A Stone Soup Lent
Coming Together In God's Chosen Fasts
Dear Friends,
A note: I’m trying out a different, two part format for the Resource Round-Up this week using footnotes for the second section. Let me know what you think!
We’re here. Firmly in the fragile expanse of Lent. After a quickly organized parish Pancake Supper and games, I marked Ash Wednesday at one of the “local” Episcopal Churches – the sort of contrast that emerges from serving in a town a significant distance from where I live.
The town (aka the second largest city in New England) I live in has at least three Episcopal Churches but I never visit them. It’s a strange experience to navigate that newness, to be the stranger, to find my way around an unfamiliar building, to feel the way so many people do when they step through the doors of a church. It was also a good reminder.
All around me, I am taken by the difficult grappling I see faith leaders undertaking regarding this Lent. As Diana Butler Bass put it, “we’re standing in ash up to our knees” right now. As much as our Lenten call is always to care for the widow and the orphan, to feed the hungry, to welcome the stranger, this message is magnified right now. (And while this will be a very USA-centric newsletter, the fact is the Kingdom of Heaven hasn’t been manifested anywhere on earth, so these notes should ultimately be useful for my international readers too, I hope!)
Our conventional fasts feel a lot emptier than usual.
So, what do we do now?
We Choose Our Fasts
“Is this not the fast that I choose: To release the bonds of wickedness, To undo the ropes of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free, And break every yoke?” - Isaiah 58:6
This is one of our grounding Ash Wednesday texts and it’s the piece of the question I see folks grappling with hardest right now. Through boycotts, shifting our spending, making do with what we have.
Maybe you’re canceling your subscription to a publication that’s been doing racist reporting. Maybe you’re spending your money locally. Maybe you are fasIting from phone games to free up more time to make advocacy phone calls. The small shifts matter and when we make them little by little they are more sustainable.
Maybe this is the Lent you invite the children at your church to join the knitting ministry or you host a workshop on mending your clothes. Maybe it’s a good time to revisit a community-oriented text like Stone Soup1 (which actually came up at my Pancake Supper table) and practice nourishing each other. Is your parish still hosting Lenten soup suppers or fish fries? These might be a chance to fast from hurry, from waste, and from loneliness.
Right now some of my shifts include really shutting down my Amazon purchases both for home and work and moving my book purchases, particularly for work, to the local Black-owned bookstore. I have long been a mender, a second-hand shopper, but I am centering those things in my attention. Knowing each other, being in community, change how we engage.
We Will Be Encouragers
I have a sticker on one of Godly Play training binders that says “Be an Encourager.” 2It’s a broad citation, referring to various statements by St. Paul in his letters. In his letters to the early church, Paul offers his own encouragement and tells the community to build each other up.3
In his Letter to the Ephesians, such encouragement is described as “[letting] no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear… Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:29, 32)
How will we build each other up this Lent, balancing our repentance in this season with the fact that we have each been “marked with a seal for the day of redemption” by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30)? I loved this videos shared by Glenys Nellist in her monthly Links to Lovely Things as a strategy for doing that building up:
We Use Our Gifts
What are you good at? What brings you joy? How can you, your family, your community – use those gifts to serve your community. Feeding people, providing childcare, making art, bearing witness. We all have gifts.
Sometimes our gift is just that of presence. Of watching and listening. Of not looking away.
I recently had the pleasure of talking with a colleague about her time as a missionary when her call was, more than anything, to bear witness to state violence. It was to watch and listen and make sure that violence couldn’t be forgotten or erased. It was, she described, the idea that one should “not just do something, [but] stand there.”
As an article outlining the work of Youth for Peace, Freedom, and Justice during the Vietnam War describes it, the slogan described an activist strategy of “tak[ing] demonstrative, symbolic actions against the war and stand there in the face of the authorities and take credit for what you do.”
Symbolic actions done again and again by many people do make a difference. We have become so concerned about “performative” activism that we sometimes forget that performances do actually produce change.
Witness, especially our witness as Christians against supposedly-Christian white nationalism4, is powerful.
We Choose Welcome
That feeling I had of being a stranger, or trying to navigate the halls of an unfamiliar church? Let’s call it the most gentle disorientation. Out here in the wilderness with Jesus, experiencing the temptation to step back, to steer clear of conflict and danger and fear and discomfort, we’re going to plant our feet. We’re going to choose welcome – and luckily we have support anchored in faith through the organization We Choose Welcome.**
**A caveat: I have some points of contention with this organization. They use some language and make caveats that I think are unnecessary and flat out not great. They’re also a smart and practical, more likely to help you communicate with your family’s concerned moderate, etc. This isn’t the right place for an essay about how the left cannibalizes itself in pursuit of perfection.**
We Choose Welcome’s resources also include toolkits for shutting down the fear and outrage cycle and meaningfully engaging with news, an Allyship guide created with the BIPOC-led faith and justice organization Chasing Justice, and their website points to concrete facts and about programs threatened by the Trump administration, including Temporary Protected Status and the Afghan Adjustment Act.
I don’t need We Choose Welcome to be perfect to find these tools helpful in advocacy and I also ‘welcome’ your recommendations for other groups doing this work.
We Will Stay Regulated
That whole thing about not falling into fear and outrage? It’s hard. They’re honest and expected emotional states right now.
I’ve written about the importance of co-regulation before as a strategy for supporting our classrooms, especially, but co-regulation assumes that we as adults know how to identify and manage our emotions. What an idea!
This is the perfect season for us to explore how our spiritual practices can help us to better regulate our emotions. Maybe you want to lean into the pause of breath prayers.5
We need to attend to our own needs before we can engage in co-regulation work. And it’s worth remembering that while co-regulation serves us and serves children, we can also co-regulate with each other as adults. It’s one of the tools I use in ministry coaching. Co-regulation creates safety and safety in children (and adults) let’s us ask questions, set boundaries, and try new things.6
Resource Round-Up pt. 1
First the General Highlights. Then the specific-to-something-above links as footnotes.
I’m on the Godly Play Foundation podcast this month talking about Godly Play and neurodivergence. It’s about coming alongside neurodivergent children, yes, but also about what this practice has offered to me as an autistic adult.
And, in more self-promotion, my conversations on Bedtime Chapel continue this week, reflecting particularly on Jesus’s encounters with women. I’m really putting that master’s degree in Women’s Studies to work this week.
Offshoots from Bedtime Chapel - you need to be following their social media! Co-host Natalie posts daily Instagram reels on connecting through scripture. They’re a great primer if you’re working through the lectionary with Bedtime Chapel but they’re also just thoughtful responses from someone on the ground with small humans.
And in keeping with that lectionary piece about Jesus’s interactions with women that I’m chatting about on Bedtime Chapel, Godly Play is hosting a story circle next Tuesday March 18 (3pm ET/12pm PT) featuring the new volume 8 story Jesus & the Women. It’s a really incredible story and if you’ve got a lunch break or a little free time, I can’t recommend stopping in to hear this story enough.
In little cute things: I’m loving these new tin Easter eggs from Be A Heart, which could easily become little family heirlooms, but also in keeping with sustainable ideas, I’ve seen a number of precious fabric eggs designed to be filled - you could make these out of various scraps and trimmings, the colorful parts of those free event shirts many of us have piled up, or even outgrown children’s items!
Resource Round-Up pt. 2
Feeling called by the idea of Stone Soup? Grab a classic version like Marcia Brown’s or opt for an updated (and in my opinion, more community-oriented) version like Christel Gollnick’s re-telling.
One way to Be An Encourager in your household? The Godly Play Affirmation cards. Designed by my very talented friend Joy (co-host of the podcast in the above highlights), they might be the best $10 you ever spend.
Grab some wisdom from St. Paul! I’ve recommended it before and I’ll recommend it again - Chris Raschka’s Paul Writes (A Letter). This distilled version of his letters is great for getting to the heart of that encouragement.
I recommend this June 2024 interview from Sojourners, “Are You Accidentally A Christian Nationalist.”
This post from Young Clergy Women International has some lovely Lent-specific breath prayers. How do you feel after saying these?
I love this free printable from Play Spark! What a great reminder about why our coming alongside children matters.
Let’s call is a day there, friends! Lent is only just beginning – let us travel this road together.
Peace,
Bird
So many little jewels in this. Thank you, Bird! I was especially struck by your comment about our concern about "performative" action. Twice a day when I brush my teeth, I repeat the 5 items from the Baptismal Covenant, and this morning it struck me that "Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?" might be painted as performative.... No! It's what I have promised to do. Not to be seen doing the things, but to do them.