Overview

This Time for All Ages is interactive—the questions here are just examples, and the imagined answers are examples of how children might respond. This was originally created for a service focusing on the idea of Love at the Center, and exploring the concept of a liberating love, inspired in part by the bell hooks quote “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

This is also a great time to give a shout-out in service to whoever tends the plants in your congregation!

Script

[Bring out a plant in a pot, large enough that it is visible to the entire congregation.]

Hello! We are talking about love today with the grown-ups, and I thought maybe you and I could talk about love, too. Specifically, about… how we love a plant.

Who has an idea about we might show love to a plant?

[Answers might include: “Give it water,” “Give it sunlight,” “Give it dirt.”]

Can you give any plant any amount of water? Or does it depend on the plant?

[Follow this line of question to elicit answers about needing the right amount of water, the right amount of sunlight, the right kind of soil.]

Huh, that sounds like people to me, too. You know, how people all need to be loved in different ways from each other. Some of us might like hugs, or some of us might like high fives. Or we might like it when someone reads us a book or plays outside with us.

So I guess plants are like that.

What else does a plant need? What else did this plant need?

[If needed, pat the plant’s pot until someone comes up with “a pot.”]

Yes! This plant needed a pot. Have any of you ever started out with a very small plant? What kind of pot was it in?

[Answers might include: “Small!” “Tiny!”]

Right! And then have you ever seen a plant that got too big for a pot? What do you need to do then? And does anyone know why?

[Elicit answers from children—who are often surprisingly competent gardeners—about repotting so that a plant can grow. Some may be able to tell you more specifically why a plant needs space.]

Right! Plants need the right amount of water, and the right amount of sunlight, and the right kind of soil to grow. And they also need the right size pot—and if you are loving a plant really well, it often needs a bigger and bigger pot. You know, there’s a saying that grown-ups sometimes say: If you love something you have to let it go. And that’s true, sometimes. But I wonder if we could also say: If you love something you have to let it grow. Just like plants need space to grow, people need space to grow too.

So today I’m wishing that all of you get the kind of love you like best—water and sunlight and maybe chocolate chip cookies—and that the love you get lets you keep growing, and growing, and growing!