I thought you might be interested in the script I have written for my recent assemblies!

It isn't in "Proper" English - it is just my notes so please "Imagine you are 8 years old... Sitting on a wooden floor.... looking forward to break time .... and realize that today's assembly is being taken by "The Water Pistol Lady".....

Finding Dory – how being different is ok and we are all part of God’s “Body”

So – anyone know who this is? – hold up poster / toy

Yes it is Dory!

Have you all seen the film?

Well, for those of you who haven’t it is about a little blue fish who gets lost and the film is about her trying to find her parents

But Dory isn’t like all the other fish, Is she?

(ask for some responses – someone will say she suffers from short term memory loss)

That’s right – she has a problem remembering stuff – so even when she is counting to 10 to play hide and seek – she forgets what she is doing!

However, she is very brave and she has really great friends who are like family to her

May be you have friends like that? May be you have people in your lives who are like family, even though you aren’t actually related!

There is one scene in the film where Marlin and Nemo, Dory’s 2 friends, are stuck in a tank in the “Gift Shop” – do you remember it? Yes, the one with the wind up fish that keeps bashing into the glass! Well they are trying to work out a way out of the tank. Marlin, the dad, says “What would Dory do?” and then talks about analysing things and working out a plan. Nemo tells him that is what He would do - not Dory!

Marlin realizes that Dory would spot the first thing she sees and use it to her advantage. Marlin sees a bunch of little geysers, water jets, that lead to a tide pool. He and Nemo hop out of the display and use the geysers to hop into the tide pool.

We see that we are all different – some of us look different, some have disabilities we can see. Many people have disabilities we can’t see, like Dory, she looks normal but she has short term memory loss. But that doesn’t mean that these people aren’t as good at somethings as we are. Sometimes they just think about things differently.

The Bible talks about this too – long before Dory was thought of and man called Paul talks about it in one of his letters. He talks about a “Body” and how it all works together – and imaging the problems if the “Ear says “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body”…. “if the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?”

So you might “think” differently to some people, but that is ok

Some people might look “different” to you – but that is ok too

Look at the para-Olympians – I can’t run or swim as fast as them with my “Normal” body

When you next see someone who isn’t “Normal” or has a different way of doing something than your way – think of Dory and remember that their way is as good as yours.

Time for reflection

Let us just think for a moment about someone we know who doesn’t think the same as us

Maybe they are disabled, may be they are from a different country or maybe just from a different culture.

Let us remind ourselves that there are things that they can do better than us and just because they think differently doesn’t make it wrong

Prayer

Dear Lord,

Thank you for helping me see that we all have different ways of doing things.

Thank you for showing me that different isn’t wrong.

Help me to see other people as different parts of one body

Amen.