WHAT ABOUT ME?
May 7, 2006

Meet today's cast...
Fr. Charlie: Quite a wit, pastor of our flock	Bubba: Good natured, loves the beach and surf-boarding, simple-minded and silly
	Stevie: Stevie is BLIND but he loves to teach everyone how he is able to "SEE" Jesus.
	Lizzie: Lizzie is bossy and can be a bully too. She is always thinking of herself and she tries to tempt others to do wrong things.
	And introducing Sunny: Sunny is a sunflower, full of wisdom and is always pointing towards the Son.

FR. CHARLIE: Good Morning boys and girls! Well, springtime is finally here and I love this time of year. The leaves are out, the flowers are blooming, and the birds are singing. It is also the month of May and it is called the month of Mary and….

(out comes Lizzie, Bubba, and Stevie)

LIZZIE: I don’t believe it, Bubba and Stevie! I just don’t believe it! Oh, hi, Fr. Charlie.

FR. CHARLIE: Hi Lizzie, Bubba and Stevie. What’s the matter, Lizzie?

LIZZIE: Well, Miss Pringle, our Music teacher, told ONLY Bubba and Stevie that they sang great in class today. Well, I think I did, too, so WHAT ABOUT ME?

STEVIE: Lizzie..you made a mistake on the words to the song. Instead of singing, “Old McDonald had a Goose” you sang, “Old McDonald had a moose”!

LIZZIE: So what! That doesn’t matter! Maybe I wanted to be original.

STEVIE: Maybe you just forgot the words.

FR. CHARLIE: So, Bubba, how was your day? What about your favorite time at school?

BUBBA: You mean Recess! It wasn’t my favorite time today! They were picking teams for basketball and no one picked me!

STEVIE: But Bubba, there were 30 kids trying to get on two teams. You weren’t the only one who didn’t get picked?

BUBBA: Yeah, but I was the biggest and tallest out there, so WHAT ABOUT ME?

STEVIE: Bubba, you seem to forget sometimes that you don’t tackle or check kids into the wall to try and get the basketball.

LIZZIE: And Fr. Charlie….this is the WORST thing of the whole week! When I went to Mass on Sunday and walked down to where I ALWAYS sit, someone was sitting in MY pew.,,in MY pew! WHAT ABOUT ME!

STEVIE: Lizzie, you and Bubba sound like robots, WHAT ABOUT ME…WHAT ABOUT ME….WHAT ABOUT ME!

FR. CHARLIE: I have to agree with Stevie. It sounds like you’re just thinking about yourselves?

LIZZIE: Well, who else do you want us to think about, Fr. Charlie?

FR. CHARLIE: Hmmm, I think it’s time to think about Mary, Ok?
(Puppets nods their heads in agreement) Let’s use our imaginations and go WAY back in time and pretend we’re watching Mary. There she is, living in a small, poor town with her family. Her mother asks her to go to the market. As she’s walking down the street, no one’s paying attention to her. She looks like just any other teenage girl.

LIZZIE: So what happened, Fr. Charlie?

FR. CHARLIE: Well, Mary’s life was about to be changed forever.

BUBBA: Fr. Charlie, is that when God sent an angel to Mary and told her that she was going to have a baby boy and when he was born she was going to name him Jesus?

FR. CHARLIE: That’s right, Bubba. Can you imagine what must have gone through Mary’s head? There she was, all alone, about to get married to Joseph, and an angel appears telling her she’s going to have a baby! If you were Mary, what would you have done? What would you have said?

BUBBA: I think I would have pinched myself to see if I was dreamin’ or told the angel to come back with a magic genie so I could ask for something I really wanted!

LIZZIE: Well, I CERTAINLY would have said, “What about me?” What was Joseph going to think? What was her family or the people in town going to say? What would they do? So, she MUST have said, “What About Me”…right Fr. Charlie?

FR. CHARLIE: Wrong Lizzie. Oh, she asked how it could happen, but Mary said, “Here I am, let it be done to me according to your word.” She didn’t understand everything but she trusted God. It wasn’t about her, it was Mary being faithful to God.

LIZZIE: Well, I’d want some answers to my questions before my life was about to be turned upside down. Why, that’s worse than 20 bad hair days!

FR. CHARLIE: Stevie, you’ve been very quiet.

STEVIE: I know, Fr. Charlie. I was thinking about Mary. She never seemed to think about herself or say, “What about me?” even when things were hard to understand.

BUBBA: Ummm, Stevie, I remember when you told me you didn’t understand why you’re blind.

STEVIE: Me too, Bubba. I used to get mad and scared and ask God, “Why am I blind? Why did this happen to me? Why am I different? WHAT ABOUT ME?

LIZZIE: But Stevie, that doesn’t bother you anymore. What happened?

STEVIE: Well, last year in May, Fr. Charlie gave me a package of sunflower seeds and told me it was time to learn a lesson from the sunflower.

BUBBA: Learn a lesson from a flower?

FR. CHARLIE: Yes, Bubba, and I told him my friend, Sunny, was going to help him. In fact, he’s around here somewhere. Well, I don’t see him right now, but since we’re talking about sunflowers, I see some over there. Dan, can you help bring the flowers up here, please?

(Dan walks to the Altar with a bunch of sunflowers and stays beside Fr. Charlie. Fr. Charlie starts walking around searching for his friend….all of a sudden you hear a sound like someone is struggling to do something)

SUNNY: (All of a sudden he pops up) AHHHHHHH…that feels better. Did I hear someone mention my name? WOAH! Where am I?

BUBBA: YIKES!!!!!! It’s a talking plant.

SUNNY: YIKES!!!!!! It’s a …….what are you, anyway?

BUBBA: I’m a Bubba…I, I…mean, I’m Bubba.

SUNNY: Oh, Hi Bubba. I’m Sunny. Oh, hi Fr. Charlie and hey, my friend Stevie’s here! Where am I, Fr. Charlie? This sure is a funny lookin’ garden.

FR. CHARLIE: Hi Sunny. This isn’t a garden. You’re in St. Agatha Church and all these boys and girls are my friends along with Bubba and Lizzie. Say, do you remember the time I wanted you to help Stevie plant the sunflowers?

SUNNY: Sure do! He was not a happy camper. Told him some things are hard to understand, we don’t know the answers..but one thing is ALWAYS certain God loves him, he’s special, and God needs his help.

LIZZIE: WHAT?! God needed Mary’s help and then you told Stevie God needs his help! If I were Stevie I would’ve said, “God needs my help! I need His help, “ What about me!”

STEVIE: I did say that, Lizzie.

SUNNY: He sure did….then I decided it was time for Stevie to stop talking and get his hands dirty! Fr. Charlie and I took him out to the garden area, he dug holes in the dirt, and then I asked him if he knew anything about a sunflower.

STEVIE: I told him someone told me it was tall, had a big, giant head, with yellow things growing out of the big head. (They all look at Bubba)

SUNNY: (Clears his throat to get them to look back at him) Let’s continue. I told him the sunflower was about to teach him an important lesson. So, we planted the seeds and this is what happened.

STEVIE: Well, I chose one plant. I couldn’t see it, but I touched it. The more the sun shined on it, the faster it grew. It got so big they had to help me get on a chair to touch it.

LIZZIE: So, that’s the lesson? A lot of plants grow in the sun. Fr. Charlie, I don’t understand.

FR. CHARLIE: Well, Lizzie, Stevie found out that as the sunflower grew, it always turned its giant face to the sun. It was designed so that it’s head faces east as the sun rises and follows the sun across the sky so that at sunset it is facing west.

BUBBA: I got it! So, that’s what Stevie needed to do…he needed to look up to God. Hey, Mary was like a sunflower..she always looked up.

LIZZIE: So, where does the God needing our help come in, Stevie? Besides, the sunflower doesn’t stay tall forever. In fact, it just bends over and stops.

STEVIE: Oh, but it doesn’t stop, Lizzie. The sunflower was created with a gift inside. SEEDS! Seeds to feed the birds. Seeds to feed people. I touched them, I could feel all the seeds and then I could hear the birds coming to eat the seeds. What a great sound!

SUNNY: Stevie finally understood the lesson of the sunflower.

STEVIE: Yep, IT’S NOT ABOUT ME. God just wanted me to look up. I found out I had a lot of good seeds in me. I found out I could help other people. I WAS SPECIAL! He needed me to help people learn that too.

LIZZIE: So, Mary trusted God, God needed her to bring Jesus to us. So, God needs us to bring his son, Jesus, to people too?

BUBBA: Hey, I guess we all can be SON flowers. I guess nothing is impossible with God when we keep looking up. I guess things aren’t ALL ABOUT ME….

STEVIE: You got it, Bubba…IT’S ALL ABOUT GOD, right Fr. Charlie?

FR. CHARLIE: That’s right Stevie…Everybody has things they can and can’t do or don’t understand. We just need to learn to look up, trust God, and remember it’s not about me—It’s all about Jesus!

Our Puppet Pulpit Phrase is: It's All About Jesus!

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