easter 2015

He calls his own sheep by name from John 10:3 Thanks to Pinterest , this morning I came across a blog post written back in 2010 by the Jealous Curator . It's about an art craft by  Christien Meindertsma , which speaks to the individuality of sheep. She created a rug out of large, knitted hexagons. Each hexagon was made from the wool of one, single sheep, and using all the wool from one shearing.    � designboom 1999-2012, some rights reserved To emphasise the individuality of each sheep, Meindertsma knitted each hexagon using a different stitch. She's done other projects in the same vein, knitting a sweater from the wool of a single sheep, for example. But this rug didn't just represent each individual. Since she also then put all the hexagons together into a rug it represented the whole flock as well. In fact, that's her name for this project - "flock". I wonder what the work of your church looks like to Jesus, with each member's output individually reco...

photo (c)  Pikku Arkki Valokuvaus , used with permission Trinity Communications, over at  CatholicCulture.org , say: On Ash Wednesday small children are thrilled to receive ashes. We can tell them simply that ashes are placed on our foreheads to remind us that someday we will die and go home to heaven. It's a post worth reading in full . Similarly, Carolyn, at Worshiping with Children , writes, The imposition of ashes is amazing to children , but she also notes that: Other than Good Friday, Ash Wednesday is probably the day on which children are least expected or planned for in the sanctuary.  And she has excellent suggestions for how to change that . In the Church of England, as priests mark you with ashes, they say,  Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. In Finland, (Lutheran) priests tend to say something like, Receive the cross, a sign of repentance. If you feel that your child will not cope well with a heavy emphasis on mortality and death a...

Ian Ruhter, a former pro-snowboarder, spent all his savings to create the world's largest camera and set off on a road trip across America. Using a collodion wet-plate process which costs him $500 a shot, he photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and the people he meets along the way. Delightfully, he is equally respectful of the homeless man with a drinking problem as he is with the seven-year-old "miracle" girl who survived a very premature birth. This film  draws a deliberate and unsettling parallel between Ruhter's total commitment to his project and a drug addict's single-mindedness . SILVER & LIGHT from Ian Ruhter : Alchemist on Vimeo . As soon as I this question from Ruhter in this video, I knew I wanted to post it here: If you had been searching your whole life for something you love, what would you be willing to sacrifice? You'll surely guess what my immediate association with that question was! When he found the great pearl... he went... and ex...

My apologies - this post would have been more timely had it appeared about a month ago. But I've decided against waiting another eleven months to post it! ---- I've only just discovered Chuck Knows Church , a series of comically informative videos about church customs, especially those of American liturgical churches. I should warn you Godly Play folk that they're not at all Montessorian . But I've gotten a kick out of them. Here's the first of the series, on the topic of Liturgical Colors: I quite like the parallel that Chuck draws between Epiphany and Pentecost, one which isn't made in the Circle of the Church Year (Godly Play) lesson. On the other hand, the Godly Play lesson does introduce the less obvious observation that just as Lent prepares us for Easter, so also Easter prepares us for Pentecost. So there are positives to be found in both lessons. The Circle of the Church Year, like other Liturgical Action lessons, is meant to be adapted to the customs of...

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.  ...