Wondering about Advent

Tomorrow is Advent Sunday! I commissioned this stole from Paula-Marie at Bespoke Stoles. Isn't it lovely?

This year I have the opportunity to tell Godly Play® reflective stories at a small after-school club we are trialling for primary school children. 

We don't meet every week, so I started already last week telling the first two parts of the Advent lesson. And then I tried asking some Wondering questions, although they are not usually part of this lesson. I structured them around the Sacred Story questions, asking:

I wonder what part of getting ready for Christmas you like best?

I wonder what part of getting ready for Christmas you think is most important?

I wonder if there's any part of getting ready for Christmas that we could leave out, and still be ready?

What I hadn't expected is that the children would hear the second and third questions as ones that had "right" answers. Upon reflection, I should have anticipated this. I was there as a priest, wearing my clerical collar. They don't know me well, and are unfamiliar with Godly Play. 

So which parts of getting ready for Christmas did they tell me were most important? Praying, and going to church. Maybe those were their true thoughts, but I suspect they said this trying to please me. Nonetheless, I stuck to my training and mused on each answer as a genuine contribution, repeating it, or giving a nod and a Hmm. 

Even then, I didn't spot that my third question would suggest to them that I believed we should sacrifice the "secular" elements of Christmas in favour of more "important" ones. So I went ahead and asked, I wonder if there's any part of getting ready for Christmas that we could leave out, and still be ready? A child who'd earlier said the best part was presents now said we could leave them out. I was so genuinely shocked that I blurted out, But that's the part you like best! So another child came to our rescue and suggested that if we did leave out the presents, that would be like leaving out the Wise Men. What a brilliant answer - attempting to bridge the apparent divide between churchy priest and present-loving child. 

I need to think hard about how I will help them to wonder next time.

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:

paying attention

David Pritchard shared a quote on Facebook last month, illustrating an important difference between "conventional" education and Montessori education.

Conventional education: the child pays attention to the teacher.

Montessori education: the teacher pays attention to the child.

via the Maria Montessori Facebook page

Berlin-Dahlem, Montessori-Kinderheim, Deutsches Bundesarchiv (source)

holding space

Today, two very different Facebook friends have linked to a beautiful blog post by Heather Plett, about how to "hold space" for people. Although the original post is about palliative care and the care of families in that situation, Heather goes on to say that it's a task for all of us (see the quote below).

Heather Plett: What it means to “hold space” for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well: To truly support people ... [we] have to be prepared to step to the side so that they can make their own choices, offer them unconditional love and support, give gentle guidance when it’s needed, and make them feel safe even when they make mistakes. ... It is something that ALL of us can do for each other – for our partners, children, friends, neighbours, and even strangers who strike up conversations as we’re riding the bus to work. 

(licensed photo by Auztrel, used with permission)

It's a beautiful and challenging post. I'd encourage you to read it all, not least because this is what Godly Play doorkeepers and storytellers do for the members of the circle.

starting out simple (CGS)

As you'll have gathered from my previous post, some CGS presentations are very simple indeed. In Level 1, Part 1, we're being shown presentations designed with the needs of 3- and 4-year-olds in mind. These children are expanding their vocabularies, able to learn terminology - chalice, paten, ciborium, tabernacle - but, "They don't want the whole liturgical history of the altar: including when the priests faced east and when it was that they turned to face the congregation..."*

Of course not, I thought. What a silly, unnecessary thing to say. 

* [This was not a direct quote. I can't remember what our trainer's actual over-the-top example was.]

She presented the gesture of Genuflection for us. I experienced this as consisting of little more than demonstrating and naming the movement. In fact, in the first presentation it is simplified down to a movement of the legs, with no accompanying sign of the cross. 

(licensed photo by Mulier Fortis)

But then I got into my group of three assigned to write up an album page for the presentation. And it was at this point that I really felt the benefits of my experience in Godly Play (and, dare I say it, the discipline of having trusted Berryman's scripts). 

Because in writing up the presentation notes (akin to a Godly Play script), one of my partners wanted to include a list of situations in which genuflecting is appropriate. Moreover, my partner's language made no distinction between genuflect (which in English means coming down onto one knee, briefly) and kneel (to be on both knees, usually for longer than it takes to genuflect), so their presentation included both postures. And then there was a debate about using respect or reverence to explain the theology of it. 

(licensed photo by
Fr Lawrence Lew, OP)

(I hadn't predicted any theological discussion - just a Wondering question encouraging the child to ponder the gesture's significance.)

I began to see the need for stressing simplicity and brevity!








EDIT/UPDATE: 

• Our trainer was much more gracious than I'd managed to be about my co-trainee who wanted to assemble so much information. Click here to read more.

album pages vs. scripts

(image source)

Before signing up for this course (on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd) I knew the name of Sofia Cavalletti, the Hebrew scholar who, upon being asked to instruct a child in the Christian faith, began by reading to him from Genesis and was delighted to find how eager and curious he was - "the beginner's mind". I hadn't understood before, though, that CGS was a team effort. The Montessori element came from Gianna Gobbi, who had trained under Maria Montessori herself.

I have seen references to Montessori albums, but had never really understood what that referred to. And herein lies one important difference between Godly Play and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. In Godly Play we buy scripts written by Jerome W. Berryman, and we stick to them. As I've written before, we're not so slavish as to use notes - not speaking from memory is a sin even greater than deliberately changing the script - bur we are told to use the GP script and live with it before changing wordings. So I asked a very experienced trainer, a big name in the GP community, how long I had to go before I'd be "allowed" to change a phrasing. "You should teach it the way it's written for at least three years first," was the answer. 

Now it's true that some of what Berryman has written is beautifully phrased. Some of it is poetry! But not all of it is. [This paragraph could easily grow to another blog post! Let me turn instead to CGS.]

materials for teaching the Liturgical Colours

It turns out that an album page is the chatechist's (or directress's or guide's) notes for a lesson or presentation. One doesn't buy it or get given it; one writes this out for oneself. We did one in class today, for the Altar I presentation. For this first one we were more or less told just what to write down, but now that we've learned how to do so our homework tonight is to write out, ourselves, an album page for the presentation of the Liturgical Colors.

Crucially, our notes on the Presentation itself are not to be a "monologue", but an outline of the "key moments" of the presentation, with jotted phrases and/or main ideas. And these notes on the Presentation itself are only one section of many on the album page. We also note ourselves what the aims, both direct and indirect, of the work are. We write down the approximate age of child the presentation is for, the liturgical season it relates to, if any, and even the core doctrinal content of the lesson.

Some of this looks a lot like the material Berryman includes in his books, but I do think today that there's a real value in writing those words out myself rather than merely reading (or, let's be honest, sometimes skimming) them. 

materials: four miniature chasubles

back to some basics: respect

In my Facebook feed this week there've been a couple of posts about Montessori basics. David Pritchard has started a series on the Godly Play España blog (written in Spanish) about the foundations of Godly Play, with a post about the Montessori method. He begins, En las escuelas Montessori la libertad es ciertamente muy importante, pero para conquistarla los niños tienen que trabajar de forma independiente y respetuosa.

(Keep reading - my translation comes a bit further down.)

Meanwhile, the National Association of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd USA has a FB thread going about ways to gently redirect a child. They asked, What are some phrases you use instead [of saying "No" or "Don't"]?

Here are some of their answers:

• use positive examples
• Let's do this. instead of Don't do that.
• Remember we walk around the work rugs.
• model the way to do it
• Can I help you with that?
• May I have a turn?
• Let me show you how we work with this material.
• Can I show you a better way?
• OR have another child model it
• gesture "stop" instead of saying No.
• redirect them elsewhere
• Please join me. (e.g. to get them away from a sticky situation) 
• May I show you a material that you may enjoy working with?
• help them remind themselves
• Remember where we are? Who are we trying to hear in this space?
• Is that your [church] voice or your outside voice?
• Remember we walk around the work rugs.
• remember that they have freedom but it's within limits
• Your body isn't ready for that work yet.
• You can choose this work another time, when you're ready.

At the same time, they stressed that it's okay for a child to explore new ideas with materials, as long as the the work is done respectfully.

As David Pritchard wrote above (my translation): In Montessori schools, freedom is certainly very important, but in order to achieve it children must work independently and respectfully. So it boils down to respect. Respect for the materials, respect for the others in the room, and our respect for the children!

the water and oil of baptism

Although Little Sister initially ignored the Baptism materials in favor of the Holy Family and World Communion, she eventually went back to the attic and turned her attention to the Baptism doll. I accompanied her to a sink/basin where she was able to fill our little jug with water. She carried that through to where the materials were, and poured some out into the bowl. She then picked up the doll by its feet and prepared to dip it head-first into the bowl of water!

Never interfere?? All my training fell by the wayside. I gasped in horror and insisted, "No no no! We take water in our hand and put it on the baby's head that way."

Little Sister was much intrigued by the bottle of oil and asked what it was for. I used a little to make the sign of the cross on her forehead, and she did the same for me. But what is this [the bottle of oil] for? It struck me that I make little use of it in the lesson, since our Finnish Lutheran priests don't use any oil in a baptism. I said that we use it in the lesson to help us think about the Holy Spirit, and wound up presenting a portion of the Baptism lesson to her, the part that introduces the Trinity (The Holy Spirit ... is invisible, like the scent of this oil. It is invisible, but still there), and she went completely silent and gave it her full attention. 

We didn't have the Christ candle out, but I just indicated
what I would have done if we'd had one, and that seemed fine.

Afterwards she continued to wonder about the oil, and as we talked I realized and told her that her baptism had been a little different from her brother's in that she had been anointed with oil and he had not. Neither of her parents had been anointed at baptism; nor had I. Later at supper I recalled (and said) that Vandriver had, like her, been baptised by an Anglican priest. Both she and Vandriver had been anointed with oil at their baptisms.

Too late, it now occurs to me that I could have given her the words of a Finnish priest, Mika K T Pajunen, who said to us in a sermon, We are confirmed into a specific denomination, but we are baptized into the Christian Church. Whether our baptism includes anointing with oil, full immersion, the use of a scallop shell or not, we belong to the one body of Christ.

making do - your Godly Play room

If yesterday's post, with the video tour of a "real" Godly Play room, or Sheila's recent post about spacious children's worship areas in Texas left you frustrated or discouraged - I hope this will undo that. Many of us have to "make do" with a space that feels less than ideal. But it's ok to do the best we can!

The minimum I would want is this: The space that is clearly a prepared space. It has been made special. It is both special ("set apart", even temporarily) and welcoming (for us). So if your circle will be made up of children, this should be a space which is set up with children in mind. There is a "threshold" of some sort, so that it is easy to tell the difference between IN the space and OUTSIDE the space. In the space there is a focal shelf, as well as materials for response and for cleaning up. Everything is displayed in an inviting manner (in open baskets, on low shelves if children are present) but also with care, so that it all looks orderly. Everything has a place. And that includes the people - there are mats or cushions or chairs enough for everyone.

You can stop reading right here. This, I believe, is enough.

doing Godly Play in my living room

If possible, the circle of participants will also be surrounded by the lessons and story materials. Again, these should be displayed in an orderly yet inviting way. Take care the first time you set things out, because ideally you will ever after always put them in the same place! Sacred stories should be together, arranged chronologically from left to right, with the core stories most visible and enrichment lessons stored beneath them. Parables are in a clearly different place. And liturgical action lessons are usually located near or beneath the focal shelf.

A piano bench is pressed into service as a parable shelf.

It is not necessarily a problem if everything needs to be set up and taken down each time. I have found that setting up is an excellent way for me to prepare myself for the session. After several months, once children had learned the layout of the classroom, then I would accept any offers of help that came from children who had arrived early. They had already learned to treat the materials with some care, and usually knew where to put them. [If you do this, you will need to think about how they enter the space - what if your threshold is not set up yet? and will you ask them if they are ready as they arrive?]

Can you spot a Parable box?

Don't forget to think about what cleaning supplies will be needed. In a future post I'll write about some optional extras that are nice to have in the room. Cleaning supplies, though, are not an optional extra. In Montessori fashion, we are confident that everyone will be able to clean up after themselves. They may need to be shown how, but they are then encouraged to carry on themselves. In fact, cleaning (or a task such as sharpening all the pencils) is a perfectly acceptable Response Time activity!

These chairs also served to delimit the space.

You don't have to replicate Jerome W. Berryman's diagram exactly! My Godly Play training took place in a room with a slightly odd shape, in which the obvious place to put the focal shelf was not (as is usually recommended) the first place you saw upon entering the room. One of the trainers commented that she was happy not to be using an "ideal" room for training but instead showing us how to "make do". 

Godly Play training classroom

Some related posts:

• Setting up the Room (before and after pictures of our space in Finland)
• Looking into our room
• Our room when we had fewer materials (several photos)
• A diagram of where I put what (in our Finnish room)
• Making do - the focal shelf
• A change of venue - a tale of a lack of preparation and a lot of making do

asking questions of children

Thanks to Godly Play Australia on Facebook, I came across a blog post by Yvonne Morris, asking:

...in our Sunday schools why do adults most often ask questions about facts and figures and places and information? Are there better questions to ask that will give us and our children that wide-eyed wonder when they connect their story with God’s story...?

She offers some examples of questions we might ask, admitting a strong Godly Play influence on her choices! And then she tells a lovely story. It begins like this,

Can I join you?” I asked the boy quite prepared for him to say ‘No’ but he nodded, so I sprawled near him on the blue blanket. He looked at the toy boat for a few moments. “I wonder what story this is” I say. “Mmmmm, I fink it’s the one where Jesus is asleep in the boat” he replied...

Click here to read the rest.

Easter followup (part 2)

This continues my followup post about retelling the Easter story straight from the Gospel of Luke, illustrated with a slide show, and then asking Wondering questions of the congregation. I did this in two churches (one earlier in the morning and one later). The second congregation in particular tends to be wary of discussion, often complaining about being put on the spot if the priest asks them any questions.

For this reason, I started my sermons from the pulpit. I explained that one characteristic of family celebrations was to gather together and listen to stories, and talk together. Therefore the way I wanted to celebrate Easter was to re-tell the Easter story the way Luke told it, and to give people a chance to talk and listen to each other. Nobody HAS to say anything! I clarified straightaway, almost interrupting my previous sentence to assure people that nobody was going to be "put on the spot". All they had to do, I said, was to listen to one another. Not laugh, not argue, but listen.

licensed photo by Andreas Praefcke

I told the story, with the slides, and then asked the Sacred Story wondering questions. With hindsight, those questions weren't ideal for this situation. It's too hard, especially for people not used to Godly Play Wondering, to break out of the expectation that the empty tomb should be everyone's favorite part, as well as the most important part. And that there's nothing that should left out from Holy Scripture!

But even so, more people made comments than I had feared. And on the whole I got very good feedback afterwards. Two things surprised me. One was that some people were unwilling to speak into the microphone but not unwilling to speak. I asked if I could repeat their comments to the whole congregation and they said yes. They just were unwilling to have their own voice amplified. The other was that one woman thanked me and said how much she had enjoyed this twice, despite the fact that she hadn't chosen to say anything.

In fact, she apologized for being unwilling or unable to speak in front of others. I could easily have believed that such a person would dislike this style of "sermon". But she told me twice, once right at the end of the service and then again at coffee time, that she had really appreciated it.

It's good to remember that someone who is unwilling to participate in the way we expect isn't necessarily irritated, bored, or disappointed. They might even be appreciating our work.

‘the things of God for the children of God’

The narrator tells his story with respect for the simple but beautiful artefacts he is using. There is not an old yoghurt pot or the inside of a lavatory paper roll in sight. The materials are handled as if they are sacramental. These are ‘the things of God for the children of God’. 

At no point in the story does the storyteller look at the children. This is important. The focus is not on the teller but on the tale in which all in the charmed circle are imaginatively engaged. The storyteller’s voice is slow and soothing, almost mesmeric. His every move is studied.

(from PLAYING IN THE CITY OF GOD, an article by Dr John Pridmore, Rector of Hackney, in AYCE Journal, October 2001)

it gets better

The title for today's entry evokes the videos for bullied teens, but really it's inspired by somebody called "Sweeter than Southern Tea", who wrote a comment on one of my older posts. I had written about being exhausted after a Godly Play session, and Sweeter asked, How long did it take for this to kind of even out? We are just beginning Godly Play... lately it seems as though each Sunday ends up being a circus.

Well, Sweeter, It gets better! 

Here the children are being silly by being
exaggeratedly still and quiet at a church service (!).

I was working with young children, some younger than 3. The oldest was four when we started. I had more girls than boys, and small numbers. All the children were generally well-behaved and inclined to do what they were told. That said, they spent a LOT of time exploring the boundaries of what was accepted in our classroom.

• I am very glad to have made it clear from the start that we walk more slowly than usual in this space. I tried to remember to praise children who did that, and to remind (rather than reprimand) children who didn't. So that was a rule that never really got tested.

However, I had much more trouble introducing the concept of sitting cross-legged (criss-cross) to show that we are ready. I let the children experiment with what was allowed, and treated almost every posture they got into as a serious attempt to do the right thing. Maybe that invited more challenge than I'd have gotten otherwise; I did find it frustrating some of the time. (The kids seemed to think it was a highly amusing game.) But I came up with my own boundaries that I enforced. One of my adult helpers found it uncomfortable to sit cross legged, so the rule for everyone was that as long as legs were crossed it was ok. To sit with legs straight out in front was acceptable if your legs were crossed (at the ankle). Merely having the toes of one foot crossed over the other was not. Sitting backwards (facing out) was not acceptable. Hands had to be on knees. Hands on feet was not acceptable.

• It helped immensely when I found a song for getting ready on the My Montessori Journey blog. My own adaptation of the words (to the tune of "Frère Jacques") was Legs criss-crossed, Legs criss-crossed, Hands on your knees, Hands on your knees. Quiet on the inside, Quiet on the inside, Ready for the lesson, Ready for the lesson. At the line, Quiet on the inside, the song gets (and stays) quieter, so that if we sing it a second time we end up whispering the second half of it. 

Within a couple of months it was no longer necessary to sing the tune through twice (the first several times that we only had to sing it once, I complimented them on getting ready so quickly). 

The other thing that helped enormously was holding an all-age service in the Godly Play style. When I explained to the adults how we show that we're ready I announced, N can show you how it's done. For a moment my heart was in my mouth, but there was no silliness at all. The child went straight into the ideal position, proud to be "in the know". And my recollection is that the children were better about the getting-ready position in the lessons following that one. 

photo by see-through-faith

• Every time I've told a Godly Play story for children, at least one adult has commented on how well the children paid attention. So sometimes it might be worth getting started even if not everyone is, strictly speaking, "ready". Particularly if you're telling a desert story, moving the sands around as you begin the story can be mesmerising. 

It might be tempting to look up to make sure everyone is engrossed in the story but paradoxically this is the worst thing you can do. Keep your eyes and your attention on the story figures! Jerome W. Berryman recommends that the first thing you should do if a child loses focus is to make sure that you yourself have your focus where you need it, and sometimes the child will then be drawn back in.

This post is at risk of rambling on and on. So for now I'll just make two more points.

• Something else that Berryman says is that it's ok if you spend your whole session just on forming the circle. Sometimes it is a circus. Sometimes what the children seem to need is just some time together, getting attention, being treated as though they are important and valued, and forming a tiny community together. And that brings me to my second point.

• I always found something that I was pleased about in every session. Having debriefing sessions with see-through-faith (my faithful adult helper) allowed me to get another perspective on things but even before that I was always thankful for some little breakthrough or insight, some piece of work a child had done, some touching thing a child had shared... And when I think now about what our Junior Church achieved, the biggest thing is that I became friends with these children. They are always glad to see me at church, and often want to tell me their news. They know that they are important to me, and they know that they belong. 

5 things to remember about Wondering

This is something I wrote as part of the Explore and Express series of Godly Play 101 posts:

Godly Play storytellers signal the end of the lesson and the opening of a time of reflection by pausing for a moment and then raising their eyes to make contact with their listeners. They say, slowly, thoughtfully, I wonder...

Each genre of Godly Play story has a slightly different set or style of Wondering Questions. I call these questions, but they aren’t phrased as questions, and that’s deliberate. Everyone is encouraged to wonder, everyone is free to share their responses, but nobody is ever pressured to answer.

Please click through to Five Things to Remember about Wondering on Sheila's blog to read the rest of my post.

Play and Pray - advice for parents

These are some thoughts I've had after our first couple of months with a Play and Pray area in our worship space. This experience has been with a small group of children aged about 3-6.

Advice for parents

1. Remind your children ahead of time about expected behavior.  This may vary from church to church. I ask children to keep their voices down to an absolute whisper except when the congregation is singing (or passing the Peace). Apart from Communion, I ask them to stay in the Play and Pray area (and to move slowly and quietly).
2. Come a little early. Your child might well want to share some news with me, or make small talk. This is easier to do before the service has started. Coming early also allows the child time to orient themselves and settle down. (If you come too early, though, we might not have finished setting up yet!)
3. Leave your child's own toys at home. We have selected the Play and Pray materials with care. Just as our worship space is not like your living room, so our "toys" are not like all the other toys your child has at home. In fact, I like to think of them as worship materials rather than toys.
4. Once you've dropped your child off, sit elsewhere. The Play and Pray area is as much for you as for your children in that we want to give you the freedom to listen to the sermon without worrying about your kids. If there's a huge discipline problem, I'll come get you. Otherwise, please assume that I'll deal with it. Give me and your child the freedom to do our own thing. 
5. Let your child know they may make their own choices. In my Play and Pray area, children choose for themselves what to do most of the time. The only exceptions are that we stand to listen to the Gospel, we may greet each other at The Peace, and we all go forward for Holy Communion or blessings. At other times, children may want to follow along with what the other congregants are doing, or watch what the priest is doing. They may choose to read a book, to color, or to work with our worship materials. They may want to pray, look around the space, or just sit quietly. It is their choice. 

p.s. Re-reading this after posting, I find it all sounds very stern. I'm sorry about that. My goal with our Play and Pray area is to help your children feel that they belong and that they matter - in church, to our congregation, to God! I enjoy worshipping with them. Thanks for bringing them to church!

Guest Post: Chameleon Godly Play

(aka Adjusting Godly Play to Fit the Context!)

Sheila, who blogs at Explore and Express, has been a guest blogger here before. I think we may be at the core of a sort of mutual admiration society. We are both ex-pats living in European countries, both discovered Godly Play here in Europe, and both brought it to our churches more or less single-handedly. In many ways, though, Sheila's managed to take it a good deal further than I have yet. She's taken it to schools and forests, she's done it in German and English and even in Russian. So when we first got the idea of trading guest posts (this was ages ago, because then we then got all caught up in the idea of an Eastertide guest post series and postponed these one-off posts for another time), I asked if she'd write something about adapting Godly Play to different contexts. Thanks so much, Sheila, for all your encouragement and enthusiasm, and for writing this guest post for me.

At school.

Chameleons have always fascinated me. They change their color in various social situations and to blend in with their current setting. They’re also a good metaphor to describe my life since it was „taken over“ by Godly Play several years ago.

One of the many personality tests that I have taken over the years describes me as a „Maximizer“. That means that when I put the time and effort into learning something, I figure out how to use the heck out of it.: ) Much like a chameleon, I figure out how to make whatever I am doing blend with the current setting.

In my kitchen.

Godly Play is no exception to this. After falling in love with this concept for religious education, I justified the time, energy and money I put into it by using it everywhere possible.  Since 2009 I have told Godly Play stories to children (both in church settings and in public schools), drug addicts, women involved in prostitution and „normal“ adults, all on two continents and in three languages.

How does one go about adapting Godly Play to fit a particular environment? I’m no expert, but here are a few things that I have learned along the way:

1. Know your audience.  Find out as much as you can about how they think and what makes them tick. Get a feel for how they will respond to the various elements of GP. Then you can expand on certain elements and tailor others. If you are telling a GP story in another culture or setting that you haven’t yet visited, do a little research beforehand to find out these things. 

2. Decide what is doable and be flexible. Ask yourself, „What can we leave out and still have everything we need?“ If, for example, your setting rather than your audience has changed (ex. going from an indoor setting to the park in summer), then you may have to pare down your supplies or expectations. At one point my „room“ for children’s church changed from a large kitchen to a tiny bedroom. I had to pare the creative phase way down to just crayons and colored pencils. But you know what? The kids still responded to God and drew thought-provoking things.

3. Pray and listen to God.  That might seem obvious, but sometimes we get so absorbed in the materials and learning the story that we forget this one! Having God’s perspective always bring fresh ideas.

Wondering with children in Irkutsk, Russia.

There is still so much more to learn! Storyteller and I would love to hear how any of you have adapted Godly Play to different settings. Please leave us a comment or link to any of your ideas.

relational not propositional

"Jesus calls Levi" (William Hole, public domain)

The incarnation implies that the 'communication of Christian truth is relational and not propositional'. 

David Lyall, The integrity of pastoral care, 2001, p.96, cited by Ballard & Holmes, The Bible in pastoral practice, 2006, p.207.

wondering with materials

It's an exciting feature of the Faces of Easter lessons that instead of opening up a time of verbal wondering or discussion at the close of each story, the storyteller says, I wonder what there is in this room that can help us tell more of the story. Look around and see if you can bring something to show more about this part of the story.

That's all. There are no more rules than that.

Some in the circle may be thrown by this and have no idea how to respond. As Berryman says, that is okay. Many children learn by watching as well as by doing.  Since most of us will present portions of this lesson at least twice during Lent, participants will have another chance on another occasion... and after all, this is an opportunity but it is never a requirement. If you don't feel like getting something, that's okay. Just enjoy what we make together.[All the Berryman quotes in this post are from The Complete Guide to Godly Play, volume 4.]

The first person I ever called upon took the instructions very literally, and brought our Bible to the circle. Which was an excellent response. Berryman had predicted what my next child did: Sometimes children get up, wander for a moment and bring something at random, without knowing why. That's okay. [Notice how often he says, that's okay. That's one of the things I love about Godly Play!] Be amazed and wonder why with them, together coming up with something relevant. Everything in the room is connected in some way.

Last year, though, I chose not to wonder explicitly about connections. I just accepted anything that was brought to the circle with silent wonder and appreciation. And perhaps a nod or a smile. My children were young, and not always very articulate. And ever since my training I've liked this special kind of Wondering for its freedom from words and freedom from over-thinking things.

And this is why I love writing this blog and reading your comments, and reading the posts that others write, especially those submitted to our Lenten link-up. It's so helpful to hear about how others put this into practice, what they like best, what they think is most important, and what they think can be left out.

photo from the So Many Joys blog

Amanda wrote a post at So Many Joys pointing out that sometimes we may need to set limits about how much it is practical to bring to the circle. Berryman suggests that a child might bring the desert box, but many desert boxes are so heavy and unwieldy that this may be too disruptive. Amanda writes about a bit of chaos that grew from large item connections to the first Face of Easter -- the entire Books of the Bible lesson, the desert, the World Communion lesson -- all big and very interesting stories to explore all out at once when we were still in our circle. I actually think that is when my headache started. Perhaps next week, I'll just have them bring one small item from the story rather than an entire story. 

Berryman proposes some Wondering Questions for use when these stories are told outside the Godly Play classroom. But it may also be entirely appropriate to ask people to think creatively and look around whatever room you find yourselves in for objects which would help to tell the story, or even to share aloud what object they would bring if it were available.

photo from Featherglen, cropped by me

When Featherglen did this, family members brought various objects, some overtly religious and others not. She writes, My beloved rummaged for a while in his overstuffed desk and brought out a beautiful big dried bean. He is gardener and this was one that came from last summer's crop. He placed it by the picture with baby Jesus. We all wondered a while about the significance of the bean, its colour (you can't see so well but it is actually a rich purple colour), baby shape and, of course all the elements of growth. 

photo from Explore and Express, cropped by me

As Sheila's experience shows, you may get unusual connections and contributions even within a Godly Play setting. Can you see what has been placed next to the plaque depicting Jesus resisting temptation?

She writes, One child laid a package of cookies and a stop sign made of sticks beside the picture of Jesus in the wilderness.  He then explained that this represented Jesus’ long fast and how hungry he must have been.  

I hope this post encourages you to try this kind of wondering if you have not done it before! Feel free to set boundaries that work for you - whether or not to ask for explanations about the objects brought, whether to limit the size of object brought, whether to restrict the objects to Godly Play materials, whether all objects should relate to one plaque or to any of those laid down...

The rewards, for you and all the circle, can be rich. As Amanda's So Many Joys post continued, I still loved seeing their connections to the Mother Mary and the Father Joseph and the Word born flesh as a wordless child. They are profound, the kids! 

5 children, 5 candles

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

eye contact

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.