"How Stories Began" material-making

So, this was a super fun evening.

Here are a few of the materials I've been working on for the Wonder and Awe Source story, "How Stories are Made." The lesson plans call for a scroll, a stone tablet made of clay, and a picture of cave paintings. But, this being Arkansas, rocks of all kinds are plentiful. So, I found a tablet-shaped stone and a cave wall-shaped rock and got to painting. The stone tablet was too wee for me to do real writing on, but the scroll, which is made from a small strip of white fabric glued around two thin dowel pieces, has the real Paleo-Hebrew alphabet written on it. (The alphabet ends at the 5th line, and after that I just copied random letters.) And the cave painting designs come from real cave paintings.

My kids, 5 and 8, grabbed these up along with the peg people shepherds that go with them (painted, but not yet sealed) and the tissue-paper LED light fire (which is just so cool, and was inspired by this type, but smaller).

See, this is why I love this work so much. I spent an evening researching cool topics, painting, crafting, and playing, I get paid a little bit for it, and my boys are totally into it.

Working on the last new story of the year...

Can you guess what it is?

Yes! Stone Soup!

In the Spirit Play training materials, I remember the suggestion that a congregation discern carefully and joyfully together which stories were important for it to tell its children. I was so daunted by this--I don't know that many stories! The new RE committee is very unsure about the whole idea of Spirit Play! The congregation upstairs just wants me to do what I think is best and get on with it! Ack!

Well, I found out it takes a little time. This year, I read a lot of stories. But I did it over a year. And at the end of this year, we have a few of the core stories, we have a few stories that seemed fun and seasonal and appropriate to the whole-church theme at the time, and we have a few Very Important stories to tell at this particular congregation. Stone Soup, I think, is going to be one of the latter., with its themes of welcoming the stranger and coming together to share even a small bounty with love and gratitude.

I learned a lot about putting story baskets together, too. I so enjoyed experimenting with different materials, establishing consistent "feels" and "looks" to the elements of any particular story, and trying to think hard about what exactly I was hoping each piece would do in the story, as well as how children might interact with them. I am happy about the little collection we now have. It feels good to have a year's worth of work sitting on the shelves, waiting for the next batch of kids.

Alas, I am not sure of the future of this method at this congregation. More parents than not--including two of the most active RE parents--did not care for the method, and their children said as much, too. The RE committee doesn't love it. The teachers enjoy it, but feel a little unsure in their delivery. I think part of that is because there was a giant conflict in our program at the beginning of this year, and the entire RE program fell apart for a little while. That meant that I didn't have the resources to support the Spirit Play teachers in the ways I had wanted to, namely with frequent meetings-of-the-minds and mini-training sessions and regular combing through the supplies and stories and work choices to improve and maintain. We haven't quite rebounded yet in terms of volunteerism, and I don't have the hours to--and even question the wisdom of--trying to carry it forward alone. So, as a classroom offering, its near future is unknown. I'm mourning that some. I had hoped others here would catch the bug as I did, and really want to run with the possibilities. But that didn't quite happen, at least not this year.

Still, I've gotten a great response using it upstairs in multigenerational services. And it's working really, really well for me in Children's Chapel. Plus--and any teacher-parent can tell you this--my own kids like it a lot, which is very motivating for me. I have found myself integrating it into our homeschooling, and that's been a lot of fun.

My employment ends mid-May for the summer, and there is no one willing or able to take on what I think would be the most delightful task of organizing and tidying up our Spirit Play shelves and classroom, making labels for all the baskets, writing up a budget and plan for new or improved work choices, etc. Likely, I'll chip away at these tasks myself when I return in August, or see if I can delegate small, well-defined pieces of this job.

Either way, I'm looking forward to a summer spent with more stories, more woodworking, and of course, more baskets!

Story-in-progress: The Stranger's Gift

I'm working on a new story, one that I'm telling as a Time for All Ages to the whole congregation tomorrow, but that I'd like to reinforce by bringing into the Spirit Play classroom. I like this flow a lot, either starting with a story downstairs and bringing it up, or vice versa. Reinforcement of good ideas with repetition, telling the same story in multiple forms, and presenting the same material to adults and children are all good ways to build cohesion and community.

This story is sometimes called "The Stranger's Gift." It's a traditional wisdom tale with no known source. In it, a stranger comes to a troubled, angry, quarrelsome town and shares the information that the messiah is one of them. The people are intrigued and excited by this news, and on the off chance that anyone they meet might be the messiah, they begin to treat each other with reverence, love, and respect. The stranger moves on, and no one ever finds out who the messiah is--or if the rumor the stranger started was even true--but the miracle is that the people themselves were able to transform their town with the way they shared the common purpose of spreading kindness.

For my story, I'm changing messiah to "an enlightened one," but otherwise keeping many of the details the same. I'm sharing it for the first of two sermons preached by the ministerial candidate, hoping that the congregation finds lots to work with in the ideas above.

Here are the story elements-in-the-works: