Yearly Archives: 2016

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All Saints and All Souls

This Holy Family is for You

As we celebrate All Saints and All Souls, I find myself reflecting on the community of holy people whose handiwork brought Godly Play to the parishes of which I have belonged. My previous parish is a small, rural Episcopal church who brought Godly Play to their community some twenty or more years ago. If collective memory is correct, a cohort of lay and ordained traveled to be trained by Jerome Berryman himself as they began the enterprise to share the stories in Young Children and Worship with the children of the parish. Creating the Godly Play space was truly a community effort.

I find myself recalling the woman who created and painted the ceramic nativity set that the children still use. Roberta died several years ago, but her presence and faith lives on in the art that she created for the children. “This Holy Family is for you,” says the Godly Play script. Continue reading →

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Wondering Skills

An Interview with W. Lee Dickson, Executive Director of the Godly Play Foundation
by Jeannie Babb

Godly Play Executive Director

W. Lee Dickson
Executive Director
Godly Play Foundation

“I wonder if God has everything planned?” Asked to recall favorite wondering thoughts from children, this is the first one that comes to mind for W. Lee Dickson. It could also be a thematic question for Dickson’s own journey with Godly Play.

As of the new year, Dickson signed on to the role of Executive Director of the Godly Play Foundation — a turn in her story that she could not have anticipated the first time she walked into a Godly Play room about nineteen years ago.

“We were at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Cohasset, Massachusetts,” she recalls. ” A story was told to a group of adults nineteen years ago, at a fall orientation for parents of children in Godly Play.” Sally Thomas was the story teller, and she was telling the Great Family. Continue reading →

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The Full Curriculum: Taking Time to Wonder

The Well at Kom Ombo

“There was no hurry.”

The children’s eyes are fixed on the bucket, left in the desert like the scattered bits of golden thread.

“I wonder how we wonder?” the storyteller says.

One little boy answers, “It takes a very long time.” Continue reading →