Last night at Good Shepherd's "Ladies' Night Out" a few of us started talking about the conversations our toddlers/preschoolers have been initiating lately on God and life and death.
"Where is God?"
"Can't we see him, just a little bit?"
"How can I feel God?"
"What's 'died,' mommy?"
"Am I going to die?"
To a mom stuck in traffic, "Maybe Jesus can help us."
In response to thunder, "That's Jesus. He's coming."
We all agreed that it's hard to know how to answer these questions and guide these conversations because we ourselves still wonder about all of it. When my son Beck told me recently he didn't want to die, an instinctual pang of fear shot through me because I get it--I don't want to die either, I don't want my baby to have to think about death, and with every fiber of my being, I don't want him to die.
Godly Play as an approach to children's spirituality acknowledges that children are experiencing God and wrestling with the deeply personal questions humans ask about God and life and death, questions that don't have easy answers. Berryman refers to this in chapter one as their experience of the God of Power.
Our hope and humble prayer as parents and church school teachers is that our children will be firmly rooted as Christians for the rest of their lives. One way toward this seems to be that the Church God we present to them Sunday after Sunday must be integrated with this personal experience they are having of God.
At its best, Godly Play seeks to integrate the Church God and the God of Power by offering children a playful, imaginative, yet highly structured space where they feel safe bringing their questions, hurts, fears, and joys, and at the same time where they receive the truth, mystery, and wonder of the Christian Story -- the Story that they are a part of, the Story that gives them the language they need to express their experiences of God, to remain deeply rooted in their faith, and to be open to growth in the future.
And isn't this what we as adults experience, or hope to experience, week after week at Good Shepherd?
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