Adapting Sophia Fahs' "A Visit to the Land-of-Great-Men"

Reading From Long Ago and Many Lands for the first time last year, I was smitten with the whimsical, fantastical image of the people who walked on clouds in the Chinese story "A Visit to the Land-of-Great-Men." But I struggled some with the story's message. To spoil the surprise, the thing that's special about this Land is that its people walk about a foot off the ground on little clouds--rainbow clouds, red and yellow clouds, green and blue clouds, and gray and black clouds. But here's where it got a little challenging for me: the clouds were described as being either 1) tied to one's current emotional state, as in the feeling being felt in that moment (ex. happy) 2) the way one behaved toward others (ex. generous), or 3) one's intrinsic character, the true nature of one's own heart (ex. kindhearted or selfish).

But no distinction was made between these. The cloud simply knew one's heart and knew how he or she felt about the world, and was rainbow colored in happiness, red or yellow in contentment, green or blue in neutrality, and gray or black in anger or deceit.

Everybody wanted rainbow clouds, so everybody thought happy thoughts and was kind to their neighbors.
And no one wanted to do business with or be around or help the people with gray or black clouds, which kept these colors down to a minimum..

I was uncomfortable with this. Everybody gets angry. Everybody has moments of ugliness in their hearts. But... we don't ostracize one another. We help one another out of those spots. When someone is on a downward spiral, sporting a blue cloud when yesterday they were red, we don't say, "Hey! Get it together! Make with the rainbow cloud!" We are gentle with one another during those times. And as UU's, I don't believe we think of others as having evil hearts. Rather, we judge others by the way they act and the way they endeavor to be.

But I realized, these are all great issues for children to grapple with for themselves!

So I set about creating a vision of what this story might look like told in the Spirit Play method. I began thinking of my struggles with the story in terms of wondering questions, and thought some about what ideas I'd want the children to be playing with as they worked with the story. Then, I made a couple of prototypes of story pieces that I thought would achieve that end.

My very, very nascent woodworking skills show here, especially in those right-angle cuts in the cloud, but it was important for me that the clouds be removable and interchangeable so that the children would be able to play with the feeling of identifying with a character, and then giving that character a rainbow, colorful, or black cloud to work with. There are to be five characters total--four residents of the Land-of-Clouds (renamed from the Land-of-Great-Men) and one traveler from another land (also pictured). That way, there would be ample opportunity for the characters to interact and for there to be a "community" and an "outsider" to work on ideas of acceptance, welcoming, assistance, and compassion. 

Next comes the rest of the figures, and then an underlay and some basic setting elements. If there's time, I'd love to have this done for this Sunday's Children's Chapel, which is the only one that falls within the Thirty Days of Love campaign. I think the message about compassion and understanding is the most compelling take-away from this story, and I'd love to share it as we and the children take a month to think about integrating and highlighting those ideas and actions in our own lives.