Worse than a beast

Dialogue from this morning's 1st and 2nd grade Sunday School class:

Me (in best teacher voice): Can anyone tell me about Lent?
Kids (in best Greek chorus voices): It's when you don't eat cheese, or milk, or meat...
Me: And what are we getting ready for, children?
Kids: Pascha! And then we get to sleep in church!

Yes, children, then you get to sleep in church. The highpoint of the church year, the Resurrection, otherwise known as "getting to sleep in church." All that other stuff? Secondary. They know what really matters.

I proceeded to conduct a minor experiment in torture. While they constructed flowers from coffee filters (a spur of the moment inspiration, lest I be accused of planning lessons or, God forbid, crafts, ahead of time, I read them Boxes for Katje. This is a story about hungry Dutch people receiving boxes of food from America. The characters savor a bar of chocolate. And most of my students hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

I'm a tyrant.

But I can put my god-daughter to sleep like magic. "Church?" she says. "Oh yeah, that place where I nap. And eat bread."