I read a wonderful piece on contemplation by Walter Burghardt who makes some comments about how to realize the capacity to discover the Holy - for contemplation. Here is another one.
...intimately allied with festivity: a sense of play. Not "fooling around"; rather what poet Francis Thomas meant when, in his essay on Shelley, he likened the poet's gifts to a child's faculty of make believe, but raised to the nth power. It demand a sense of wonder that many of us lose as we grow older, get blases and worldly-wise and sophisticated, believe that everything can be explained. No, let your imagination loose to play with ideas - what it means to be alive, to be in love, to hope even in this valley of darkness.
This may seem odd but at times I think this is what happens on a show like Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. People are looking at the the world and the actions going on in this very serious and "important" world and they are able to laugh and find a way to play with the characters and times at hand in such a way that we really have to begin to look at things in a new way. I know this borders on "fooling around," but then again, it may be one way to help us begin to play in the middle of our quite serious and protective day. Sometimes the exercise of play is not something that comes back to us so easily. It is not difficult to let go and enter into moments of sheer delight when we take ourselves and our world too seriously. Just now I thought of that wonderful movie "Life is Beautiful." The "clowning" around of the man who was sent off to a concentration camp was an adventure in play that quite literally was able sustain himself and the little boy with him. There was always a way to open up the day...to see things differently...to imagine when there appeared to be nothing left to imagine...everything was known - even the outcome of this brutal story. When we pray, we play...and that may be the moments of our lives that will sustain us, as Burghardt notes, "even in this valley of darkness."
Connection: What a gift it would be to have people around us that were able to help us play right when the world seems so serious and dark and powerful. Play...with all the "don't touch" items and ideas all around us. Go for it!
My Lord, what a day is placed before us. With your hands, guide us and help us to laugh and giggle and seen this day with various lenses so that we will not be caught up in one, closed-up vision that denies us the wide vision of your gracious Reign. Amen.
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