The Calendar

When I first began experiencing Godly Play, this calendar was new to me. Now I'm absolutely in love with this tool. It is so helpful to children to physically have the visible cues to what season the church is in at any certain time and what comes next.

I love the way Jerome Berryman, the "father" of Godly Play, explains how the calendar works in his Fall lesson, "The Circle of the Church Year," that time is in a line like a string, and that in creating the calendar the Church tied the ending that was like a beginning to the beginning that was like an ending, so we would always remember that for every ending there is a beginning and for every beginning there is an ending. For me, the calendar depicted in this way celebrates the mystery of Easter.

Another thing I love about the calendar is that it reminds the children how important it is to both get ready for a special event (Advent and Lent) and how important it is to live in and fully celebrate that event (the seven Sundays of Easter.) And it shows that ordinary time, a time of growth, is important too.

Every week, every day, we are making our way on a path with God. And as we keep going around the circle, we hope our communion with God and our love for God and our understanding of God deepens as we go.