Page 7 - The Circle / July 2016

To say that Godly Play is “grounded openness” risks misinterpretation. Let’s accept the risk and develop this idea anyway, even if some will see only the “grounded” part of the phrase and others will see only the “openness” part.
Some will say that Godly Play is the specificity of the method and the spiral curriculum. Yes. That is true, but how one presents the lessons is critical and has to do with being open to God, to others, to the deep self, and to God’s presence in nature, where there are traces of the divine just as there are traces of the poet in the poem.
Others will say that Godly Play is open, so anything goes. No. We can trust the method and the curriculum. It began with a question in 1960 and has never lost touch with children in its development or ignored the quality of their spirituality, which is a way of knowing rather than just a developmental period. Godly Play steers between rigidity and chaos, intentionally keeping form in touch with openness so the creative process can flow.
This means that both misinterpretations miss the point. The point is that the deeper you go into a specific bit of Christian language, like “The Parable of the Good Shepherd,” the more open it becomes. This is counter-intuitive, so we need an example to focus our attention.
THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
I sat on the floor of a Houston Methodist church with a dozen Cambodian, refugee children to present to them “The Parable of the Good Shepherd.” Their average age was about seven years old. They understood a little English, but more importantly they were profoundly involved in the parable with their senses as it moved across the underlay, connecting the deep self, others, God, and nature. This connection was not a passive one. It involved the creative process as they made meaning in this web of home. I will have more to say about the breadth, depth, and significance of the creative process for Godly Play in a moment.
After the presentation we wondered together, but the children did not have much to say. There was some language difficulty, as with the presentation, but that did not seem to be the problem. The children had easily wondered, mostly in their personal silence, about what the elements of the parable might really be. They showed this by nodding as I pointed to various parts of the parable on the underlay. My guess was that the monstrosity of what they had experienced and needed to express was too awful to put into words.
I showed the children the art materials I had brought. They especially liked the large paintbrushes, the tempera paints, and the big pieces of thick paper. They worked for about 30 minutes as I watched quietly on the floor with them,
from a little distance away, radiating silent support for the tremendous effort of their creativity. Their eyes were big as they worked, and their concentration was intense. Most of the children painted tigers in a very dark jungle, full of lumpy clumps of black and purple paint. The paintings were as different as their fingerprints, but they shared the need to express what had happened to them. “The Parable of the Good Shepherd” gave them a playing field in which to say what they needed to in an indirect way to make it possible.
CROSSING BOUNDARIES FROM DEPTH TO DEPTH
Godly Play’s version of the parable draws on Jesus’ synoptic parable about the lost sheep, Psalm 23, and the I-am saying about the Good Shepherd from the Gospel of John. This blend of Scripture provided the medium for the Cambodian children to gain access to their terrifying memories and to begin their healing. The parable was presented by God’s grace with an awareness of the four cardinal relationships, and the creative process was engaged with grounded openness. What is remarkable is that neither the children nor I grew up with sheep and shepherds, so how was this deep communication possible, across cultural boundaries?
Our cultural differences were dramatic. I grew up speaking English on the brown, dry prairie of Western Kansas in a small farming and ranching community. The Presbyterian church, where our family attended regularly, was across the street. The Cambodian children grew up in Southeast Asia, surrounded by jungle, and their places of worship were shaped by another ancient culture. They spoke Cambodian, and the prevailing religion in their country was Theravada Buddhism, practiced by nearly 95 percent of the population. They had never seen any sheep and shepherds. I knew about sheep and shepherds, but my view of them was negative and violent. The origin of the English word “deadline” came from a line drawn in the prairie by the ranchers to warn the sheepherders that if they crossed the line, they were dead.
I think there are seven primary reasons why the Godly Play presentation “worked” in this case, despite these cultural differences. First, the material and presentation was specific but not overly determined, and it was part of a larger and venerable language system. The parable and its movements showed the fundamental relationships among the figures. The children could feel the safety in the presentation because it invited them into the four cardinal relationships in a creative way. These factors opened the door to the deep self, so the children could express their pain and fear in their paintings.
Second, the parable engaged the children through all their senses, including taste. A feast was included so they could taste the love of Jesus, who created the parable, and the love
A GODLY PLAY QUARTERLY PUBLICATION 7