Let's Play!

Well, hello again, folks. This is Dick Folk. The story is from the road. It's not quite dark 30 on November 1st, as the military would say. Light is just coming to the eastern skies here in Colorado as I record this. And I want to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects. If you hear me rattling papers or turning pages, it's because I'm rattling papers and turning pages. I'm going to read you a couple things. But let me start here. I don't know how many years ago was that Ruth and I were driving across Pennsylvania from Lancaster to Princeton, New Jersey. It was a Saturday afternoon in the fall. And I was on my way to speak in Princeton that next day. And along the way as you roll out through farm country, it's just beautiful. The leaves returning and I looked to my right and there in a pasture, in a field, were kids, not an usual in farm country, except these kids were playing baseball. It isn't just that they were playing baseball. It's that they were Amish kids playing baseball. So you're not in shorts and t-shirts or tank tops or something. You're in a dark clothing, long sleeve jackets and dark pants, wide brim straw hats. But the thing that struck me, and I should have taken a picture, I know I should have, the thing that struck me is that they were, I think most of them wearing Nike athletic shoes. And I thought to myself afterwards, I should have taken a picture of that, sent it to Nike, made a few bucks. There is something about play. No matter our culture, no matter our age, that is inherent in who we are, is human beings. As I record this program early on the morning of November 1st, the race is on for NCAA men's football title. At this speaking, George's number one, Ohio State and Tennessee are tied, actually, for number two. The NFL is up for grabs, pick your team, almost any team. The world series is tied, one to one between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros. They got rained out yesterday. So I guess they're playing game three today. And in three weeks, the world cup will be played in cutter on the Persian Gulf. Play, it goes around the world. Sport is one of the things that take you around the world, just like agriculture, water, and music. But last night was interesting, wasn't it? Halloween, this sort of cultural piece that has religious roots way back, but child after child, group after group of children came to the front door, saying, Trick or Treat, you gave me a handful of kids. And I used to love Halloween in Oakland, California. I had my buddies. We would get big bags and go out and race through the neighborhood, fill them up, bring them back, get another bag and race out again in the neighborhood. But it dawned on me that Halloween is not just about candy alone. It's about dress up and imagining. It's about play, isn't it? I mean, last night, we had several characters from Star Wars come to the front door. We had ninjas, had an R-Wall, had a cow. I actually served candy, gave handfuls of candy to bananas. But don't ask. My question is this, if we in fact are made in God's image, as it says in Genesis the first chapter, does God play? Where does it fit that God would play? I mean, I know he sings. I know he's big into story. More than 40% of the book, what we call the Bible, is story. He's an artist for sure. In the beginning, God created comes before something he said. So let's go with that a little bit here. I love with G.K. Chesterton, the writer and thinker of the last century said about God and children. Because children, he says, in his book Orthodoxy, have a bounding vitality because they're in spirit, fierce and free. Therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, do it again. And the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exalt in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exalt in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun and every evening, do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy. I love this part. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy for we have sinned and grown old and our father is younger than we. So when I think about play, whether it's for fun or competition or big money, play is always what we do. From building forts to chests to video games to imaginary friends, it is who human beings are. We are players. This is what Dr. Stuart Brown, medical doctor psychiatrist from California, said in 2009 in his wonderful book Play, the subtitle is how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, invigorates the soul. And this is how he describes it. Play is a state of mind, rather than activity. Remember the definition of play and absorbing a apparently purposeless activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of self-consciousness and sense of time. It's also self-motivating and makes you want to do it again. There it is. I mean, he goes on to say watching sports, not just playing watching sports or sitcoms or Oprah or whomever or an excellent drama on TV is usually a type of play as is reading a novel. Hobbies like model airplane building, kite flying or sewing are most often play. He goes on to say I would say that the impulse to create art is a result of the play impulse. Well, people play in all different kinds of ways, don't they? And there's celebratory and ritual play, there are birthday celebrations, holiday dinner and so forth. I like what he says, and you could appreciate this from my perspective because I sometimes people say, who is filthy? Well, he's that guy who tells stories. Storytelling, he says, on page 91 of his book, has been identified as the unit of human understanding. It occupies a central place in early development, in learning about the world and oneself and one's place in it. Stories are a way of putting disparate pieces of information into a unified context. Stories remain central to understanding well after childhood. You sit around the Thanksgiving table and a few weeks, perhaps, and somebody starts telling a story about great Uncle John who used to do such and such and so and so in what context. And we retell the story again and again, a lot of times it gets elaborated, added to. He goes on to say Stuart Brown, storytelling has the capacity to produce a sense of timelessness, pleasure, and an altered state of vicarious involvement that identifies narrative and storytelling with states of play. In his book, he lists eight different kinds of play activities or play what he would call play personalities. And I'll read them to you here. This is what he says. Here's the first one of the eight. The Joker. The most basic and extreme player throughout history is the Joker. The Joker's play always revolves around some kind of nonsense. I mean, we do this as parents don't we? Parents make infants laugh by making silly sounds, blowing raspberries, generally being foolish. The Guinness Thete, that's a big word. Guinness Thete are people who like to move who in the words of Ken Robinson, the wonderful writer now gone on creativity. Guinness Thete's need to move in order to think. They naturally want to push their bodies and feel the result. They may play football or do yoga or dance or jump ropes, but the way they learn is by them play that is found in movement. The Explorer. Each of us started our lives by exploring the world around us is probably from my perspective, this is both here. The sort of core part of little kids. They're curious. They explore. And exploring can be physical, Brown says, literally going to new places. Alternatively, it can be emotional searching for a new feeling or deepening of the familiar through music or movement or mental researching a new subject. The competitor number four. That person enjoys a competitive game with specific rules and enjoys playing to win. Brown calls or the terminator or the dominator, the competitor loves fighting to be number one. So this is the World Series. This is the World Cup. This is NCAA football. This is golf. This is NCAA women's volleyball or high school, whatever it is. The director. Directors enjoy planning and executed scenes and events. So these are the born organizers. They are involved in play by organizing it, the party givers, the instigators of great excursions to the beach. I found this one interesting. The collector. What good is a world of random objects? The thrill of play for the collector is to have and to hold the most the best, the most interesting collection of objects or experiences. Coins, toy trains, antiques, plastic purses, shoes ties, video clips of rice car crashes, or pieces of the crash cars themselves. Collectors may enjoy collecting as a solitary activity or they may find at the focus of an intense social connection with others who have similar obsessions like Jay Leno who collects antique cars. Here we go. The artist creator. That's where we started this with God himself. The artist creator for that person joy is found in making things. Painting, printmaking, woodworking, pottery, sculpture, knitting, sewing, furniture, gardening is in there. The point is to make something, to make something beautiful, something functional, something goofy. And finally, here's where I'm going to land again. Forgive me, folks. The storyteller. For the storyteller, the imagination is the key to the kingdom of play. Storytellers, of course, are novelist playwrights, cartoonist screeners, but they're also those whose greatest joy is reading those novels, watching those movies, people who make themselves part of the story, who experience the thoughts and emotions and characters of the story. Because the realm of the storyteller is in the imagination they can bring play into almost any activity. What I find fascinating about this is that when I look at Scripture, you don't, at least I don't find much play in the specific sense of just random activities. You do see it in the narrative, in the story. You do see it in the creativity. Miracles, maybe miracles are God at play. Here's the Apostle Paul, who I see as a pretty intense cat. In 1 Corinthians 9, he's writing to folks in this party town. Verse 25, he says, everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown. They will not last, but we do it. We compete in the games to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a box or beating the air. I don't shadow box. This play for Paul is the real deal. Looking back at the stories of the Gospels, I think the kid who brought his lunch to the party. He's out 5,000, there are thousands of people. I can't imagine him, first of all, let's say he's 10 or 11 and his mom gives him a little bag with a few pieces of dried fish and a couple of little barley loads or something. I can't imagine him being by himself at 10 or 11 or 12. He's got to have some buddies with him. He brings his lunch to this long adventurous, adventurous playful for him day. This has got to be going to the circus. Let's go see if Jesus will do something exciting again. He lived to tell about it no doubt that the most exciting thing perhaps that ever happened in his life was the multiplying of his lunch. Play might seem inconsequential, but it has purpose. It develops us. We live longer, we live better, steward studies, folks in what are called the blue zones, a place like Okinawa where people live a long time. Not just perhaps because they eat more fish or they're in a clean air environment, but they apparently they have a great capacity for play into old age. So whether we're doing play, actually playing or watching play, it's not bad. In the beginning, God created to hear my questions for you as we round this out today. Where do you go? Either in your head or physically to play. Where do you go to be restored? Let me give you a conversation starter as our sign off questions. I have found over the last 20 years, maybe 30 years in particular, that I can ask almost anybody this question and it not only changes the conversation, it changes the atmosphere. I have asked this question of seat mates on airlines. I have asked it of heads of state, of nations and senators and generals. I've asked it of men and women, young and old. Here's the question. What games did you play as a kid? What did you do for fun? Well, I believe I'm going to go hang out play. I'm out. I'm going to grab a cup of coffee, sit out on the back porch and make up one more story in my head. This is Dick Boath saying catch you later. God bless. Thanks for subscribing and we'll be back with a story from the road in just a few days. See you.