Dear Friends,
You know that feeling of coming back from a vacation? That exhaustion after what was, in theory, supposed to be refreshing? I’ve often heard it said that, after going on vacation, we need a vacation – and that’s about where I’m at right now, only with a move between apartments and a handful of medical appointments sprinkled on top. Following the Wild Goose and then a visit to my family, I am more tired than I knew I could be. In fact, I think I just keep discovering new depths of exhaustion (and I’m ready for that to stop!).
There’s also something strange about reentry when you’ve been in an unusual, special kind of space. For years, my wife and I have regularly camped at other festivals and reentry is always a challenge. After a few mornings of wandering into the Episcopal tent to say morning prayer, I find myself at home managing my cats – who unfortunately have no interest in the Psalms. Way too many emails sit waiting for me, sporadically answered. One festival we used to attend referred to life in that space as home, with the rest of the world described as Area 52, where maybe aliens are hiding?
I’m glad to be back in my actual home, but the fact is, it’s harder to get back into my routines here than to become emerged in the unusual rhythms of these special places. I remember it always being that way when I went to camp as a teen, and it isn’t any less true now. Deep immersion is a powerful thing.
Deep & Disorienting
Immersion can mean a variety of things. We can be immersed in water – in baptism, for purification, because it’s hot and we’re seeking to cool down. We can be immersed in a language or a culture; it’s often said immersion programs are one of the best ways to learn a new language, for example.
Immersion is about depth and intensity, and in this week’s Gospel we find Jesus pushing his listeners into something of a philosophical deep end. Here, we encounter rapid-fire parables, a sentence or so each. And after a few weeks of greater exposition and detail, these parables come without any notes – until the very last one.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
Do they understand? Do we?
In Godly Play, we begin tellings parables with an extra bit of wondering. We wonder about the pieces as we set them all out, a bit at a time, turning them this way and that, stretching our minds together to get ready. Parables can demand a different way of thinking, a different relationship to language. But they also demand that we relinquish the idea of total understanding. The great mysteries of our faith often do this, but for such tiny stories, parables can be forceful about this matter. Have we understood all this?
Absolutely not. But that’s okay.
When I think about the parables, I often think about how dug in we can be about being right. I am no exception to this rule. In fact, as an Enneagram 1, I’m probably more difficult about this than most people. A need to be right can control me.
Children aren’t immune from the need to be right – I’ve been impossible in this particular way all of my life. That being said, my experience of children is that the typical child is used to being wrong. And when they are wrong, they make a decision: will they dig in on their original conclusion, will they play with the original idea while holding the fact that they were wrong, or will they take on the newly presented information and begin to experiment with this new knowledge?
When I was a child, I was known to take in new information, determined to be right, and then to close everything up. Their were words I refused to say for months because I had mispronounced them a single time and been corrected. I could not say the word again until I was certain it would be correct. Sometimes I think my mind doubles down on mistakes, building extra strong neural connections upon being corrected, whether the error was in my multiplication tables or a behavioral failure. But then there are parables.
While I can imagine many of us were told we were wrong about a parable at some point in our religious education, parables are the ultimate playthings. In the assortment of blocks above, I was playing with the Parable of the Good Shepherd.
At first, this play felt obvious. There was the sheepfold, the sheep, the shepherd, a wolf. But what if the wolf was looking for a home? What if the wolf needed his own place to call home? So I built a wolf-fold!
This was what came out of the parable box for me that day. It was the piece of the story I hadn’t discovered before – but play opened it to me.
Play And Presence
One of the last things I did at the Wild Goose this year was to offer a presentation on why we do what we do in Godly Play, telling a story while also exploring the underpinnings of our practice. And, as we were sitting and talking about the way that this practice works, one person raised her hand and posed a question: why is it that adults aren’t supposed to play?
In Montessori, we say that play is the work of the child, but it’s a vital question; what about adults? Play is certainly also part of my work, but my work is also to be with and create space for children and their own authentic spirituality. But all adults can benefit from play. So how do we move into that space? How do we embrace play?
Perhaps one way for us to get closer to our own playful nature is to first let go of our desire for a perfect, controlled experience. At one of my previous congregations, I found joy in the delighted declaration - Crack! - that followed the breaking of the bread. Some of my fellow parishioners certainly felt the same way, but others, I’m sure, were far from pleased. But that breaking is a high point in the liturgy. That sensorial moment is hard to resist. It was with this story in mind that I was so taken by Juniper LaNunziata’s recent writing in Geez Magazine, “On Hearing the Crack.”
About the presence of children at the Table, Juniper writes,
It can be a little bit precious (in the pejorative sense) to some folks, who find that “interruptions” by noisy children make it difficult to hear the Body being broken for all. But I have come to believe that the sound of children being present at the Lord’s table is even more beautiful than the sound of Bread cracking. It is a reminder of who is being gathered together and a reminder of Who it is that does the gathering.
Whether children are physically gathered around the table or are in the pews, a church without children is missing a big piece of the image of God. And those children will and should act like children. Indeed, above and beyond including children, prioritizing our own ideal worship experience is a barrier to the inclusion of many people, particularly many of us who are disabled, in God’s house, at the table we are all invited to.
One of my favorite resources for this purpose is, I must say, one that I created myself – a pew card designed to help people be better companions to children and families. You can get my Worshipping with Children Pew Card here. (Not quite what you need?Please reach out if you’re hoping to offer some special notes to those worshipping in your community and need some design support or a consultation!)
Making room for play in our broader worship and community practice can also mean reemphasizing the kind of intergenerational gathering that had been steadily disappearing from churches – but is now re-emerging, often due to decreased capacity and lower attendance numbers. Those issues are certainly among the arguments for ending children’s church, but they shouldn’t be the main ones.
Rather, as Gline Allen notes in a recent Sojourners article by Bekah McNeel,
…children shouldn’t just be occupied with quiet, self-contained activities; they should be invited to participate in worship, service, teaching, and liturgical elements — all of which can be made developmentally appropriate.
“Engagement with the children from the pulpit during the sermon is also a way that children are made to feel that they belong, that they are a part of the body of Christ,” Gline Allen said.
In recent months I’ve had the privilege of holding space near some of my Sunday School children during the occasional sermon, and even when that sermon hasn’t been explicitly targeted towards them, when they recognize pieces of what’s happening in the larger discussion (shoutout to my rector Nick for his mentions of things like ants at a barbecue and the Rice Crispies mascots), they now that there are things that connect them to the bigger conversation. Maybe they’re not following the entire Trinity Sunday sermon, sure (were you?), but even those small moments are opportunities for them to hear that they are part of the same ecosystem of ideas that their community is attending to.
As a child, I began lectoring around the age of 9 or 10, which was one of the ways I knew I was viewed as a full member of my community, but children shouldn’t need to be embedded in specific ministries to know that they are seen and held in that way. This summer, while most of us continue to be in the in-between of vacations and reduced worship schedules, I encourage you to consider how you’re welcoming children specifically and embracing their presence as innately spiritual beings. Too many of us will find ourselves back in church school during worship when the program year resumes, but even if that is the time we are given, we can be more intentional about that time – and the time in worship and fellowship that surround it – each time that we gather.
Peace,
Bird