Yearly Archives: 2017

Breadcrumbs

Home / 2017

John Pridmore Wrestles with the Angel of Childhood

A Book Review by Jeannie Babb

Playing with Icons: The Spirituality of Recalled Childhood
By John Pridmore
with foreward by Jerome Berryman
197 pp. The Center for the Theology of Childhood. $24.95

cover detail from Playing with IconsJohn Pridmore’s thorough and insightful book will capture the imagination of those who nurture children, especially in religious settings. Playing with Icons offers more an analysis of beautifully written case studies than a scientific survey. Pridmore, a retired Anglican priest, based his study on published autobiographies of childhood. He lists over a hundred such works in the bibliography, weaving evocative passages throughout the body of the book.

Pridmore invites the reader on an existential journey to play with and welcome the child. He likens children to icons, which when painted on wood gaze past us to behold God, even as we gaze at them and beyond them to God. Like an icon, a child’s vision of the divine lends us our own sighting. Pridmore invites us not only to pray with these icons, but to play with them and recognize this playfulness as a sort of prayer. Continue reading →

Breadcrumbs

Home / 2017

All We Can Do is Begin

Based on an interview with the Rev. Thomas Blackmon by Sally Thomas

The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana clergy directory lists the Rev. Thomas Blackmon as retired – but that has not stopped Tom and his wife, Molly Steele, from launching a new vision for Godly Play ministry in Honduras.

Tom Blackmon teaches children in Honduras

I wonder . . .

Tom has been a friend of Jerome Berryman and Godly Play for over thirty years; this June in Denver, he will step down from the Godly Play Foundation Board after 18 years of service. I first met Tom in Sewanee in 1997. Many of us remember with deep appreciation Tom’s phone calls as we were traveling to Core trainings beginning in 1999. They would always start, “I have been praying for you and your circle. I want you to know that.”  Tom is a visionary and dedicated partner in building Godly Play programs. Continue reading →

Breadcrumbs

Home / 2017

When the Good Shepherd calls your name

There was once someone who said such amazing things and did such wonderful things that people followed him. They couldn’t help it. They wanted to know who he was, so they just had to ask him. 

So begins the beloved Parable of the Good Shepherd in the Godly Play repertoire. As we approach Good Shepherd Sunday, we invite you to come closer. Lean into the circle as the lid comes off the box that is the Godly Play Foundation. I wonder what’s inside?Gold box with green dot, lid slightly ajar.

Once when they asked him who he was, he said “I am the Good Shepherd . . . I know each one of the sheep by name.”  Continue reading →

Breadcrumbs

Home / 2017

The Fires in Kansas

The Wichita Eagle

Many of you have asked about our friends and colleagues in Ashland, Kansas after the entire town was evacuated Monday due to uncontrollable wildfires ripping through the region. As Patricia Carney posted on Facebook: “I suspect many of us in the Godly Play world feel as though we have family in Ashland, Kansas! Prayers continue!”

We are grateful to report that all of the Foundation employees at Godly Play Resources are safe and their houses still stand. Godly Play Resources headquarters was spared, and the team is beginning to return to work. Your thoughts and prayers pouring in meant so much to Mike, Teresa, Connie, Teika, and all of our vendors and the professionals who serve the Foundation.

But the destruction to the area was significant. Continue reading →