Conference Day 3 - Reminded of Playfulness

This morning started out with a Godly Play story. We had a choice of seven circles to join, each telling a Parable, but in six different languages. I went to hear the Parable of the Great Pearl told in Spanish.

I know that our storytelling can (and indeed should) be rather playful, but that does not always come naturally to me. It is certainly helpful to see how others do it. I remember in training watching Rebecca Nye as she put materials away, playfully flicking a rolled-up underlay back and forth a bit, unrolling and re-rolling it a bit. It was playful but also emphasised that we should roll those underlays back up as we put them away.

This morning, I watched David Pritchard playfully act out how heavy the merchant's bags of money were, and mop his own brow as he "struggled" to carry all the possessions across to pay for the pearl. 

During our Response Time, therefore, I felt encouraged to be a little playful with the figures on the focal shelf, and brought the shepherd and sheep from the Holy Family across to interact with the Good Shepherd and his sheep:

Godly Play in a home

We made a brief visit back to Finland during the summer. Sadly, our pastor has been unable to continue offering weekly services, so our congregation now meets only twice a month. The Sunday we were there was one of the Sundays when there was no service. So I organised a sort of "house church" Godly Play session with one of the families whose children used to come to Junior Church.

I made a focal shelf in their living room. 

Ahead of time, I had asked the children each to request a set of story materials they'd like me to bring. I used these, as well as some of the family's own possessions (like a storybook about Jonah), to surround us with stories the way a Godly Play classroom does.

I presented the Circle of the Church Year and we had crayons to use during Response Time. During our feast we listened to the passage from Ecclesiastes about there being a right time for everything, and we had a short time of prayer. I asked the parents what hymns they would like us to sing together, and we used those to open and close our service.

The children had lost some of their sense of how we used to do things, and found it a little difficult to settle down in the space they usually use for play and watching tv, but one thing I really notice from the photos is the way the children moved closer and closer to the story materials as I presented the lesson. They were literally drawn in!

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!

help, encouragement, and support

[written on 8 March; scheduled for automatic posting on 13 March]

Today, Lord willing, my usual helper, see-through faith, will have taken over as leader. Last week stf was away, and a kind school teacher joined the circle to be the second responsible adult in the room. This week a gentle and godly mother will be the second responsible adult. 

This seems like a good time to thank all these people, as well as Vandriver, our pastor, and the parents of our children, for all their support. 

I especially want to thank stf, who is a never-ending source of encouragement. We debrief together every week, talking through what went well and what didn't, never in a harsh way but just seeking to acknowledge where there is room for improvement. She models appropriate behavior and creative choices during the response time - daring to work with story materials when most of the children choose art work. I notice the children glancing over from time to time, interested to see what stf is up to. 

This week stf plans to tell a brief version of the story of the Holy Family and to change the cloth on the focal shelf from green to purple. Then she will read a Bible storybook to the children, implicitly reminding them of the basket of storybooks in our classroom, available to anyone during Response Time, and introducing them to the Gospel story of the miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11).

spot the differences

Here is what our focal shelf looked like a month ago:

Here's what it looked like today:

One difference is that for the February picture I remembered to kneel down so that the photo was taken from a child's perspective, whereas the March photo is my perspective. 

Several things have found their way into new or different baskets, but that's not important. What I really want you to notice is the new materials that have been added. The Good Shepherd and World Communion materials were new last time (two weeks ago). Do you see what was new today? Do you know what it is? I plan to tell you this week!

Advent - the focal shelf

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

On the second Sunday in December, the third Sunday of Advent, the two children returned. It was a little difficult to get them settled down before the story, but as soon as it began, it captured their attention beautifully. I had asked them to bring their own nativity set, since mine has no sheep or shepherds. (Theirs had none either, but I knew it had an angel, which commemorates the same event.)

So the first thing we did was to carefully move my nativity set to its stable on another table, and set theirs up on the focal shelf. This time, when I said that Junior Church was over and they could play freely, I was fully prepared to bring out toy trains or legos... but the first child asked very tentatively to play with the Advent materials. Of course! I replied, thrilled.

Then the other child wanted to do the same. Well, you'll have to ask N. If N wants to work alone then you'll have to do something else. The reply from the first child was so quiet we could hardly hear it, Want to work alone. With no fuss, the second child and I curled up on the couch together to read Bible storybooks instead. Out of the corner of my eye while reading the books aloud, I could see the first child carefully unroll the underlay, and place all the plaques in the right places.

That's the end of that week's story, but for the Godly Play die-hards, I thought I'd add a picture of our focal shelf. Everything on it, apart from the Christ candle, had been used before in Junior Church. (Well, the Advent materials and Holy Family had been new the previous week.) On the floor are table cloths for the other seasons. On the bottom shelf: a few storybooks (which we had read in previous months), materials for the story of the flood, and the gold box containing the parable of the Good Shepherd. The top left shelf held the Advent materials, and the top right the Lent or Palm Sunday story from Young Children and Worship, "Jesus the King". [It only occurred to me in January that it would have made better sense to place the Holy Family in the center, as they are on most focal shelves, and put the risen Christ cross above the Lent materials.]

Our new room, part 2

One feature of Godly Play (in an ideal set-up) is that the participants are surrounded by the stories and language of the church. All materials have a place, so that children can find them easily and so that they know how to put them away. The placement also signals some of the relationships between stories - all parables are stored together, for example.

We have four low benches at our disposal in the room we use. All four are dragged into a large square, to define our circle space. One I have designated as the "getting ready" bench, in the absence of an official door person. If children need a space in which to take extra time to get ready, there it will be. (So far, it hasn't been tested. We haven't needed it or even talked about it.)

The other three benches are used as shelving for lesson materials.

The focal shelf: Although really a circle has no sides, there is still a sense that this is the front of the circle. Here we have the holy family and the risen Christ (you can see a close-up on the "About Godly Play" tab), center stage. To the left is the Christ candle, and underneath it are the materials for the baptism lesson. There is a glaring empty space on the right, which will be filled soon.

On one side of the circle is the parable shelf: So far we have only one parable box, but I have most of the materials almost ready for another one, which will come eventually. At the end closest to the front are the Palm Sunday materials, which we worked with a lot during Lent last year. (This is the "Jesus the King" story, from Young Children and Worship.)

And on the other side of the circle is the sacred story shelf: Here again, there's only one story so far ("The Great Flood", with an ark and two baskets of figures). And mirroring the Lenten materials on the other side of the room, the Advent materials are at the end of the bench closest to the focal shelf.

Then there is a Bible stand (with a basket of Bible storybooks below it), our art materials, cleanup supplies, and a 'prayer and peace' basket.

a Frälsarkransen (Lutheran prayer bracelet), a holding cross, and a peace flower

I think that last basket is the only thing in the room that none of the children have been introduced to. It is just there waiting until it is needed, or wanted, or until somebody "discovers" it and asks about it.