“Gan Gan, is David looking down on us from heaven?” Lately my eight-year-old granddaughter, Olivia, has been asking some hard to answer questions about “life after life”.  She knows that my nephew, David, died in a traffic accident at a young age and wants to know what has become of him.  She is at the age when thoughts about mortality have begun to creep into her consciousness.  I try, but it’s clear that I can’t always answer those questions to her satisfaction. Fortunately, Olivia attends Sunday School here at St. Dunstan’s and many of her existential questions can be answered through lessons in our Godly Play classrooms!  More importantly, she is learning about God’s infinite love for us and the many ways throughout history that His love has been manifested - and is still very much there for us today. 

We are now entering our third year using Godly Play as our primary curriculum with the younger children ages four through fifth grade.  Godly Play is what creator Dr. Jerome Berryman calls “his interpretation of Montessori religious education.  It is an imaginative approach for working with children, an approach that supports, challenges, nourishes, and guides their spiritual quest”. 1 These beautifully handcrafted lessons contain hands-on manipulatives that help reenact the most important stories in the bible.  Many of the Old Testament Sacred Stories use a “desert box” filled with sand where the story can be acted out with small wooden figures and other special items.  Parables such as “The Good Samaritan” and “The Great Pearl” are carefully created to express the main points of the lesson Jesus was trying to illustrate and are kept in beautiful golden boxes.  As you can imagine, trying to equip three Godly Play classrooms with these meticulously hand-crafted lessons can really add up. As we have been gradually building up our inventory, we have been able to share lessons between classrooms.  This works to some extent, however if a child wants to revisit a previous story, it may be in one of the other classrooms that day.  Our goal over time is to equip each classroom with their own set of lessons so that travel between the rooms becomes a thing of the past. 

Many of you may have seen the slightly crooked Christmas tree in the back of the Nave the past couple of Sundays.  On its branches you can find colorful apples containing the names of specific Godly Play lessons we do not have in every classroom.   Please take a look as you are passing by and see if one of those apples speaks to you.  Last week a very sweet person took the apple for “The Story of Ruth” saying that they relate to this particular bible heroine.  Next week they will bring the apple back with a check to put in the basket thereby “gifting” one of our classrooms with Ruth!  Others would rather make a donation to the website and let me do the shopping!  We even have a QR code posted that makes it more convenient.  Just point your smartphone camera at the squiggly box, and you will instantly be taken to the website!  Our children depend on these generous donations as these materials continue to help build a firm foundation in their spiritual lives. 

So, the next time Olivia asks me one of those imponderable questions I would need a master’s degree in theology to answer, I can reassure her by reminding her of one of the lessons she learned in Sunday School.  I can point out how the lessons illustrate God’s never-ending love and guidance.  They can help her to realize that God has always been there for His people and always will be.  He is indeed blessing David in His presence, He will always be watching over her too, and will be there one day to welcome all of us into His eternal kingdom.  Yes, Olivia – there is a God, and He deeply loves you! 

Angela Stengl

Godly Play Donation link: 

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=55MGDVXUQNKVG 

1 – Jerome Berryman, The Complete Guide to Godly Play,  Volume 2 (Church Publishing, New York 2017), Introduction 5.