I don’t think that anyone would describe me as playful. I’ve never been whimsical, or theatrical, and only my children think I’m silly. And no one was surprised when the All About Mom page my son brought home for Mother’s Day last Spring basically listed my greatest strength as “adulting.”
But even though my love for To Do lists and productivity is deep and wide, I’ve also spent a surprising amount of my adult life thinking about play. First, as an early childhood and elementary education major, then as a children’s minister, and now also as a parent.
Admittedly, these days this thinking could often be more accurately described as worrying, particularly about the play habits of my own children. Do my children play enough or too much? Do they do the right kinds of play—free play, structured play, imaginative play, cooperative play? Do they play outside enough? Do they read enough? Is it okay that my son almost never wants to color? How much technology-driven play should I allow? Should I be playing with them more or does that take away from their capacity for independent play? Should their play have a purpose? Are they playing right? Is it possible to play wrong?
Play is generally described as engaging in an activity that is 1) voluntary, 2) enjoyable and 3) open-ended and flexible. Play is about the experience, not the ending. If your play can only have one specific outcome it’s not play, it’s a project or a competition.
Play is not a break from the real world. It is how you discover it. Play is how you try things on, practice various roles and personas to see if they fit, practice the rules and then change them, join in the act of creation, imagine the world as it could be.
As the ever-wise Mr. Rogers explained, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
And research shows that play is not just the work of children, it is the work of all of us. The need for play does not end when we become adults. “We don’t lose the need for novelty and pleasure as we grow up,” says Dr. Scott G. Eberle in the American Journal of Play. “Play brings joy. And it’s vital for problem solving, creativity and relationships.”
I think play is also vital for faith. We must be able to play with our faith.
I know that sounds counter intuitive or irreverent even. For many of us faith is IMPORTANT. Shouldn’t we WORK at faith, not play at it? But it’s a false dichotomy that buys into the lie that work and play are opposites. I believe faith, like play, must also 1) be voluntary, 2) enjoyable, in the sense that it is rooted in joy rather than pain or fear, and 3) it must be open-ended, flexible, and changeable.
In this way faith and play are inextricably linked. This is a problem for a society of adults who have been conditioned to believe that play should only be done if all of your ducks are in a row. (Has anyone seen my ducks?) But if those are the terms, we’re doomed from the start
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But play is not frivolous. Educators, researchers, and Mr. Rogers all affirm that play is, and always has been, real, meaningful work. Work that must be born and fostered in childhood, but that needs to continue into a healthy adulthood. Play is the work we do to practice imagination, try on new ideas, and dress up in various roles to see how they fit.
Play allows us to try out our our strengths and our weaknesses, in low-stakes settings. Play is where we learn to dream, to wonder, and to question reality. Play is where we practice telling, hearing, and getting caught up in Stories. Play is where we learn to create and respond with our bodies through music and dance. Play is where we learn to use and grow our imagination.
And for those of us who are Christians, and affirm that Jesus is God revealed to us, then we understand Play to be a part of the very nature of God. If we have in our minds a humorless, Vulcan-esque image of Christ, we didn’t get it from Scripture. Even in the small snippets of Jesus’ life depicted in the Bible, we find that our God has sharp sense of humor, a lively imagination and a penchant for creative storytelling.
We serve a God that enjoys word play and told humorous stories about a person who tried to take a speck out of a friend’s eye while a giant log was sticking out of his own. We serve a God that could look at nobody, a screw up, or a terrorist, and imagine the world-changing person they could become. We serve a God that knew when he needed to rest and when he needed some time alone with nature. We serve a God with a self-deprecating sense of humor that led him to lead a Royal parade on a donkey rather than the traditional horse in order to make a point. We serve a God that created the Blob Fish and the duck-billed platypus.
And if play is part of the very character of God, perhaps as God-seekers we need elevate the role of play in our lives individually in our faith communities.
This means we must MAKE space for play to happen. We are no longer children, who will naturally play given the smallest amount of time. Instead of the adult method of rushing through mundane tasks, children naturally transform ordinary moments into opportunities for exploration, wonder and play. My 4-year-old son cannot walk by a drawer or a cabinet without opening it to see what’s inside. He slithers like a snake down the hallway to retrieve his jacket. He plays with every toy as he puts it away. It. Is. Maddening. And yet it’s inspiring.
So many of us adults have had play conditioned out of us, however. We no longer see the world as full of wonder and possibility, but as a problem to be fixed. So we get from Point A to Point B in straight lines, our minds already thinking about the next task. When we do have little bits of time we choose distraction, not imagination. So it’s precisely because play is no longer as instinctual to us as pulling out our phones that we must purposefully make space for it in our lives. And we need to do it especially when we feel like we don’t want to, when we couldn’t possibly find the time, when there are lots and lots of important things to be done. It is at these times that we need to play the most.
Because if we have lost the ability to play, we have lost the ability to imagine. And if we can no longer imagine, then what are we doing here? What are we doing when we come together in our faith communities? We might be upholding tradition. We might be passing along knowledge or rules. We might be enjoying each other’s company. But we are certainly not on a journey of faith. We are definitely not participating in the Kingdom of God. Because to believe that Love and Grace can change the world is to imagine what such a world would look like, what people transformed by God would look like, and to have the playful, imaginative faith that this could be so.