Tonight, at Community of Travelers, was a double win - we played a version of the game Chubby Bunny and we sang portions of the Gaga Mass. How in the world did such a fun service come to be? I'm glad you asked, dear reader.
Today is the holy day of Pentecost, which is when the holy spirit descends onto the disciples of Jesus. As you might imagine, people gathered from far and wide to celebrate. The miracle that happened that day is everyone could actually understand each other- even though they all spoke in a different language. Pastor Megan pointed out that, had the miracle been in what was being said, they would have written in down (they didn't). So, the miracle was in the listening and the unifying spirit that was with them.
Tonight, to symbolize that, we split up into pairs and put as many marshmallows in our mouth as we could and talked to our partner about God. If you didn't play it as a kid, this is really similar to the children's game Chubby Bunny- although the original version doesn't have God in it. The idea in today's service was that the marshmallows symbolized tongues, and so we could speak a language for each marshmallow in our mouth. I admit, the most marshmallows I could fit was 3 (they were the big kind). Really, though, if you've ever played Chubby Bunny you know that speaking with your mouth full of marshmallows doesn't really enable clear enunciation. But I tell you- the laughter in the church today filled the hall. We were all still communicating, just with gestures and facial expressions. We had a ton of fun! By the end, I believe we felt unified and celebratory- just a taste of what the folks back then would have been feeling.
The Gaga Mass music helped with that as well. Although we still need to practice a bit, we had an absolute ball with Telephone and Bad Romance. By the end of the service, we were just rocking out, laughing, and hugging.
