Categories: christianity, words, life
Date: 10 March 2008 13:23:32
Yesterday's evening service was a special service led by a group of people of adults with learning disabilities. The church was packed with regulars, and visitors from various towns and villages in the area - and the "prize" for coming the furthest distance was for those who had come from Newport, South Wales. (Noswaith dda!)
The theme of the service was how each individual is special in God's sight. This was illustrated with readings, music and drama.
The choruses were sung and also signed by team of signers at the front of the church. I had not heard of Makaton before but it turned out that I had some familiarity with it as the deaf homegroup in a previous church had used it in services when worshipping to music. I used to find it fascinating to watch the interpreter convey the service to her congregation. It turns out that Makaton is a simplified form of British Sign Language (BSL) using the most commonly used words in the language (BSL is not an international language - that is to say, users of other sign languages based on the English language are not the same. I don't know to what extent they vary... perhaps it's just in the vocabulary such as the difference between English/American trousers/pants example but it could be in syntax as well. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?).
I am not usually a great fan of choruses in general but I found it quite moving (no pun intended) to be using my hands and arms to convey the words as well as my voice. And there was the advantage that the vocabulary used was fairly repetitive so by the end of the song, one felt to be pretty fluent.
It was also very moving to see how engaged and involved everyone was in the service. At one point, there was an activity session which was very child-like in some respects. It involved colouring in paper-chain people and putting your thumb in some paint to leave your indivdual mark on a poster. I left a bright green print of my VERY special and unusual recessive gene thumb in the middle of the O of "love".