What Is At The Center

On Why We Do This Work – And The Tools That Help Us Do It

Dear Friends,

There is something amazing about writing this letter in this moment. I sit here with some of your freshly in mind, having spent days around tables with a few of you at the US Godly Play Trainer Gathering. I have a world of new connections. But it’s more than that. It’s a re-centering. It’s a recollection of why all of us do the work that we do, whether professionally or as volunteers, as parents or caregivers or friends.

We do it because we are called to the spiritual nurture of children, because we honor children and their spirituality, because they are at the heart of it all.

It’s shockingly easy to forget that, especially when we’re caught up in church politics, overwhelmed by stress. And yet, this is the most important thing. But when we’re asked to defend our programs and priorities, it’s easy to lose focus. To remain countercultural within the mainstream.

This week, as I navigate reentering my life and saying farewell to my congregation’s rector, I write with a few simple thing I am carrying with me from this past week.

Where Is Your Center?

During the time I was away, I realized that I hadn’t been apart from my wife for this long (6 days) in the entire time we have been married (6 years). My wife is absolutely my center. We’ve known each other for 14 years. We have seen each other through countless crises. I have a tattoo from Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,” reading “the wild & the tame” from the following passage:

What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.

It’s the best description of this relationship that I can imagine. And, at the same time, I know this is not my only center. She is the center of my personal life. But our lives are bigger than the places and people we call home.

One way we can understand where our centers lie is by considering what is really and truly most sacred to us. How do you mark the holy? Where do you find your calm?

During my time away, we collectively built an altar, guided by one of our fellow trainers, Jill, who runs the amazing Instagram @sacred_spots_at_home.

We often write about creating altars during holy times, places to practice Advent or Lenten devotions, but they can also be an always place, constantly in flux, marking the liturgical seasons. I’m sure many of you do this (I can barely put a books on a bookshelf thanks to my cats), but I do love how Jill approaches it with her underlays and, as she mentioned to us, her patience with the things she doesn’t always want there. These are collective spaces and things can be beloved and important to others in our lives even when they bother or annoy us.

Welcoming With Wonder

This is a community familiar with wonder. It’s in the newsletter name for a reason. And one of the most striking things about gathering with others who love Godly Play is that, even when we are grappling with difficult things, we speak in the language of wonder. It seems like every other sentence begins that way. It’s the way we speak, and we carry it beyond the circle – a notion that is played out in Sally Thomas’s Wondering Together Project.

The Wondering Together Project invites families, classes, and other communities to gather around and reflect on their days using Wondering Questions much like those we use in our circles. It’s designed to build connection, to help us deal with stress, to help us reflect collectively on our days.

Speaking the language of wonder is transformative, but it’s a practiced skill and it can take time to embody. Consider printing these out and laminating them, then using them to guide your daily or weekly conversations at home or in another community.

Process Not Product (But Also A Cool Product)

A few weeks ago I wrote about Andrea Nelson’s process art and that she had inspired me to play with one of her favorite materials, “goth glue” to make a labyrinth. Well, I did it!

Do I know anything about watercolor paint that I didn’t learn on TikTok? No!
Was this a practice in patience as I outlined the labyrinth and had to wait for it to dry to paint it? Yes!
Was it a lot of fun? Also yes!

One of the things I always have to be reminded of is the fact that we shouldn’t say negative thing about our own art because it teaches children that art may not be something for them, that it has to be conventionally “good” or “beautiful” to be worth doing. I’m married to a very talented artist. I am not a very talented artist. But I will take any opportunity that presents itself to come to the page or the canvas or whatever other material I have access to. Creating is a way for us to come closer to God. It is a gift we were given and it’s worth embracing it, even in its imperfections.

Go Forth In Song

Finally, one of my favorite resources I came away from the past week with is this: Music That Makes Community.

I love music. I love goofy kid music. I love the sort of contemporary Christian music whose theology I could never get behind. It helps me internalize stories and to live in more worshipful posture. I’m delighted by any opportunity to sing in a round. I enjoy it all, and so I’m thrilled to have this at hand.

Before our community dispersed this past Monday, we stood in our gathering space in the retreat center and together sang this delightful little tune, which I’ve been singing since -

Go forth and do your work in joy, in peace, in faith. Embody those words. Walk in love as Christ first loved us.

Peace,
Bird