The Power of Life, or a Peaceful Children’s Chapel

This past Sunday I conducted our Children and Youth RE Children’s Chapel, which is basically a service that takes place in our Common Room while the grownups are in the Sanctuary.

Peace should always be the prevailing direction...

I was excited because I purchased a new peace sign weathervane to help us during services where we call the directions; many of us, with our cellphone compass apps, may think we don’t need any help finding North, but it is a visual symbol that together we are addressing the directions. I will be using it this coming Sunday for our Ingathering and Water Communion service, but I wanted to first use it with the children.

It really worked well, and the service got underway with little problem. The theme for the service was the Four Elements that make up the power of life; the curriculum of Sing to the Power has been completed and this was the service to tie it all together.

We had a nice discussion among the children about Earth power and how they feel connection with the Earth. We also talked about how we are sustained by the food we grow on the planet, and how the members of our church do service work that connects with the theme of "earth power"-for example, our food pantry and the local soup kitchen.

Next we discussed air; the four characteristics are Stillness, Presence, Silence, and Listening. We had a volunteer model stillness (for about 3 seconds!), and then we talked about why it’s important to listen. They seemed interested when we talked about the ministry of presence that our pastoral care team practices, such as visiting people in hospitals; some of the children had been in the hospital before and knew how lonely it could be and how nice it was to have someone to listen to them talk about their experience.

Fire was the next element, and we discussed their passions (video games and sports), and how people don’t just have a passion for something they act on it. They gave examples of how people stand up for justice, such as groups working on protection of the environment or animals.

Our final element was water, and we talked about the power of water that makes smooth stones. We discussed Hurricane Katrina and how water, and all the elements, can be dangerous or helpful.

We then got to connect the power of love and what is helpful with the qualities they each have as persons, and that’s where Will.i.am came in…

I showed them the Sesame Street video of him singing about “What I Am”, and asked them to shout out when he sang, “What I am is…SPECIAL!”

When we extinguished the Chalice, I knew they were still listening because when I read the quote below from Chief Seattle, one of the boys reacted to the second line, “The earth does not belong to us,” saying “Huh?” Then he heard the next line: “we belong to the earth,” and nodded his head.

“This we know:

The earth does not belong to us;

we belong to the earth.

This we know.

All things are connected

like the blood which unites one family.”

- Chief Seattle Reading 550, Singing the Living Tradition

The final thing I did was to introduce the special guest who’d been sitting patiently in a chair next to me during the entire service. Poppy the Peace Monkey is my new office buddy, she sits in here and gives hugs to whoever needs one.

Because she has so many peace symbols all over her fur, she is named after the flower that is associated with peace, as it is the only flower that grew on the battlefields of Europe after they were ravaged during World War I.

Poppy got lots of hugs from the children. We began the service with the peace weathervane and ended with the peace monkey; so nice to think our children experienced an hour in a little oasis of peace in a troubled world.

Gaye W. Ortiz,

September 2, 2015