Better Get to Playing!

A decorative addition to my office made while I was out one day.

Although it's not necessarily an everyday event at Horizons, I can proudly say a fair amount of "shenanigans" happen in the halls and offices and between staff.  It would be easy to say some of our staff are simply being "childish or obnoxious."  It would be easy to say the jokes, pranks, and laughter are off-task and counterproductive, perhaps even hurtful.  But it'd also be easy to say these things and in the same breath also kill the Spirit of a life-giving, life-sacrificing, out-of-the-box thinking team of life-changers.  No thanks.  We'll stick to playing.

The concept of being playful, even as adults in busy work environments, is not a new concept.  Yet, it has primarily been promoted as a goal for women wanting to "treat, pamper" or provide "extra gentle portions of self-care" to the soul.  To seek or need "play" is often seen as a week or wasteful approach.

But being playful is far more powerful than we make it and should never only be applied to one gender or only to a particular cross-section of our population.  The capacity to cultivate playfulness and engage it is ultimately the freedom we have in Christ to separate ourselves from the pressures, expectations, and doubtful outlooks.

Yet, it's easy to be serious instead.  It's easy to demand excellence and discourage distractions.  It's easy to focus more intently and push for greater concentration on goals and overcoming obstacles.  But the more we do this to an extreme, the less creative, innovative, courageous, and energized we become.  Edwin Friedman, in "Failure of Nerve (Seabury, 2007) suggests that without playfulness, it is difficult to distance ourselves from the things that are not truly us, that we easily become swept away by anxiety, and that we are reduced to operating reactively--like animals.

Paul talked about this quite a bit, encouraging us to no longer by like infants "tossed back and forth by the waves, blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming" (Ephesians 4:14).  We're also reminded not to be of the world and remember who we are and who we are not in 1 John 2:15.

So again today I invite each of us to find opportunities to be playful and cultivate playfulness--at work, in our relationships, families, and with strangers.  It'll do far more than simply make us feel silly.  It will separate us from who and what we are not and give us a chance to re-immerse ourselves in Christ, through whom we came, and through whom we live.

Here's to a good play!

More to come!

Jason <><