Go play.

Summer always surprises me with a renewed sense of playfulness.  My family gets together with several other families to play some fun and ridiculous games every year for the Fourth of July.  The favorite for this year involved a shower cap, shaving cream and a bag full of cheesy puffs.  Kids and adults fired away to see whose team could land the most cheesy puffs on the shaving cream covered targets.  Who knew this could be so fun?  We all got lost in the wonderful craziness of it and something life giving and authentic was found.  

This type of spontaneous play is something children do so naturally.  In fact, I believe it is their primary way of interacting with the world.  They get lost in their play and this brings freedom, something we adults need so desperately.  So, what is play and how do we as adults step back into this much needed terrain? 

Play is something we choose to do with our time, taking us back to a child-like state and releasing us from our many adult concerns.  I remember several instances where the beauty of play was seared into my memory, and light and free moments transcended the normal preoccupations of my mind. One of these memories involved skipping home with a good friend from a night meeting on my college campus.  This simple, spontaneous act allowed us to let go of everything expected of us and, by engaging in true play, we were present in the moment.  Play invites us to taste the goodness of doing something just to do it, completely free and unaware of the unique outcome in store.  I have heard it said many times that the brain remembers strong emotion; I believe this is why one can easily recall the pure joy that comes from spontaneous play.   In her book, The Art of Family, Gina Bria says this about play: "play provides new ways of being together, and not so as to escape ourselves, but to bring more of ourselves to each other."

Where could you incorporate more play into your life?  How could play bring you closer to community?  How might play awaken you to your worth?  Adults, go and play.  

Pain

I recently cut my index finger and had to get several stitches.  No fun.  As my finger is in the process of healing, parts of it have been quite numb.   As the numbness is starting to wear off in certain spots, I feels bursts of pain.  At first I was surprised by my genuine elation over the pain in my hand.  I quickly realized that my happiness was an indicator of the health of my finger.  Both feeling the pain and experiencing the healing are good things.  

I have always been a lover of music.   As the numbness wore off, the Lumineers song Stubborn Love began to play like a soundtrack to my finger injury.  The line "it is better to feel pain, then nothing at all" captures this concept.  Thank you Lumineers for reminding me of this truth.  

My finger injury was a small cut requiring a few stitches and some time to heal.  However life often brings much deeper cuts and profound times of loss.   What do we do?  Do we feel the pain that life brings so suddenly into our midst or do we bury it?   Jerry Sittser, a man who has experienced deep and tragic loss provides wise and beautiful words in his book, A Grace Disguised.   He says,  "But this depth of sorrow is the sign of a healthy soul, not a sick soul.  Sorrow indicates that people who have suffered loss are living authentically in a world of misery, and it expresses the emotional anguish of people who feel pain for themselves or for others.  Sorrow is noble and gracious.  It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world's pain and hoping for the world's healing at the same time.  However painful, sorrow is good for the soul."

I greatly appreciate the depth and truth in Sittser's words.  It is encouraging in the process of moving toward my own pain and toward the pain in others. As the numbness wears off, experiencing pain can expand the soul in beautiful ways.