I know, we are supposed to be resisting the pressure to celebrate Christmas. Every year I do, I scowl at the cards in the shops in September, the Christmas music in the shops in October, the trees and decorations. I’ve learned that Advent is a season of waiting, of expectant hope, of waiting for the time when we’ll commemorate in celebration Jesus’ birth as a person long ago, and also waiting, alertly, for the moments when we experience Christ in the here-and-now, and even, if we can stretch ourselves theologically this far, of waiting for Christ’s return at the end of time, when every tear will be dried.
Advent is a season of waiting, not a season of celebration and fulfillment. We shouldn’t – liturgically – be celebrating Christmas during this time, shouldn’t be feasting, having parties, singing Christmas carols. That should all wait – and that waiting will help us experience the mood of the season.
But waiting isn’t refusing. Expectant hope doesn’t equal being a killjoy. When something is offered, is present – a party, a song, a tree-lighting celebration, “Silver Bells” on the PA system – are ignoring, declining, objecting, Christmas virtues? I don’t actually object or decline, of course, but if I feel I ought, or somehow indicate to the children that we ought, how is that slight sourness helping to bring the Kingdom closer? If we focus too much on the “wait,”- if waiting and alertness becomes delaying and control, we ignore the fact that the Kingdom is out of our control. We’re waiting because it’s not here yet – not because it’s good to wait. We should be longing, not waiting, and one who longs welcomes any sign of the approach of the beloved.
In real life, it’s not just the shops who want us to celebrate Christmas early. In school, Christmas parties and events are well under way – our school fair is this Saturday, the day before Advent even begins! In the town, the trees are up and the lights are on.
This year, I’m going to try giving in, and letting go. In my own spiritual development, I knew about Christmas long before I ever learned about Advent. I think I’m going to resist the “should” of liturgical correctness and give in to the “should” of the shops, the schools, and the city. I’ve bought a chocolate Advent calendar and I’ve already spent an afternoon browsing the shops with my daughter looking at Christmas things. (We saw a lot of expensive felt ornaments in George Street that we thought we could produce ourselves…)
Last year we experimented with a version of Las Posadas within our church over the weeks of Advent. Las Posadas is a tradition in Latin America, held over the 9 nights leading up to Christmas Eve. In a community, nine houses are chosen, and each night, figures of Mary and Joseph are processed around the houses, asking for shelter, but being refused, until the ninth house lets them in. Last year we carried the plaster figures from the crib scene to different locations within our church building. This year, we’re making puppets, (less breakable!), and we’re going to take them to several places in the neighbourhood of the church building. The idea of stepping outside the church to explore our surroundings came out of the City Centre Church Lent Group which several of us took part in.
The idea of accompanying Mary and Joseph (in our imagination) on their journey towards Jerusalem connects with the idea that we are all journeying towards Jerusalem, towards the birth of Jesus, in our understanding, our minds, and our hearts. Advent is the season of waiting, of expecting, of journeying, toward our celebration of the birth of Jesus in historical time, towards a greater awareness of his presence with us at all times, and towards our expectation of his return. These are big themes which it takes a lifetime to appreciate, and hopefully the children in our Underchurch and Crèche will have many Advents to explore them. This year, I hope something resonates with the children, whether it’s the idea of travelling, the sense of expectation, the “not-yetness” of being told “no room at the inn”, and the peace of the final Sunday, when Mary and Joseph are finally welcomed to the stable within the church building.
Practicalities
Our plans are to visit several locations over Advent. These are:
6 December: Edinburgh Castle (just as far as the main gate)
13 December: Castlecliff Homeless Hostel (the same; as far as the main entrance)
20 December: Johnstone Terrace Wildlife Reserve (we’ll go in and walk around)
Because we’ll be outside, it’s important that children have warm outdoor clothes. We will need plenty of adult helpers. We’ll bring lanterns, some blocks of wood to make clip clop donkey noises, and if we’re brave enough, we’ll sing a little as we process around. We hope to be able, within the service, to share a little of our adventures with the adults in the main service.
I just had a nice conversation with Julian at Scottish Wildlife Trust who says he’d like to give us keys to the Johnstone Terrace Wildlife reserve!!!! I’m so excited. We can have Forest Sunday School and Forest Creche – I see us wandering around peacefully among the trees and shrubs, pushing our brothers in the pond – anyway, need to put some thought into it. But still – what a fantastic wee place, right on our doorstep, and probably all to ourselves most of the time! There are volunteers working there on Sunday mornings and the Quakers have a key, apparently.
I think it might be the first stop on the Outdoor Posada this year if that goes ahead.
This week was a classic example of yet another of those great children’s work clichés: you know how the ones where you have NO time to prepare, so you just have to wing it, praying hard, sometimes take flight and are blessed? Whereas all too often if you spend days working on preparing, those ones just seem to die the death…? Which is a long-winded way of saying, though I knew well in advance I was doing it (THANKS Catarina), nonetheless, last week was a total write-off in terms of preparation. Particularly Friday and Saturday, spent in a haze of hospitality and halloweenery. So I just had to hope something would occur to me, very late Saturday – or first thing Sunday!
Which it did, luckily. Had already decided to do All Souls as well as All Saints – none of the websites so much as mentioned Hallowe’en , and we felt it was important to let the wee guys de-brief about the single most exciting thing about their week. And then explain the meaning of it – can you believe, out of 12 of them (one of the other immutable rules is, the less prepared you are, the more kids turn up) none of them knew why there was Hallowe’en at all…? Oh – except Olivia, so maybe they start doing it from P4 upwards. So we covered All Hallows Eve and All Souls to segue neatly into All Saints Day. Which worked nicely, helped down by my sole teaching aid – some Hallowe’en sweets left over from handing out to guisers the night before…! Possibly a bad precedent to set – but since we had a fair bit of chat to get through, thought it might help them sit still. Which it did! (Catarina says it’s not bribery. It’s called ‘incentivising positive behaviour’.)
That was the main idea – to do something about ‘what are saints’ followed by ‘nowadays WE have to be the saints’ – and get them to sign up to something as saints… and if that didn’t last long enough, read the Lazarus story as set for today, then wrap Colm in toilet paper and have them invite him to come forth! But the idea that did pop, belatedly, into my brain over brek on Sunday was – the idea of signing up or making a mark didn’t grab me, but – hangabout, didn’t all saints have some visual symbol in pictures of them, to show it was them…? John the eagle, Peter with his keys, Jerome the cardinal’s hat – thought we’d skip over Agatha, with her breasts on a plate, but still, the idea was there. What symbol would signify you-the-saint? What has particular resonance for you? What will be in paintings of Saint Gill, Saint Martin, Saint Colm – and so on? Let’s draw our Saint Symbols, and show them off to ‘the community of the saints’ – better known as grown-up church…!
Well, like so many half-baked ideas, they actually really responded to this one – they all drew enthusiastically and industriously, and seriously engaged with the idea of something that meant something to them, individually – because they all drew something different. I wondered if they might either borrow ideas, or just go for obvious/formulaic things – that we might get 3 lions, 4 nintendos and 7 Hannah Montanas – but no. We had all different things, and animal, vegetable and mineral! The smaller guys identified primarily with livestock – we had Luke the zebra, Michael the lion, but also James the dove and David the spider! But then we also had Olivia the double bass; Paul Michael the tree; and Freddy the tornado!
So then we lettered a sign saying ‘we are the saints’ – and practised processing behind it holding up our saint-symbols. And practised. AND practised – and turned it into a game… And began to despair – because it was a LONG service this week, and we were down there an hour! (At this point I regretted not having brought the loo-roll for St Lazarus.) However we did eventually get back into church – and process – and the saintly symbols were censed by the Rector! We had lots of questions about it – always an indicator of interest…
Gil
I’m still feeling gloomy and confused about what’s happening at church, so it’s a blessing that our spiritual life at home is especially rich and colourful at this time of year. We had our school Halloween party on Friday night which was a successful end to a period of hard work. 350 people enjoyed themselves there, which to me is a lot. That meant our home Halloween preparations were a bit behind, and I went out to the greengrocer’s with my daughter to buy a couple of pumpkins on Saturday afternoon.
After choosing the nicest pumpkins, I got a couple of pomegranates; I asked the greengrocer which were the best and we got into conversation. The shop was empty for a moment and I somehow ended up telling him, briefly, the story of Persephone (a Greek myth we like, which is about a pomegranate, a mother’s love for her daughter and why we have seasons, esp. autumn and winter!) He listened, and then said, “And I’ll tell you another thing. If you’re a Muslim, in every pomegranate, one of the seeds is from heaven. One of the seeds is a gift from heaven. “ He also told me that there are two fruits that, for Muslims, are “from Heaven”; the pomegranate and the fig.
Well – isn’t that lovely? What else can you say?
That night we went out guising and had a great time running around our neighbourhood, bumping into other dressed up daleks and witches and devils. We had glow sticks with us, our pumpkins were hanging by the front door glowing with candles, a neighbour let off fireworks, and we generally did pretty well at fighting off the dark night. “Ordinary time” is almost over…
Tempestuous turmoil at church. Hopefully things will soon be resolved with justice and compassion.
From a “The Children” point of view, this weekend helped me see how much the congregation shares a child-friendly (for want of a better term) approach to worship and church life. During the parish consultation day, when the children were in a creche in a separate room from the adults, I heard a lot of adults asking where they were and was their voice going to be heard in the consultation. In fact they were, because we were very fortunate in that Michelle Brown, the Youth and Children’s advisor for the diocese, came and did an hour of brainstorming and play with the children to identify what they love, like, and would like to see changed at St. C’s. This produced a fantastic list which I will reproduce here in full when I get a hold of it! Top of the “we love” list was “communion,” which is obviously very encouraging.
When I came into the church with a few of the children on Sunday for what had been billed as an all-ages service, some adults in the front row immediately offered their seats to the children so that they could see comfortably. This sent a lovely welcoming message. There was a suggestion that the children might want to leave the community and be looked after by creche workers in the hall, but never mind, really. It’s hard to balance everyone’s needs and ideas at the same time. I know that if the service had been planned within the congregation of St C’s and arose organically out of our traditions, that the children would have been included. That’s a good thing to know.
A bit of to-and-fro-ing this week about who was going to take Underchurch. I thought for a while that I was going to need to cover for somebody, and I was happy with that – I’ll re-tell the GP lesson we did last week, if there are a number of new children, and then we’ll have an extended response time. But it turns out that people have organised a swop and while I’ll be there on Sunday, I’ll be there as a helper and can sit back and relax. Now the very thought of that really appeals to me! I feel happy at the thought of sitting in the circle, listening to the story, sharing my news and my prayers, being looked after. I’m looking forward to it. So is Underchurch becoming church for me? I don’t know how I feel about this.
At the Godly Play enrichment day last week, a number of participants voiced their frustration with the limited time they had with the children to do Godly Play sessions. Some had to travel a distance to get to the children’s spaces, others rejoin the main service for communion or stay in longer for a children’s address. I think a number of people seemed to feel that the children benefited more from being together in a Godly Play setting, than in the main service.
I worry sometimes that when we work with children separately from the adults we’re in danger of creating a separate church. A separate gathering, with its own traditions and rituals, a place with its own energy, someplace where we’d rather be – adults and children alike. Listening to the ideas coming out of the Mission-shaped Church movement, Fresh Expressions and so on, the consensus seems to be that a number of different types of gatherings can become “church” even if they’re not in a church building, not on a Sunday morning, and not a group of people sitting quietly listening to a sermon with breaks for singing. That all sounds really positive especially if it’s occurring in a missional setting with people that wouldn’t otherwise come to a traditional church. But what’s happening if different groups within an existing congregation peel off and start directing their energies away from the main group?
It’s probably a daft thing to worry about, especially in a world with poverty and earthquakes. In our church, I’m the only adult who spends the majority of her time downstairs with the kids, although there are some others who must be at the 50% mark. But I don’t think I’m going to let it go as a concern. For example, I don’t want to be building up a repertoire of songs that we do downstairs but not up – which means that sometime over the next few weeks I’m going to ask if we can come upstairs and teach “Welcome Everybody” to the auld yins in the congregation.
but I’m a bit disappointed at Sunday School this week, too. Were the kids all rowdy and shouting again? No. This week, they were too quiet. In fact, I’ve entered into a private arrangement with Olivia and Iris that the next time we do Godly Play, I’ll give them a sweetie for every sensible response to a “wondering” question. Let’s just say there was a lot of silent wondering today.
I think it was the same problem this week as last; a large proportion of kids who aren’t usually there (it was the Three Churches joint service) and I didn’t put the time into building the circle, as Godly Play puts it, or preparing myself. I went to the Godly Play enrichment course yesterday and it was good to have the messages about the heart of Godly Play reinforced. Crossing the threshold into sacred space, and building the community of children. It’s very easy to get stuck at the level of telling the story (or even below that, at the level of making and accumulating the materials!) I’m afraid that’s what I did today.
After the course yesterday, I had decided to tell a GP story today. The visiting preacher was going to talk about “cities” and the OT reading he’d chosen was that of the Tower of Babel. I realised that we haven’t done the Mystery of Pentecost (which starts off with the Tower of Babel before going on to the Pentecost story) in a long time. In fact, I didn’t do it last Pentecost because we were having a joint service with the same people at another one of the three churches. So, a great choice on an intellectual level, right? But I ended up putting the time into memorizing it, rather than really making it my own. The children were startlingly quiet during the story, and quieter still during the wondering. (There’s a possibility that they might have warmed up, actually, but the buzzer for returning to the service rang)
So not too many points for the story, but that wasn’t the only problem: I knew I wanted to start off with a getting-to-know-you activity, but I chose one that was just too much for the 4-10 year old children who were there – matching up jigsaw pieces which even included some reading, silly me, with the intention then that they find out their partner’s name and introduce them to the group. It was a nice idea, but the combination of age-and-stage and shyness made it a bit of a non-starter.
High point of the session- when I asked what people’s favourite part of the story was, Richard said “the happy ending.” The “Mystery of Pentecost” lesson ends with:
Everyone could see that Jesus’ friends had come close to God – and that God had come close to them – in a new way. It no longer mattered that they spoke different languages. Everyone could understand one another. Jesus’ friends, his disciples,had become apostles! They went out into all the world to tell his story.
Gosh, it is a happy ending, isn’t it, and it’s kind of the happy ending of the whole Jesus story. Except I hadn’t seen it like that. The feeling that it evokes in me is anxiety, rather than happiness. I think it makes me feel anxious, the very thought of evangelising and “going out to tell his story.”
So – a learning need identified for me. Building a new circle, with a large proportion of new children. What’s a good way to build relationships and make people feel comfortable?
And getting myself more relaxed and prepared on Sunday mornings. One of the helpful things about the GP enrichment course was sharing with other folk about the stresses of working in shared space and time pressures. It’s hard starting the day with arguments about tables and things like that. Next week, ten minutes out in the sunshine in the garden before anyone arrives.
Sounds like draft Dr. Seuss title, but it’s some materials I brought home from a Godly Play materials making session I went to last Saturday organised by Margaret Grant and Alex MacKenzie from the Church of Scotland. Alex did an incredible amount of work in sourcing and preparing materials, doing all the hard work and providing cut-up MDF, photocopied pictures and even bags of different shades of blue wool fleece to make Red Seas out of felt. I really look forward to making mine, a quiet hour or two spreading out fleece and making watery wave patterns.
I should look up when that story appears in the lectionary – or maybe we should do a season of Godly Play? One of the problems with Godly Play is if you stick to the given lesson’s there’s only one year worth of materials, and there’s only so many times you can tell the stories, but this new Red Sea is motivating me to go through the Desert Bag stories again. (Yes, I know that they’re really the People of God Lessons or something.) Another challenge is that we have a rota system of Sunday School teachers, so that it’s hard to have a continous run of stories.
I’m going to a Godly Play training day tomorrow (I think – I have registered rather sketchily online rather than quaintly posting off cheque using stamp and envelope,) so I may hear of some solutions to these problems. The focus of the day is on Godly Play with “real” children with challenging behaviour but hopefully it will broaden out.
Fairly disastrous Underchurch chat today. Very grateful the Divisional Underchurch Inspector didn’t turn up for a spot check.
I knew there were going to be a lot of visiting children, so I prepared early. The Gospel was the one where Jesus says, “If the salt loses its savour, what can season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with each other.” Ahah – salt – a concrete image. What is salt? Something which makes things tastier, better. I had a brilliant idea (that alone should have sent off warning bells) of baking a loaf of bread entirely without salt and giving it to the children to taste, so that they’d get a sense of salt and the absence of salt.
I thought we could also make pictures using salt. (Glue and salt – like glitter.) This seems “Sunday School-ish” in that it presents the children with a preplanned activity rather than letting them respond and choose their own materials, but I thought it might be a bit more educationally respectable when I hit on the idea of offering a choice of different textures of salt, and, living near a Waitrose, that’s not a problem: I bought rock salt and Malden crystalline salt and some ordinary table salt.
I got there plenty early, to set up the tables, bowls of salt and glue coyly hidden under tea towels, baskets of bread with and without salt prepared and waiting. Unfortunately, the room where the creche toys are kept was unusually locked, so we had the usual last-minute rush anyway.
So what went wrong? Well, I think I wasn’t completely in the mood – I was a little tired and stressed and maybe didn’t allow myself enough time to prepare in any spiritual way for being with the children. We jumped straight into a song without much of a getting-to-know you period.
After the song, which went fine, we had a little session of prayer, which was a mixture of the sublime and the surprising. I handed round my no-salt bread (which does taste really odd, believe me) and the normal bread for contrast. The children were quite excited about being given little chunks of bread, like ducks, but less so about discussing the flavour of the bread. When I identified that it was salt that was missing, and invited discussion on salty foods that they liked, they engaged enthusiastically. “I like sausages!” “I like pizza!” “I like popcorn!” …..When I tried to intimate that Jesus thought that we could affect others the way salt affects food, that we could be salt to each other…well, I had the embarrassing experience of trying to shout over the children’s head about Jesus. “Can you think of a time you were nice to…oh, never mind. “ Except I didn’t say never mind, I carried on, feebly, for a few minutes. Eventually I gave up and released them to run over to the art table or stay and play with the trains and cars and Noah’s Ark.
The art was fine – I suppose in the end the children had a chance to really experience salt and handle it in quantity and discuss its texture, and think about its absence and presence. Maybe the next time they hear that passage from Scripture it will have a bit more resonance for them. The other parents who were there pointed out, nicely, that the subject of food was always going to be more exciting to talk about than morality and being good, and that’s certainly pretty clear to me now !
I went home to have some more of my no-salt bread, which was quite tasty with Anchor butter and Marmite.
