Play as Order
Because Christ plays in 10,000 places
The following is an excerpt from Chapter Two of my new book, Let There Be Play: A Classical Guide to Joyful Discovery. The book is currently available (on sale!) for pre-order at CiRCE Institute, and will ship soon. Check out the Table of Contents here.
Since the days when our firstborn could sit up in his highchair, “The dining room is not a playroom!” has been an oft repeated saying in our home. How many times have I said to my children, “Stop playing around!” during dinner, lessons, and worship? What I am really saying is, “Don’t be disrespectful! Don’t be wasteful! Don’t behave in a way unfitting to the occasion!” When I refer to these things as play, I am misusing the word, masking its true nature. Disrespect, waste, and misbehavior are not play; in fact, they are the opposite of play. Similarly, Merriam- Webster’s dictionary includes “exploit, manipulate” as one of the definitions of play, yet exploitative, manipulative “play” refers to something altogether different than true play. Disrespect, waste, misbehavior, exploitation, and manipulation share a common attribute: disorder. Play, however, is the opposite; at its core, play is ordered.
Play, according to Huizinga, “creates order, is order.”1 At first glance, order may not be the word that comes to mind when we think of play. When my children run through the house in a game, laughing, it seems the opposite of order. But play has an order all its own. Huizinga continues, “Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it ‘spoils the game’, robs it of its character and makes it worthless.”2 Thus the common cry for justice when play goes amiss—“that’s not part of the game!”
Just because the order is not readily visible to an adult does not mean that it does not exist. Years ago, several of my fourth grade students approached me as I waited in the shade. A recess time dispute is hardly unique, but this disagreement was singular: My students were contesting over small bits of bark. The game was a game of pioneers; there were camps and boundaries, and, central to the play, they collected twigs and bits of bark. As they launched into an explanation of the game so that I could mediate the infraction, my eyes began to glaze over. It made so little sense that I could not begin to understand. But to them, the rules were intricate and complete. Someone, in some way, had violated the rules by using bark improperly. The order was broken; injustice had been done. To the extent that play is an ordering force, it must participate in the ultimate order: Christ the Logos. When we think of Logos, we often think of the New Testament translation, Word. Yet the Greek word “logos” also means wisdom, reason, proportion, and order. Not only through the Logos were all things made, but also in Him all things consist.3 This means that all things hold together through participation in Wisdom, Reason, Proportion, and Order. When we speak of the logos of a thing, we mean its internal order or organizing principle, the way in which that thing participates in reality.
While Christ as Logos is explicit in Scripture and church tradition, the question remains: How does the Logos play? Consider creation. Through Him all things were created, and this creative act was, at its core, an act of play. In the book of Proverbs, a poetic personification of wisdom recounts:4
When he established the heavens, I was there . . . Then I was by Him, as a nursling; And I was daily all delight, Playing always before Him, Playing in His habitable earth, And my delights are with the sons of men.
Since before the creation of time, wisdom has been at play. God’s creative act is the greatest act of play, “an order directed by the Logos after the manner of a graceful game,”5 and we participate in and imitate this order in our play. Homo ludens, the man who plays, only makes sense within the context of and preceded by Deus ludens, the God who plays.6
The creative act of play follows a rhythm of work-play and rest-play patterned by creation. First, God created the Earth and saw that it was good. When He created Adam and Eve in their natural state, He gave them work to do. He gave them creation to fill and to rule. He made them to be sub- creators, imitators of his creative play. “The spirit of inventiveness, of productiveness, the flexibility to conceive alternatives, imagination, and fantasy are all more grounded in man’s play than in his work. Even work is to be play. This is the symbolic meaning of the Garden of Eden.”7 Work was a joy, not toil; it only became so after Adam and Eve rejected God’s goodness. It was only as part of the curse that work became full of pain and thorns and sweat. Yet in God’s mercy, the order of creation was not annihilated. The created order is still filled with goodness and abounding in meaning. Theologian Romano Guardini explains, “Now what is the meaning of that which exists? That it should exist and should be the image of God the Everlasting. And what is the meaning of that which is alive? That it should live, bring forth its essence, and bloom as a natural manifestation of the living God.”8 We participate in and discover this meaning through our work-play.
On the seventh day, God rested from his creative act. In rest-play, we find the sorts of play that one normally thinks of as play. For example, the child-directed free play discussed in Chapter One is a type of rest- play. Yet it is not the highest form of play; the highest form of play patterned for us is worship. The play of Christ did not end with creation, but it continues as a holy act of worship. Thus, the famous lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins:9
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
As we participate in and imitate Christ in a rhythm of work-play and rest-play, we become transformed. If play is order and creates order, participating in the Logos, it serves as a healing act that orders us morally, intellectually, and spiritually. As it orders and transforms, it is an act of healing, causing preeminent play proponent Joe Frost to claim, “Play carries healing power wherever it is practiced, and these benefits are documented in a significant body of research.”10
We will now turn to four healing orders or pillars of play, an overlapping cluster of ideas that will be explored in detail throughout the remainder of Part One. Play realizes order in and through virtue, knowledge, imagination, and leisure. Each of these is a mode of relating to the content of play, the cosmos. Before turning to the content, we will briefly consider the relationship between these four pillars through the lens of our world-class musicians at play.
To read more about these four pillars of play, order below!
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play- Element in Culture (1950; repr., Martino Fine Books, 2014), 10.
Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 10.
Colossians 1:16–17.
Proverbs 8: 26, 30–31 (Jewish Publication Society Tanakh 1917). The JPS Tanakh was the first modern English translation of the Bible completed by a panel of Jewish scholars according to the Masoretic text. The Tanakh restores the translation “play” from the original Hebrew Hochmah. This translation had been lost through the Hellenized Septuagint, which translated the Hebrew word as “rejoice.” For further explanation, see Chapter One, Rahner, Man at Play (1962; repr., Cluny Media, 2017).
Rahner, Man at Play, 15.
Rahner, Man at Play, 9.
James V. Schall, Far Too Easily Pleased: A Theology of Play, Contemplation, and Festivity (The Catholic Education Press, 2020), 65.
Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane (Agnus Books, 2023), 56.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” The Mentor Book of Major British Poets, ed. Oscar Williams (Mentor, 1963), 349.
“What’s Wrong with America’s Playgrounds and How to Fix Them: An Interview with Joe L. Frost,” American Journal of Play 1, no. 2 (2006), 141, https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2022/01/1-2-interview- whats - wrong - with- americas- playgrounds- joe- frost.pdf.