easter 2015

I'm guessing that many of you, like me, don't read German - or not well enough to feel up to following a German blog. So you might have missed the feast photos  published recently on Gott im Spiel . Markus's comment was that they've had some nice things to eat recently. And I see that, as we did in Finland, they use glass drinking glasses and paper napkins in the color of the season. the Great Green Growing season But most striking to me is that it seems the children in Markus's classroom may select materials to have near them during the feast. A favorite is the Table of the Good Shepherd, with its chalice and paten. Go check out his photos .

Recently I had the opportunity of presenting a Godly Play taster session to some of the children's workers at my English churches. Another local storyteller kindly loaned me materials for several stories so that I could furnish our space, surrounding the circle with lessons as we normally do in a Godly Play classroom. Understandably though, the local storyteller couldn't loan me the "top shelf" focal shelf materials since those were essential to their own classroom. Most of my own Godly Play materials are in storage back in Finland. I was able to borrow the Circle of the Church Year materials (the "church clock") and Baptism materials (minus the Trinity symbols). So here's how I "made do": This photo was taken before I had quite finished - I did put the blocks into the clock correctly before we started! The focal shelf, as its name suggests, provides a focus for the room. It is the most important shelf, and it locates Christ as having central ...

If you'd like to follow me on Facebook, that's now possible. I've set up a Wonderful in an Easter kind of way page. You should be able to have a look even if you are not a member of Facebook yourself; the address is  https://www.facebook.com/easterkind . Their software wouldn't recognize the avatar I use here (one of the wooden People of God; it might have been too small a photo) so for now, at least, my profile picture is the Finnish Holy Family set: my profile picture on Facebook This is all pretty new to me. I'm not sure whether I'll post every blog post there as well as here... I want to make it easy to keep up with anything happening here on the blog but not to overwhelm you or irritate you by double-posting. Comments and advice are welcome! And if you like the page, please do click the "like" button there.

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 arg...

Featherglen asked how my Easter presentation had gone. (Thanks, FG, for the query!) As I explained earlier, I made a slide show to illustrate the Easter story, line by line. I used the day's lectionary reading, Luke 24:1-12, but also included some background from the previous chapter to set the scene. The pictures below illustrate these lines: Darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. Then Jesus cried out in a loud voice, saying, �Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.� With these words, he breathed his last. All his friends stood at a distance;  so also did the women who had accompanied him from Galilee and saw all this happen. The women took note of the tomb  and how his body had been laid.   Then they returned,  and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath day they rested,  as the Law required. In the telling, each slide contained just a single picture, but during the Wondering I showed a "review" slide to help jog people's me...

How was your Pentecost celebration? Did your church celebrate it like one of the three major festivals of the Christian year? photo source:  http://www.garageshopblog.org Our preacher started his sermon by singing"Happy Birthday" to us, which reminded me of my Junior Church celebration two years ago . But it wasn't really a remarkable service compared to an average Sunday. The Cathedral, on the other hand, made it very clear that yesterday was a Big Deal, and I was thrilled to join them yesterday afternoon! How about you?

You remember the Busted Halo video about Advent ? They've done several , but the first one was the one that explained Pentecost in two minutes. Here it is:

The first time I prepared the Pentecost story was early in my introduction of Godly Play to the very young children in our church. Vandriver and I were not at all sure about knocking down a set of blocks as the opening to the story - the children were still learning our new, reflective storytime mood and we worried that knocking down a tower was going to send the wrong message! Instead, I prepared a story based heavily on the Young Children and Worship version. But I came down with the norovirus that year, and didn't do Pentecost at all. our Pentecost materials The next year , I found myself with the materials ready for the Young Children and Worship story but discovered that after months of telling Godly Play stories I was no longer really satisfied with the YCW script. It felt like the worst of lectionary readings can feel - less like a pericope (a self-contained unit) and more like a random chunk of text. It seemed to me to lack the shape of a story. What I did like, though, wa...

If only I were doing Godly Play this year, it would be time for my favorite lesson from Young Children and Worship . I hope you'll bear with me if I repeat some of what I've written on this topic before : The relationship between  Young Children and Worship  and  Godly Play  is somewhat murky, especially to outsiders. But it would seem that the Ascension lesson was  written by Sonja M. Stewart after visiting and working with Jerome W. Berryman (and after reading Sofia Cavalletti) .  It's one of my favorite lessons.  It is simple, while being both biblical and liturgical.  It brings together the story of the Ascension with Berryman's "changing of the light", while also introducing (or reinforcing) the response we often give during the Eucharistic prayer to sum up the Mystery of Faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. (photo by  stf , cropped by me) In presenting this, I adapted Stewart's lesson in small ways....

Vandriver and I are beginning to look ahead toward the end of our year in England... and I'm finding that I don't look forward at all to returning to my work in Finland. Instead I'm daydreaming. What if there were a Godly Play job out there? Even a part-time one. Just for one "school year". Or might there be a Montessori day care that would take on someone with no paper qualifications for child care? (I can at least provide references and background checks and that sort of thing.) The English church sometimes advertises jobs which are "house-for-duty", meaning you don't get paid but you get a house to live in. I'd consider something like that, but I fear those arrangements are for priests rather than children's workers.  One part of my mind says it's just a daydream. But one part of my heart says, Go ahead and publish it,  just on the off-chance that somebody looks up my email address (it's on my Blogger profile page) and sends me a ...