Sunday, February 20, 2005

You have to laugh...

No doubt seasoned alt. worshippers could have warned me about this, but I'm sure I didn't ignore a crucial para in the books nor even among jonny's worship tricks. Yesterday I purchased, from a local toy shop, two small but adequate plastic sacks of sand. I kind of assumed they contained sand, as it said on the label...instead of which, when I opened them this afternoon (thankfully I was being atypically prompt in my preparations)there seemed to be a glutinous sand-based mud. Several pints of water, definitely.
This was fine for the "Making an Impression" station....but less satisfactory for the "promises in the sand" one, where I was burying dozens of little scrolls with bits of Scripture written on them. So......
Husband, son and curate spent much of the afternoon wielding hair dryers, ovens, gas rings and any additional forms of heating/drying we could think of in a desperate attempt to dessicate the sand sufficiently for my purposes. The boys were still at it when I left for Evensong...
If son were not now in bed, sleeping the sleep of the righteous sand-dryer, I would be able to post photographic evidence of this. Maybe tomorrow...when I might tell you all about "Into the Wilderness" too.

6 comments:

Caroline said...

oh come on, if finding the sand pit was god being remrkably full of suprises, then what was giving you soaking wet sand all about?.....

ok. i'll go away.

Kathryn said...

Well...in all honesty, the soggy sand really /was/ quite a positive thing...cos we all fell about laughing, and then actually did something together to make it better, instead of pulling in opposite, though well-meaning, directions.
Practical problems are quite definitely the strong point of my various boys.

Tony said...

This is why I quite like BCP: you can do it without any props. :-)

But where I do need to use anything else, visual aids or whatever, I have learned to be distrustful (paranoid?) enough to make sure it's all ready about six weeks beforehand.

Except when I forget until the last minute, of course.

maggi said...

excellent story! lol

Andii said...

So what we all need to know so that it can be recommnded for Jonny Baker's worship tips is which drying method worked best? Was it the hhairdryers or what?
Of course what it also means is that the sand you bought was heavier than it need have been with all that water in it too; I do hope you didn't buy it by the kilo!
I have to take issue a bit with Tony's comment -you are supposed to have cassock, surplice and scarf not to mention a church building, a prayer desk and the book itself for BCP; it's just that those props are more 'standard'. Now, my training friends have things like sand [and pens and paper and plastic boxes etc etc] as standard but have to work harder if they want surplice and scarf ... Roll on the days when sand is standard in churches!

Kathryn said...

According to the drying squad, the best answer was metal baking trays on gas rings...So now we know.
Worship trick number ??? "b"