Recently I read a piece on nurturing children’s spirituality – which I think is what we are trying to do in our kids work ways. Nothing new, just reminded me that for children, God is as real and normal as mum or dad. That whether a being is visible or invisible is not as much of a big deal for children as it is for adults, and that our task is to protect and preserve that position, and give children a vocabulary to share their experiences and questions, rather than to give them answers.
When I did my Godly play training course, the question I asked was ‘ Where are these children now?’ Surely, my brain said, children brought up on a diet of open dialogue, big questions, creative and personal reflection and so on, should be living in a different world to the rest of us as adults by now? Surely they would all be calm, reflective, godly adults who are like I want to be – like Jesus. I was told that lots of people asked that question, and Jerome Berryman (Godly Play founder) answers: ‘Well I married 4 of them’. Not as in, he is married to 4 people, but in that they came back to him as adults to ask him to officiate at their weddings. I don’t think that was really enough for me. I wanted to hear that they were changing the world! That those children who had grown up on GP were out there making it a better place in up front and newsworthy ways. But that is just where I and Godly play, and indeed I and Jesus, slip apart.
Jesus tells the leper to show himself to the priest, present the offering needed and then go home quietly. A life changing moment, a meeting with Jesus, a childhood rich with meetings with Jesus in the calm of a godly play classroom – and Jesus just says to go home? ‘My ways are not like your ways’, Isaiah 55.. is my reading this week. How unlike God’s ways are my ways. I want people to be upfront, noisy and out there forging ahead with making a massive difference for the poor and the oppressed. But Jesus says to keep quiet and go home. That first godly play cohort of children, now adults… just getting on with the everyday stuff of getting married, living, working, probably nit combing their children’s hair every night like I am right now. But we are all changed, in turning to go home, in embracing the ordinary mess of everyday life, in little ways that no one else sees, that is where ‘a seed grows into a tree so big that all the birds come and make their homes in its branches’.
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