During the second week of Advent we learned the story of “The Annunciation to Mary”—“annunciation” being just a fancy word for “announcement.” The story is recorded in Luke 1:26-38. After we got through all the administrative stuff (nametags, attendance, how-to-use-the-talking-piece, etc.) we did a Circle round to describe our familiarity with that story.

There are three options: This story is…(1) brand new to me, (2) somewhat familiar (3) a story I could tell, more or less. I had modeled the “more or less” very well, having mixed up words in a couple of places and completely leaving out Mary saying, “How can this be?”

For three of us the story was brand new. Five of us were somewhat familiar, and seven of us felt we knew it well enough to tell, more or less!