Finding worship in play

This post was contributed by LifeTogether intern Mac Stewart.

 The other day, I came across this passage in a book I am reading:

 “Worship can be seen as the explicitly religious form of play. Worship may possibly be experienced as an island of rest on a working day; it may possibly be experienced as a bout of labor on a day of rest. But it will be best experienced as the resolution of work and rest in play. It will then be genuinely re-creation.”

 Worship is religious playfulness. I love that idea. For one thing, the idea seems to tie together nearly all of the themes that have, this year, taken hold of my walk with God in the world. To be playful requires you to be present, to be aware of who and what is going on around you, to be mindful of this moment without the conscious interference of guilt over what you have or haven’t done or anxiety over what you “ought to be doing.” It requires you to be in this moment with joy, knowing the simple pleasures of skipping rocks on a river, or playing catch with your dog, or belting out your favorite hymns at the top of your lungs to the chagrin of your intentional community housemates (e.g., “One Bread, One Body”). As the passage suggests, play can become a place of appropriate balance or rhythm within the repetitive cycle of work and rest. Above all, playfulness embodies a posture of gratitude: thanks and praise for the sheer gift that we exist.

 The more immediate reason that this passage stuck with me, however, is because my work at the moment has me thinking about play. The church in Dorchester at which I find myself (as a Micah Intern) is attempting to install a new playground to replace our old “playground” (a wooden swing set with rotting wood and zero swings). As I speak with playground vendors and try to raise support from partner churches for this project, I can’t help repeatedly returning in my head to the question, “What good is a playground going to do for kids in such a poor neighborhood? They need education for a future, not a place to waste time on a jungle gym.” A perfectly legitimate question (and, incidentally, our church also has in the works an SAT prep tutoring program). But I think, with inspiration from the author quoted above, the following counter-question might serve as strong motivation for me taking this project as seriously as any SAT prep course: “What good is a future without a place to play.”