Education during the Sunday School morning depicted in this week’s reading contained a great deal of ritual, both explicit and habitual.  Ritual was significant both in the classroom environment (students led by teacher), as well as within the educational leader herself.

In the classroom, intentional ritual included such elements as:

• setting the learning space: welcoming and introducing the students, separating those who routinely interact distractively, three-fold “preparation for learning” (relaxation exercise, loved and chosen identity exercise, ‘good story’ from the Bible read), and clapping for attention;
• symbolic rituals: lighting a candle, ritual positioning for prayer; and
• enacted rituals: public mourning ritual of wailing, letting go exercises of markers object lesson and paper-cramming, building a wall in which their larger community will participate with them.

The educational leader also practiced her own rituals, bringing them in at various levels of effectiveness in the learning environment: preparation of materials prior to Sunday morning, letting-go prayer ritual of stuffing written prayers (which the full class shared in), relaxation exercises (questionable success with energetic young boys), and the loved-and-chosen exercise of unconditional acceptance and identity (wildly successful with the class).  The leader also yearns for her own “grown-up” church rituals at the pivotal point in the chapter at the peak of her frustration that her teaching is not getting through to the amateurs, recognizing how her ritual needs differ from the children’s needs.  Finally, a mental ritual practiced by the leader is the ritual of worry and anticipation of continued bad news.

A point that remained unsettled for us as a group was that of the comment about the loved and chosen ritual: “each of them turned out to be loved and chosen, which does not happen so often.”  If the author means that each of the children are loved and chosen every time this ritual is performed in her classroom, as opposed to their experience in the outside world, then this would seem a good reinforcement of God’s unconditional love.  If, however, she means that this morning they were all loved and chosen, as opposed to other Sunday mornings, when some are excluded, then this would seem a very dangerous practice: are they loved and chosen more when they behave properly? Does God play favorites?  And so forth.

Christian meaning is embodied in many of these rituals as the class learns about God.  For example: welcoming and introductions is thematic for the expanding relational koinonia of Christ’s body (though the early class period of isolated-learner chair-sitting works against this somewhat); loved-and-chosen is central to our identity as unconditionally loved children of a God who initiates relationship prior to our behavior, out of which we are free to live in community with other equally-loved children of God; lighting a candle reminds us of Christ as the light that we are to carry into the darkness; and releasing our prayers to God not only fulfills our emotional need to feel good but in fact enables God to act in God’s ways outside of our control, and invites the children into prayer as frank relationship with God.  It was noted in our discussion that the symbolically-enacted learning points are worth discussing explicitly in relation to how God is at work in our lives (in ways the children can hear, as opposed to the opaque adult generalization of the letting go exercise).  Otherwise, to use “loved and chosen” as an example, the students may simply learn that the leader loves and chooses them.

We are asked to select the most important aspect for the educational leader to focus on in this situation.  Our responses all centered around the work of God: from emphasizing the affective need filled by God in the central identity of being loved and chosen, to recognizing the limitation on our ability to participate as best as we can in the learning environment and then releasing the learning in prayer, to the work of the Holy Spirit.  A centering verse from the Psalmist may be helpful: cease striving (be still) and know that I am God.  From our identity as children of God we can live in freedom to do all things in Christ who strengthens us, in the power of the Holy Spirit who unites us in community.

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