liturgical formation

A dragon for Michaelmas

/ Christine Pennylegion / 1 Comment

Happy Michaelmas: a day for talking about angels, symbolically slaying dragons, and (apparently) blowing the dust off one’s long-neglected blog. Phooooot. Michaelmas is a new one for me, but in the spirit of slowly embracing/incorporating more of the church year I thought we’d give it a go. So I made a dragon. And then we killed and ate it. Good times!

The recipe is pretty easy:

1. Start with whatever basic biscuit recipe you’ve memorized. You have memorized a biscuit recipe, haven’t you?

2. Add half a cup of sugar. Yum.

3. Increase the liquid and butter a bit to make up for the added half-cup of dry ingredient.

4. Oops, too much liquid. Better add some more flour.

5. Sprinkle sprinkle, stir stir, sprinkle sprinkle, stir stir, sprinkle sprinkle, stir stir, why the sam-hey is this not coming together?

6. Make a dragon shape anyway. Get dough all over your hands because it’s really too goopy to do this. Fend off design criticisms from the preschoolers.

7. Decorate with whatever you have on hand: dried fruit, in this case.

8. Pop that baby in the oven. When your husband peeks in and asks “That’s a dragon?” tell him yes.

9. When the timer goes off, realise you’ve burned the dried apricots but the centre still isn’t baked through. Cover with tinfoil and return to oven. Forget to reset your timer.

10. Pull when it seems done. Eat dinner and talk about angels and the great war in heaven. Say “after you’ve finished your dinner” about eighteen times.

11. Slay that sucker and dig in.

Hallowe’en and All Saints

/ Christine Pennylegion

Sometimes I mostly write a post and then forget about it. Rescued from my drafts folder, an account of some of our Fall:

This year we took the kids out trick-or-treating for the first time! We had previously let the holiday pass by unremarked — not out of any particular objection to Hallowe’en, but just because it seemed a lot of work for kids who were to small to get much out of it (or even eat candy, for that matter).

Anyway, our glorious run of non-participation came to an end this year as Anselm was old enough to clue in to the fact that something called Hallowe’en a) existed and b) looked like fun. Fortunately for me, neither of them has yet realised that children usually get to pick their own costumes, so I was able to (enthusiastically) inform them of what their costumes would be, after I looked around and figured out something I thought I could make relatively easily and cheaply.

Behold, a scarecrow and a bird:

For Anselm’s costume, I cut down an old shirt that my husband was getting rid of anyway, bought a cowboy hat at Party City, and the rest is just strips of yellow felt cut into fringes and glued to the insides of his shirt. The fringes around his ankles are just safety-pinned together with a regular pair of jeans over them.

For Perpetua, I started with a blue t-shirt a few sizes too big for her (I wanted both costumes to fit over a couple of inside layers for warmth), and cut and glued teardrop-shaped felt onto it for her front plumage. I measured her from the middle of her neck down to her wrists and cut two large wings for the back that would be long enough to come down and cover her hands; those were also just glue-gunned in place, as were the little wrist cuffs. The headpiece was all felt: a wide band with two cartoon-eyeball-shaped projections at the front, white and brown felt glued to that to make the actual eyes, and yellow felt cut like a slightly rounded triangle and then folded and glued to more or less look like a beak. I also glued blue feathers sticking up from the inside of the headband — you can just see a few of them in this picture on the sides.

The night itself was a success; we went out after dinner, and they got totally tuckered out after the first two blocks. Little legs get tired! We carried them home, sorted the candy, and that was that. Except, of course, right after Hallowe’en comes All Saints, so we were still celebrating the next day!

Our All Saints was very simple: I put a tablecloth on the table (nothing says “special dinner” like digging out a tablecloth, amirite?), made pan de muerto, and we talked a bit about the saints. Oh, and ate a bunch of candy from the night before, of course. The end.

I used this recipe for pan de muerto again, with a few adjustments. I was able to get my hands on some aniseed this year (last year I left it out), which added a really lovely flavour. I cut the recipe in half to get a more manageable size for our family of four, and I decided to skip the glaze. Last year the glaze tasted good, but it made the whole loaf crazy-sticky, which made it hard to cut and even harder to get off little fingers. The bread is sweet enough on its own, really. I forgot to get a picture of the loaf after it was baked, but here are my crossed bones during the second rise:

And that was that.

One of the most satisfying things to me as we build our family and liturgical traditions was realising that nothing has to be extravagant to be special. Simple works very well, as long as simple is different from our regular days. I look forward to continuing these traditions as our children age — even if it means that they will get to choose their own costumes one day!

And then there was Easter

/ Christine Pennylegion / 2 Comments

Clergy families around the world are heaving deep sighs this afternoon: We made it through Holy Week. Phew!

This year I made hot cross buns for our Easter morning breakfast, from this recipe (foodnetwork.com). They came out very well, though I will note that the dough was so sticky that it was almost impossible to work with when it came time to knead. Next year I will increase the flour by half a cup or so and see if that does the trick. They tasted just as they ought, and I am especially pleased with getting the icing right. Often I have trouble hitting the right consistency without going over, so this time I added my liquids a quarter-teaspoon at a time. That was a bit tedious, but it definitely paid off!

We also made “resurrection cookies,” sometimes called “empty tomb cookies,” though much better known just as meringue! The idea is that you recount the story of the crucifixion as you make the meringue cookies, giving each ingredient a symbolic interpretation. They get put into a warm oven overnight (which you seal up with masking tape to represent the seal on Jesus’s tomb), and when you get them out the next morning the cookies are hollow like the empty tomb — at least, that’s the idea.

This is the recipe I used for these, and they came out terribly. I mean, they’re passable as meringues, but they didn’t hollow out at all, or even set in the middle. They are also cloyingly sweet — almost inedible even to my (very) sweet tooth. Next year I will have to just use my regular recipe, which has less than half the sugar called for here, and I will leave the oven on for 10 minutes or so once the cookies are in before turning it off. I like the concept; the kids were pretty engaged; the only problem was the recipe.

Culinary adventures aside, it’s been a lovely Easter. We went to the church egg hunt yesterday (where a good time was had by all), the service this morning was beautiful, the choir played an excellent April Fools joke by coming in with Joy to the World after the intro to the Hallelujah Chorus (which we did sing properly afterwards, I hasten to assure you), everyone ate way too much sugar, and then we had simultaneous meltdowns circa 3 pm. As one does.

A blessed Easter to you and yours. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Why we keep our kids in church

/ Christine Pennylegion / 4 Comments

Ever since Anselm was born, we’ve made it a priority to keep him — and Perpetua as well, once she came along — in for as much of the main church service each week as humanly possible. It began mostly as a practical step (we had mandatory chapel in seminary without childcare) but has become something we really value for what we see it doing in our children’s lives. Our church has a great kids’ program — Anselm loves Sunday School and Perpetua more-or-less tolerates the nursery — but for most of the service, they’re in the pew. This is why.

Knowing how to behave in church comes from being in church. 

Sometimes people compliment us on how well our kids behave in church. This isn’t to say that they’re never loud or wiggly, or that I’ve never had to carry a screaming child or two out of the sanctuary (ha). But by and large, they do fairly well. They sit (mostly) quietly and listen, they stay in the pew instead of climbing over or crawling under. As much as I’d like to say that this is because I am, obviously, a 100% amazing parent… what it really comes down to is that our children know how to behave in church because they’ve always been in church. It’s not a foreign environment to them; it’s just something we do. Since they were born they’ve been watching and listening to what the adults around them are doing. As they’ve gotten older they’ve started mimicking that behaviour. They can’t read, but they hold their bulletins. They stand and sit when everyone else does. Anselm can sing some hymns that he knows. They know how to behave in church because they spend time in church.

We want them to know that church is for them. 

We’re Anglicans, so Anselm and Perpetua were both baptized as infants. They are members of Christ’s body. There are no second-class citizens of the Kingdom of God! God desires our children’s worship just as he desires ours; God works in our children’s hearts through the hearing of his word just as he works in ours; God invites our children into his presence just as he invites us. There are few things that make me grit my teeth like hearing someone gush about how “children are the future of the church.” Y’all. Children aren’t the future. Children are the now.

We trust that God meets them right where they are. 

Can Anselm articulate a coherent, comprehensive systematic theology? Of course not. He’s three. But does he have faith? He sure does. He’s got all of the basics down: God made him and loves him, Jesus died for him and then rose again so that we can be with God forever, we go to church to worship God and learn about him, we can talk to God in prayer whenever we want, and the Holy Spirit helps us in all of that. As he grows he will learn and understand more. God’s grace meets us where we are; there’s no minimum age or cognitive level that we have to meet before he will begin to work in our hearts. Corporate worship is critically important to the process of spiritual formation, and we trust that having our children in church is impacting them in ways that we perhaps cannot yet see or understand, but which are nevertheless very real.

Bringing our kids to church reminds us that church isn’t about us. 

There are times that having the kids in church feels more like a hassle than anything else. I take them out to Sunday School and nursery, respectively, right before the sermon begins, which means that I miss the first few minutes of the sermon more often than not. And I go fetch them during the Peace or the Offeratory, which means that I often miss at least the first part of the Communion liturgy. When they’re with me, my attention is divided; I may be singing or praying or listening, but I’m also keeping one eye and one ear fixed on them. It’s hard for me to completely “enter in” to what we’re doing. But you know what? That’s ok. Granted, I do look forward to the days when I can regularly hear the whole sermon and participate in the whole liturgy, start to finish. But bringing my children into church reminds me that weekly worship is about a lot more than how I feel or what I get out of it. It’s about being with the body of believers, however messy that might look sometimes. It’s about passing on my faith to my children. It’s about a whole lot of things, none of which are centred around my ego or enjoyment.

Our kids need to be in church because the liturgy forms us.

We learn to worship by worshipping. We learn to pray by praying. We learn to sing by singing. Hearing the words of the liturgy week after week lets them penetrate our children’s hearts and minds, just as they penetrate ours. We have consistently been surprised when Anselm comes out with a phrase or idea lifted from the liturgy — but we oughtn’t be. In fact, it’s exactly what we ought to expect. The liturgy is deeply formative and we want our children to be formed by it.

Jesus bids us to let the children come to him. 

This is the big one, isn’t it? Jesus invites our children into his presence, just as they are. Even when they’re too small to understand. Even when they’re fussy. Even when you just get settled into the pew and then someone has a diaper blowout or drops a hymnbook or cries. Even when it’s the last thing we want to do on a Sunday morning. We don’t have to bring perfectly behaved children to church. We don’t have to bring completely attentive children to church. We just have to bring the children we have, again and again, trusting that in their imperfections and ours God is doing something beautiful.

Related Reading: Topical Tuesday: Why are there no children in church? | Children in Worship, or the Mortification of Parents | Welcoming Kids into Worship | Dear Parents with Young Children in Church | Pew parenting | Children belong in Mass