Productive Play

It's 3pm on a Friday afternoon, and I find myself relaxing in a fantastic little bar in Camden, fittingly named the Spiritual Bar, as it oozes soul left, right and center. I'm sat here alone, free to tinker on the piano or to help myself to whatever I want, the owner having generously invited me to make myself at home, before disappearing off for a bit.

I've been to the Spiritual Bar on a couple of occasions before, to listen to live acts perform, and both times I've loved both the music and the general vibe. So, earlier, when I spied the bar owner sat in a cafe, I wandered over and said 'Hi'. Before long I found myself sat down, coffee in hand, engrossed in a fascinating conversation about music, politics, life, a conversation that unfolded like a river, turning this way and that, winding its way into this present moment, with me sat down in the bar, soaking in the atmosphere, finding myself inspired to write.

I'm discovering that wandering, with its inherently uncontrolled spaciousness, allows for this kind of everyday adventure, producing the kind of rich connections and experiences that can't be planned for or manufactured, but can only be received as precious gifts. And with this, I'm finding that wandering, if embraced fully, allows for a unique kind of productive playfulness, a special kind of effortless activity that is neither work nor play, but some beautiful marriage of the two. As the poet, Mary Oliver, puts it:

I simply refuse to distinguish between work and play.

I love this quote!

We all find ourselves entangled in deeply disfunctional and destructive systems, systems which mean that for many of us "work" has become something utterly disconnected from "play", something "soul-destroying" (and often life and earth destroying too), something that requires us to leave our hearts, our spirits, our unique passions and gifts and perspectives, at the door. For many of us, we have been bred to believe that this is normal, inevitable, the way things have always been and the way things will always be.

I love this quote, mainly because it reminds us that this is not true, that we can, in whatever ways we can, however small, refuse this destructive disconnection of work and play.

But how?

For me, one of the most important ways we can refuse this destructive disconnection is to begin rebooting our mental software, to begin by changing our perspectives, unlearning old ways of thinking, inviting in new ways of seeing things, so that we can begin thinking and acting differently.

Another favourite quote of mine comes from Thomas Merton, who so often in his writings invited us to turn our habitual perspectives on their heads. In this quote, he writes:

What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what He in Himself takes most seriously. At any rate the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyse them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

The older I get, and the more I come to know myself, the more I realise how deeply I have embibed the toxic values and perspectives of capitalism and its protestant work ethic, its white-supremacy, its imperialism, its hetero-patriarchy. I realise how deeply entangled in these systems I am. I have to remind myself to pause, in order that I might invite in change, invite in transformation and healing, in order that I might nurture and grow fresh, new, liberated perspectives within myself.

I feel this wandering is slowly, inch by inch, healing me of a toxic seriousness and reminding me of the eternal invitation to join in the general dance, the eternal invitation to embrace the way of productive play.

I can't think of any better way to spend my days!