guest post postponed

This week I've attended the funeral of the man I wrote about in this post. Like Sarah and then Abraham, he died old and full of years, with family to remember him with stories and love while committing his body back to the dust.

Sheila and I have agreed to delay this week's guest post until Sunday. See you then!

the feast

I have deliberately scheduled this post to be published some time after it was written, to give it more anonymity. 

(preparing the Communion Elements on the Focal Shelf)

We always have two adults present at our Godly Play sessions, usually only two but always at least two. And usually between two and six children. Together we form the circle, have a lesson and Response Time, then clean up and have our feast. It is usually sometime during the feast that the priest arrives, and when we have finished eating the Godly Play feast the priest gives communion to the adults and individual blessings to the children. Then we sing a song of blessing and the children leave to join their parents at Church Coffee.

This week my adult helper asked the priest if it would be all right to receive a blessing rather than the wafer and wine. The helper explained to me afterwards, It felt wrong to take it again. Because for me today our feast WAS communion!

(napkins for a feast during the Great Green Growing Season)

Eastertide Guest Post: on the Emmaus Road

Featherglen came up trumps for our (Sheila's and my) Eastertide Guest Post series with not one but two blog posts. I introduced her in yesterday's post, about her Eastertide garden. Today she shares several ways of telling and remembering the story of the Emmaus Road. I appreciate how sensitive she is to the context of worship - the community, the physical location, the resources available. It's wonderful that she's included so many photos (please honor her request, "If you want to use any of them, please be lovely enough to ask me first."). I took the liberty of re-arranging them slightly, dividing the post into an introduction and then three sections.

Although all the accounts of the Resurrection are amazing, one that I particularly love is the appearance of Jesus to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Yes, it is strange that they don't recognise Him - but then they aren't expecting him either - somehow He is the same but different - that's certainly what I'm hoping for myself anyway! What I love is that He doesn't just jump in and shock them and say 'I'm back!' but takes the time to walk with two grieving, wondering men. He walks alongside them, listens to them and then starts to help them put the pieces together. It is only in the breaking of the bread that finally they see Him. It certainly reminds me of my own encounters with Jesus.



For us in L'Arche, it has been a powerful theme, that God walks with us. We have used it on L'Arche retreats, with large wooden figures. When I encountered Godly Play, it seemed like a natural extension of what we do in many ways already.

Also, in L'Arche, every Easter Sunday, we read the story and it is mimed by our core members ( the adults with learning disabilities that form the centre of our Community). We use our long driveway and over the years we have even made a quite permanent looking signpost. I enjoy seeing it when I arrive at L'Arche in the morning, it reminds me of my continuing walk with Christ. I think it could be a great story to do with children, outdoors, along a quiet road.

Earlier this year I also got hold of the book 'Young Children and Worship' by Sonja M. Stewart and Jerome Berryman. It is the forerunner to Godly Play. I was thrilled to discover it has an Emmaus Road story in it. However, being too busy I haven't had the time to really learn it - but after a quick look and drawing on elements of the story I have heard and participated in in so many ways each year - I told it to our family. We just did it after dinner one evening, at the table, which felt appropriate. We did  a quick raid of my son's wooden castle blocks, then used some wooden figures, a bit of bread and a candle (our Christ candle). At the end of the story, instead of wondering, we broke and shared some bread together. And in that simple moment, Jesus walked among us anew. Amen...

Eastertide guest post - An Eastertide Garden

This week's guest is "Featherglen", one of the early participants in our Lenten link-up. She and her husband both work as members of the L'Arche community in Inverness. Her sidebar list of topics shows her major concerns to be her faith, her family, handicrafts, and the L'Arche Community. Featherglen's life sounds very romantic - living in the Scottish Highlands, married to a French jeweller and gardener, members of an international movement building faith-based communities with people with learning disabilities, supporting them to reach their full potential... yet her writing is honest and down-to-earth.

As a mother, member of a L'Arche Community and a church, Lent can, ironically, turn into a very full time. Although this is usually in a good way, by the time Easter has arrived and been celebrated in various ways, I'm ready for a break. However, despite not growing up in a liturgical tradition, I have grown to appreciate many aspects of such a way of worship, Bible reading, and the sense of celebrations in their appropriate times. This is sometimes also very helpful for the adults with learning disabilities that  are at the heart of L'Arche. Advent and Lent are two very important times of the year for us and we take time to deepen our relationship with God during them. I came across Godly Play when looking for ways to share the biblical story creatively, and it seemed to be instinctively right for us. One story I love in Godly Play is the Circle of the Church Year and as a family we have been very struck that 'You can't keep Easter to just one Sunday, so it keeps on for six more weeks'. I find it very liberating knowing that there's no hurry to celebrate Easter - we have all the time we need!

all photos by Featherglen, please do not re-use without her permission

 In our family we made a 'Lent garden' - a large plate filled with sand and a bare branch, along with a wooden figure of Jesus, representing his time in the wilderness. It sat on our kitchen table and we added a stone each day at dinner time. By Palm Sunday we lifted out the stones, added some soil, then replaced the stones into a path to the bare branch. We sowed some wheatgrass seeds and made a tomb from clay, giving it time to dry out. A cross was added on Good Friday.


On Easter Saturday we added in a another tray of soil for the tomb to sit on, along with a big rock (the wooden figure was placed inside). We sowed some more seeds and added jars and vases of green branches and flowers, as well as Easter candles and some animal figures.

It was all ready and beautiful for Easter Sunday breakfast, with the stone rolled away, the candles lit and Jesus was once more in the beauty of the garden, now transformed from rock and soil, a living image that 'a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies'.

But this year, instead of keeping it for a week or so as usual, I decided we should try keeping it for the whole of Eastertide. It seems like a simple focus, without too much extra effort, to remind us of the Resurrection. We moved onto a table in our living room, covered with oilcloth. Each week we water it, snip the grass (my son likes this bit) - and feed it to the guinea pig (who is very appreciative!). We gather fresh flowers and leaves. It has been lovely to see a whole range of spring flowers this way and I have been surprised by how well my two boys arrange them. I have a book ( The story of Jesus by Andrea Skevington - I recommend it!) with some good artwork, propped up behind it. From time to time we read the stories of the resurrection, and we have added another figure to the garden - perhaps it is Mary?

I have made Easter gardens before, but this year, having one that stretches all the way from Lent through to the end of Eastertide, is a new expression of our journey with Jesus, that has a nod to Godly Play and a connection with the spring world around us.


Featherglen's written a second post for Sheila and me as well, which will be posted tomorrow. This next post is about the Road to Emmaus.  

Eastertide guest post: "Baptism"

photo by Markus

This week's guest post is in German! Fortunately, Sheila has translated it into English for us. The writer is Markus, of the Gott im Spiel - Godly Play blog. Having him as a guest blogger reminds us that there are men out there, as well as women, leading Godly Play (David Pritchard is another male writer blogging about Godly Play), and also that Godly Play crosses denominational lines (as I have said here). Markus works in the Roman Catholic church. His blog includes simply beautiful photographs, but Google's machine-translations of his posts are often tantalizingly bizarre:

• When fathoming it was a boy, the Holy Family so on and found this: Mary and Joseph standing with his back to the crib. (from the post "Jesus in der Pubertät")

• At the end of a picture ensteht with a steel end "sun" from the twelve brauenn felt strips (previously the house in Jerusalem was praying in the imaginary), at the ends and around which the shields and symbols of male and female disciples are. ("Das Geheimnis von Pfingsten")

What a relief to be able to read him in a proper translation for once! Thank you both, Markus & Sheila.

Die Vorbereitung meiner sechs Jungs (9 Jahre alt), die sich auf ihre erste heilige Kommunion vorbereiten, endete nun. Die letzte Stunde sollte sich mit der Taufe beschäftigen und so die Überleitung für ihr Fest, das sie jetzt in der Osterzeit feiern, sein. I have been preparing six 9-year-old boys for Holy Communion, and our time together has slowly come to an end. In our last class, we covered baptism and with it the transition that they will be celebrating during Eastertide. 

To read the rest, see Markus's baptism materials, and learn what "Holy Star Wars cards" are, click here. 

preamble to this week's guest blog-post

I wanted to introduce this week's guest post in part by referencing the blogger's denominational identity [Roman Catholic]. But I started including so many links that it was going to distract from the guest post!

You might remember that my guest blogger three weeks ago was a Methodist, and that my congregation is pastored by Lutherans and Anglicans. Did you also know that my sidebar includes blogs by Baptists, Episcopalians, and the Spanish national children's ministry co-ordinator for the Scripture Union? That the Director of Training for the Godly Play Foundation was a Quaker (Society of Friends)? That before Jerome W. Berryman was ordained an Episcopal priest he was a Presbyterian minister?

We Godly Play folk are a diverse bunch!