Pirates, Saints, and Bees--Oh, My!

After a long stretch of little creative energy, I suddenly find I'm SWIMMING in writing projects! Some are work related, and others are "just for fun" (or profit, if any of them would sell!)

First off, we re-staged our "Pirates in Paradise" VBS program (originally written and performed in 2007) this summer. Because we opted to do the VBS in the evening, and wanted to keep the final night as the presentation to the parents, I had to rewrite it to fit the storyline into four episodes rather than five. Since I was rewriting, and had a couple other actors who wanted to be pirates, I created a few new roles, and I was able to polish parts (and write some parts which had originally been ad-libbed). At any rate, that inspired me to think more about these characters and about the sequel I had proposed writing for last year's VBS (which we pulled the plug on due to insufficient volunteers). The original Pirates VBS deals with teaching the pirates to claim the Royal Pardon, forsake piracy, and store up treasure in heaven; at the conclusion most of the pirates do so, rechristening their ship "The Heavenly Pearl" and setting off to tell others the good news. So, the sequel focuses on the converted pirates' missionary journeys (and the Pirate Captain's attempts to somehow get back his ship). I spent a good part of vacation jotting down notes and working out the plot and I feel like I'm ready to write it now.

Of course, that is far from pressing. On September 23rd, we will be re-launching !TNT! (Thursday Nights Together), a family based program for which my wife and I will be leading the youngest component (K-4th grade) through a study of the Beatitudes. Last Spring we did a child's version of Alpha, and the featured character (puppet) was a young owl named Alphie who had a LOT of questions he wanted answered. This session, since we're doing the Beatitudes, I thought the featured character should be a Bee. Though as I'm thinking about it, the "Bee Attitudes" are probably very different from the Beatitudes. The Bee character that is developing is someone who stays very busy, always working to make more honey, and not too good about sharing it. So he will prove to be more of a foil to my wife, who will have to correct him and teach him to be more humble and relaxed about things.

At the same time, we are revamping our "Church School" to become "Children's Worship," following more closely the pattern of what is going on in the "adult" service upstairs. The storytelling time (serving as the sermon) will be surveying what our Bishop has recommended as the 100 Essential Bible passages, and we are hoping to do so creatively, with Godly-Play style interaction and some puppet shows. I have offered to write a puppet show for the Joseph story. We also hope to have the children present a puppet show for the adults on All Saints Day (observed). Speaking with our rector this morning, he would like us to focus on the heavenly worship as described in Revelation... which I did a couple years ago for the closing semester of KidzLife. So I'll be dusting off (or adapting) some of my "Visions of Patmos" material, and figuring out how to do that with little children as the puppeteers.

What I LEAST need to work on (and am having the most fun with) is actually a writing project of my wife's. She has been kicking around an idea for a "mid-grade mystery series" (think Nancy Drew, or better, Trixie Belden), set in 1976. I started helping her with researching (and remembering) the time period, and I've gotten very into it.

Then there is the adult play dealing with Simon the Pharisee/Leper and the Woman with the Alabaster Flask who anointed Jesus at Simon's feast. I began that last spring, and haven't done much with it lately, but it feels important and like something I really need to do.

The question is, WHEN?

Camels and Pigs

In addition to the Pirate storyline in VBS, we had a "Story time" built into the curriculum. When we did it in 2007, this was one of several stations that the children would rotate through, and I designed it as more of an interactive teaching station. This year, because of space constrictions, we were not able to break into groups and had to do everything as a big group in the same space, which inhibited the "interactive" piece of it. We decided to use a version of "Godly Play" to tell the story three of the nights, and do puppet shows the other two.

The two stories we decided should be done with puppets were The Rich Young Ruler and The Prodigal Son. Trying to think in terms of how best to tell these stories using puppets, I keyed in on the animals in the stories; in the case of the Rich Young Ruler, I decided to tell the story from the perspective of a camel, as if ANYONE knows how impossible it is to get a camel through the eye of the needle, it would be a CAMEL. With the Prodigal, the obvious animal choice was to tell the story from the point of view of the pigs that the Prodigal was hired to feed at his lowest point.

Having neither a camel nor pig puppet, having no budget, and running out of time to make anything from scratch, I ran down to my favorite thrift store (Red White and Blue) in hopes of finding some second-hand stuffed animals I could use. The pigs were easy to find, but, as you might guess, there were no camels to be seen. I ended up piecing together the head and neck of a snake, the mouth of a donkey, and the body of a leopard (all pinned together and covered with a tan cloth) to create the camel.

Driving home from the thrift store, I was given the voice and character of the camel, as well as the name, "Canticle, the Cantankerous Camel." It was a low voice with a southern twang (something in the neighborhood of Foghorn Leghorn, without the constant repetition), and as a beast of burden, he had a lot of complaints about people with "lots of STUFF!" The voice and character came so strong, I ended up writing the piece as a monologue, with Canticle talking about Camels' place in New Testament society and in Jesus' teaching, and then recounting the story of the "this Rich Kid with all this STUFF which BLINDED him to th' fact that he GOD ALMIGHTY was standin' there RIGHT in FRONT'v'HIM! WHADDIDHE DO? He TURNED AROUND and walked AWAY! 'TseNUFF to makye wanna SPIT!!"

I couldn't tell how well the story went over on the other side of the puppet booth--there was a lot of chatter in the room at the time--but individual kids who saw the puppet before and after the performance really seemed to respond well to him.

The pigs' story failed to materialize, but I think that was just as well. I decided that needed to be more interactive, so I used a version of the Prodigal by Bob Hartman, which involved the audience in saying certain rhyming words and making certain gestures throughout the story. We did use puppets to act out the story, but that was more of a backdrop to the Hartman interactive storytelling piece.

"And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning..."

"There were a lot of times I had to turn my light out when I was acting out Bible stories," my daughter informed me the other day. "First there was the plague of darkness in Egypt, then there was Daniel in the lion's den, then when I did Jonah in the whale, cuz of course it was dark in there, and then when Jesus was in the tomb before he rose again. Then I had the light off just now because I was doing Revelation and John was in prison."

"And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." And so it has been from the beginning.

I'm glad that my daughter appreciates the difference between light and darkness. I'm delighted that she enjoys acting out Bible stories during her play time, and I'm impressed at her memory and sense of the flow of the sacred story. I'm glad she didn't trip and hurt herself playing in the dark, and I'm glad I wasn't the one who walked in to find her lying still on the ground with her head under the bed.

"Honey, are you all right?" my wife asked.

"I'm PRETENDING to be dead."

"Why are you doing that?"

"I was acting out Bible stories and I was being Goliath!"

Beginning Again

Fortunately, it is easier to re-launch a blog than it is a rocket. Actually, growing up during the "race to the moon," I don't think there was such a word as "relaunch." If something was launched once back then, there was not much left after separation and orbit to "relaunch". I guess maybe the term came into use with the advent of the space shuttle...

"At any rate, I can tell I'm starting wrong. Let me begin again..."

For various reasons, once launched before Christmas, this blog went on a long hiatus, but I'm back, and hope to be posting at least weekly (and less weakly) in coming months. My apologies to the few readers who managed to find this.

The other new beginning I want to mention is that KidzLife started off again with a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper. This was our third Spring to kick-off in this fashion, and everything seemed to really come together well. Thanks to all who provided food and served the meal, and special thanks to my team, especially Pam for leading music and Allie and Debby for doing the Exile story using Godly Play. I'm always impressed (and somewhat baffled) at how well those stories connect with the kids, but obviously God uses them. And I'm hoping we will use them more in our kids' programs and Sunday School.

Personally, I was pleased to see once again how well the Pancake Race went over. It's a simple thing, I know, but games are not my forte, and when I come up with one that the kids like so much, it is very gratifying. (Jesse Marshall, who worked with me in an earlier stint as youth pastor, had a real gift in this area; he could say to the kids, "Ok, for the next ten minutes I want you all to jump up and down on your left foot" and the kids would swear it was the most fun they'd ever had. Most of my games I feel like the kids are merely indulging me.) In Olney, England, they've been running this race with housewives flipping pancakes every year since 1445, so we just re-enact it as a relay race. The past two years the kids have had so much fun that once they all went through the line once, they just kept going until we made them stop.

This week was mostly setting the scene for the semester, which will be dealing with Daniel. Next Tuesday we will start with puppets, though at this point it is not at all clear HOW! Prayers, please, for time, money and creativity...