Tag Archives: reflection

Sacred Space for Godly Play

by Jeannie Babb

light on church pew

Liturgical spaces help us come close to God

Where do you go when you need to pause, ground yourself, and reconnect with the Holy Spirit?

Sometimes I like to slip into an empty church and walk up the aisle, watching where the sun slants through the windows and lightly touching the wood of each pew until I find a place to kneel. I notice how the space feels sacred even when empty of the souls who have invested it with such meaning. A church is a people, not merely a building; yet I find holiness in this very space set aside for worship, as if the wood and stones are saturated with so many prayers from thousands and thousands of services.

Another place I find that sense of reverence is in the Godly Play space. Continue reading

The Mystery of Christmas, the Wonderful Impossible

A Reflection on the Story & an Interview with Jerome Berryman
by Jeannie Babb

The hymn O Come All Ye Faithful is as majestic as it is ubiquitous. For me, it evokes an early childhood memory so visceral that singing the refrain still gives me a shiver.

Wise men or magi adore baby Jesus

“They were late. Every year, they are late! They are adoring the baby.”

I’ve sung this Christmas carol in the plain white-walled space of the Southern Baptist Church in which I was raised, and beneath vaulted ceilings, and in a house church with tambourines. Yet, when I hear those words “O come let us adore him,” I am transported back to the seventies. Continue reading

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

Come Close to this Table: Godly Play with Developmentally Delayed Adults

Telling stories at VBS for adults

Telling stories at VBS for adults

By the time the first sheep touched down on the green felt, the electric fan in the corner was the only sound in the room. They waited silently to receive the next word, bodies relaxed but in that slightly forward-leaning posture common to children in every Godly Play circle all around the world.

These were not children. Nor were they seated cross-legged in a circle. Some of their fragile bodies and compromised joints would not have allowed climbing onto the floor. We were not even in a circle. Continue reading