Games of 'What If'
Parables, The Beatitudes, & Imagining the Kingdom of Heaven
Dear Friends,
I’m just back from a grand Godly Play adventure in Washington, D.C. and I am so tired but full of delight. It is life-giving to get to talk about children’s spirituality and what it means to really trust children with the stories of our faith.
That being said, I have been immersed in hours of conversation with families and caregivers and church leaders and I feel like I don’t know what’s been going on in my own world! So let’s get oriented again together –
To Be Blessed –
It’s Beatitudes Sunday this week, and when I think about teaching the Beatitudes in Church School settings, I do initially hit a wall. They’re so concise, such essential promises, and yet, in the moment, it’s easy to feel as though “what good is all this?”
How does it help me, if I am hungry now, to know that in the Kingdom of Heaven I will filled? Or that I must wait for that Great Beyond to be comforted in my weeping?
But, as I said above, I just spent several days talking about children’s spirituality, and in the the Godly Play context, part of that means dissecting the idea of play, and how “what if” play – play that imagines things that have not been – is essential to envisioning and manifesting the Kingdom of Heaven, because it is also something that exists right now only in the “what if.”
Unlike the Parables, the Beatitudes, give us a more deeply imagistic realm with which to play with those “what if” notions of heaven to manipulate and explore. The Beatitudes, on the other hand, are premonitions and admonitions. This is what it will be like for those who are currently on the margins. And this is what it will be like if you are currently in a position of dominance – beware. Repent.
Unsurprisingly, my Godly Play impulses around this story are clear; tell the parables. Keep telling the parables. Tell the Greatest Parable, which includes the Sermon on the Mount in its exploration of Jesus’s earthly ministry. We need to spend more time in the “what if” world, exploring the strange and wonderful reversals. Only then are we ready to come closer to making the “what ifs” real – which brings me to an excellent resource: Carol Boston Weatherford’s picture book, “The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights.”
What I love about this book as a model of the Beatitudes is that it helps us envision what it takes to change the play of “what if” - the things we haven’t seen – into the “as if” - those things that have been modeled for us, through the lens through the history of racial injustice in the United States. In the big picture, and in the particularities of this moment, every step towards a more just world for people of color, for LGBTQ+ people, for disabled people, is a step towards that strange what if and not yet world that we invoke in the Lord’s Prayer: “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
And that’s the other piece that comes alongside teaching the Beatitudes; while the Lord’s Prayer is a highly condensed expression of our ideal relationship with God, it is also an invitation to work towards that world. The hungry are fed. Those who have done wrong are forgiven. Bits of heaven become the here and now.
Resource Round-Up
The start of Lent is less than a month away, so let’s see what we’ve got on that front first –
Before we can get to Lent, we have Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday! Whether you have a traditional pancake supper or maybe you do a special pancake coffee hour the Sunday before, you can make it all extra fun with these Pancake Party ideas from A Good & Joyful Thing.
Speaking of the Pancake Party, head back to this pre-Lent newsletter from two years ago, which includes that link plus a variety of other Shrove Tuesday & Lent thoughts
PC(USA) has put out their resource list for Lent here – of particular interest is the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s Tread Lightly for Lent, which is really oriented toward Creation Care topics and is easily adaptable across age groups.
And, for a crossover, they’ve highlighted the book Turning Over Tables: A Lenten Call for Disrupting Power by Kathy Escobar, which includes a variety of reflection lessons and prompts; my ABCUSA colleague, neighbor, and friend-in-song Nancy Willbanks plans to offer a reading group for beginning the week before Ash Wednesday. Check out her most recent Substack post here for more information on how that group will work (it’s at the end of the newsletter but there’s a lot of good stuff in there!).Another oldie, but one I may not have highlighted in the past, is What We Do In Lent: A Child’s Activity Book by Anne E. Kitch. Anne Kitch is just an absolute legend in the Episcopal children & family’s formation space. I really appreciate that this book includes a specific short parent guide for “parenting in the pews.”
I’m really taken by the book Bare Tree & Little Wind written by Mitali Perkins and illustrated by Khoa Le, who illustrated Mother God, so it’s unsurprisingly beautiful. In particular, I think Perkins choice to distinguish Jesus as a “Real King” in comparison to those kings of the world is an elegant and interesting one to place next to Godly Play’s language about Jesus not being a Different Kind of King. (And if you love it, the duo has a follow-up for Christmas, Holy Night & Little Star.)
Finally, speaking of Godly Play’s language choices, if you’re using Faces of Easter or the Greatest Parable during Lent, per their traditional scheduling, make sure you’re using the updated art. Faces has had beautiful “new” art for about 5 years now, while the new Greatest Parable art, done by the phenomenal Vicki Shuck of Esperanza Arts, was just released this past fall. Only the prints and downloads of the Greatest Parable art is available right now – probably because everyone is prepping for Lent! – but if you’ve already got the box and triangles, that will still let you update them easily!
Okay, one more – which is to say that Vicki has a gorgeous Ash Wednesday coloring sheet available for download for only $2!
Other resources that have caught my eye recently – and then I’m going to figure out what happened while I was mentally off the grid for about 4 days!
One of the things I’ve become a go-to for through this newsletter is home-based faith practices, so unsurprisingly I’m excited for the Rev. Emily Hunter McGowin’s Households of Faith: Practicing Family in the Kingdom of God.
The latest Messy But Graceful podcast from GenOn Ministries features Kayla Craig in conversation with host Brittany Sky – and that’s a dream duo. It’s a great podcast in general, but Kayla Craig on parenting and spiritual formation? Yeah, I’m tuning in.
Speaking of Brittany Sky, she’s got a new project over on Bookshop.org called The Good Shepherd’s Shelf. If you like the book recommendations you get here, The Good Shepherd’s Shelf is the same vibe, but in a more centralized space. (I confess, I did start building something similar over on my website but it’s been really slow, so maybe this approach cracks the code!)
Okay, that’s enough for now! It’s been a super busy few weeks between onsite Forma coordination in Province 1 and my Godly Play work trip to D.C. I don’t even want to know what my inbox looks like, but it was lovely to start my return to things here with you all. See you next week!
Peace,
Bird