Play! Enjoy Life

Maybe I'm trying too hard. I do have white hair, but don't think I can do this! But I do relate to this picture.

I'm having to learn to plan to play. Intentional Play is Healthy! This blog is dedicated to thriving life. "To the individual, good mental health is directly related to his capacity and willingness to play," William Menninger, M.D.1



Yesterday I spent a couple of hours with an artist friend learning jewelry making. I totally lost myself in the wonder of this new craft. I slept better last night and I awakened to knowing I must plan to have fun and play on a regular basis.



Dr. Menninger writes, "In this troubled world today, so filled with unhappiness, distress, anxiety, and restlessness, to whom can one look for help? It is my firm conviction that if we could encourage and teach and guide more people to more effective recreative activity, we could and would make a major contribution to our national and international peace of mind."



Here is a comment from Dietrich BonHoeffer from his prison cell as he writes about the horrors of WW II and about play in a letter to his friends Eberhard and Renate Bethge:
"I wonder whether it is possible (it almost seems so today) to regain the idea of the Church as providing an understanding of the area of freedom (art, education, friendship, play), so that Kierkegaard's "aesthetic existence" would not be banished from the Church's sphere, but would be reestablished within it? I really think so. ... Who is there, for instance, in our times, who can devote himself with an easy mind to music, friendship, games, or happiness? Surely not the "ethical" man but only the Christian."2



One of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, helps me with these thoughts: "If we would but play, we might be surprised by the joy of God himself. True, there is no guarantee that joy will occur. But God has made us creatures with the capacity for communion with Him, not only in and through our work but also in and through our play. And in a time when work is proving increasingly sterile and defective, could it not be through our play that the serendipity of God's presence might most easily be experienced?"3

Work hard, look up for your help and take life lighter and play!!!



1 Menninger, William, MD Living In A Troubled World. 1967. Kansas City,MO: Hallmark Cards, Inc. p.38
2Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, enl. ed., ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 198.shrub164
3 Walter Hooper, "On C. S. Lewis and the Narnian Chronicles," quoted in Eliane Tixier, "Imagination Baptized, or, `Holiness' in the Chronicles of Narnia," in The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis, ed. Peter Schakel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1979), p. 143