Joys and Concerns

This past week not only marked the year end of preschool, it was the last day of Sunday school as well.  When I enrolled Ella in the Religious Education program at our parish this year, I had to choose something to sign up for as well.  I quickly looked over my choices, hastily checked the box next to substitute teacher, turned the form in, and never thought anything of it.  Then, one morning, I got THE CALL.  And I’m glad I did.  Teaching RE ended up being both fun and… enlightening.  ish.  Here are some of my favorite Sunday school moments:

At the beginning of our meeting, the children get a chance to voice their joys and concerns.  Something similar is going on at the same time in the big people service but, whereas their joys and concerns have to do with things like sickness, engagements, new jobs, births, deaths, etc, ours have to do with the likes of scraped knees, Transformers, and little sisters who don’t share.  Some days there are themes.  On my first day as a sub, the first little girl to go raised her hand and, furrowing her brow, voiced the concern, “Mosquitoes sometimes bite my skin and suck my blood.”  It was all blood and mosquitoes from there.

Other times it’s a grab bag.  Once, in children’s chapel, “My Nana came to visit” was promptly followed by “Yesterday I got cats!”.

The last time I subbed, the second child to go announced that she had gone to Disney World the week before.  And suddenly all of the children had been to Disney World the week before, with the exception of the last boy in the circle who said he had a great idea, which was to go to Disney World.  That day’s topic was supposed to be unconditional love.  After I read The Runaway Bunny to the children, the other teacher asked why the mommy bunny kept looking for her little bunny, even when he kept running away again and again.  We were looking for something to do with the mother loving the little bunny no matter what he did or how far away he went.  Instead we got, “Maybe she wanted to take him to Disney World!”  “Yeah, and then they would go on the Dumbo Ride because that’s the funnest one!”  “Okay,” said the teacher, “what might be another reason why?  Why wouldn’t she just let little bunny run away?”  “I went to Cinderella’s castle and saw all of the beautiful princesses!”  “I want to go to the Mickey Mouse Club House!”  “There isn’t a  Mickey Mouse Clubhouse at Disney World!”  “Yes, there is!  Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse!”  (I had to look this one up when I got home to confirm what I had heard.  Apparently saying “meeska mooska” is a way to make a clubhouse appear, not a voodoo curse for herpes.  Who knew?)  And so on.  “Yes, but,” the teacher tried in vain, “do you think there is anywhere the little bunny could run where his mother wouldn’t try to find him?”  “Maybe he should run to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!”  “Or hide on the Dumbo Ride!”  “YEAH!”  It was time to admit defeat to the Magic Kingdom.  “Okay, then, children.  God/Jesus/Buddha/Mother Earth (for we are a Unitarian Universalist parish) loves you, now who wants to finger paint?”   You want to know the best part, though?  Sixteen little hands smeared bunnies who loved each other on their paper and not one of them painted the Dumbo Ride.  I’ll be damned if they weren’t listening, after all.

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