An embodied worship service honors and includes the whole child. During my internship, I led a weekly Wednesday evening multigenerational worship service. The Stories for All Ages in that service always included an element of embodiment and participation. I included children and adults as actors in the stories, and often included props and costumes, like masks, capes, strings of connection across the worlds, and mountains to climb. I regularly had actions and noises for the entire community to do or say during the story, and left space for creative interpretation of those actions or noises, such as “How do you think the very cold river might move and sound?”. The children had an opportunity to move and to embody the spirit of the story through acting it out, thereby bringing the lesson into their bodies. They had an opportunity to be creative in their faith community, and move their bodies in affirmed, cooperative ways with other children of various ages, other adults in their faith community, and religious leaders. The new embodied practice in the Story for All Ages was very popular: many parents told me their children were excited about and insistent on attending Wednesday Chapel for the first time. Every week, I had a line of excited children who wanted to know if they could help me lead the service.

Stories can provide access routes for different children, and provide frameworks for moral processing. For instance, as a group of children were preparing to act out a story in a chapel service, a younger school-age child was concerned about the ethics of her character. She was playing Water in a story where Falsehood convinced Water to put out Fire in order to acquire more cattle. Developmentally, her moral reasoning was at a dualistic stage, and focused rather than broad. Like most children her age, it was important to her to be good and follow the rules. She was worried her character was not good.

“Am I good?” she asked, and justified, “because even though I put out Fire, it wasn’t my idea, I got tricked into it.”

“Well, it IS true you are good and that you were tricked,” I said, “but Water also hurt her friend Fire. Do you think it is ok to hurt someone even if it wasn’t your idea?”

“No,” she said, and worried “does that mean I’m bad?”

“No, you can still be good even if you make a bad decision and hurt someone.” “So I’m good?” she asked. “You’re good,” I reassured her, “but remember to think about how your actions affect others.”

She smiled and seemed satisfied with this answer. My intention with my answer was both to affirm her inherent worth and dignity and to push her gently to expand her thinking beyond dualistically categorizing herself, her character, or other people as either good or bad. I met her where she was, and asked her to grow into thinking about how her actions affect others even as she maintains a positive sense of self.