Kindle Notes & Highlights
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September 17 - September 21, 2021
images. The Second Council of Nicaea (787) declared representational art “in harmony with the history of the spread of the gospel, as it provides confirmation that the becoming of man in the Word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as it brings us a similar benefit.”272 It is striking that the Council recognized that devotional images helped Jesus feel real to the faithful, thereby making faith feel real.
Council of Nicaea was open to art - the art makes God feel real to the believer - gold
Seeing an object as a “no-thing”274 is to see the world with an “arrogant eye,” which positions oneself over and against the object to be known and keeps it at a distance.275
A second example of medieval Christians playing was holy foolery. Interestingly, this example stretches the imagination to consider that playing takes various and unexpected forms. Playing with devotional dolls might seem more like what we commonly regard as playing. One can imagine tenderness in the playing of the Rheinland nuns and perhaps sweetness and joy in mothering. However, playing looks and feels different in the context of fools for Christ, who evoked a range of emotions, including dedication, scorn, and mirth. The playing of holy fools broadens our understanding not only of playing
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Holy fools were Christians who simulated folly in response to the call of the Holy Spirit to live into a vocation.284 In a sense, holy fools were deliberately playing by pretense.
Holy fools - deliberately playing - response to holy spirit's call
Most but not all fools for Christ were monastics in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. The heyday of holy fools began in the thirteenth century and ended in the sixteenth, reaching its height in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.288
Paul was the first “fool for Christ.”290 Although many accused him of madness, Paul uses the word mōros to refer to himself as a fool for Christ’s sake.291
In the mirthful playing of holy fools, saints were creating conditions that invited people to respond spontaneously and to “go with” playing, so that they might experience much-needed spiritual wisdom. In
Spontanously going with play - holy fools
Fools for Christ adopted a pedagogy of playing that shares resemblances with and yet was different from the pedagogy of playing adopted by the Rheinland nuns. Holy foolery was an ascetic practice engaged for the sake of being formed in Christ-like ways and (by doing so) being in communion with God. This is not unlike the playing of the Rheinland nuns, whose pedagogy nurtured the spiritual formation of individuals in relation to Mary and the Christ child. Like the nuns, one can imagine the saints becoming lost in the performance of being fools, yet they might experience being found
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Why Holy foolery
Living a double life, they were men or women of prayer by night, when no one would see them praying. By day they were fools, engaging people on the street or in the marketplace.306 Unlike the nuns, the holy fools refused to contemplate Christ only in the monastery. Instead they embodied Christ’s life in the everyday form, using public space as a stage.307
Streets by day praying by night
Furthermore, in Byzantine culture, people had a sense that the world was permeated with sanctity. They believed that the holy could reveal itself at any moment when and where one might not expect.311 Therefore one could never be certain who was a holy fool. Belief in legends of the “secret servants of the Lord,” who could appear in the guise of the worst of ordinary lay people, gave rise to later understandings and narrations of the holy fool.312
As is true of playing in general, the playing of saints was a sophisticated, original weaving of an in-between experience (in what Winnicott describes as an “intermediate area of experiencing”) to which “inner reality and external life contribute[d].”318 Like all Christians, the saints experienced inner longings, images, and devotion for Christ. In order for these to be expressed, they needed a vehicle that others could also experience—a doll or the phenomenon of the fool. Winnicott would say they needed some “fragment” derived from shared reality.319 The
Saints got creative
Whether one was playing with devotional dolls or holy fools, the playing of saints invited revelatory experiencing because they involved indirect communication, allowing true self to be known even as it was hidden, its vulnerability protected.
When human beings exercise their creativity, it fosters a sense of aliveness in them, as being creative leads to a sense of feeling real, which can be part of revelatory experiencing. Feeling real, which means having a sense of self and of being, is essential to health.330 When
Creativity promotes aliveness and real faith
Second, both fools and the Rheinland nuns were creating conditions for revelatory experiencing as they engaged reality “as if” for Christ’s sake—that is for the sake of love.
The sake of love
Playing for love’s sake provokes a wide range of emotions that makes revelatory experiencing powerful and varied. While
For love's sake
Second, playing that invites revelatory experiencing involves love. Whether tender or fierce, maternal/paternal or childlike, human or divine, playing involves love that is authentic and life-giving, capable of surprising even hearts of stone.
In what follows, a contemporary example of liturgical art calls attention to the physical, psychic, cultural, and ecclesial spaces for Christians playing.337 Liturgy itself can be understood as a practice that invites playing in/at God’s new creation, though not everyone experiences worshipping as playing or thinks of it in these terms.
Liturgy as a form of play
Associating aesthetics with playing is hardly new. Friedrich von Schiller wrote about “aesthetical play” in 1794, displaying remarkable forward thinking.343 He references nature to illustrate how imagination, which he understands as a natural, wild, and abundant energy, makes the leap into aesthetical play as it finds form and creates beauty.344
Taking the association of aesthetics with play even further, Hans-Georg Gadamer goes so far as to argue that art is play, meaning play is “the mode of being of the work of art itself.”346
What art is
However, playing aesthetically is not limited to art since all playing has aesthetic dimensions. In this sense, “playing aesthetically” refers to the sensual, imagistic, and affective dimensions of playing.
SJUMC was recovering from a divisive conflict over church property, finances, and church leadership. Working with pastor Motoe Yamada Foor (SJUMC pastor, 2009 to present), the artist created The Garden Series to help the congregation imagine a new future through playing. While it was the pastor who came up with the metaphor of the garden, it was my mother’s role to translate the concept into art. She engaged children and adults in creating an indoor garden (made from wood, fabric, and paper) during worship over four weeks. The series visually mimicked the changing seasons to reflect the themes
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Winnicott observed that good enough mothers (or parents) are key in helping their babies mature by providing conditions that facilitate their spontaneity and creativity. In this conducive environment, baby’s needs are met by mother’s matching, as she provides just enough of her presence and attention so that baby feels seen and held, though not held too tightly or supervised zealously.
However, a good enough mother helps to establish a deep enough sense of trust and safety so that the child is able to play freely. In the pairing of mother and child, baby makes tentative gestures of creativity, testing to see how they will be received. A baby bangs a cup and a spoon together with delight and looks to mother for her reaction. The mother’s role is to “be the environment” that embraces the child’s spontaneous creativity with tolerance and understanding.350
transformation. Good enough educators have much practical wisdom and good instincts about how to nurture people into deeper faith. Thanks in part to this work, churches and other faith communities are also good enough at being the facilitative environments that the faithful need for maturing into faith.
Good enough teachers
Good enough churches
Achieving the happy middle in teaching is not easy but key for revelatory experiencing. Each instance of religious education is unique, involving different learners and processes. Learners themselves have different capacities and propensities for engaging in autistic and realistic thinking, as do the educators themselves and the communities of which they are part. The task is then to consider, moment by moment, what is needed to guide imagination toward illusionistic thinking given all these variables, adapting to the learners and the situation as it is unfolding.
In Theology of Play, Moltmann argues that Christians should become “congregations of the liberated,” as they practice being-with/for-others.373 He envisions Christians being in relationship with the oppressed and marginalized so that all might experience the joy of liberation. In my revision of Moltmann’s work, I suggested that Christians are to embody hope through empathic, life-giving relationships, which can accommodate a wide range of emotional states and be experienced in a variety of situations, including those not associated with common understandings of playing.
Moltmann - playing for justice
Author - playing for life giving relationships in addition to that
dresses them with ointment.374 By my account, her actions can be understood as playing. She pretends that her tears are bathing water and acts “as if” her hair were a towel. Her earnest tears suggest she is acting spontaneously and authentically. The
This text provides vision for how churches might lovingly be-with/for-others, as Jesus facilitated the sinful woman’s playing. They were both playing for love’s sake.
For loves sake
Though there was likely a range of emotional responses to the art, interviews suggest that some church members were swept up in the wonder, surprise, and the goodness of a new creation.
identify what is often taken for granted in revelatory experiencing. Traditionally, the focal point of communion is a common table that defines the space. The practice trains the imagination, creativity, and the senses in a sensual feast of memory, even as these three shape the meaning of the practice. Since the early church from at least Irenaeus on in the second century, the Eucharist has been understood as a “school of the senses.”383
Communion - a form of play acting and creativity
One can also ponder whether the people were mimicking the art or whether the art was mimicking the people. Paper dolls, which were tacked to the chancel wall, were scattered in the first week, but they slowly joined together over the course of the series, until they were seen holding hands in a circle by the end.
Art mimicking people
The very first ways that we register and know love are through the senses in the intimacy of being held and touched. Winnicott gives clues about the importance of this sensual holding that happens in the mother child dyad; however, to imagine how this happens communally, in the context of a particular culture, requires
It might also be the case that playing together must also address both communal and individual healing, which Moltmann does not address in his Theology of Play.
Community as well as individual play - we must help others but thos eof us who are marginalized must also play for ourselves as a source of healing.
Every occasion for religious education is an opportunity to create a rendition of what we hold as theologically true, while practicing an embodiment of the Gospel in relating to one another.
Gold quote about religious education being the statemwnt of what is theologically true
Aesthetics performs a vital role in determining how a learner’s body and imagination are “handled” in the space of religion,404 including the spaces in which religious education happens. Religion emerges in the place between “‘natural aesthetics’ (those dealing with sensory perception and rooted in the body) and ‘artificial aesthetics’ (those dealing with the objects and arts in the world, along with their creation and reception).”405 This
Local practical theological aesthetics (LPTA) is the sensibilities that guide a Christian community’s unique “style”409 of relating form and theological content. A
Finding the lpt
A community’s LPTA is often a mixture of aesthetics. A community can have an affinity for the performing arts, music, the visual arts, or the poetic word. They might sense God’s beauty in feasting or in sacred architecture. Because communities have their own LPTA, each context needs different kinds of playing.
This practical theological project has required various strategies and diverse conversation partners from cognate disciplines. Because the territory of revelatory experiencing is mysterious, varied, and not easily encompassed, an interdisciplinary approach was necessary. I
Playing in a Detention Center Masankho Banda, a performance artist, healer, and teacher, tells the story of playing with inmates of San Francisco’s Juvenile Detention Center, Cell Block H, where the worst offenders are incarcerated. He recounted the story. I went in and I said, “My name is Masankho Banda and I’m here to sing and dance with you.” “Why?” looking at me like, “If you don’t give me a good answer, I’m going to take your head off. I don’t have a gun, so I can’t cap you but I’ll take your head off.” And I said, “Because I care about you and I love you.” “You don’t care jack. You don’t
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”433 Over a lifetime, an individual undergoes a long process that depends on being seen: “When I look I am seen, so I exist. I can now afford to look and see. I now look creatively and what I apperceive I also perceive. In fact, I take care not to see what is not there to be seen (unless I am tired).”434 Having
While revelatory experiencing occurs with and without critical reflection, the four perspectives on playing (psychoanalytic, theological, historical, and aesthetic) are a set of analytic tools that can be used to bring to light the grace that instigates and accompanies revelatory experiencing.
A local church may be more or less able to function as a good enough mother and be an environment conducive to authentic relating and creative engagement. A faith community may be more or less open to seeing or experiencing themselves and/or God as playing. It
Despite all that can go wrong, some of the grace of playing is that revelatory experiencing often happens despite obstacles. The detention center did not have a history of openness or a communal memory of playing. Probably the detainees did not see themselves as playing children of God.
In a classroom where learners first meet as strangers to one another, playing begins with building a community of learners who are willing to take risks with one another—to dare to be seen and known perhaps in ways that are unfamiliar to themselves and in the presence of others. This
Playing builds community
The content of classroom learning is not simply material to be absorbed or received, but to be taken up, played with, and re-created. The point is to enter with others into interactive, participatory relationship with content given by Christian and/or other tradition(s) through the creative process. At the same time, learners and teachers are being formed into a faith community as they depend on one another for inspiration, mirroring, and the flow of movement between creativity and imagination.
Creative processes
In liturgical contexts and elsewhere, religious educators help the faithful to create as they find the God that they need. The notion of “creating God” might sound outrageous and maybe even blasphemous, but at some level God is discovered in the creating, yet is already there to be found. Just as baby “creates” the object that baby needs, the faithful render the God they need for more abundant living. A person attributes to God her highest values, such as love, strength, and wisdom, as well as her worst fears.441 At
God is disovered in creating
In the Protestant tradition, educators are often called upon to breathe life into liturgy that has become dry and perfunctory.
For example, leading communion in darkness at a pastors’ retreat can help participants to experience the familiar in new ways.443
In addition to classroom and liturgical contexts, religious educators can and do facilitate playing in everyday life with greater intention. A dancer is drawn to investigate music she hears within a deserted university chapel, where a man unknown to her is improvising on the piano. They have no shared history, but the chapel is holy place, traditionally a safe place. She is a religious educator who has used movement improvisation in her teaching and is visiting the campus. He is a musician and an arborist taking a break from his job. Without introductions, she begins to dance to his music, and
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The prospect of playing in everyday life challenges religious educators to consider how we invite others into playing if we have never met before. They may not share our history, theology, culture, or familiarity with the ways that people of faith play. They may not have been tutored in the healthy illusions of the faith community/ies to which we belong. In
