Reflective Moments Moments Reflective February 2010
The purpose of Reflective Moments is to offer you a way to incorporate the spirit of Saint Angela Merici into your own lives. We hope that it enriches you spiritually.
Play: a spiritual exercise By Sister Marietta Wethington, OSU
A
re you a playful person? Do you ever take time out of your busy schedule to just play and have a really good time? Or do you see play as wasting time, something you’re too busy to engage in?
M
ost of us in our society are reluctant to spend time in play. We consider it an interruption in our time that should be spent producing, achieving, getting ahead.
M
any spiritual writers will tell us that play is valuable, even necessary for living a balanced and wholistic life. Play helps us discover our creativity, invigorates our spiritual life, heals our physical and mental fatigue, gives us new energy and a fresh way of approaching life. Play brings us into the present moment and teaches us a lot about ourselves. Am I competitive? Cooperative? Patient? Enduring? Creative? Am I easily inspired? To answer those questions look at how you play.
W
hen I was a child, my siblings and I played a lot. We grew up on a farm so we had our assigned chores, but when the work was finished we played. We had a woods nearby and we spent a lot of time there. We were highly imaginative, building “playhouses” with dried leaves for walls and the green moss for the carpets. In the evenings, we caught fireflies and kept them in jars to enjoy their flickering glow. There were always races and a ballgame of some kind in the yard in summer and cards and jacks at the dining room table in the winter. Oftentimes our cousins and playmates from the neighborhood joined us. Play helps build relationships and is a bonding time for many families.
S
omewhere in my adult years I lost much of my ability to play and joined the segment of our society that is too busy to lose myself in play. It is easy for me to settle into a comfortable rut and keep plunging headlong into work. This reflection challenges me to return to some of the spontaneity of my childhood and to engage in the spirituality of play. One author I read recently challenges us to look at play as a profound way to pray. Have you noticed how similar the two words are? The difference is in only one letter. Maybe we as individuals and community can add some vitality to our spiritual life by playing together and through that creative wasting of time encounter the sacred in ourselves and in each other.
A
ngela must have enjoyed many playful times with her family. Her biographers tell us that the Merici family spent time together in the evenings listening to their father read. They also tell us of the pranks she and some of her siblings played as children. Invite Angela to join you in your reflection.