Thursday, September 18, 2008

Selective hearing

Last night Leah and I had our first ever Wednesday evening church activities. She thoroughly enjoyed Cubbies, part of the Awana program. She loved her friends, the teachers, doing a craft, having a snack, singing songs, ....oh, and hearing a story about Jesus, too.

I am helping out as a leader with the 3rd-6th graders, and last night was our "get organized" night. The kids got some information on what options they have (crafts, puppets, choir, activity or games) and we voted on songs that we would learn this year.

At one point, Pastor Tom was giving the directions for a little activity. On the big projector screen there was a psalm, and we were supposed to choose a word picture from it to illustrate in our groups - either one, or everyone all together.

As an example, he picked the phrase, "Do not listen to the counsel of the wicked," or something like that. His image, cut & pasted from the internet, was a drawing of three kids dressed in costumes of a ghost, witch & devil. There were trick-or-treat bags at their feet, and a big "Do NOT" symbol behind them. Pastor Tom said, "Yeah, these are kids dressed for Halloween, but we know a ghost, witch and devil are 'wicked' " and went on with the rest of the directions - where we were supposed to go, etcetera, etcetera.

We got to our table and I started handing out markers. One girl looked at me, and asked, "What are we supposed to do?" with a totally blank face. As if we hadn't just heard about it for 10 minutes.

I said, always the teacher, "What do you think we're supposed to do?"

And this lovely, attentive child replied, "I think we're supposed to draw a picture of what we're going to be for Halloween."

I tried to hide my amazement and just said, "No. That's NOT what we're supposed to do."

5 comments:

Aaron said...

I'm going to have to blame Pastor Tom on this one. You can't show kids a picture of Halloween costumes in late September and not expect their minds to wander.

Noel said...

What would a Jane Austen costume look like?

. said...

um, i could barely wrap my mind around that one. and since when are witches wicked? aren't you reading a book about that? didn't we see a new musical that showed it just depended on who's point of view you had?

sigh. poor ghosts and witches and kids excited about hallowee.

Lyz said...

Ruth - Pastor Tom did not make it seem that the KIDS in the drawing were wicked, merely that they were DRESSED UP as wicked-type characters. And from the point of view of the church, yes, witchcraft is generally considered to be wicked. Also, I didn't feel that the musical WICKED was really trying to argue that witches in general are misunderstood...just green ones.

Noel - I think that costume would involve a whalebone corset, long heavy skirts, and gloves. None of which I am interested in wearing in our lovely 80+ degree weather.

Noel said...

I'm 95% sure that the Jane Austen costume won't be too warm for Halloween in Fargo. I wish I had been in Fargo this past week to enjoy the great September weather. At least the weekend looks good, if a bit cooler.

This morning with scones and coffee on the patio, the Book Club member of the house and I got into how the book and the musical _Wicked_ were differing. You folks should have an interesting discussion.

We've steered our kids away from the ghost and witch etc costumes for Halloween. One of the funnier costumes was an Elmo from Sesame Street costume which by itself was not exceptional, but 2 year old daughter T called it her Elmo _cousin_ instead of her Elmo _costume_.