“One of the results of having lived a regime of
regularly scheduled days for almost our entire life is that we can easily lose
the spirit of play. Not only do our bodys age, but our spirits can mildew a
bit, too. Whether we know it or not, Life has lost some of its possibility of
abandon, over the years. More importantly, the sense of play, the quality in
us, that really keeps us young, after years of having been largely ignored, has
been sapped of its electric edge. It may take awhile to retrieve it. But
retrieve it we must if we are to let age have free rein in us.
Age is for the revival of the spirit. Age is meant to
allow us to play — with ideas, with projects, with friends, with life.”— Joan
Chittister from The Gift of Years.
There is a possibility that
resides in old age, like never before. Play. The innocence and wonder of
childhood flares up again. Old eyes, hearts and spirits experience the world
with the same kind of creative reverence and incandescent wonder that graces
the very young.
In so doing, the old one’s
experience aids Creation. Newness burns brighter, near the end, where an
educated experienced light shines forth. Slowly elders, the reborn old, are
coming to realize that life still surges in their blood, and that the
magnificent miracle has not forsaken them.
Maybe this culture has,
mistakenly, but Life hasn’t. Strangely, now at this seemingly broken hour, it
calls out of us our true uniqueness, and guides us toward discovering our
belonging. The elderly are seedpods, they hold something that cannot be gotten
to without the heartbreak and surprise of life-experience. They aren’t the used
up ones, instead they are the well-used ones. To release the wisdom, and
creative energy of ripeness, inherent in the lives of the old, Nature has
provided fun, laughter, comraderie and play.
Play equals fun, and fun
equals creative engagement, and that enlivens everything it touches. In fact,
there is a continuum that extends from Creation to human play. What is happening
at the largest scale we can barely imagine, is also happening locally, when the
attitude of play breaks out in someone’s laughing delight. Getting older brings
this into perspective. What once belonged only in childhood, suddenly is a gift
that graces even the doddering. Some fun takes a lifetime to unfold!
Play isn’t just fun, it is
educative. Creation dances with
energy, so do we. Creation plays with form, so do we. Creation explores the
non-obvious, ill informed, irrational missteps, so do we. All along we learn,
so does the force that animates us. It could be that one of humanity’s highest
art forms is play, a creative imaginative engagement with what is. The active
edge of the expanding Universe might be right here, in the spirits of those
living right now within the dilemmas of Creation, and playing their hearts out.
Play is kind of a secret, a
secret that doesn’t comport with our puritanical heritage, so it has kind of a
bad name. The idea of it is much worse than the experience. So it, like old
folks, is kind of pushed into the shadows. They are immigrants, still looking
for a way to be taken in, still looking for the kind of recognition that frees
their gifts. They are finding each other, there in the shadows, and something
unforeseen is emerging, a new more playful way of being grey.
This is a development that
has Evolution buzzing. Like all truly good things, this development is full of
paradox. The most frivolous and nonsensical of pursuits contain some of the
most mysterious and binding meaning. What appears, and must be held, as an
unproductive act, produces the unexpected. The old are suddenly fountains of
youth. Creation doesn’t rest, it doesn’t even pause to celebrate its
achievements, but from this moment in time, play and ageing are wonderful
building blocks for a future worth having
