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.
Gil suggested I mention that this week that other great familiar children’s work phenomenon of “this week we both thought we were doing it and turned up with something prepared” to be continued next week as “we both thought the other one was doing it“…..My favourite version of this is, “I’m not sure if they’ll turn up, so I’ll sort of half-prepare something…” which obviously makes no sense.
This is what one wee boy in the Sunday School asked his father when he came down to collect him. For me it brings to mind a great image of the adults hastily putting the chairs back out in rows, just in time for the children coming up for the Peace. We were sitting here listening to a sermon, honestly, we weren’t playing British Bulldogs. Or Twister.
But actually it might not be so much fun every week upstairs. This week all the songs were from the navy blue hardback book, not the purple paperback! What’s that about?
After church, my daughter and I went to Coda and bought a Runrig album. I’ve just spent a week on the isle of Skye with my son’s class at school and my daughter came along as a stowaway. My children go to a Gaelic school and there are a lot of obvious parallels between bringing up children as Gaelic speakers and as Christians. Both are subcultures, both can become insular and old-fashioned. There’s a bit of an effort on the part of parents to sell the “Gaelic is Cool!” message, just as with “Church is Cool!” Anyway, at home, I put the Runrig album on and my daughter asked if it was Gaelic they were singing. I said yes, and she said, “But it sounds like pop music – wow!” (i.e, not like folk music.) So Gaelic is Cool, at least for a little while.
I know I could re-create this experience by playing Christian pop music. We do hear Fischy music and obviously I could invest heavily at Wesley Owen in Christian pop – but are they ever going to get that experience in church? “It’s church, but it sounds like the real world! Wow!” Dunno.
I think I’ve titled a post like this before, which gives an idea of how often we’re not “normal” at St. C’s.
This week I experienced that familiar phenomenon of The Less Prepared You Are, the More Children Show Up. The inverse of this is, of course, Preparing a Fantastic Session Which You Present To Your Own Children and Nobody Else. This week I have to confess I was so busy with the loft conversion – painting skirting boards, the last step before the children can move into their new rooms – that I prepared on Saturday night by looking at that excellent website, Lesson Plans for Small Congregations, put together by the Episcopal church in the US. So I was in fact vaguely aware of the theological implications of the reading for the day (two healing miracles; the Syro-Phoenecian woman’s daughter, and the man who was deaf and blind) Unfortunately, I didn’t know where the Underchurch prayer cards were, where my handbag with the reading printed out was, or the correct pronunciation of Tyre. At first Susan and I were convinced it was just like Tiree. It sounded great, and what a nice idea, Jesus being on Tiree!
It was lovely having a biggish crowd of children, and of adults too! I pointed out to the children that the story about the Syro-Phoenecian woman features the unexpected element of someone arguing with Jesus, which the children responded to with enthusiasm. Arguing with authority – and we can argue with Jesus? Good. The children pointed out to me that the story of the healing of the deaf man featured Jesus being disgusting. Licking his finger and then touching the deaf man’s tongue. What kind of spiritual insight is this? Well, Jesus is fully human – embodied – disgusting – argues -takes risks to help people.
We then went on to draw pictures of people we knew who needed healing and placed them very close to a picture of Jesus. Very nice to have made our mark on the wall at the start of the new church year.
