Just for the Joy of It

I

’m convinced that sport and play are connected to the life of prayer. I could not have imagined my grunge-rocking, athletically-averse teenage self making such a statement, but having kids will change you. 

I’m invited into play whether I am ready for it or not. To take one of many examples, this past spring we had the surprise of an April snow day, which meant that I received an excited kid-invitation to go outside and have a snowball fight at 7:30 a.m. I swallowed some coffee, donned snow gear and complied. I would not have had the playfulness to suggest it, but my nine-year old son did and we created a memory. 

Also, given that my two boys are obsessed with all things basketball, we take most opportunities we can to watch the sport on TV: NBA playoffs, college NCAA March Madness games, and in particular, as many Boston Celtics games as possible. We even seized the moment to attend the big women’s NCAA Iowa vs. LSU game live on Monday night at a stadium about an hour away. For those women’s basketball fans who might be reading, yes, joining with thousands of people to cheer on Caitlin Clark’s three-point swishes and Angel Reese’s power in the paint was thrilling.

The way that my life has been immersed into play and sport through my kids has me thinking about prayer as play and sport. The apostle Paul uses sports metaphors sometimes, such as when he compares the life of faith to a runner’s race. He even embraces healthy competition when he says “Do you not know that in a race all runner’s run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). But I don’t typically think of prayer as a race—and if it is one, then prayer sounds tiring. Rather, it’s the uselessness of play, not the competition, that seems to have the most to do with contemplation. In prayer, the only prize that can be won is something that can only be given to us and not achieved. And yet we show up each morning—not dissimilar to how some of us show up on treadmills, spin bikes, and yoga mats—so that we can be ready for the gift of grace. We go to “practice” so that we don’t miss the grace when it comes.

Life with God does not have to be so serious. It can be holy and ordinary, as my forthcoming book, The Holy Ordinary, tells. And ordinary can be fun, like throwing snowballs with children or cheering on basketballs thrown through nets. Perhaps it’s my theologically inherited Protestant bias toward work, or simply the contours of my psyche, but I’m guilty of often taking myself too seriously. If I’m honest, I do turn prayer into a competition of sorts, even if I’m racing only against myself, with “should do more” as my primary motivator. I also become caught up in conjecturing the meaning and purpose of things, as if thinking about life is the same as experiencing it. But I’m finding that it’s often the purposeless activities and relationships embraced just for the joy of it that mean the most.

Most elite basketball players that I watch on TV, though, seem to be locked into the game’s intensity with grins far from their faces. Not Caitlin Clark, though. One aspect of WNBA first draft pick Clark’s play is that, as fiery and competitive as she is, she also seems to remember the joy of the game. In this year’s March Madness competition, Iowa eeked out a close win over the University of Connecticut in a final four grueling match.

There’s a moment I remember that perhaps helped turn the game around: Clark shot a three in the third quarter and smiled as she rediscovered a more relaxed confidence. Clark’s smile amid the unyielding game reminded me of the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s breath practice that incorporates smiling: “Breathing in, I smile; breathing out, I release.” I often feel the tense pressure of the tough game of life, but it’s practices like intentional smiling that help me feel the effects of a body more at ease. 

There’s nothing like a smile and a breath to put me “back into the game” of a more playful life. It’s worth recalling, too, that God is a playful God. 

The German theologian Hugo Rahner wrote a book on play and summarized work from the seventh century theologian Maximus the Confessor: “We speak of the playing of God, who through this creative outpouring of himself [the incarnation] makes it possible for the creature to understand him in the wonderful play of his works.” Rahner reminds us, through Maximus, that what the Trinitarian God is up to in the world is playing—and the invitation of our lives is to join the playing God. The incarnation of Christ through creation is a game played to the delight of God the Father/Mother. 

The posture of prayer and meditation can also be playful. We are playing with God when we relax, rest, and make ourselves available to God’s presence in prayer. 

I think of my meditation sits as taking a moment to luxuriate in God’s Sabbath rest on the seventh day of creation. After all, on the seventh day, God couldn’t have laid in bed all day binging Netflix—I like to picture God dancing or at least playing hide and seek in the garden with the first humans. Prayer can be an allowing of a playful God to enjoy and spend time with us. Such enjoyment is also a picture of the world as it should be: the prophet Zechariah envisions his people’s exile ending and God dwelling perpetually with them, exclaiming that “The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there” (8:5).

Admittedly, prayer is sometimes the equivalent of the grunting and sweating of core and cardio work or navigating the tough defense of an opposing team. Contemplative practice does not feel like play all the time. Sometimes it is hard work, and there are times of dryness when we don’t experience anything, or we’re not sure if we believe anything, but we keep showing up anyway. 

But the most trustworthy mystics of the Christian tradition, like Maximus or Thomas Merton, suggest that beyond the willful commitment to practice we can discover a spacious and playful inner willingness. To slightly paraphrase Thomas Merton:

What is serious to humans is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what God takes most seriously. At any rate, God plays and diverts God’s divine self in the garden of 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 the Divine call and follow Christ in the mysterious, cosmic dance.[1]

When we pray, we are participating in the sheer delight of the game.         

[1].     Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (Shambhala: 2003), 302-3.