Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Let us play

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. Psalm 43:4

It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. R.Rohr,OFM Music: Unaccompanied Cello Suite No.1 in G major BWV 1007, Yo-Yo Ma

Searching our own depths

Richard Rohr suggests there are three activities that can help us make our way through mid-life: playing, praying and creating. If we are committed to attending to our inner life, praying may be something we are intentional about. Similarly with creativity, we may choose to make time for cooking, card making, gardening or other creative pursuits. And playing….? We may find ourselves looking down on the idea of playing, however if mid-life means that we are spending time searching our own depths, playing can provide a helpful source of balance. Perhaps the idea of playing does appeal to us but we don’t know where to start. How about…

• Learning to juggle
• Doing a sport we’re not good at, purely for fun
• Building a sand sculpture or sand castle
• Finger painting
• Re-learning from children how to play

Maybe some of these activities appeal to us, or we are more drawn by other ways of playing.

The divine playmate

Playing frees us to be spontaneous, in touch with wonder and delight. It engenders lightness of being, dispels stress, and reduces the chances of us taking ourselves too seriously And perhaps in our playing we will discover that we have a divine playmate, one who is close to us in our lighter moments, one who is our joy and our delight. Jane Edwards