Beloved Friends,
As we continue to move into these hot summer days, I find myself yearning for more “playtime” and thinking back to what that has looked like in my life over the years.
My summer months as a child were often spent in a different country with my family as my father was studying or teaching as a foreign law professor. It was a bit unusual perhaps but in hindsight, but I have always appreciated what it afforded us four kids—windows into other worlds including cultures, cuisines, languages, religions, and people and places often vastly different from our own. Added to those various landscapes was the gift of time together—time to explore and “play” together.
Play meant travel time and an adventure in my family growing up—exploring museums and national monuments, theater and opera, eating new food and hearing new languages—it was, always, in all of its variations, time that couldn’t be duplicated or approximated without direct experience. In other words, no amount of trip planning or research could ultimately prepare us for what we discovered together as a family. Of course, as a child in the system I just went along for the ride, but I suspect even my parents would agree once we were in the streets of Mexico City, or on the beach in Southern France, or in a Shinto shrine in Japan there was something unexpected and delightful we discovered together.
These days play means something altogether different to me, or does it? While international travel and exploring the sights and sounds of different cultures is not imminent, what is similar is a desire for unexpected and delightful moments spent with people I love. And that, to be sure is happening in spades all around me. Whether in the streets of Toledo, or on the pond in my backyard or at the altar at Trinity, I am seeing and experiencing the things that revive and restore my soul. The list of ways I am “playing” this summer is in fact shaping up very nicely with your help; sitting at the Black Cloister for game night, sailing on Lake Erie on a member’s beautiful sailboat, going to a Mud Hens game and throwing out the first pitch – and it’s not even August! And I wonder if in fact it is in the collection of these beautiful moments with wonderful people that helps us redefine and capture the heart of what it means to live a joy-filled, playful, life day after day seeking out and discovering where and how God keeps showing up in our lives?
So come home this Sunday where your place at the Table of Love is always ready and waiting and where we might even be able to ease into a time of “holy play” as together we make up the Body of Christ- ready and willing to be sent out into the world for good and for God!
May we never forget that we are loved.
Lisa