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by Katy Bowser Hutson
Play—its benefits and importance—are popular in our cultural moment. The church has a tenuous history with play, though. How can we play in a broken world? Don’t we have more important things to do? Dr. Brian Edgar and Katy Bowser Hutson agree with G.K. Chesterton that play—playing with God, even—is of a higher order than seriousness. It’s the big idea.
In this conversation, writer Katy Bowser Hutson talks with theologian Dr. Brian Edgar (Katy in St. Louis, Dr. Edgar in Melbourne) to explore some theology of play. Dr. Edgar’s book The God Who Plays is one of Katy’s top inspirations as she writes Play Book for Rabbit Room Press.
Katy Bowser Hutson: I first found your book The God Who Plays a few years ago when I was starting to look at play. For me, my first introduction was finding out that you had written on the subject. You’ve also written on the Trinity, laughter, friendship, and other things. Brian, are there any other major themes I’m missing?
Brian Edgar: I’m really a person of a single line of thought. It’s gone from eternity to play and laughter—and that’s good. I don’t think there’ll be any more.
KBH: That seems like a pretty good line, if you ask me. In light of the conversations we’ve been having, that looks like it makes a lot of sense.
BE: It does, absolutely.
KBH: I've told people when I first found your book, I was so excited because it looked so good. And then, I went on a writing retreat and took it with me, and dove into it for a couple of days. I came out of it so delighted, because it was easily the best thing I'd found out of all the books I had read so far. But also, I went: Why do I have to write a book? Do I even have to write a book? Is there any point? I was in the depths of despair for a bit, Brian. And then I thought, “Okay, Brian wrote a book as a theologian and a lover of play and a lover of God, but I'm writing about those things as a Katy, the way that I do it.” So I am really enjoy getting to, in some ways, stand on the shoulders of your work because it's so, so good.
BE: I'm really pleased. There's been too little written on what is really a very important area of Christian life.
KBH: It feels like there’s this long but slender tradition of theology of play—sometimes celebrated, sometimes embattled. At points, play is embraced in Christianity, but at other times it’s almost seen as something bad.
BE: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that’s the majority position. When people really consider play theologically, they tend to see more problems than benefits. Play seems to detract from the serious topics of work, service, ministry, and commitment. It seems trivial when you line it up against the great themes of the gospel.
KBH: Trivial—that’s a good word. And it seems like there’s an assumption of a binary: That there's work and then there's play, and that they are different things.
So, I think that it's rather seldom explored, all things considered. Is that the reason—that ambivalence about play? Or is it more that people just think it isn’t important?
BE: I think it's a mixture of a bunch of different readings. I think, just by its nature—not only in theology and Christian life—but in all sorts of academic areas, people find it difficult to take play seriously. It just seems like a trivial topic. But it's an instrumental thing for life. So I think in other areas of the world, it's not developed enough, really. But then when you add in the Christian dimension to it, it's not only trivial, but it's often identified as being sinful. You know: “The devil finds work for idle hands.” It’s only when you're working that you're really serving the Lord, and if you’re playing, then you’re being sinful. And so, it’s had a really hard time. I don't think it's quite that way today, although people are reluctant to support play as a spiritual topic. It’s more of a secular kind of opinion.
KBH: That’s part of what’s been interesting to me. There's so much talk about play in the broader culture. Corporations have figured out that when workers do things playfully or have opportunities to play and let down some, they work better given some space and margin. When they're in a play space or a flow state, throwing ideas around—when there's an understanding that you can mess up, you can fail—there's vulnerability, there's some safety. Their people do better thinking. But in the church, I feel like there’s suspicion—like if you “throw something around,” you might bump into heresy. So we don’t tend to kick ideas around a lot. Yet within the bounds of orthodoxy, there is so much scope for imagination, to quote Anne of Green Gables.
BE: Absolutely. The culture, at the moment, is relatively positive about play. Sociologists and psychologists will talk about the importance of play. So in the culture, it’s in a relatively significant place. But within the church, within spirituality, I don't want to just see it as being a useful, pragmatic tool to help people build up their lives. I've gone full bore on this, and I want to say that—along with G.K. Chesterton on this—the true object of human life is play. And then, to say that play is “the essential and the ultimate form of relationship with God.” That's where I want to go, too: it's not just a peripheral, pragmatic, and utilitarian thing that helps do things better. It’s that the kind of relationship that God wants to have with us is a playful one.
KBH: You know that I'm in complete agreement with you. So, in light of that: the point, the whole point, before the beginning of creation, God was already at play, right?
BE: I believe so. I believe that is the point of the Trinity: that God is—when God is, God is still in community, God is still dynamic, God is still in relationship. God is love and that is possible because of the Trinitarian nature. Some of the early theologians referred to the perichoretic nature of the Trinity, which talks about the members of the Trinity dancing around together. Their life is a life of love and play and joy, and those are the things, and that's the kind of life that God wants us to have inside as well, to join in.
KBH: As I’ve dug into this a little bit, not having a formal theological training, it's been interesting to think about and important to clarify: God created, not because God needed to create, but out of who God is. Is it fair to say: out of the overflow of who God is, out of that joyful play even?
BE: Indeed. Yep, that's a good way of putting it. God overflows His love and invites us to join in God's life, when we live our lives within the Trinitarian life of God. God is the great one, the big one, and we live our lives inside God. It’s not a case of God being out there, separate from us. God embraces us into God's own life, to share in that community, that joyful, dynamic, dancing, playing, loving relationship.
KBH: In your book, you do such a beautiful job of saying it's not as though, again, God is over here [gestures elsewhere], but there's a sense in which we're actually living in the heart of God. Can you help me and put more words around that?
BE: Well, I think a lot of people, when they think about God—God is bigger than us, God is greater than us, and God is the one that we worship and adore, and that's because the only kind of relationship that we have with somebody is of somebody else. We cannot be in one another. I cannot be in you, and you in me. And yet, that's the serious language of the New Testament—that God speaks about being in us, and us in God. And if you think about it, sort of philosophically, where is there for us to be, in a sense? God is the entity. God is all in all. God creates and makes the space for us to join in God's life. God does not exist in “some space.” There is not some space into which God goes and lives. God is everything. So if we are to live—where are we going to live? Within the life of God.
KBH: I love that. There is something so utterly comforting about that. How could we possibly be forgotten if we are existing within the heartbeat of God?
BE: Indeed. Yeah, the doctrine of the Trinity is not merely about God, it’s about God embracing us into God’s life. There’s a fabulous and often-ignored verse in 2 Peter 1:4 where it says, “so that you may participate in the divine nature.”
KBH: You don't hear people preach on that a whole lot, you know? That could get—what a mystical thought that is, you know?
BE: Indeed! What a mystical thought that is. Yeah, absolutely.
KBH: Okay, it feels like we ought to get into this: So out of that, God made out of his love. He made us out of this incredibly playful act, made this world. But at this stage of the game this world, while amazing, is also really broken. You know, both awesome and awful. I feel like we're feeling it a lot these days. I'm sure that's always been true, but we see so much of it and are privy to so much of it all at the same time, and it's so, so much. It feels a little bit like Israel in Babylonian captivity: How do we sing God’s song in a foreign land, you know? And, is it appropriate, in the world that we're in, to play?
BE: Yeah, well, you've gone straight to the most difficult part.
KBH: I just thought we better go ahead and do it.
BE: Yeah, it's absolutely difficult. And, when I was writing, I was aware it was the hardest. The fact is, it's a hard thing to play in this world, and so we cannot play in this world in the way that we might anticipate playing with God in the future kingdom of God, while we're all being restored and made well.
KBH: So play is different now than it will be then?
BE: It’s different now than it will be then. We have many things that we need to do in this world to work with God, restoring things and helping people and serving and working and caring and a whole range of things. But, as well as preparing ourselves and preparing for the new world, we need to demonstrate what the new world is all about. And when the Bible speaks about the future kingdom of God, it's almost like it switches language a bit. In this world, we're called to minister and serve and care and do work. But in the future world, it's going to be a world of dancing and joy and children playing. And those are the kind of images that we get—
KBH: “children playing in the street.”
BE: Exactly. Part of what we are to do is to live out the future in the present. That's how we can show people what God's life is like and what the future kingdom will be like. So, we're called to play as much as we can in this world, recognizing the very fragmentary form of play that we have here.
KBH: It feels like both. I've been thinking about that a good bit lately: the idea that the kingdom future is also coming to bear right now. It's an act of the kingdom coming to bear, playing well here, and it’s also practicing kingdom come. It's a both/and.
BE: I got a lot of help on this from Bonhoeffer because if you ask who understands about pain and suffering in the world . . . Actually, while he was in prison he wrote and was able to write and get letters out. One of his friends had written and sort of almost apologized for enjoying some things while Bonhoeffer was in prison. He wrote back, who is it who can devote themselves to friendship, to creativity, to games and play in the light of the present circumstance? It’s the Christian. Only the Christian can do that, and Christians should do that, enjoy all this in the present and demonstrate it to other people.
KBH: It's a subversive act, I love that idea. One of the attributes of play that I’ve really enjoyed is appropriation. You talk about it some in your book. So, an example of appropriation might be a flash mob: You're in a mall, and all of a sudden a choir pops out in the middle of everything that's going on and starts singing the Hallelujah Chorus. All of a sudden, you're kind of in a cathedral, you know? There's something to taking a space or taking a moment or a situation and playfully saying, “No, this is actually something else.” Bonhoeffer’s prison became a place of prayer and play. That’s the kingdom actually coming to bear right here.
When I had cancer, I had thought about play for so long. But, that was really kind of the catalyst, because I actually felt like I had gotten as close as I could get to the face of death. I thought, this is actually a place where it feels fitting to play with God. To wrestle with God, and play with God.
BE: That’s powerful. Usually the metaphor for cancer is battle: You fight cancer. To speak of playing with cancer sounds scandalous.
KBH: But it really was play. It felt like a thin place, where at the bottom of things, it felt . . . not very hard to feel very near God and to be able to speak vulnerably. Okay, so we're on the edge of things, let's see what happens. Does this hold, these truths that I've got? Do they hold when I push into them in this way? And it's hard to say that in concrete, clear language, which is why I write poems.
BE: That’s great. Look, I resonate with that so much. I finished The God Who Plays, and then I had another book that I felt called to write. But at the same time, my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. So it's a bit of a hard thing, in one sense, to feel God is saying to you, “I want you to write this book about laughter, and, oh, by the way, your wife has Alzheimer’s. So, have a good laugh while you write the book.” But, laughter became the way of looking at Alzheimer's. People often talk about Alzheimer's and cancer as being the worst things that can possibly happen. But I'd like to rewrite the narrative: not necessarily for everybody, because people are different. But I can tell you there was a three-year period where we laughed more than any other three-year period in our life, absolutely,
KBH: That is so sweet.
BE: The whole process, through to her passing away last November: I much would rather see it as we played together with this Alzheimer's. And it was not just a bad time. It was a time where God was very much present and there was a lot of blessing in it.
KBH: That's amazing. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that feels a lot easier to say when you're in that spot, or have been in that spot, to say, “Hey, just heads up from down here.” It's an actual possibility.
BE: I’d like to remind people of the joyfulness of this. I think if people want to play with something that's a little bit more “theologically respectable,” a theology of joy is what we're talking about here, and theology of creativity. I think play and creativity just go totally hand in hand. Play is part of our creative life with God. And that’s why you’re here: the poetry. That’s really, really part of it.
KBH: I was writing a poem about that process today, the idea that before you create something, you have to imagine it. And so, there's a sense in which you have to think playfully, you have to think while pushing against boundaries and while “what-if?”-ing. It feels like very few significant things have happened to the world without some kind of play at the core of it all.
BE: Absolutely.
KBH: So the initial impetus, the gestating of an idea, and the actual creating, they are all the outflow of playing. I was thinking about how we image God like that, and what a joy it is that that's part of how we're created in God's image. It's part of how I feel the most human and the most Katy-ish, and it's when I tend to feel closest to God. Ooh, can we talk about play and worship?
BE: We can. There are elements in the historic Christian tradition that link up with that. Unfortunately, they tend to get suppressed. But dear old Thomas Aquinas, he would have agreed very much with what you were just saying there. He talks about play and creativity and imagination and connects it with prayerfulness. He talks about the relationship between prayer and play and puts them together. It's lovely.
KBH: That tends to be when I feel most deeply in worship. I go to an Anglican church, so there's liturgy, there's form. But within that, there's so much freedom. Words can be going by, the Nicene Creed can be going by, and sometimes I think, Can I just hang back here for a bit and kind of wonder about one bit? When you just spend some time in it, I think that's where things get really interesting. In the feast that's set before you, you find yourself saying, What are we playing with today? Worship itself, the actual act of relating to God, and saying who God is and who we are, and remembering all of that is a kind of play, and there's so many ways that people express that in church.
BE: Absolutely, I think that's important. That's why the liturgy—it’s like a game. When we play a game, we’re really creating another world with its own set of rules. Those who are playing have to follow the set of rules. But sometimes it involves even getting dressed up, moving in particular ways, doing particular things, which, to an outsider, seem absolutely crazy, but they're part of the world that they've created in play. In worship, we're doing the same thing. We're creating a world where, in this case, imagining something that is actually real, and we’re seeking to make it real in the present.
KBH: Yes. We’re not “making something up.”
BE: With the words, with the movement, with color, with song, we are creating this, this playful world that can then speak to us.
KBH: I've been wandering around St. Louis for two weeks here, and I've been exploring different cathedrals most days. I went into the Cathedral Basilica today. The amount of imaginative play that went into it! It's sparkly, almost gaudy. It has the Beatitudes, a scene in scripture or an idea, and it's like walking into a storybook. What a beautiful thing! That was some deep play.
BE: That's a really good game that some traditions play, the liturgical dress up, creating an environment. Other traditions play a different way—some traditions will play word games. Some people really like just word games. They like posh words and Wordle and that kind of thing. Some churches are very much word-based and people find pleasure in the rationality, in the logic and the repetition of the words. Sometimes people who like the other kind of games don't exactly like that kind of game.
KBH: That strikes me as such a generous way to look at different church traditions. Like, maybe these are all aspects of how God has made us, they're kind of like different kinds of games. Very good games that access parts of who God is. And they have so many roots in how we're made and different kinds of being.
BE: And then, there are some people who like physical games and some worship is even like that, sometimes—very physically oriented. It might even involve falling over and doing spectacular things. I think all of those games can be played really well. They can also be played badly, as well. So, immerse yourself in the game, and immerse yourself in God.
KBH: Brian, I could talk to you all day. My copy of The God Who Plays is dog-eared and underlined on nearly every page. It’s such a gift to the church and to anyone curious about play’s place in Christian life. Thank you so much for writing it, and for talking with me today. Can we do this again sometime?
BE: Absolutely.
Katy Bowser Hutson is a writer and songwriter. She's deep in the middle of writing Play Book for Rabbit Room Press—if you ask her about play and God at play, she won’t stop talking. She is the author of Now I Lay Me Down to Fight and co-author with Tish Harrison Warren and Flo Paris Oakes of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days. She’s written for Square Halo Press, Art House American, Inkwell and Brighter. Katy is also a co-creator of kid music outfits Coal Train Railroad and Rain for Roots. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Kenny, and their two children. You can read more from Katy on her Substack: Katy Plays.
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