easter 2015

Christmas is coming, ready or not! Berryman's script reminds us that if people aren't ready, they can just walk right through a mystery and not even notice. But sometimes we have to go ahead even if we don't feel ready. Sometimes maybe we can trust that lighting the Advent candles for four weeks ... or singing the O Antiphons for seven days ... or hanging our Jesse tree ornaments or whatever it is that we've been doing has made us ready. Sometimes we can pray, but only say the word and I shall be healed.  In Godly Play we ask people to decide for themselves if they are ready to enter the room and join the circle. Sometimes when I didn't have a Door Person I would sit outside the room with the children, encouraging them to sit still for a moment (after they'd been running around) and take time to get ready. Then I'd say, I'm going to go into the room, and you can follow me when you're ready. One week, once we were in the circle, one girl said, It...

Thank you, Sheila , for linking to Carolyn's post, " What do we say to the children when kids are killed with their teachers at school? " Carolyn's advice reminds me of Mr Rogers' advice , or rather, the advice he got from his mother. When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of disaster , I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers � so many caring people in this world. That's good advice for all of us, whatever our age. I sometimes daydream about the news media deciding not to grant fame to killers (which would also prevent them from mistakenly giving out the wrong name). I can choose to focus on and share news of heroes, of helpers, of the good that stands up against evil. May I urge you, too, to seek out any of the several recent articles ...

Wishing my Nordic friends well on St Lucia Day! public domain photo by Niels Henningsen (Helsing�r,  2001)

I'm so pleased with some gifts that I delivered last weekend that I'm very tempted to write a self-congratulatory post. I'm going to try to turn it into an informative post for others, though. My apologies if I fail and just sound prideful. We have two godsons. One is a young adult; the other is six years old. We're far away from them this year, but were visiting last weekend, and so I wanted to give them gifts - partly just to show our love but partly to foster their spiritual growth. So I went shopping for Advent gifts. image source For our young adult godson , we bought a collection of Advent reflections, one for each day of the season (plus Christmas Day and Boxing Day):  Inside the Christmas Story ,  by Bash & Bash. It's written by a priest who once served the parish of a relative of ours, with his wife, which gave it a little extra personal connection. Sheila, at  Explore and Express,  has written a post about  children's spiritual styles , and I ...