Second Advent

We had a Service of the Word yesterday (no Holy Communion), and the whole congregation got a "sermon" suitable for children. I laid the altar to look similar to a focal shelf. (The underlay is in fact a chalice veil!)

And I told the first two sections of the Godly Play Advent lesson. I encouraged everyone to move closer to the front for this, and almost everyone did. Only one adult chose to sit on the floor, though. 

All our (Finnish Lutheran) lectionary readings had themes of Waiting &/or Getting Ready, so we wanted this lesson to lead into a meditative time of singing the Taizé chant, "Wait for the Lord". For that reason, I swapped the order of the script a little, talking about the need to get ready for the Mystery of Christmas after I had presented the two plaques. 

It took three tries to "change the light" of the second candle. This child found it hard to WAIT long enough for the flame to die beneath the snuffer. 

(Many thanks to his mother, for taking most of these photographs!)

I've added some old Christmas cards to the art supplies we have on hand. (Several of them were donated to our cause by congregants last winter!) 

"She rode and she walked"

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")

Our Second Second Advent

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.

Advent - my story materials

[I've travelled back in time, to tell about our first Godly Play sessions, last December, in my own house.]

I was only going to write those first two posts today,

but then I realized they're hard to interpret if you don't know anything about how Advent is observed in Godly Play.

Here are my Advent materials (apologies for the rushed photo - no, candles should never be used on a couch!). The wooden boards and all the wooden cut-outs on them were made by Johanna Kaarto-Wallin, and stained / painted by me at the Godly Play European Conference last spring. While at that conference, I saw some German materials with the plaques not painted or stained, but covered with felt - an idea which I copied. (This very rosy purple was the only purple felt available when I needed it.)
(Update: for more about my Advent materials, read this post.)

On the first week, we remember the prophets, who pointed the way to Bethlehem, and we light the first advent candle. On the second week, we remember Joseph, Mary, and the donkey, on their way to Bethlehem. We put the figures from a nativity set right onto the plaque (or the felt underlay, depending on the size of the figures), and we light the second advent candle. And on the third week (with figurines again if possible), we remember the shepherds, the sheep, and the angels, singing a song of joy, which is why the third candle is a joyous pink.

Advent - at my house

We had no Junior Church today, because on the last Sunday of each month we gather together, all ages, for a child-friendly service.

This gives me a chance to go back in time and write about December, when this Godly Play project really began to get off the ground. Our normal Junior Church meeting place was taken up with Christmas activities, and we had nowhere to meet. It was suggested that maybe we could meet in the sacristy (where the priests get ready for services), or possibly in a side chapel, but with a busy schedule of Christmas concerts and carol services I was worried that we would be in the way and get distracted. But what other solution was there, except to cancel Junior Church altogether during Advent?

Why, Junior Church at my house!

The first week I kept it to a single family - two children. They walked in and made straight for the shelf of materials, touching them gently, with interest and delight. I told the stories for the first two weeks of Advent (the first Sunday in December was already the second Sunday of Advent), and they were rapt with attention. They wanted the third plaque already, but I said, No, not until next Sunday. 

I had laid out some art materials next to the kitchen table: crayons, colored pencils, and clay. Clay! CLAY! We had never had clay before at Junior Church. That was what both of them wanted to do in their work time. And then we had our first feast. I was delighted by how easy it was to get them to stop working with the clay and clean up when they knew a feast was coming. After the feast I thanked each of them for coming and said that Junior Church was over, and they could play freely until their parents came to collect them. But the wonderful mood of Godly Play lasted right through.