...The universe is made of stories, not atoms,
and its music is our children...
     (author unknown)

I do believe this is true, and it shapes my vision for Bradley Hills Church.

We must keep on telling The Story, our faith story, yet tell it in new ways...involving our learners in more drama, speech choirs, liturgical dance, art and music...teaching in ways that go beyond listening to The Story, ways that engage all our senses...ways that build bridges to each other.  Just as we pioneered a special needs Church School class with Ruth Heiss, we could do the same using the arts, enabling learners to make The Story “live!”  Charles M. Schultz, of Peanuts fame, captures the potential of such a program in one of the cartoons from his book about young children in the church “two-by-fours”:

I’d love to see Bradley Hills Church expand its settings for spiritual nurture, offering settings that engage us in broader ways, in ways that encompass our mind, body, and inner spirit, as does the winding, meditative pathway of prayer that a Labyrinth offers.  One day, perhaps a Labyrinth will grace our grounds, resting in a natural setting, open to all in our congregation and in our community.

Envisioning the future for Bradley Hills has been like looking through a kaleidoscope, the ever-changing patterns of the colors and shapes tumbling around and around, presenting endless possibilities of pattern and design.  But from the many possibilities, the two patterns and designs that, for me, began to stand out from the rest, were using ways to tell God’s Story through artistic expression and finding a variety of tools for spiritual nurture, such as walking the Labyrinth’s prayerful pathway...all the while, continuing to hold hands with our past as we reach out to the future in new ways.

Elder Betty Hansen