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Teaching Godly Play: The Spiritual Journey in Classroom No. 1 Lay homily by Penny Stratton
Hearing Arrington’s sermon on Easter Sunday made me realize how long it had been since I’d heard a sermon. I haven’t been playing hooky, mind you: rather, I’ve been spending the better part of the 9:15 services in community with our youngest parishioners, the three- and four-year-olds in the pre-K Godly Play class—and, when we combine classes, with the K-1’s. When I agreed to speak today, it didn’t take me too long to decide to share some of the things that happen right down the hall every Sunday, to talk about the spiritual journey that’s taking place in classroom number 1.
According to the official literature, Godly Play “teaches children the art of using religious language . . . helping them become more fully aware of the mystery of God’s presence in their lives. [It] teaches the Christian religion to children in a way that deeply centers them.” We’ve offered Godly Play for about ten years here. During that time I’ve supported the program by recruiting teachers, acquiring materials, and attending trainings. But a funny thing has happened as I began teaching the classes myself two or three years ago. I’ve become more fully aware of the mystery of God’s presence in my life. And when I’m teaching the class, I feel deeply centered.
What has contributed to that experience? I think three things help create that centeredness, and bring about what Jerome Berryman calls a sense of God’s elusive presence: the classroom space itself, the words used in the stories, and the wondering questions we ask after the stories.
Now, we can’t all physically crowd into classroom number 1 today to see those things happening. So let me try to give you a sense of what goes on there.
We spend a lot of time creating a special atmosphere in the classroom. We emphasize that it’s a place to hear the stories of God: therefore we can talk more softly, and walk more slowly; we don’t have to hurry. Now, as a result, just about all I need to do is to cross the threshold to feel that I’m entering a sacred space. When I take off my shoes and walk in the room, and sit on the floor to wait for the first child to arrive, it’s one of the few times in the week when I allow myself to breathe and relax and be still and present. The children arrive, take their shoes off, and join me sitting in the circle. One of them rings a little chime, and when we no longer can hear it, the storytelling begins.
The stories are sacred stories from the Hebrew Testament; stories from Jesus’ life; parables; and stories of our faith. They’re simple, told without much detail. We don’t try to interpret what they mean. We use simple props as we tell them: wooden figures of people; pairs of animals; a burning bush; a model of a temple; a Pearl of Great Price; a baby doll to be baptized. A Godly Play expert has pointed out that because our faith stories on their own are so powerful, they “offer plenty to think about even without our elaboration on what they ‘mean.’" Rather, what we’re doing is “meeting God along with children rather than teaching them what we adults think they ought to know.”
In story after story, we talk about the mystery of God’s presence, and we emphasize the bigger themes of our faith. Here’s an example. One of my favorite stories, which we tell in September and refer to every week, is called the “circle of the church year.” We have a puzzle shaped in a circle like a clock, containing one block for each Sunday of the year. Each block is the appropriate liturgical color: green, purple, white, or red. You remove those blocks and rearrange them by color and explain what they mean:
These are the three Great Times: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Christmas is such a great mystery that it takes four whole weeks, the four purple weeks of Advent, to get ready to enter it. Easter is an even bigger mystery than Christmas. So it takes six weeks to get ready to enter into that mystery. And the mystery of Easter is so big that it spills over from Easter Sunday and lasts for six weeks after that. The color of Pentecost is red, like fire—and the followers of Jesus were so eager to tell the story that they felt they were on fire, and some people even said they thought they saw flames over their heads. The other Sundays of the year: they’re the great green Sundays that go along through the year: into the summer, when the days get longer—and into the fall, when they’re getting shorter . . . until you think the light’s just about to go out. And then it’s time to get ready for the mystery of Christmas, time for the light to come back into the world. The circle has no beginning and no end: when you think you’re reaching the end, you get to a beginning.
As you put the blocks back into the frame, you begin to repeat: these are the three Great Times: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. . . .
Now, I knew those were the three “Great Times,” and I’ve known it for years—but I’d never heard it expressed in that way. And I love the idea of needing time to enter the mystery of Christmas and of Easter. Are we going to sense God’s presence? Maybe, let’s look for it. Is it OK that it’s a mystery and that not all of it makes rational sense? Sure. The wording of the story imparts a sense of rhythm and motion and timelessness and expectation that are at the core of our faith.
Here’s another example of the way the words of the stories get to the Big Picture. In the fall, when we’re still in the green Sundays before we get to the purple of Advent, we tell the Hebrew Testament stories. In many of these stories, someone gets so close to God, and God gets so close to that person, that the person knows just what God wants him or her to do. Noah got close to God and knew to build an ark. Jonah knew he was supposed to get close to God, but he kept running away. Moses especially was always getting close to God, and God to him: he knew God was in the burning bush; he knew that he could lead the people across the Red Sea; after he and the Israelites had followed smoke by day and fire by night, he was the only one brave enough to climb up the mountain into the smoke and fire to get close to God. And there they got so close to each other that Moses knew to bring down the Ten Commandments.
I love that image of getting that close to God, and God getting so close to you, that you know what God wants you to do. What a compelling way to think about prayer that is.
Later, after Christmas and Epiphany, we tell the stories of Jesus’ life, some of which are the parables. In Godly Play, each parable is in a separate gold box. You begin by wondering what’s in the box. Is it a parable? Sometimes one is in there and sometimes it isn’t. You slowly begin to take things out of the box and wonder what they are, until you finally have enough to begin telling the story. I love this way of presenting the parables, because it acknowledges that we don’t always understand what they mean, and there’s no one right way to interpret them. When you unpack them, you don’t know what you’ll find. You might be confused, or puzzled, or you might all of a sudden see something that you’ve never seen before.
After each story, we wonder together. Sometimes it’s fun just to think about new ways to look at the story: I wonder if the sheep had a name? I wonder what it was like to be a fish looking up at the ark? I wonder how the whale felt when Jonah was praying inside him? I wonder if it was comfortable to ride the donkey all the way to Bethlehem?
With the parables, the wondering questions reiterate the idea that there are many ways to interpret the parables. Take the parable of the Good Samaritan, which Jesus told in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” After telling the parable in class, we wonder, “who’s the neighbor?” And as we ask it, we move the different figures around: Is this the neighbor? Or is this the neighbor? Is it the Samaritan? Is it the man who was robbed and left for dead? Is it the priest who walks by and ignores the victim? The Levite? One of the robbers? What would happen if the people switched roles? What if one of the robbers was robbed and left for dead: would the Samaritan have helped him? Thinking about those questions turns pat answers on their heads. Funny how posing the questions this way, for young children, can upset all our grown-up interpretations and lifelong assumptions.
After the sacred stories, the wondering questions that are more open-ended: I wonder what part you liked best? I wonder what part is the most important? I wonder if there’s any part we could leave out and still have all the story we need? I wonder where you are in this story?
I love that last question, where are you in this story? When we ask that question after the Ten Commandments story, I know where I probably am: I’m probably one of those Israelites hanging around at the bottom of the mountain, thinking, sure, it’s a great idea to build a golden calf! Let’s worship it! But I also know where I want to be: I want to be the one brave enough to climb up and get close to God, and to know what God wants me to do.
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So those are the three ways that the teaching the lessons help to get at that elusive presence of God. But that’s only half of the picture. The other half is learning from the children. Let me share just one powerful experience I had with the children a few months ago.
The Epiphany lesson ties into a wonderful book by Madeline L’Engle called The Glorious Impossible, which is a retelling of the life of Christ, illustrated with paintings by Giotto. I happen to be a sucker for Giotto, so even before I learned this lesson I knew I was going to love it. I told the story the very first time this year. Let me tell you what happened.
The props for this story are not objects but a series of plaques. Each one shows a reproduction of one of Giotto’s frescoes of the nativity story. The first plaque shows the annunciation; the second shows the visitation; the third shows the nativity, and so on. Before you lay out the first one, you say, “This is the biggest parable of all, the wonderful impossible. It shows how God became a baby.”
As you lay out the plaque, you tell the story of the picture but also comment on what you see in the picture, for example:
Look. Do you see what is happening to the mother Mary? The angel Gabriel is announcing to her that God has chosen her to be the mother of God. Do you see Mary? the angel? They have the same colors, but the angel has wings.
Look at the halos. They show which people are the holy ones. The artist used real gold and beat it out very thin and pressed it into the paint. Look how old Elizabeth looks. The artist wanted us to remember that she was too old to have a baby and old enough to be a wise friend to Mary.
Here is the baby Jesus just born. See how the mother Mary is lying down. She is awake and happy, but Joseph is asleep. The baby is wrapped in strips of cloth like you hear about in the story. Look at all the angels. They are so happy they are flying all over and singing.
Look at the man Simeon holding the baby at the temple. Do you know what he said when he saw Jesus?
By the time we were on the third plaque, the children started to lie down on their stomachs to get closer to the pictures. They couldn’t keep their hands off them. Now usually I stop and say, When I see you’re ready to listen, I’ll continue. Or I would say, Yes, it’s beautiful, while touching them gently on the arm to encourage them to take their hands away. And I started to do that, but I realized they were so engrossed in the story and in the beauty of the paintings that they just had to touch them. And as the story continued, I felt like we were in some kind of transcendent space, on one of those “brief flights” that Fred Alling talks about in his new book. I thought, here we are, telling this age-old story, 2000 years after it happened, looking at art that’s 500 years old. There, with all our hands on those old paintings, I felt like we were all entering the Word, like we were truly entering the mystery of Christmas, like we were getting at something that passes all understanding. There, indeed, was that elusive presence.
It’s a rare sermon that will reach me in that deep, deep way.
And so, teaching these young but very wise little children, I’m having quite a spiritual journey. It’s through teaching them that I’ve become a learner. I’ve come to see something that one of the children, Ben Duffy-Howard, expressed last year. In response to the wondering questions after a story, Ben put his hands up to his head, stopped, and said, “Wait a minute! I think I’m getting it now! God’s part of all of this!” Amen.
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