Godly Play continues to expand internationally with the latest round of trainings in South Africa and India.  Below Board Member Andrew Sheldon recounts his journey with fellow Godly Play Canada Trainer, Amy Crawford. Their trip was funded largely by the Foundation’s International Development Fund, which continues to accept donations for missions and projects such as this. A full account of their adventure and more pictures are available on their travel blog.

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Sharon Ely Pearson’s wonderful article “What Reaches Children” in The Christian Century surveys the Christian education scene for children and includes findings and empirical commentary on the use and attributes of the Godly Play method.

The power of story permeates all our human  cultures and our earliest memories of story often stay with us no matter what we endure. The Rev. Lois Howard, a Godly Play story teller for over 25 years and an Active Trainer has been sharing our Godly Play stories with Alzheimer patients with remarkable results. Her article detailing this incredible Godly Play journey into residences for Alzheimer’s patients was published earlier this week on Virginia Theological Seminary’s Center for the Ministry of Teaching Key Resources website. This gift is presented in two parts:

Discovery to recovery: Godly Play for Alzheimer’s patients

Discovery to recovery: Godly Play for Alzheimer’s patients (continued)

In January, The Central Conference of American Rabbis’ journal The Reform Jewish Quarterly published “The Middle Realm, the Creative Process, and the Creator in Religious Education” by Godly Play Founder Jerome W. Berryman. This Winter 2014 issue is entitled “Sacred Teaching and Spiritual Learning” and was edited by Rabbi Sandy Eiesenberg Sasso and Rabbi Dr. Michael J. Shire, whom many of you met last summer at the 2013 North American Godly Play Conference in Toronto.

In their introduction, Rabbis Sasso and Shire write: “We have been blessed by the wonderful and creative contributions of our fellow educators and clergy, including the Rev. Jerome Berryman, whose pioneering work in spirituality and children and the theology of childhood has influenced our thinking about Jewish spiritual pedagogy.”

Rabbi Shire is the Dean of the Shoolman Graduate School in Newton Centre, MA and has been working with The Rev. Dr. Berryman to develop a Torah Godly Play to facilitate Jewish spiritual learning.

Jerome Berryman’s essay “The Middle Realm” headlines the Fall 2013 edition of Episcopal Teacher, the quarterly publication of Viginia Theological Seminary’s Center for the Ministry of Teaching.

The “state of consciousness that is open and indeterminate yet fundamental to our nature and relationship with God and each other” we all know so well “from the inside,” the Middle Realm was publically introduced in Jerome’s addresses at the Dallas Children’s Medical Center symposium and the North American Godly Play Conference in Toronto this year.  Now journeying through poetry, metaphor, science, and history, this new article in Episcopal Teacher further articulates the elusive Middle Realm with seven windows into its existence.