Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

David. Tommy. Kim. Mike.
Shields drawn.
Walnuts in hand.
What are the rules?
What makes a fair game?

This little poem popped into my mind last weekend after a quick flood of childhood memories. I’m the middle girl of two brothers (David and Tommy), all close in age. Growing up on the outskirts of a small town in rural Wisconsin, we learned to entertain ourselves. In the era before PlayStation and Xbox kept kids wired to TV and computers (Pac-Mac was just making its debut), we created a host of our own interactive games. Thinking back on it, we may have been some of the most creative – or crazy – gamers around town with hits like “Gahilla Monster” (our misspelled/mispronounced reference to a slow moving venomous lizard) and “Ghosty Ghosty On-the-Bed-Posty.” These were rainy-day indoor games. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say they involved lots of pillows and jumping on bedroom furniture.

But the poem above was inspired by our marathon outdoor adventure game with no fancy name: war. Our particular war game involved: metal garbage can lids as shields, black walnuts from the nearby tree (almost baseball size in their hard green shells) as plentiful ammunition, and ski goggles and wrestling knee pads as protective gear. My brothers and I, along with a few willing friends, would divide into two teams, set up camps in the woods, and play for hours and weeks on end.

This vivid memory was prompted by an exercise in a class I’ve been taking. The last phase of the course involves a group project. Our skilled teachers understand that it’s hard to assign people into small groups and immediately expect them to perform well together. Group dynamics, for better or for worse, influence how people get things done together. So before we started our teamwork, the instructors led us in this brief exercise.

• Sit in a comfortable position. Shut your eyes and clear your mind for a moment.
• Think about your earliest memory of working in a group. Don’t over think it – just capture the first thing that comes to mind. There’s no right or wrong answer.
• Ponder this memory…. What was happening? What were you feeling?
• Create a short poem in your head about this experience. Again, don’t over think it. Just compose whatever comes to mind.

In class we shared our memories and poems with one other person. Then a few people shared their stories aloud for all. Together we reflected on what we’d learned, from an early age, about working in groups.

One woman expressed how sad she’d felt after being excluded from a group of girls playing dolls. One man recounted a lovely experience of moving to a new town as a kid. When his family arrived to look at a new house, neighborhood kids assembled on the front lawn and invited him and his sister into a game of Red Rover. He spoke fondly about the impact of that warm welcome.

I shared the story of the war game. The last two lines of my poem were a spontaneous insight. I realized the key to all the games we made up was creating boundaries (rules) for everyone to be able to participate fully. And these rules were constantly being enhanced or revised as the game went on. If someone got injured, we’d lose a player and therefore lose some of the fun. So we invented new rules, such as only throwing walnuts below the knees – anything higher was too risky. We determined how long we could go before calling a truce (for a snack break) and what to do when someone “wanted out.” Our only objective as kids was to have fun. What I realize now is that our way of having fun meant constantly finding ways to keep everyone engaged, learning how to negotiate individual and group needs so that everyone won.

We have lots to learn as adults about effective group dynamics. But with credit to Robert Fulghum, today I remember that lots of what I “really need to know I learned in kindergarten.” Maybe making fun one of our top priorities in groups will free us all up to change the rules and invite more friends to play.