Playing with God

“Play with me.” The request of every kid, everywhere—and also of God

“Play is the activity most pleasing to…” God. Bagger Vance (The Legend of Bagger Vance, 188)

“I believe in God, the Father....” (The Apostles' Creed)

“I believe in God, the parent....” Ozzie Ostwalt

God as parent is one of the most persistent metaphors alive in Christian theology. This metaphor is used to describe the love of God, divine punishment, and, in general, the relationship God maintains with human beings. The metaphor allows us to relate to an ultimate, transcendent, infinite God in a human way. Before becoming a parent, the metaphor of God as parent had power in my life. After I became a parent, the metaphor defined God in a whole new light—if I can love my child as much as I do, how much more must God's love for his children manifest itself in our divine, spiritual relationship. I count it joy to claim God as parent. “I believe in God, the parent....”

As I reflect on my role as parent, I have come to think that, as the quote from Bagger Vance above suggests, a parent's joy is at its greatest when the parent's children are at play. During the past 18 years, I have spent countless hours on the floor, playing with dolls and dollhouses, dressing up horses and cows, riding bikes, swinging on swings, kicking a soccer ball, baiting hooks, and such. I'd do, and still would do, just about anything to play with my daughter—such sacred moments. I've also spent countless hours simply watching—watching my daughter at play, on the backs of horses, on the soccer field, with a golf club in her hand, or simply being ridiculously silly. As I watch my daughter at play, my heart swells with joy, and I must say that I am never happier than when my daughter is at play—joy begets joy. This is why I can agree with Bagger when he suggests that God likes to see His children at play.

So, I say—let's make God really, really happy!! Let's play!

And the more I play, I find that playing, sport, leisure—Recreation, or Re-Creation—give us space to re-imagine our world and our relationships, especially if we play with God, or for God. Then we make life and play a spiritual activity, we re-inhabit the spiritual realm, and we learn to see a spiritual reality in the midst of our playful living.

This is the basis of Playing With God—assuming a spiritual ground, this book presents a series of playful “reflections” that challenge the reader to re-examine assumptions about daily life. The reflections in this book are gritty with everyday life struggles, tinged with humor and skepticism, non-traditional and playful, and always founded on the assumption that the matrix of existence, the fabric of our material world, is fundamentally spiritual, founded on a metaphysical reality that is always available to those who have “eyes to see” and “the spirit to play.”

Playing With God contains topical reflections that can be read as daily meditations or thematic explorations. The reflections are written primarily from a Christian perspective, but they include wisdom from many of the global religions. The reflections attempt to be as open and responsive to the world’s wisdom traditions as possible, and, in the spirit of gentle provocation, lead the spiritually sensitive on a journey of recognition and exploration of the possibilities of life lived without spiritual limitations. The reflections themselves are the result of my own year-long journey, during which meditation on the spiritual underpinnings of reality became the main focus of seeking and emerged through my own playtime. The resulting reflections demonstrate that spiritual reality infuses everything in life from the trials and tribulations of parenting, to the banality and excellence of popular culture, to the wisdom of dogs and animals, and to the insights available through humility and humor. Above all, the reflections and corresponding insights emerge through play, and reading the reflections should be done itself in the spirit of play.

But why choose play as a metaphor for spiritual seeking? Because I think contemporary Christians need to infuse their religious lives with a healthy dose of frivolity. In a word, we tend to take ourselves too “seriously.” And the only way to reinvigorate our search for the divine is to shake things up a bit. I connect with my daughter through play; I romance my wife through play; I speak to my dog through play; I interact with my friends through play; why shouldn’t I also seek out God through play?

Why, indeed? It seems appropriate to me, because Spirit itself plays. The Spirit, pneuma, breath, is uncontainable, blowing and wafting hither and yon, peripatetic in its nature like a child at play. If we want to cultivate spirituality in our lives, if we want to be more spiritual, we must learn to be more “spirit-like,” peripatetic, spontaneous, and dare I say, child-like. To cultivate spirituality in our lives, we must recapture the ability to play; we must embrace leisure; we must seek and find “recreation” in order to experience a “re-creation” of the ancient, undifferentiated spiritual ground. I find such play in a variety of life pursuits: running; interacting with the family pet; parenting; riding a motorcycle; working on an old truck; playing music; creating art; writing poetry. The commonality of these activities is that they give one space (sacred space) and time (transcendent time) to play, if only for a moment, with and for God. The central metaphor is PLAY—play, recreation, leisure—within our playful selves, we shall find the freedom to please God and re-create our ancient, spiritual selves.