the power and authority of Scriptural story

[The authority of scripture was] exercised by priest and people praying the words of scripture in psalm and canticle, and reading, hearing and pondering the whole sweep of the Bible’s story year by year ... so that they might learn the way of repentance, conversion of life, and holiness. The key thought of “the authority of scripture” was the power the story had to inform prayer and shape imagination, to provide exemplar and encouragement, and to help put their lives’ journey into the context of the journey of God’s people from creation to final fulfilment by way of the cross. 

The authority of a story (and most of scripture is story) is often subtle, frequently a long-term project, and nurtured by repetition and slow digestion. It is about the reshaping of how we see ourselves and our lives by forming our mental world, and populating it with the images, examples and friends who open new possibilities to us, as well as warning us away from bad ideas and foolish practices (of which there are more than a few in the Bible). 

--Doug Chaplin

[The context for this quote is a blog post arguing about different understandings of the authority of Scripture. But what leapt out at me was the emphasis on the slow digestion of Biblical story/stories and the way this phrasing might encourage other Godly Play folk.]

[The photo is my own - showing materials for the story of Abraham, Sarah, and the Great Family.]

Lenten link-up update

We're a week into Lent, and a week into the Lenten link-up that I am co-hosting with Sheila. She's now made us a "button", which you can see on the top of my right-hand side-bar. I am thrilled with the response! We've had twelve posts linked up to us already, from eight different blogs as well as Sheila's, most of which were unknown to me before we started. It's better than I could have hoped. It's been interesting and inspiring to read about the varied ways in which families with children are observing Lent.

I was also very interested to find reference in one of the blog posts about using Godly Play in community, at L'Arche. This post from Featherglen explains that they're using the Faces of Easter materials. From the moment I started my Godly Play training I've felt (as many others have as well) that this was not something for children only. It's been a surprise and a blessing to find myself working with children nonetheless. But I always have my eyes open for those who can tell me about their experiences of using Godly Play in other situations, too.

L'Arche de Noé (image source)

Featherglen commented,

We were quite a big group - more than 25 people, so I didn't have a formal time of wondering. But there was plenty of out loud wondering during the story - that's the gift of adults with learning disabilities - no polite restraint - but rather plenty of (often) playful participation.

This was actually not in the post itself but in the comments, as a reply to me! Thank you, Featherglen, for engaging with my question straightaway and for sharing your experiences. And thank you, too, to everyone who has linked up with us.

There's still plenty of time - we're running this for the whole of Lent. So to repeat, we'd like to link up with anyone Preparing for Easter with:

• art projects,
• nature projects,
• Montessori methods, &/or
• story-based religious education

Just click on the link at the bottom of this post (the blue, Add your link button) to create a link from our party to your blog post. You should then be prompted to give the URL of the specific post you want to include (not the URL for your blog's front page), the title of your entry, and your email address. Then please add links within your own post to me and to Sheila. 

making do - desert sand

Seethroughfaith asked yesterday about the photo I'd used in a recent post:

learning Sacred Stories (Godly Play training)

This was a photo I took during my Godly Play training course. I wanted a photo of the desert bag, which for my purposes was a lot more manageable than a desert box:

exploring materials during the training course

That reminded me that I've wanted to start a series of posts here about Making Do. There's a certain tension in Godly Play between the ideal of a room full of beautiful materials dedicated for children's spiritual use and the practical realities of limited budgets, limited space, and limited time. Sometimes we have to make do.

When it came time for me to get and fill a desert bag, it was winter - not the right season for collecting sand at the seaside. (Besides which, it's best to have very dry sand for your classroom.) The smallest quantity we could get at the local hardware store was FAR too much. (Also I have since learned that there can be health concerns about children playing with industrial-grade sand.) But I found a solution:

my desert bag

I bought several kilos of cream of wheat! Cream of wheat is farina, or ground wheat, which can be cooked into a breakfast porridge. It's lovely - light-colored, and a beautiful texture to work with. And best of all, do you know what the Finnish for "cream of wheat" is?


Manna. 

The Gathering of the Manna (15th c. image source)

Lenten link party

What are you doing with children for Lent this year?

How do you prepare for Easter in your family?

Will you be telling the Faces of Easter story, 
about the One who was (and is) Easter?

Sheila, from Explore and Express, and I are co-hosting a Lenten Link Party, and we would love you to be a part of it! Now if you already know all about link parties, skip to the next paragraph, but since this is all very new to me I figure it might be new to some of you as well. The idea is this: if you write a blog post that fits our theme (or if you've written one in the past), we will link to it with a little thumbnail image here (and on Sheila's blog, too). In exchange, we ask you to add a link back to both of our blogs. It's all in aid of sharing ideas, discovering new blogs, and finding new readers. 


We'd like to use this theme of Preparing for Easter to link up those who work with:

• art projects,
• nature projects,
• Montessori methods, &/or
• story-based religious education

All during Lent (from Feb 22 through Apr 7), you can click on the link at the bottom of this post (the blue, Add your link button) to create a link from our party to your blog post. You should then be prompted to give the URL of the specific post you want to include (not the URL for your blog's front page), the title of your entry, and your email address. Then please do add links within your own post to me and to Sheila. Every Wednesday, Sheila and I will each post a party update. Welcome aboard!

another two-minute video lesson

If you enjoyed the two-minute explanation video for Advent by Busted Halo, you might like to know that they've done another for Lent:

enter the story and hear the song

The God of Israel and the claim that God makes [upon Jews and Christians alike] can be known only by taking seriously the full reality of the imaginative language through which that God is presented in the biblical text. Narrative and poetry are the central forms of this testimony about God. Even the nonstory elements of the Old Testament characteristically assume the framework and knowledge of Israel's story about encounter and relationship with God. We are invited, indeed required, to enter the story and to hear the song and to respond according to the shape of the story. In that encounter with Israel's imaginative language we find perspectives on the claims and witnesses of our own experiences as persons and communities. 

Birch, Brueggemann, Fretheim & Petersen

A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament

2nd ed. 2005, Abingdon Press (Nashville)

condensed by Storyteller from page 8