Reflection :: May 23

Parishioner Cathy Henney shares the following reflection:

Hi! Most of you know my name from my longtime participation in the Outreach Oversight Committee. There will be more information provided on the changes coming to St. Paul’s Outreach/Faith in Action in the weeks ahead. Today, I want to talk about Godly Play.

Godly Play is a Sunday School curriculum based on Montessori educational methods. It follows a prescribed schedule for Sunday mornings so that the children know what to expect each week. Within that framework, children are allowed the freedom to choose their own activities, participate or hold back. Each week there is “The Feast,” “Getting Ready,” the Godly Play Story, Group Wondering and time to do one’s own work. A key feature of Godly Play is the use of religious language even with the very youngest children. Children have an innate understanding of God but often lack the language to communicate what they know and feel.

I had taught Sunday School at my previous church from kindergarten to about third grade for many years. We taught the children there by reading the stories from a children’s Bible and then using crafts or coloring pages to reinforce what they had learned. It was a success if they could tell the story back.

In Godly Play, the language of the story is the important part. Mary is always “the Mother Mary.” Joseph is “the Father Joseph.” Water is “the water of creation, the dangerous water of the flood, the water the people went through into freedom, the water of our baptism.” It is within the religious language that children understand and connect the biblical stories to the God that they know in their heads and hearts. This was brought home to me a few years back when I was telling the story of Pentecost. The 11 apostles go into the Upper Room and select Matthias to take Judas’s place. In the Godly Play story, the Upper Room is represented by four felt walls and the apostles are each represented by their shields. The words and the motions in Godly Play are of utmost importance so I was extra careful to have the correct shield for the correct apostle in the correct order. As I said the name of one of the apostles, a student in the classroom shouted “That’s me! That’s me! I am an apostle!” He had found himself as a follower of Jesus in the story and now had a name for it as well. 

I was amazed at how God worked through the lesson to show this student how they were part of God’s family.

Cathy Henney, Parishioner