November 10, 2011
Dear Godly Play Friends,
Many Godly Players --- teachers, Christian education directors, chaplains (those in schools, hospitals, mental health and other settings) parish clergy, seminarians, researchers, parents, and other friends of children --- would like to know more about Godly Play. The core training is the place to begin. Some continue their life long learning by taking the core training again, seeking out different trainers than those who first trained them to gain perspective. This is a good idea.
Another good idea is to explore the Certificate for the Spiritual Guidance of Children at The General Theological Seminary in New York City. We have finished the first year of this program, involving both academic and practical courses, and have three graduates. Two are hospital chaplains and one is a Godly Play Trainer. Several students lack only a few courses to graduate. To learn more go to www.gts.edu and click “Center for Christian Spirituality,” then go to the “Certificate”.
Here is the description of the course I will teach this coming January:
SGC10 – THE CHALLENGE OF CHILDREN TO THE CHURCH: THEOLOGY AND GRACE
The Church has developed a de facto doctrine of children that involves ambivalence, ambiguity, indifference, and grace. This self-contradictory, theological heritage will be examined by a historical survey that begins with the Gospels, continues through some twenty-five theologians in our history, and ends with contemporary women and men writing today. The three-part goal is for students to become aware of this history to end its unconscious and conflicted control, to propose a conscious alternative, and to invite students to create an informed theology of children to guide their ministries. The texts are Jerome Berryman’s Children and the Theologians: Clearing the Way for Grace, Marcia Bunge’s The Child in Christian Thought, and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Unless You Become Like This Child.
More news about the Certificate, as well as others ways to learn more about Godly play, will be forthcoming.
With love, always love,
Jerome
October 10, 1011
Dear Godly Play Friends,
Godly Play is full of “wonder,” but what does it feel like?
Put your hands on your heart and close your teeth and lips very tight. Then gradually move your hands out as far as your arms will allow and at the same time begin to smile. Slowly, slowly show your teeth, not to snarl or bite, but to laugh. It is something like that.
“Wonder” is difficult to translate into words, because it is so fundamental to whom we are, especially as Christians. Its meaning is carried more in our bodies and expanding spirits than in our minds, which distance us from God’s mystery by abstractions, analysis and logic.
Wonder is the special gift of children. They show us how to be open to the very tiny, such as flowers and pebbles and to the very large, such as sunrises turning the mountains pink or the metallic, gray light of an angry sky over the ocean. In both kinds of wonder God’s laughing embrace circles us around to complete us as we wonder.
Children are drawn to God’s embrace, but such safety is also strange and scary. This is why they need the smaller safety of the Godly Play circle to try it out and explore its meaning, as with the mustard seed. Still, the safety of the circle implies this larger safety, so children need guides who are not afraid to let go of trivial safety to move with them towards the Kingdom of ultimate safety.
My prayers go with you on this journey.
With love, always love,
Jerome Berryman
A note for those who might be interested:
To know God --- beyond, beside, and within --- one needs to be able to be open to what Rudolf Otto called in 1917 “The Holy” (Das Heilige). The Holy is not just full of mystery (numinous)but is at the same time terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans). This is why we try desperately at times to control or reduce it to some kind of artificial safety while God’s safety, a paradox in the poetry of the Psalms as fresh, living springs in the desert and the solid rock of Mount Zion, can only be known by wonder to appreciate its vastness and yet tiny particularity.
September 1, 2011
Dear Godly Play Friends,
What do you do when a beloved Godly Play teacher dies?
This was faced with grace by the community of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lenox, Massachusetts. The teacher was Mary Jane Emmit (Googie), who died unexpectedly in her sleep last May. It was Claudia Wells, who told me about this.
Googie trained in Belmont, Massachusetts, at All Saints Episcopal Church with Cheryl Minor, the Rector, and Nancy St. John in 2003. She was instrumental in starting the Godly Play program at Trinity in 2004. Many children passed through her Godly Play room during the intervening seven years. Children who were about six years old when she began were just becoming teenagers when she died.
It is always hard to know how much to say to the children when someone dies. It is best to use as few words as possible and lean on love and hugs, instead. At Trinity they put a picture of Googie in the room for the children and did “The Parable of the Mustard Seed” and “The Parable of the Good Shepherd” the Sunday after she died. They were her favorites, so it was thought that a side-by-side would be good. The children uncharacteristically resisted playing back and forth with the parables, as Linda James Cooper remembered. She reflected that on this day they didn’t want to change them. Probably one parable would have been more than enough.
In addition to remembering this wonderful teacher in her Godly Play room, she was also remembered when the larger community worshipped together. The children’s choir sang “Little Lamb Who Made Thee?” from John Rutter’s “Mass of the Children.” This is from the Agnus Dei part of the Mass and can be heard in a wonderful performance in Spain by going on line.
“The Lamb” was written and illustrated by the London poet William Blake (1757-1827). It was written in 1794 and may be found in his Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poem begins with the wonder of a child about the pure existence and reality of a single lamb. In the second stanza the wonder expands to the infant Jesus and the speaker’s own soul. It was intended to be sung, but Blake’s original melody is lost. The music of the poetry remains.
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!
When this is read slowly and with wonder the meaning expands beyond the words to take in all of life, especially when paired with the fearful power and force of Blake’s “The Tyger,” also in Songs of Innocence and Experience. Infinity in simplicity is good for remembering a beloved Godly Play mentor and guide like Mary Jane Emmit --- and you.
With love, always love,
Jerome
August 11, 2011
Dear Godly Play friends,
This “Note” comes to you about one month before 9-11-11. Some of you are preparing to observe the tenth anniversary of 9-11-01. I was about one hundred yards from Ground Zero. It was several days before I was able to rent a car and drive to Nashville and then fly home to Houston. When I checked my bag in Nashville it was still covered with white dust, so they put on rubber gloves and quickly took it away for testing. I was sequestered for questioning.
The time I was in New York City, waiting to go home, I wandered about in a daze as many others were doing. I wrote a lot of poetry. The summer after 9-11 I collected some of the poetry into a little book manuscript and forgot about it until a month ago. Here is the latest draft.
I do not know what I will do with this, but I wonder if it will be useful to you as you prepare to observe the tenth anniversary of 9-11? I hope so.
With love, always love,
Jerome
The Reverend Dr. Jerome W. Berryman, J.D., D.Min., D.D., D.D.
