demand. Mainly, though, they were there to wash out eyes stinging from smoke, and provide Blistex for parched lips, and foot inserts for boots walking across hot metal. They operated hydration stations, and snack canteens. They offered a place to rest, and freshly cooked chicken courtesy of Tyson’s. The day I arrived, they distributed 1500 phone cards for the workers to use in calling home. Every day they served 7500 meals. They offered an oasis of compassion in a wilderness of rubble.

(kind permission for use of this photo granted by the photographer, urban)

eye contact

2011-09-02T12:03:00.000+03:00

photo by Heptagon, used by permission

Something that really sets Godly Play apart from other kinds of storytelling is the lack of eye contact between the teller and listeners. It seems to be one of the most disturbing features of Godly Play. It's certainly one that I have often heard people complain about. And I too find it frustrating sometimes not to be able to "see" how children are reacting to the story. But if I've understood right - that's precisely the point: It's not about where the storyteller's focus isn't, but about where it is.

The storyteller is completely engrossed in the story. And this deep involvement draws the listeners' attention to the same place. There's a lovely photograph of Jerome Berryman telling a parable story to a child. It's copyrighted and so I won't include it here, but please follow this link to the picture.

I don't think anyone could look at that photograph and say, "How weird that Jerome isn't looking at the boy!" It's clear that Jerome and the boy are looking together at a shared story. It looks perfectly natural and right.

If you have time you might click through the complete sequence of five photographs of that telling (at the National Godly Play Conference in Australia, July, 2011). There is one photo illustrating the eye contact that does occur before the parable begins, Even if you don't know what a parable is, the parable is already yours.

And then, I wonder how many sheep there really are? What I love about this photo is how curious Jerome looks. He has handed over control to the boy, and has no idea what answer the boy will come up with.

The third photo we've seen already: When there are places of danger I show them how to go through.

Four: I wonder if you ever had to go through a place of danger?

And finally, a picture of real intimacy and trust. I wonder what caption you would give to this photo.

"we, who are many, are one body in Christ"

2011-08-29T18:30:00.001+03:00

I am back home after spending a week at ministry training summer school. It was a wonderful and exhausting week. And my overwhelming sense at the end of it is that I was not only welcomed into that community, but have already come to belong to it. That, in turn, left me with a feeling of belonging to the Anglican Church more widely, and to the Body of Christ more widely still.

What a pleasure, then, to stop on our journey home for communion at a little Anglican church where a diverse group of people were welcomed.

St. Martin's Church, West Drayton

There were several white-haired ladies already present when we arrived. Gradually elderly men arrived as well. Then two young women with bold platinum highlights in their hair, and a young man with tattoos on his neck and arms - a large rose spreading from his left shoulder up to his left ear, and a row of what looked to be Hebrew letters across the back of his neck. I was so struck by his tattoos that it took a while for me to notice that he was holding an infant in his arms. When I asked, at the peace, he replied that the tattoo said father. All these people were white, but the congregation also included a middle-aged man who looked Chinese, and a young black man.

Like we have at our church, they had a re-usable leaflet containing the order of service. But unlike ours, theirs was season-specific. And, as Vandriver spotted even before I did, the cover was in the color of the season. Inside the front cover was a description of the season. I won't repeat it all, but here is a little of what it said: We need to remember that Ordinary Time does not need to be "ordinary, or plain or dull" and it is not meant to mean that somehow we get a break from the Liturgical Year. The opposite is true: Ordinary Time celebrates the mystery of Christ in all its aspects. Many important liturgical celebrations fall during Ordinary Time, including Trinity, All Saints and Christ the King. ... As we journey through Ordinary Time may there be nothing 'ordinary' about our encounter with our Lord and Saviour.

What I noticed was this information: There is an area in the south side (near the font) that has been set aside for carers and toddlers to use during our services. There are book and quiet toys to keep children occupied. And so there was!

It included crayons and Bible storybooks, as well as other activities, and was within view of the altar and even the organist (depending a little on where you sat). A Sunday School for the over-3s ran from the start of the service, with children re-joining the adult congregation for the entire Liturgy of the Sacrament.

But it wasn't just the provisions for children and the presence of a visibly diverse congregation that showed off the welcoming nature of this church - we were made welcome. We were greeted as we entered the church (by the same woman that I later saw helping an elderly man find his place in a large-print service booklet), and because we had apologized that we might have to leave early because we had a plane to catch, we were amongst the first to be ushered forward for communion!

So it was just a natural extension of the feelings that the week of summer school had left me with - a real sense of belonging to a community within a wider body. For so much of my life, I have interpreted the question How was church? to mean firstly, "How was the sermon?" and then, "What hymns did you sing?" and "Who spoke to you?" Well, yesterday we sang several familiar, beloved hymns and were given a competent, evangelical sermon, but what I took away with me was several images (the children's area; the hanging aumbry with a funny dove above it which looked like an angel from where I was sitting; the secluded, walled churchyard; the tattooed father holding his baby; the stained glass depiction of the crucifixion and ascension which I turned to gaze upon during the Eucharistic Prayer) and above all the sense of belonging.

meeting the Good Shepherd face to face

2011-08-25T19:15:00.002+03:00

Like many bloggers before me, I feel that through blogging I am making new friends, even though I have yet to meet these new friends in RL - real life. One is Leslie, who blogs at Thoughts from the Sheepfold. I keep meaning to add her blog into my list on the right, once I decide how to classify it, since hers is not a blog about Godly Play but Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

CGS is the big sister, or maybe even the mother, of Godly Play. Both programs follow certain Montessori educational principles, both use the notion of sacred space and value silence, and, in the words of the Rev. Joyce Scherer-Hoock, "Both methods strive to provide Christian formation rather than education". Moreover, both place great emphasis on Christ's identification of himself as the Good Shepherd.

Today I read on Leslie's blog that the co-founder of CGS, Sofia Cavalletti, died on Tuesday at the age of 94.

the Magnificat transcribed by Sofia (via cgsusa)

Leslie writes, She was a woman of great strength and intellect, who loved God deeply and cared passionately about the spiritual lives of children.

I join many others in rejoicing at our confidence that Sofia has gone to meet the Good Shepherd face to face and to live in his celestial pasture.

(Leslie's post: With Thanksgiving for Sofia: I just received the announcement below from The National Association of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd ...)

Being Present with the Invisible

2011-08-20T09:00:00.003+03:00

Auguste Deter (first documented case of Alzheimer's Disease).

I'm off to start my ministry training with an orientation and summer school, and so for the second time in a week am linking to others rather than writing up a whole post about our own work. The first link is to a short blog post about Godly Play ministry to Alzheimer's patients. The second is a considerably longer article about the same work.

Ministry to those with Alzheimer’s Disease: My mother has Alzheimer’s. We recently moved her to a nursing home where she could receive the 24-hour-a-day care she needed in order to be safe. So I was particularly interested in a workshop led by The Rev. Lois Howard, Deacon at a recent Christian Education Day in Lexington, Kentucky. Lois has a ministry of presence and relationship with folks who have dementia. And she brings Godly Play to them.

Being Present with the Invisible: Ministry to Alzheimer's Folks Using the Godly Play Model: by Dn. Lois Howard, The Church of the Resurrection, Jessamine County, KY. (You might need to scroll to page 10.)

(If you're brand new to my blog, you might also be interested in this post about an elderly man from two weeks ago.)

welcoming a new children's ministry blog

2011-08-16T18:20:00.003+03:00

I ran across a new blog last week: "Motley Play." (Isn't that a great title?)

German Federal Archive

The author, Cathy, says she wants her blog to be "a place to discuss the pedagogical, wrestle with the theological and decide to act on the illogical". And she's certainly jumped in with both feet, with a post entitled, I wonder ... Is Godly Play Ethical? She sets up a dichotomy: those adults who feel that "raising up children in the way they should go" requires a fairly heavy hand vs. those who are genuinely inspired by the Montessori principles behind Godly Play (and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd), feeling able to trust to that the Holy Spirit will move in the classroom and touch all the children where they need to be met.

Although I felt that she was preaching to the converted in my case, it was a good reminder to me that I need constantly to be letting go in the classroom. I sometimes get disappointed that the children so often choose art materials over the story materials, for example. I mustn't let myself start over-selling the story materials, or trying to coax out the sort of responses that I want or expect. Let it go. Trust.

Welcome, Cathy. I hope you get the kind of dialogue you're seeking!

getting ready for Fall

2011-08-08T11:57:00.000+03:00

(photo by stf)

We were back in Junior Church yesterday for the first time since Pentecost (me) or Trinity Sunday (the children). This was a sort of "taster" before we start up properly in a couple of weeks. I told the Holy Family story and we had an extra-long work session.

Because I'm starting ministry training, I won't be able to continue leading on a weekly basis, and stf will also be unavailable for much of this year. But stf has kindly volunteered to kick off the autumn schedule with a session on the 21st. I've got a Sacred Story curriculum planned for the autumn (including both Godly Play stories and Bible-based children's stories for reading aloud), and I believe that several parents are willing to help out in order to keep Junior Church going. We're still looking for leaders and especially adult helpers to ensure that we can offer sessions every Sunday, but it's looking good!

The children came in as if it has been no time at all since we last met. The room was familiar to them and they fell comfortably into familiar routines, most of them being the way we ( = I ) prefer to do things, and a few being behaviors that I'd like to curb - *wry grin*. We had two new children in the circle, and after the session they told their mother that they'd like to come regularly!

When it was almost time to go home, a grandmother, visiting from abroad, helped me clear up. Her grandson came into the room again as well, and acted as a guide for her. I was amazed and delighted that he identified the Pentecost story (I haven't blogged about this yet, but I felt that my presentation of it was not a success), even using the word Pentecost. He also answered her questions about the Church Clock (It's about telling time. These are all the Sundays, and this is Christmas).

Here's a photo of the two of them looking at the Advent / Christmas materials:

Heavenly Father,

please guide us this Fall.

Provide the leaders and helpers we need.

Reveal yourself to your children, young ones and grown ones.

Help us to recognize the Green Grass and Cool Water that you shepherd us to,

And give us courage and wisdom for the dangerous places.

We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

guest post: One miracle at a time

2011-08-06T21:04:00.001+03:00

Written by Finnglish Mum on 6 August

A few weeks ago I decided to take my 5 year old “Monkey” to our regular Sunday Service. She used to come along with me but since the creation of a regular Junior Church she has only rarely joined me at a “grown-up” service. With Junior Church taking a break over the summer months, this was an ideal opportunity to celebrate our faith together. After the service, I wrote the following as a comment for Storyteller on her blog entry about creating the Circle of the Holy Eucharist cards in June.

I just used these cards with "Monkey" for the first time at today’s service. THANK YOU!

I think this is the first time she has sat through a whole "grown-up" service without insisting on drawing or running around and without getting bored! She sat on my lap for the sermon and listened quietly to that and everything else!

We followed the cards together - sometimes peeping ahead and sometimes waiting for a "surprise". She grinned with glee when she recognised someone in a picture, especially Mummy!

It also helped that she knew both the readers and the interceder so I think paid them more attention than otherwise and, of course, the last time she came to a "grown up" service was before the new format Junior Church... She has obviously learned SO much from regular attendance at a Junior Service (not just an escape from the main service!).

She was the only child there and so was not distracted by anyone else, this probably helped, too ;D

Since writing this, we have been together to two more Sunday Services, both with Grandma, visiting from London. Grandma was reading on one occasion, so Monkey watched out for when Grandma should go up to the front.

She was completely unfazed by Grandma’s involvement in the service; it seemed to her to be completely natural to see a family member standing up to speak.

So, a huge THANK YOU to Storyteller, Vandriver & stf for teaching my Monkey how to behave at church!

drawing by Sannaksenaho Architects,
made available for media use by the art chapel

I wish this newly found responsible behaviour translated to other churches... we visited the Faith, Hope & Love exhibition at St Henry’s Art Chapel last week and I was so upset and embarrassed that Monkey & her little brother, Mouse, ran around the whole time screaming. The chapel should be so serene and beautiful and we were unable to really enjoy that beauty on this occasion. I even tried invoking the influence of Junior Church – “would you behave like this for Storyteller & stf? You know you should walk slowly and quietly in Junior Church and in the Cathedral, so why are you running and shouting in this church?” Unfortunately it had little effect!

Oh well, I can’t really expect miracles.

Finnglish Mum

Godly time

2011-08-03T13:18:00.006+03:00

One of the ideas that Godly Play has opened up for me is that we can be with God in play, and in "just being". I don't suggest that we should dispense with corporate worship, but I have been stretched by notions of wordless prayer, active prayer, and time that I cannot even call prayer but nonetheless seems to be Godly.

Last week a few of us traveled to see an architecturally famous church. A 98-year-old man leant on my arm, and the two of us walked slowly up a side aisle. He began to puff and pant, and so as we entered the chancel I urged him to sit down. We sat together and looked around a little, and then I got up to speak with somebody else. I looked back and was surprised and moved to see the man hunched over his cane, mouthing silent words. I thought, "He's praying!"

We soon left the church and meandered through the grounds before making our way to the parking area. Another able-bodied person helped the man to a bench. When the time came to leave the man had his head back and was gazing at the church tower viewed against a bright blue sky, and at birds circling overhead. I could not bring myself to interrupt him.

Photo by john shortland, used by permission

This is a man who is essentially house-bound, as neither he nor his wife drive any longer. He is not demented, but has so little short-term memory that he cannot really hold a conversation, enjoy reading, or even remember to remove his shoes when he goes to bed. His wife told me that he can no longer cope with church services, even on the rare occasions when younger relatives visit and offer to take them.

Yet there outside the church I had a powerful sense that he was engaged in Godly work: admiring the birds' flight and enjoying the sun. He was engaged. It called to mind the Montessori quote I posted recently - the child who concentrates is immensely happy. And again, I thought of Godly Play - we have all the time we need. Surely there was no rush to take him to the car. The others could wait another few minutes.

Photo by Adam Jones (cropped by Storyteller and used by permission) adamjones.freeservers.com

[The photos I've used here show a different church and a different old man - they are publicly available photographs and I am grateful to the photographers for sharing them.]
[You might like to read another post about all the time we need.]

the materials aren't the key

2011-07-26T06:00:00.000+03:00

We know that not every parish can allocate generous funds for Christian education. We believe Godly Play is worth beginning with the simplest of resources. Without any materials at all, two teachers can make a Godly Play space that greets the children, shares a feast and blesses them goodbye each week. When Jerome Berryman began his teaching, he used shelving made from boards and cinder blocks, and only one presentation material: figures for the parable of the Good Shepherd, cut from construction paper and placed in a shoe box he had spray-painted gold.

The Complete Guide to Godly Play by Jerome W. Berryman

(you might also like to read this post)

one of the more famous Montessori quotes

2011-07-19T07:54:00.000+03:00

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
(Maria Montessori)

public domain image

on affirmation

2011-07-12T08:08:00.002+03:00

It is the responsibility of every adult - parent, teacher, preacher, and professional - to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.

-Marian Wright Edelman
(emphasis added by Storyteller)

(If I have understood right, she has said this at least twice. Once it was every Black adult and every Black child, and once it was generalized to every adult and every child.)

a theme song for Godly Play?

2011-07-06T16:10:00.003+03:00

Hey soul! Is there anybody home?
Hey soul! Can you come out and play?

It's such a fine day. The Lord's come to stay.
He's just come to play, and he's singing his song.

These are lyrics from an album my parents owned when I was little. It has taken me a long time to track it down, for two reasons. The first is that I had remembered it as having been recorded by The Fisherfolk. In fact, it had been recorded by The Keyhole (the group which "morphed into The Fisherfolk" only later).

The other problem is that I had no idea what the name of the album was, although I could vividly remember the photo on the album cover. The two little kids on the cover were the spitting image of my brother, "Tommy," and his friend, "Tammy." (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) So my family never called the album Sweet Jesus. We called it The Tommy and Tammy record.

Well, I've finally tracked it down. You can hear a thirty-second clip of the song, "Hey Soul", or even buy the MP3, here. It captures something of how I felt about Godly Play when I first encountered it (as an adult).

Hey soul, wake up! It's time to come out and play!

on concentration

2011-06-28T06:00:00.001+03:00

The first essential for the child's development is concentration. It lays the whole basis for his character and social behaviour.

The child who concentrates is immensely happy.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, pp. 221, 273

an ending which was also a beginning

2011-06-23T15:41:00.004+03:00

With Pentecost, we reached the end of our Spring Godly Play experiment (which began in February, after a trial run for Advent). I'm happy to report that as far as I can tell nobody wanted it to end!

And it's fun for me to see how acclimated everyone has become. The children spotted new story materials immediately...

... and our pastor had taken on board how keenly the children were following changes of liturgical colors, and so showed off her red stole for them.

See-through faith organized a party/picnic last week, which she reports on in her blog entry, feasting Godly Play style. And I look forward to hearing about what parents and children (and other church members?) do in the coming holiday weeks.

on the child's advantage

2011-06-21T06:37:00.002+03:00

Children lack knowledge about many things. ... Mystery is a close, mostly unthreatening, friend in childhood, and responding with awe or a search for meaning are everyday childhood games.

--Rebecca Nye, Children's Spirituality: What it is and why it matters, p.8

I just want to sit

2011-06-17T06:02:00.002+03:00

Last Sunday after the lesson I asked what three-year-old wanted to do in the Response Time.

I just want to sit and play with my socks.

It took me longer than it probably should have to say, OK!

Over the next six to seven weeks, Vandriver and I will spend a little of our time on work, some on family-time, and some on vacation! So expect posting to be sporadic and short, and the moderation of comments to sometimes take longer than usual. I'll be back with longer posts again in a while. But for now I probably just need to take a page from three-year-old's book, and sit and play with my socks!

Happy Birthday Dear Church...

2011-06-16T19:59:00.001+03:00

I'd guess that it's been over a year, maybe even a year and a half, since I started opening Junior Church with the song, "Thank you, Lord, for this fine day" by Diane Davis Andrew. Every week I ask if anyone is especially thankful for anything, and then we sing thanks, first "for this fine day", then by name for everyone in the room, and then for the special things mentioned. This year during Lent we left out the "Hallelujah" chorus and did not use it again until Easter Sunday.

This routine is clearly important. On Palm Sunday I was worried about time and so skipped the "What are you thankful for" part, intending just to sing "this fine day" and our names. One child interrupted the song in mid-flow to remind me, "You didn't ask what we're thankful for!" At our all-ages session on Easter Sunday we went ahead and sang through the names of every person present, just as we would in Junior Church. Although it took a long time, people seemed to find it welcoming and worthwhile. When we had another all-ages session on Ascension Day, this song went even more smoothly, and I felt we were really rejoicing and worshipping as we sang it.

And yet, when I say that we sing, the honest truth is that at Junior Church it's usually only STF and I that sing. The children either listen, rock back and forth on their mats, or bounce around. Sometimes the bouncing around leaves me really uncertain as to whether they're actually listening or even enjoying the song at all. Nor do they sing along with the "Go now in Peace" song (by Natalie Sleeth) that we use to close the session, although gradually some have started following a few of the hand motions that we use (we don't sign the song as some YCW folk do, but we have a simple gesture for each line).

Last Sunday, as we gathered for the feast, I explained that many people consider Pentecost to be the birthday of the Church. We served out little pieces of cake, each with a birthday candle in it, and (once I had delivered a stern warning about the potential dangers of candles), I went around the circle lighting everyone's candle and singing "Happy Birthday". We had time to sing it all the way through twice, and then we blew out our candles together. What a hit!

I think every child sang along.

Pentecost in Helsinki

2011-06-13T18:09:00.001+03:00

Pentecost, a set by Pikku Arkki on Flickr.

Here's a beautiful and fun set of pictures from the Anglican Chaplaincy's child-friendly Pentecost Eucharist yesterday. These were taken by the talented and super-friendly Sarah.

(This is not "our" service, although we are affiliated with these folk. We had Junior Church yesterday, while Vandriver preached at big church.)

clothed in humility?

2011-06-12T13:57:00.001+03:00

Happy Pentecost!

Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337)

Today, I've dressed for my Junior Church children, wearing an outfit I would never consider wearing to grown-up church. One of our main-stay topics of small talk in Junior Church is what people are wearing. I see you have your rainbow skirt on today! --*I*ve got stripey socks on! --Oh, look. Three people have white on today. --These are my *church* shoes. We've had something of a heat-wave this week, so I'm wearing a red sleeveless top, and a black skort. I'm expecting the skort to be a great topic of conversation with the children, even if I feel it would be too short for big church. (I won't be at big church at all, since the children are dropped off with us before big church begins, and they meet their parents afterwards at coffee.) To be honest, I fear that it's a pretty unflattering outfit, but I think the children will be glad that I'm wearing red for Pentecost, and get a kick out of it.

1 Peter 5:5b

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part three

2011-06-08T11:47:00.004+03:00

As I've said already, I presented this lesson on the fly. The downside to this was leaving out some of Berryman's poetry, which I hope to include next time: [Holy Communion] helps us go where words and thinking alone cannot take us. ... This is a time to lift up our hearts, to give thanks and praise. What is beginning to happen is a great mystery. We remember the Last Supper of Jesus and the Twelve and then gradually we are there and it is here. ... Jesus is with us in the bread and wine and we are all together, all over the world, and with all who have lived and died in this huge family of families called the Church.

But the upside was that it was a very personal lesson, about our congregation.

At the end, I wondered which part was their favorite. The child who answered first was not the one who usually answers first. And she pointed to one of the photographs of her mother.

I still have to work on letting their answers stand for themselves, and not suggesting interpretations, or rephrasing things for them, but I was glad to add or reply this time that one of the nice things about going to adult church would be worshiping together with their families.

I didn't ask any other wondering questions. As I've said elsewhere, we did look briefly at the liturgical colors in the photos, but really, the children's attention had been exhausted. They were somewhat silly in the response time, and I think it was partly the need to relax after such a long and focussed lesson. It's probably a very good thing that our 3-year-old was absent that day!

It's a long lesson, and there are no figures to move around, no sand to smooth out (I didn't even have the recommended green underlay). I really pushed my children to the limits of their attention span. But just as they'd begin to flag, there'd be another photograph featuring one of their parents or something else that would catch their attention again (or I'd sing another one of the responses, for example). Almost as soon as I'd finished, one child had a question. I don't think that's happened before in our classroom.

Before collecting the material, I had held up the table, the wine and the bread from the World Communion lesson to introduce the topic. And then, although I left out a lot of Berryman's phrasings, I did keep his idea of setting the scene with two episodes (much abridged) from the life of Christ - the beginning and end of his ministry: his reading Isaiah's prophecy in the synagogue of his hometown and his Last Supper with his friends. The first illustrates the first half of our service, the Liturgy of the Word, and the second illustrates the Liturgy of the Sacrament. On those cards, I used illustrations I had found on-line. This is what one artist thinks that might have looked like. Our children had not heard the first story before, but had heard the second, and I think enjoyed that feeling of "Oh, yes. I remember this!".

All throughout this lesson I felt that we saw connections and moved back and forth between the unfamiliar and the familiar. The Old Testament reading might be one of our Sacred Stories, like the story of the Ark and the Great Flood, or it might be the words of a prophet. Our choir usually sings the Psalm - look who's singing here in this picture. --It's Pappa!

These were children aged four and five, who don't read yet, and they followed this Enrichment Lesson all the way through. They took it in, asked intelligent questions at the end, and seemed to enjoy it. I was so proud of them, and pleased for our congregation as a whole.

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part two

2011-06-08T10:47:00.003+03:00

This post follows on from yesterday's.

My desire was to create cards which would serve the dual purpose of presenting the Circle of the Holy Eucharist lesson in our classroom and be available for use by our children during adult services when necessary. I loved the idea of featuring photos of our priests and congregation (as done by Christ the King: see yesterday's post). So for over a month now, Vandriver has been snapping photos during our services for me.

Of course, when it came time to make the cards, I discovered that Vandriver had taken many beautiful shots of communion, but only two photos of the congregation singing a hymn, neither of which was ideal. What I needed, though, was only one card for communion, and four or five for hymns! But with some judicious cropping, sorting through photos taken at previous events, even hunting through the Chaplaincy's photographs on Facebook, plus a few "cheats" (such as using the face of someone reading a lesson to illustrate singing instead), I was able to come up with a complete "deck" of cards.

photo by seethroughfaith

At the time I made the cards, I had a vague recollection that Berryman's cards had been orange (all I can think is that that was the color of card that he happened to have on hand that day, and now it has become normative), but it was only upon re-reading the lesson on Monday that I understood that it was to help distinguish the two parts of the service - cards for events during the Liturgy of the Word are orange, cards for the Liturgy of the Sacrament are golden. So I have since gone back and added an orange or yellow stripe to each card. (Although Vandriver points out that these two colors are close enough that some color-blind folk may find them hard to distinguish. It might have been better had Berryman chosen two colors more distinct from each other.)

I used Powerpoint for the cards. For Sunday I just printed Powerpoint "handouts" on good-quality paper. I was in such a rush that they weren't even trimmed symmetrically. Today I'm going to drop off the revised file at the church printing office, and I hope they'll make us nice large (A5?) prints to be laminated for use in church, and slightly smaller ones for use in the classroom. Apart from the size, the cards will be identical.

All cards feature photographs of members of our congregation and/or the priests who serve us. Almost all were taken in the chapel where our adult services are held. A few have smaller photographs of Godly Play materials to emphasize connections - above you see the material for the Trinity on the Creed card, and stones in the desert (a prayer technique we have used) on the Prayers card. The New Testament card shows the German Godly Play picture of Paul writing an epistle (although my children have not had that lesson yet).

Some cards include some of the words that the congregation speaks together: Thanks be to God or Hear our prayer. Some include a question that parents might ask their children, such as What does the priest do while we sing? on the Offertory Hymn card. A very few cards include more text, such as the words we use to close the intercessions on the Prayers card. And a very few include a suggestion, such as You might like to make the sign of the cross, or hold out your hands to "receive" the blessing on the Blessing and Dismissal card.

Within the deck there is at least one photograph of vestments in each liturgical color, which is one of the things we looked at once I had finished presenting. This fit in perfectly for us with the reminder that this week is the last in Eastertide and that we would have a new color next week. I'll tell you a little more about our lesson in my next post.

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part one

2011-06-07T23:18:00.001+03:00

Next Sunday (Pentecost) will be my last Junior Church session until the autumn. It was looking like we wouldn't have any Junior Church at all across the summer (although now Finnglish Mum is trying to organize something), and I was a little worried about our young children moving suddenly from a situation in which they have their own church for an hour and a half each Sunday... to being in grown-up church for the whole time. So I wanted to present them with the Enrichment Lesson called The Circle of the Holy Eucharist.

I've never seen anyone else's cards for this lesson, apart from having once come across a webpage for Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas, who have cards "based on the Godly Play lesson ... for young children to follow the sequence of liturgical actions," which I thought was a lovely idea!

(source - scroll down to find this)

Of course, it took me FAR longer than I had anticipated to create the materials for the lesson. (In fact I've continued to work on them since Sunday and they now look rather different than they did then.) I was right down to the wire having even that earlier version of them ready for Sunday, so I had no time to review Berryman's script for the lesson, let alone rehearse.

But in some ways, that worked well. I presented the lesson much as I imagine Jerome Berryman did when he first created the lesson. I just gently talked through how our services go. I pointed out the things that occurred to me as I went along - such as that Father R usually uses a red Gospel book, but that all Gospels are also found in every Bible, and Lay Reader G reads out of a regular Bible. I sang a few of the key pieces of service music (or at least the opening phrases), to the tunes that we use in our church: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy; Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia (before the Gospel reading); Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might; Jesus Lamb of God, have mercy on us. It was gentle and personal, and still now I have a great feeling about it.

In the next post I want to tell you more about my materials, but for now I'll point you to a photo by seethroughfaith. [I've also written a third post, with more about how the young children coped with the lesson.]

Core vs Enrichment - which are the foundational lessons?

2011-06-06T16:30:00.013+03:00

I don't yet own Volumes 6 or 7 of the Godly Play scripts, containing Enrichment Lessons "for older children". (Most of Volume 8 hasn't even been published yet.) The materials for these enrichment lessons should sit underneath the Core Lessons in the classroom, and should be presented once children have really absorbed the Core Lessons. Since my circle is mostly children aged five and under, and since I'd never been introduced to the Enrichment Lessons by a GP trainer, I started off with the assumption that I would just ignore those for now.

But as Watkins and I discussed in the comments to her post about the Godly Play story of Joseph, an exclusive focus on the Core Lessons in Godly Play means accepting Berryman's determination of which are the foundational stories. If we're under the authority of a Sunday School committee or superintendent, it might be important to accept that determination, but for those who are using Godly Play in the home as Watkins is, or solely responsible for the Sunday School curriculum as I currently am, we carry a responsibility to decide for ourselves what stories our own children need to hear, and when.

Some of you probably feel like jumping in here to remind me that Berryman has been doing this for almost forty years. He has studied pedagogy and theology, and tested his ideas on generations of children. He's a priest, he has a doctorate, and he studied with Sofia Cavalletti. So I would agree that an important part of our decision-making process is to draw upon his knowledge and insights. But we also "follow the child". And we tell the stories of our faith and our own congregations from our own hearts.

Most stories of individuals are Enrichment Lessons rather than Core Lessons: Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Daniel, Jonah (yes - it's in Volume 2 but it's an enrichment lesson), and also the saints, from St. Patrick to Mother Teresa. The idea is that the curriculum is a spiral. Berryman sometimes calls the enrichment lessons "Extension Lessons" (Teaching Godly Play page 126). The stories of individuals follow on from and extend the Core Presentations. The Enrichment Lessons are therefore fitted into the larger context of "The Story of the People of God". The stories in Volume 7 show how the Holy Spirit continues to inspire and lead us as the People of God, the Communion of Saints, post-Pentecost.

"Teresa of Calcutta carrying Pepo, a friendly child with Down's Syndrome" by Aguijarro (by permission)

But Berryman also emphasizes that Godly Play is not a complete children's program (this is repeated in the introduction to every volume of The Complete Guide to Godly Play). Ideally children are also participating in Vacation Bible School, listening to children's sermons at church, reading Children's Bibles at home, and talking to their parents and godparents. So of course stories of individuals in the Bible will have come up in those contexts.

Moreover, Berryman emphasizes how important it is to adapt [at least some of] his materials to our own circumstances. Here's a quote from the lesson on Holy Baptism: Adapt the materials according to the usage of your church. For example, if your church uses a shell for baptism, you can place one on the tray with the other materials. If your tradition baptizes by total immersion, you will need to work out a way to show that, perhaps by using a larger bowl or basin...

And that makes me think that for some of us it is surely appropriate to follow our own intuitions and present the Enrichment Lessons when we feel it is right for our children. But the lessons in Volume 6 haven't been written for young children. As Watkins wrote, they don't interact with the materials playfully. Then again, as I've mentioned already, not all the Enrichment Lessons are in Volumes 6-7. Did you know that even "The Holy Family" is labelled as an Enrichment Lesson? (I confess that I'm not sure why, unless it's because it's often presented not as the main lesson of the day, but as part of the getting ready when we enter a new liturgical season.)

As you might have guessed - I presented an Enrichment Lesson in our classroom yesterday. In my next post I plan to tell you which one that was, and how it went.

not the be-all and end-all

2011-06-04T19:59:00.000+03:00

Sometimes I'm so gung-ho about Godly Play that people might think that I believe it's the be-all and end-all of Christian education for children. This post is to say that that's not the case!

Two days ago I told my godchild the story of Samuel. We weren't in our Godly Play classroom, we weren't in church, we were sitting outside in a quiet moment in between playing at my house.

This was not the Godly Play, Volume 6 -version of the story. That version covers the whole of Samuel's life and more, beginning with the ark being carried to Shiloh and ending with Samuel's death. The Godly Play materials include three coats, each one larger than the previous, marking the passage of time as Hanna visits him each year with a new coat as he grows up. But that version of the story gives relatively little emphasis to the episode in which Samuel hears God's voice in the night and mistakes it for Eli:

...Samuel thought it must be Eli calling, so he went to him. But Eli did not call him, and he told Samuel to go lie down. This happened three times, until Eli realized that God must be calling Samuel...

John Singleton Copley (public domain image)

In contrast, what I told my godchild was only this episode. I started off weak... (This wasn't a rehearsed story, and I almost got entangled in why it was that Samuel lived at the temple).

But soon I found my stride, and I told just the story of the boy Samuel lying in his bed at night, and hearing, Samuel! And then him going to Eli and asking, What? And Eli saying, What what? I didn't say anything. And Samuel going back to bed.

What a great story it is! I confess to hamming it up a bit. The second time Samuel went to Eli, the godchild was giggling. By the third time, Samuel was fed up: WHAT do you WANT!? --I didn't say anything! cried poor Eli, for the third time. I was loud, I was animated, I was making eye-contact with my "audience". And my godchild was laughing with delight.

Happy Ascension Day

2011-06-02T11:02:00.001+03:00

Happy Ascension Day!

Hallelujah! not as orphans

Are we left in sorrow now;

Hallelujah! He is near us

(photo by stf, cropped by me)

We celebrated Ascension Day last Sunday, using the lesson from Young Children and Worship. You can read more about that below.

Welcome to any readers who have followed the link from the Child in the Midst newsletter by Mary Hawes and Going for Growth. It's a real honor to be mentioned. I'm both thrilled and a little nervous, to tell the truth! Mary wrote to me and explained that she'd first found my blog by following a link from Sheila's Explore and Express blog, so thank you to Mary and Sheila, both, for the encouragement.

the wrong kind of seat

2011-06-01T06:00:00.053+03:00

An anecdote: On Sunday I used my learner-Finnish to ask the chapel caretaker for some prayer benches, in case any other adults wanted to use them to come down closer to the children's level.

I wanted something like this:

(the picture source is a page with instructions for making your own)

Instead I got something like this:

photo by Hanna-Maarit (used by permission)

I worked out pretty quickly that I had used the word for "food" instead of the word for "prayer". Looking at the two words now...

"food": ruoka

"prayer": rukous

... I'm sure native speakers of Finnish would say that they're very clearly different, but for a moment there I was really baffled. I'm pretty sure the caretaker was baffled, too! I tried to correct my mistake and only muddied the waters further. Whatever it was she understood the second time, her response was: We don't have any of those.

I said, But they were here on Easter Sunday!

Oh! she said, You mean the prayer benches.

getting ready to come in

2011-05-31T12:57:00.004+03:00

I was chatting with see-through faith yesterday, and she suggested the following check-list for getting ready to enter the worship space:

Do you have to go to the toilet?
Have you washed your hands? (whether or not you've just been to the toilet)
Do you have any gum in your mouth? (please throw it away)

Edited to add: See-through Faith was never trained as a door person; I've tried to avoid even asking her to try to be one. Our original agreement was that she'd be a responsible adult in the room, but otherwise as far as possible just another member of the circle. Yet for some time now she has been organizing the feast and is now beginning to take on responsibilities for helping people cross the threshold. I'd guess this is similar to the way the role of door person must have evolved for Jerome and Thea Berryman!

ascension early

2011-05-31T12:55:00.003+03:00

Sunday the 29th was again a day when Junior Church folk and the Big Church folk (big people, who usually worship in the big church) came together for Family Service. This is usually a communion service led by our (Finnish Lutheran) pastor, in a somewhat more child-friendly space than our "big church" is.

This Sunday, though, I got a phone call about two hours before our service was scheduled to start. The pastor had come down with something, and was too sick to be able to take the service. She asked if I could lead a service and of course I said yes right away.

It took me less than five minutes, bouncing my ideas against Vandriver, to run through my options and reach a decision. It was a given for me that the service would follow a Godly Play structure. And very quickly I/we decided that the lesson should be the Ascension lesson from Young Children and Worship.

Sonja M. Stewart (source)

The relationship between Young Children and Worship and Godly Play is somewhat murky, especially to outsiders. But it would seem that the Ascension lesson was written by Sonja M. Stewart after visiting and working with Jerome W. Berryman (and after reading Sofia Cavalletti).

It's one of my favorite lessons. It is simple, while being both biblical and liturgical. It brings together the story of the Ascension with Berryman's "changing of the light", while also introducing (or reinforcing) the response we often give during the Eucharistic prayer to sum up the Mystery of Faith:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

by Rartat (public domain)

It's what I had been planning for Junior Church the following Sunday, and I already had all the materials I needed for it. Sunday didn't seem too early for Ascension, since we'll be celebrating it with a public holiday on Thursday. And it felt perfect to present the Ascension in the same space that I had presented the Resurrection a month earlier - the beginning and the end of Eastertide.

There was a quick phone call to see-through faith, who volunteered to drop everything and help us set up. She texted back almost immediately to add that she had some food she could bring for our coffee time, and to confirm a few other arrangements. She is a real blessing for practicalities! We packed up the car and drove to collect her, the three of us drove to our usual premises to gather some things from there, and then we all began setting up at our Family Service premises.

I want to also thank our organist, who was gracious about arriving only to have me say that we didn't need any of the music that she had prepared. I regret that I didn't even think to ask what songs she had planned to have us sing together. She took a seat in the circle, quietly preparing for a very different service than she had expected - a model of "getting ready". I wish the children could have seen her!

I did adapt Stewart's lesson in small ways. I didn't use a satin underlay, but a small linen table cloth. I showed the Crucifixion/Resurrection card from the Faces of Easter lesson to emphasize the connection with (and continuation of) the Easter story. I deliberately used the word Eastertide as well as "season of Easter". And I followed Berryman's choice of phrasing, the tomb could not hold him, rather than Stewart's God made him alive again.

(photo by stf, cropped by me)

I felt that it was the grace of God that I was prepared to step in and lead at such short notice. I was near-ready with this lesson already, I had led Godly Play in this space before, I am a relatively confident person when it comes to leading and speaking in public. We only had one child under three this week, and his parents kindly held him close (to his great frustration) while I was working with the candle. See-through faith and Vandriver were so supportive and helpful, and the congregation was flexible about the unexpected change in program. I felt a real sense of joy as we opened the session in song: Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.

taking care with materials

2011-05-26T06:00:00.007+03:00

Last Sunday I told the parable of the Great Pearl. At the end, I asked (this was my first question), I wonder whether the merchant is happy now? All the children leaned forward to look at the face of the picture of the merchant before answering.

Many Godly Play materials are deliberately made without facial expressions. This leaves the expression and emotion to the viewer's imagination. Do you picture Mary as serene or exhausted? Do you picture Joseph as proud or worried? Abraham's face surely looked different when he laughed at God's promise of a son than it did when he invited the three strangers to dinner.

But the Parable materials are different, and usually do show facial expressions. This wondering session warned me that we should be careful with them. We might search for ways to remind children gently that this is just one artist's impression, and that their own ideas are just as valid.

My own parable materials are colored, laminated, cut-out photocopies from Young Children and Worship. I looked up the originals in my book... and found that I'd used the characters the "wrong" way around. The one which Stewart and Berryman label as "Merchant" I used on Sunday as the Seller, and vice versa. I wouldn't have thought it matters much, except that I now see that the one who is supposed to be the Merchant (the one who sells everything to obtain the pearl) has a tiny smile on his face, while the Seller has a neutral expression.

With the way things worked out, I'm glad I used them the other way around. The children looked at a picture of a man with a neutral expression, and then had to decide for themselves whether he was happy or not.

(They all decided that he was.)

about parables

2011-05-25T06:00:00.003+03:00

Storyteller: I noticed that as soon as 4-year-old came into the room, you said, "There's a new parable box!" I wonder how you knew that it was a parable?

4-year-old: Because it's gold.

Storyteller: Why should the gold be a signal that it's a parable?

4-year-old: Because it's from Jesus.

guest post: remembering a parable

2011-05-24T11:54:00.002+03:00

Written by see-through faith on 23 May

Saturday was our wedding anniversary. 23 years.

We woke up together but spent the morning apart. Hubby busy with stuff around the house and I – I cycled over to our all age Godly play morning.

It was fabulous. Storyteller opened up the story of the great family of God in a new and exciting way.

But before that there was a heart stopping moment for me. As part of her introduction to the session storyteller explained to the group that all the stories in the room we had already had this year except for the one we were about to hear that morning. One of the young members of junior church raised their hand and repectfully reminded us that there was one story storyteller hadn’t heard! Because stf (that’s me!) had put in a new parable box the week before.

photo by see-through faith

That was nice.

But then the heart-stopping moment all teachers dread … One of the adults asked. Oh … can you tell us what parable it was?

silence

(I’m sitting there thinking … wrong question … I never gave the parable a name. How awfully embarassing for the child. How awfully embarrasing for me.)

But I was wrong.

The three little children (all 5 and under) looked at where the box was placed and then at me and then with very little prompting they remembered – and started to tell the story to the grown ups.

They remembered the story of the tiny little seed, so tiny if I had it on the end of my finger you wouldn’t be able to see it!

which was planted by a sower

and it grew

and grew

and grew

until it was a huge shrub

as big as a tree

photo by see-through faith (taken from the children's viewpoint)

and the birds of the air

came

and made their nests in it.

Then it was time to quiz the adults as to what parable that actually was. That was the fun part. (grin) You see there is more than one parable about the Kingdom of God which talks about seeds and sowers and birds, but only one in which the birds of the air make their nests.

That parable is – of course!- the parable of the mustard seed.
(You can find it in Matt 13:31-32)

journeying with your partner

2011-05-22T11:18:00.001+03:00

See-through faith just pointed me to this photo she took yesterday at our Godly Play morning, and I had to share it straight-away. This represents Abram and Sarai on their journey towards their new home at the Oaks of Mamre by Hebron. You can see the altars Abram built at Shechem and near Bethel, and off in the distance behind them, the Euphrates River and the city of Haran.

photo by see-through faith

She came to our fellowship morning on her wedding anniversary! Congratulations to see-through faith (who, a little like Rebekah, moved far from where she had grown up to marry her husband) on 23 years with her Love.

Godly Play morning for (almost) all ages

2011-05-21T18:18:00.006+03:00

Thank you, Leslie, for writing words of encouragement after my last post (about plans for today's Godly Play event), and also to my mother, who sent an email saying she was praying for us. My prayer had been that everyone would get something they needed from it.

There were thirteen of us in the circle. We had children aged 3-5, a young teen, a grad student, parents, adults without children, married couples, and at least one pensioner. We were people born in North America, the Middle East, Eastern Asia, Africa, and Europe (including Finland!).

I told the story of "the Great Family" (of Abraham and Sarah), using a desert bag for the first time in our classroom. This prompted at least two people to make plasticine deserts in the Response Time.

Some people responded to the literal distances in the story and the idea of emigration, while others responded more metaphorically, for example to the idea of travelling through the desert without the refreshment and guidance of a river. One person even connected ideas from this story with insights from a recent television documentary about the Second Law of Thermodynamics!

In the picture below, you can see that Abraham's body has been buried under the "sand".

Afterwards, I asked the children what their favorite part of the day had been. One said working with glue. Another said helping with the feast. However, the feast was something of a disappointment to at least one child, because there was no food, only drink (a decision I'd made because lunch was to follow almost immediately). Also, the children found some of the grown-up talk difficult to sit through: notice the two children amusing themselves below by wearing their napkins on their heads:

We ended our session with a very different kind of prayer time than we've had before. I put the desert out again, and handed around a basket of stones and blocks. Everyone took a turn and put one into the sand. If they wanted to, they said a prayer after doing so, either in their heart silently or out loud.

I think this was the most successful prayer time we've ever had in Junior Church / Godly Play: we have one child who is often very awkward about prayer, but who seemed to handle this activity just fine.

When we got home, Vandriver asked me what my favorite part had been. I said, "Entering the room after preparing the drinks for our feast [during the Response Time] and seeing everyone doing their work - whether chatting together over plasticine, making a glitter glue painting, taking a nap, or reading about prayer."

upcoming event

2011-05-19T09:42:00.000+03:00

Here's a copy of an invitation email that went out to our congregation this week:

Dear Church Family,

As many of you know from Sunday announcements this month, you are invited to a fellowship event on Saturday the 21st (morning and lunchtime).

10-12: Godly Play session for everyone ages 3 and up, followed by lunch. Children under 3 and their minders are welcome to fellowship together in the coffee room while the rest of us are doing Godly Play (please bring quiet toys).

You are welcome to come to lunch whether or not you come to the Godly Play session (and vice versa), but we do need to know numbers by Thursday evening, so please reply to this email to say whether you'll be coming to Godly Play, lunch, or both (and let us know if you plan to bring other friends or family members, and whether anyone has any dietary restrictions).

**Please come on time. If you arrive after the story has begun (after the door to the "Sali" is shut), then we ask you not to interrupt the GP session but to join the folks in the coffee room instead.

Some of you got a taste of Godly Play on Easter Sunday. It began as a Montessori approach to children's Christian education, but it is now used for all ages, even in work with the elderly and in prison ministries. It involves exploring Bible stories using your senses as well as your mind. You don't need to pretend to be a child - just relax and be yourself. Some of what we do may seem childish, but each person can experience the event at his or her own developmental level, spiritually as well as physically. I will never ask you to share more than you want to - silence is respected and enjoyed in Godly Play!

Our session will go like this:

- Gathering together

- Sacred Story presentation (an oral narrative, with visual materials to help you focus)

- Wondering together (a time to reflect upon the story with simple, honest discussion)

- Individual responses (including art, prayer, or working with story materials)

- Returning to the circle (time for a little more discussion if desired, and a short time of prayer)

- Blessing song / Dismissal

I've been looking forward to this for weeks - I hope you can come!

love, Storyteller

busy with other things

2011-05-16T13:33:00.004+03:00

Many, many thanks to "see-through faith", who dealt with Junior Church this week while I was busy with a family reunion (four generations, gathered from four countries) and wedding.

And thanks, too, to Sarah Frechette, for capturing some of our family time in photos for us.

not a problem!

2011-05-10T12:04:00.002+03:00

Dear parents,

I'm so grateful for the chance to work with your children every week. They are teaching me how to be with children, how to listen to them, and how to respect their abilities. Godly Play, like old Eli, knows that God speaks to children as well as adults, and believes that we should honor that.

Please don't fret when I write something that might sound a little critical. I'm in a relationship with your children, and we have to learn together how to do Junior Church and Godly Play.

licensed image by Hardeep Singh

I promise that if I really think your child is misbehaving in a way that you should hear about - I will let you know.

Otherwise, I hope I can write here about my minor frustrations, mistakes I make, what seems to work and what doesn't... without making you feel like you need to apologize for them in the comments. I love all your children!

Oh, and please, please don't tell them that you read on my blog that they were naughty!

licensed image by Peter Klashorst

With love from Storyteller @ Easterkind.

sigh

2011-05-09T21:19:00.000+03:00

I did suggest that it would be nice to keep the new clay in separate colors, and to use the already-mixed army green clay if that wasn't important to you...

oh well... ;)

watermarks poll

2011-05-06T20:36:00.003+03:00

This is part of my continuing effort to watermark photos without being too irritating. My goal in this is to allow people to enjoy and even reproduce the photos while keeping it clear where they've come from. So the "man" symbol is supposed to convey that the photos are not copyright in the strictest sense (this symbol is from Creative Commons), and the word Easterkind I hope will lead them back to this blog.

Which watermark do you like best (or hate the least)? Which is the worst? (To see larger versions, click on the photos.) ~~I've set up two polls at the bottom of this blog. And you could also~~ leave a comment if you like...

A.

resurrection

2011-05-02T22:41:00.001+03:00

This week I presented the Faces of Easter VII lesson for a second time, giving the children a chance to bring materials to the story, which we were unable to do on Easter Day.

Story materials brought to the circle: Trinity symbol and Baptism materials, the Presentation in the Temple, Christ candle, Advent materials

Vandriver said to me this morning, I wonder if there's any part of this story that we could leave out, and still have all the story we need? Well, Father Berryman seems to think we can leave out the Resurrection.

He was partly joking, but it was also a comment on my frustration with this lesson. And it was a reminder that I have lots more I want to write about the tensions in wanting to honor Berryman's model, scripts, ethos, etc. while also needing to be true to my own understandings and beliefs. This post will likely only scratch the surface a bit more, but here it is.

The lesson asserts, Jesus had died on the cross, but somehow he was still with them, as he is with us, especially in the bread and the wine. But never does it say, He is risen. Left out of the story are the angels, Mary's encounter with Jesus in the garden, indeed any resurrection appearances at all. (Berryman has now finally released new lessons which may incorporate some of these post-resurrection appearances, "Knowing Jesus in a New Way", but for the time being, apart from part 1, the only way to get these texts is to buy a $200 package from the United States.)

My frustration was compounded by the fact that the picture on the final plaque in the German series I have been testing out, by Juliana Heidenreich, does not show Jesus at all. Instead there is a shaft of light, and a community of Christians sharing bread and wine. But I was not about to present a lesson which included no representation of the risen Christ in word or image, especially not on Easter Sunday!

What I ended up doing visually was faithful to my understanding of Berryman and still something I was comfortable with myself. I used the image of an icon of the Eucharist which includes representations of Jesus, grain and grapes, bread and wine, and a Gospel book or Bible.

I felt that this worked as a representation of the Risen Christ today, who, as we know from the Holy Family story, is no longer bound by space and time. It visually conveys Berryman's emphasis that Christ is present to us today in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. And it is so different from all the other plaques that it emphasizes the line about the fact that the Mystery of Easter changes everything.

As for the words of the story, I added one line of my own to the story of the women finding the empty tomb: Angels explained that Jesus had risen. I added the line Berryman uses in "Knowing Jesus" part 1: The tomb could not hold him, and then my own partial summary of ideas from the "Knowing Jesus" series: Over the next hours, and days, and weeks, Jesus' friends had to learn new ways to recognize Jesus - in the sound of his voice, in the breaking of bread, and in the memory of that empty tomb (which at first had seemed so sad). And these are still ways that we know Jesus today.

Wondering about the Faces of Easter

2011-05-01T21:18:00.002+03:00

Images by St. Michael's Workshop (UK)

Storyteller: I wonder which part of this story you think is the most important.

4.5-year-old: This (pointing to the Resurrection plaque).

13-year-old: I think the first one [the birth of Jesus].

3-year-old (jubilantly): I like ALL OF THEM!

4.5-year-old (quietly): Even the upside-down one?

Storyteller turns over the Resurrection plaque to reveal the Crucifixion plaque.

13-year-old: That's important because Jesus died for our sins.

Storyteller: But that's not what 4-year-old asked. 4-year-old asked if we like that part. Isn't it interesting that there might be a part that we think is very important and yet we don't like it.

please bear with me...

2011-05-01T21:16:00.000+03:00

Ever since I started the blog I've been wondering about watermarking photos. I've recently figured out how to do it with the software I have, as I'm sure you've noticed. I am experimenting with different effects - larger/smaller, more and less transparent, different colors...

Please let me know if there's an effect that you find too jarring or irritating. My goal is not to ruin the photos but just to attribute them. Once I settle on something that works, I'll try to go back and replace some of the less successful efforts.

On a related topic, I've begun to regret choosing the user-name "Storyteller". It'd surely be hopeless to try to search for my blog if that's all you remembered about me. Any thoughts on whether I should change my "name" (probably to Easterkind)?

(Rowan) on discovering God

2011-04-26T23:20:00.004+03:00

Seethroughfaith linked on Facebook to this article from the Telegraph, and I do think it's lovely: A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God. And the Archbishop of Canterbury answers.

photo by Brian (licensed image)

Nobody invented me [ = God ] – but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadn’t expected.

I think it sounds very Godly Play!

[Update: the original article, including scans of the letters, can be read here.]

Faces of Easter (Easter Day)

2011-04-25T23:10:00.001+03:00

For our congregation, the last Sunday of the month is "family service" - a communion service abridged for children, with a sermon aimed especially at them (or sometimes a craft in place of a sermon). The goal is that the whole congregation (not just young families) should attend. This year, Easter fell on the last Sunday of the month, and the pastor asked if I'd like to present the sermon to keep continuity with what we'd been doing in Junior Church. Another congregant then suggested I should organize the whole service as a Godly Play session. And that's what I did.

ready to begin (with the Lenten purple under the Holy Family)

I was really grateful to our pastor for being so flexible about this. Not least for carrying on with aplomb when one child finally decided he was ready to examine the Holy Family figures... in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer! Given that I'd placed all our focal shelf materials on the altar, you can see how some priests might have found this unnerving.

at the end of the service (Easter white)

For Finnish Lutherans, just as important as the liturgical color is the number of candles to be placed on the altar. Easter is a six-candle festival, so I needed to negotiate with the vaktmästare [caretaker] to make sure that those candles looked clearly different from the Christ Candle. I think the result was clear: six candles for Easter plus the Christ Candle for Godly Play.

thank you, Pastor, for this photo

Some things didn't work so well. Seethroughfaith warned me near the beginning that I needed to speak up, but as soon as I began to tell the story I forgot. (After all, my focus was on the materials, not on my audience!) Some of the time I was "competing" with a baby who was at that squeal-y stage of exploring its voice, as well as two tots who just could not stay still and quiet. Perhaps I should have asked if I could have a lapel microphone.

And I regret not cutting the summary of the earlier plaques right down to First we heard about how Jesus was born, and a story from when he was a boy, and then about when he was baptized... Since there were a number of children there completely new to this lesson, I gave slightly longer summaries, and walked around the circle showing everyone the plaques (mine are only 4x6 inches / 10x15 cm). But with Vandriver interpreting into Finnish for me, this meant that this already rather long story became twice as long. Too long.

Yet even those whose focus had been lost were startled back to attention when I suddenly cried out that the story shouldn't stay in a line and re-arranged it, and there was good response at the wondering. Then I handed out Easter cards, blank on the inside, and asked everyone to decide what it was important for them to do - draw a picture inside, write a poem, make it a card for someone else or a card for themselves... And folks of all ages really seemed to enjoy that.

thanks, seethroughfaith, for the Response Time photos

the apron of humility

2011-04-21T22:32:00.002+03:00

Put on the apron of humility

Serve your brother: wash his feet

That he may walk in the way of the Lord

Refreshed.

("Footwashing Song" by The Keyhole)

The sermon at our Maundy Thursday service this evening was about finding new meanings in familiar traditions, adapting old rites to new situations (as Jesus did with the Passover meal at the Last Supper). The priest urged us to approach this evening's familiar events (ceremonial foot-washing, communion and vigil) with a willingness to do so in new ways, open to new insights.

I was surprised but pleased to find myself spending the time after communion entertaining the one member of the congregation who was under the age of 30 (she happened to be sitting in the same row as me). I showed her how to sit on a kneeler while we sang the final hymn. She showed me her picture book while the priest read us Psalm 22. I whispered the names of things she pointed to (I hope that only she could hear me) while the priest read the story of the disciples falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.

I'm sure that this was not the sort of thing that this priest had envisaged when he wrote his sermon! But it was a confirmation to me that my calling at church, at least for this season, is to interact with children.

wordless Wednesday

2011-04-20T16:38:00.002+03:00

(thanks, seethroughfaith, for all these photos!)

telling children about the crucifixion

2011-04-18T10:31:00.002+03:00

Leslie, at Thoughts from the Sheepfold, recently reposted a very helpful article by Dr. Elizabeth L. Windsor about children and the events of Holy Week. I highly recommend clicking either of those links to read the whole post, but I've summarized her points here.

Don't diminish the Easter story by skipping the crucifixion. It's better to acknowledge that bad things happen and that God is more powerful than evil.
Don't dwell on the gore, but do acknowledge the pain. Try to avoid letting sensitive or visually-oriented children see disturbing images, but answer their questions briefly and honestly. Yes, crucifixion hurt. No, Jesus didn't die alone. His mother and his best friend were there with him (John 19:26).
Do always follow references to the crucifixion with the joy of the resurrection. One way that Godly Play does this is quoted in my blog header: He died on the cross. That is very sad, but it is also wonderful, in an Easter kind of way. Now... he is everywhere, and in every time.

Johann Melchior Gutwein 1726 (public domain image)

Palm Sunday 2011

2011-04-17T20:41:00.000+03:00

Today we were back in our old venue, just for a day. We pushed back the cafe tables, something I'd never really had the guts to do before, and I brought a blanket so we could sit on the floor. (Fortunately it has warmed up a lot recently, and the floor was not too cold.) We had a fairly minimalist set-up: the focal shelf plus one story: "Jesus the King" from Young Children and Worship.

I also had a more compact art supply center than usual: paper, clay (plus tools), colored pencils, and crayons:

But in other ways today was far from minimalist. The service began outside with adults and children together for the Liturgy of the Palms and a procession - led by our 13-year-old member carrying the processional cross!

Moreover, for the first time ever we tried Junior Church bilingually today. Two pastors (both of whom had studied translation as well as theology) helped me translate the YCW story from English to Finnish. I told the English story by heart, and after every paragraph or so I read the corresponding Finnish text from paper. One Mom came to interpret some of my introductory explanations about how Junior Church and our classroom work, and seethroughfaith interpreted a lot of my other instructions, as well as looking after the younger of the two non-English speaking children when she began to need more help figuring out what to do next during the Response Time. Thank you to everyone who helped to make today work out as well as it did!

He laittoivat vaatteitaan ja palmunoksia tielle,

jotta Jeesuksen olisi hyvä kulkea, ja huusivat:

”Hoosianna korkeuksissa!

Siunattu olkoon hän, joka tulee Herran nimessä!”

"Hosanna in the highest!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

lost and found

2011-04-17T12:29:00.002+03:00

Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost!

(Luke 15:6)

(It was hiding in a cannister of colored pencils)

photo by seethroughfaith

Wonderful in an Easter kind of way

Lenten link-up update

making do - desert sand

Lenten link party

another two-minute video lesson

enter the story and hear the song

de-briefing

"I wonder about that, too"

Sharing Lent and Easter with Your Children

setting up a Godly Play room - link

in the chapel

Candlemas - links

the one who was, and is, the light

different understanding

Remarks about scribbles

very much the 'present'

Name this child

a small milestone

How can we Remember?

"She rode and she walked"

5 children, 5 candles

materials - familiar and unfamiliar

Merry Christmas

Advent art - initial reflections

advent art, part 4

advent art, part 3

advent art, part 2

advent art, part 1

topical response work

it never rains but it pours

Oh yes I know

Our Second Second Advent

and yet another blogger!

Hopeful Advent

another new Godly Play blogger

looking ahead to Advent

circle-calendar of the church year

my world communion materials

"unwanted"

learning liturgy

children and chat

the parts we don't like

genius? stupid?

risk assessment (lighthearted)

What do you mean, "*in* the story"?

a group bulletin board?

off-topic: 9/11

eye contact

"we, who are many, are one body in Christ"

meeting the Good Shepherd face to face

Being Present with the Invisible

welcoming a new children's ministry blog

getting ready for Fall

guest post: One miracle at a time

Godly time

the materials aren't the key

one of the more famous Montessori quotes

on affirmation

a theme song for Godly Play?

on concentration

an ending which was also a beginning

on the child's advantage

I just want to sit

Happy Birthday Dear Church...

Pentecost in Helsinki

clothed in humility?

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part three

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part two

Circle of the Holy Eucharist - part one

Core vs Enrichment - which are the foundational lessons?

not the be-all and end-all

Happy Ascension Day

the wrong kind of seat

getting ready to come in

ascension early

taking care with materials

about parables

guest post: remembering a parable

journeying with your partner

Godly Play morning for (almost) all ages

What do you mean, "in the story"?

sigh