making do: the focal shelf

Recently I had the opportunity of presenting a Godly Play taster session to some of the children's workers at my English churches. Another local storyteller kindly loaned me materials for several stories so that I could furnish our space, surrounding the circle with lessons as we normally do in a Godly Play classroom. Understandably though, the local storyteller couldn't loan me the "top shelf" focal shelf materials since those were essential to their own classroom.

Most of my own Godly Play materials are in storage back in Finland. I was able to borrow the Circle of the Church Year materials (the "church clock") and Baptism materials (minus the Trinity symbols). So here's how I "made do":

This photo was taken before I had quite finished -
I did put the blocks into the clock correctly before we started!

The focal shelf, as its name suggests, provides a focus for the room. It is the most important shelf, and it locates Christ as having central importance. We have the Holy Family in the middle, which tells both that Jesus came among us at a particular point in history, and also that he is now everywhere, taking the whole world into his embrace. I represented this with my Risen Christ cross and a little Christmas ornament showing Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus.

(Of course the true Holy Family materials also tell of a family made up not just by blood but intentionally, incorporating the lowly (shepherds) and outsiders (the Magi, who were not Jewish). But I had to make do with what I had, and since I was not telling that story this time, I felt that what I had was good enough.)

On each side of the Holy Family we have a reminder of one of the names Christ gave himself, one of the metaphors he used. To the left we have "the Light of the World", the Christ candle. This was relatively easy to provide; we already had a white pillar candle and base at home. Below it are the (borrowed) liturgical materials about the sacrament of baptism, which pick up the theme by talking about us receiving the light of Christ.

To the right we have "the Good Shepherd", and below that the liturgical materials about Holy Communion, when we gather around the table to recall his words ("This is my body...") and to meet him in the bread and wine. I didn't have the World Communion materials, not even the Good Shepherd, but I had a Central American cross depicting Jesus as the Good Shepherd. At the beginning of my session I introduced people to the space a little, drawing their attention to different things, and I asked them to imagine Communion materials below the Good Shepherd image.

I used the furniture I found in the space I had; the focal shelf was made of a piano bench! The bench was high enough that I felt I needed to stand the crosses up somehow, so I made use of two brass flower vases that were already in the space. I covered this shelf/bench with a white cloth (a damask cloth napkin) since we were just at the end of Eastertide. (Usually there is a cloth, in the appropriate liturgical color of the season, beneath the Holy Family but not covering the whole shelf.) Below this are the liturgical materials for the Circle of the Church Year.

If you don't have easy and regular access to Berryman's books, the UK Godly Play site has really helpful resources about how to furnish a Godly Play space. (Even if you do have Berryman's books, you might find these resources a useful supplement.) In thinking about what to do for a focal shelf, I drew on my memories of the document, "Designing and building a Godly Play room", which can be found on the same UK Godly Play page. [[Since writing this post, I've also remembered this post about the Focal Shelf on the Three Great Days blog.]]

Just as a point of comparison, the very first focal shelf I ever created had a Christ candle and a tiny Holy Family. I regret, though, that I had no Good Shepherd at all. The shelf was spread with a cloth of the right color, and although I had no church clock I did have the other three liturgically-colored underlays laid out at the base of my shelf. I placed Advent materials on the left, spatially liked with the Christ candle, and Lenten materials on the right. (Endings that are also beginnings, circles and cycles link World Communion with the Circle of the Holy Eucharist, the Faces of Easter, and indeed the Circle of the Church Year. So in a classroom they are typically linked spatially as well.) Our space was tiny. I had so few materials that I didn't surround our circle with the lesson materials, but kept Noah's ark and our one parable box in this same set of shelves.

Is your focal shelf as you would like it to be? In what ways have you been able to "make do"?

Faces of Easter (Easter Day)

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

change of venue

I had it written in my diary, I'd been reminded, and I'd reminded myself. Nonetheless I managed to completely forget, until Vandriver drove me up to the door of our building, that we had to use a different room for junior church today.

(I've obscured the faces a little)

I was really flustered by the change, by having forgotten, by feeling that the first thing I needed to do was construct big signs directing people from the entrance we usually use to another (unfamiliar) one, by needing to think very very quickly about how to adapt a completely new room to our needs. I was even more embarrassed because seethroughfaith was not with us today, and I was rushing around in front of a new helper who'd never worked with me before. When I went to set up the sheepfold on the focal shelf I realized that one sheep was missing. I don't know where it is, even now. I told the children we'd be reminded of the story, how the Good Shepherd will realize one is missing and have to go off looking for it. But worse, I don't know quite what I did wrong, but somehow as I opened one small box, everything in it spilled out and fell to the floor, including the Holy Family. A chip broke away from the Christ Child, and the father Joseph's head came clean off!

focal shelf with damage and loss

So those were the major low points. There was also a distinct lack of confidence in singing our new "Amen" song (seethroughfaith is often disparaging about her singing abilities, but today we really felt how much she had supported us last time!), and a fidgety-ness after our feast that grew to the point where I gave up on having a prayer time and instead we all played a few rounds of "pass the slipper". I'm sure there's a proper party game called "Pass the Slipper", but this was just a silliness borne of the fact that two children slipped their slippers off and started goofing around a little, and so I grabbed one and started handing it round our circle. We all began to giggle and sent the slippers around and around. Not exactly a sanitary activity for those of us about to receive communion! Our poor pastor - she had made a real effort to arrive in good time only to find that I greeted her with such relief that she thought I was complaining about her tardiness. No. She was in good time. It was just a rough week for us.

But there were a bunch of good moments, too. Perhaps the most unexpected was at the very end, just as we were preparing for communion and blessings. I lit the Christ candle, repeating the words I always use (from the baptism lesson): Once there was someone who said such wonderful things... and He said, 'I am the Light'. The five-year-old girl leaned in and said to me earnestly, My mummy has a necklace, 'The Light of the World'. 

William Holman Hunt (1854)

I meant to ask her mother about it afterwards - is it a reproduction of this painting, perhaps? But I forgot to ask and so I still do not know. Yet it was an encouragement to hear that connection, especially after all the silliness with slippers!

Boxing Day

[This is the last in a series of posts about our first Godly Play sessions, last December, in my own house.]

Christmas Day last year fell on a Saturday, and our pastor chose to have a service on Christmas Day rather than on Boxing Day. So on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I had asked Vandriver to make an announcement at church inviting folks to join us at our house on the following Sunday, Boxing Day, where we had Junior Church for all ages.

By this time, the child owner of our alternative nativity set had been given additional figures, including a shepherd, two sheep, and three wise men. 

photo from my friend, stf

It was interesting to watch the interaction of adults (who felt obliged to keep their children in line) and children (who knew the rules and customs of Junior Church). The children started right away to replace my nativity set with theirs.
The parents said, No no. Leave it alone. 

I said, The children are right - that is how we begin.
I made my own blunder, however, when one child pulled out another wooden toy. I acknowledged what it was, but said, too quickly and dismissively, but that doesn't belong here. The child was very upset, and later the mother explained that they had created a little story at home about why that extra toy was in Bethlehem. I still don't think I'd have wanted that toy on the focal shelf, but I do have to learn to be more willing to interrupt myself to listen properly to what the children have to say. 

I presented the Advent IV lesson, with the addition of a feature from the "Children's Liturgy for Christmas Eve", which was to ask everyone to sing the first verse of an appropriately themed Christmas carol while I fetched the figures and lit each candle. In this lesson, I "revealed" what the children had already discovered for themselves, that the fifth section of the underlay is white instead of purple. I had no time to ask what was missing (as recommended in the script), before one child scrambled right down off the parent's lap to fetch the Christ candle for me! 

We went straight from the lesson into something in between a Godly Play feast and a post-church coffee time, where again there was a mismatch between adults' and children's expectations - one child carefully opened napkins into Godly Play "tables" on the floor in front of each person, which didn't work at all since most of the adults were sitting on chairs! 

I was also a little sorry to find out later that although I announced that people should feel free to ask to sing more carols or to work with materials during the coffee time, one adult told me later that is was too hard to do so. One child happily got some plasticine out, but the adult felt compelled to sit and sip a hot drink and chat with the other adults. I suppose one contributing factor is that my living room is so small - there was not really enough room to create an individual space to work in. 

My biggest regret about the evening (despite the lack of space!) was in not extending the invitation further. We got a phone call from one couple who had missed the announcement about there not being church, asking why nobody was at the church building. They didn't feel up to coming to our house at that point, but just went home again, disappointed. But for those of us who did come together, it was a warm and festive evening.

photo by stf :)

Advent - the fifth candle

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

During free time at the end of our third session (the fourth week of Advent), the second child started off  sitting on the couch with me, listening to Bible storybooks read aloud as we had done the previous week, but then chose to work with our Lent materials ("Jesus the King" from YCW). Since it had been months since we'd used them, I sat with the child to reiterate the basic plot - placing cloaks and leaves on the road to make it ready for Jesus going to Jerusalem. Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

There's a nice parallel between the Advent materials and Lent materials, in that both include an underlay which has to be rolled up when the story is put away. This child is the youngest of the three, and kept scrunching the material with tight fists - it was hard work for me to let the child do it!

Much later, I remembered that in my own training the teacher had looked mischievously at us while flicking the roll of underlay with a single finger. Aha! She was being playful, but I suspect also demonstrating that rolling and unrolling could be done with a delicate touch.

Meanwhile, the first child unrolled the Advent underlay, and placed all the plaques on it (including the fifth, white, Christmas plaque, which I had not introduced yet). This week, the child also got all the candles out, and carefully examined each candle to make sure that they were put out in the correct order. Then, just as Berryman predicts, The children will probably discover quickly that the white card needs a candle, too. The child called over to me that we needed another candle. I said, Hmmm. I wonder where in this room we could find a white candle? The child walked over to the Christ candle and, eyebrows raised, checked with me whether this could be the right answer. That's right. The Christ candle! and the child carried it across to place it on the Christmas space. 

Candlemas

Yesterday was our first official Godly Play Junior Church, in new premises (although not the room we will usually use, as that had already been booked by someone else), and with a new extra-long time slot (parents drop off their children before the adult church service starts, and we do not join them again until their coffee time afterwards). Also new: the celebrant joins us as soon as the adult service is over, to administer communion or blessings to everyone at junior church. Wonderful!

Our congregation is served by both Anglican and Lutheran clergy, following the Porvoo Agreement. The Anglicans celebrated Candlemas the Sunday before, but the Lutherans have it on the Sunday after, and both last week and this week the adults were following the Lutheran lectionary. So yesterday I began by putting all of our candles (including a brand new Christ candle) in the middle of our circle and praying for God's blessing on them and on us as we use them. Our lesson was the Baptism lesson. During the feast, I also told a short story of Christ's presentation in the Temple.

I made a control card, with the reference to the story in Luke on the back, and a series of small photographs on the front:

the Christ Child (who was not baptized as a baby...)

his mother Mary, who stayed at home with the baby Jesus for 40 days after he was born

his father Joseph, who, with Mary, took him to the Temple, to dedicate him to the Lord

the prophet Anna, who recognized Jesus as the child who would change everything

Simeon... who prayed a poem which we still sing at Evensong today 

Simeon's poem said that Jesus would be a light, not just for those who knew they were the People of God, but for everyone. And that's why we bless candles on Candlemas.