Dear God, Please Open Me to the Spirit of Play: NIta Gilger

Dear God, Please Open Me
to the Spirit of Play

Children have always taught me about imagination and wonder. But all too often, societal pressures, fear of judgment, or trying to be "grown up" tends to whittle away at the empowered, free confidence of creativity. Creativity must be nurtured, encouraged, and permitted. Even mistakes, when praised as learning experiences, can be creative and launch us into helpful realizations.

There are all kinds of artistry and creativity. We each find our own gifts and passions and it behooves us to keep those things alive and well. For children, PLAY is their ritual and their pathway for creativity. Their creative flow is filled with curiosity and problem-solving in figuring out how the world works around them.

Isn't it just the coolest thing to watch a baby who is discovering that their hands or feet actually move? They will hold their little hands right up in front of their face and look totally amazed when they see their fingers moving. It is fascinating when a baby crawls up to a mirror and sees their own image. Learning object permanence is a huge WOW moment, full of miracle.

My short but compelling ask today, for all of us, is to dwell in wonder. Let our creativity flow however and wherever it can. Try to remember that among the wears and tears of life and "adulting" it is important to laugh, feel amazed about something, be curious, and seek out beauty. Perhaps we can provide a sampling of such things to those around us.

The sun has risen. A new day is here and so am I. Let me be a child of wonder and hope in a world needing peace and passion; creativity and love. Amen.

- Nita Gilger

Six Characteristics of Play

Across its many forms, play typically includes these features:

Intrinsic Motivation – It is done for its own sake, not merely for external reward.
Felt Vitality – It carries a sense of aliveness, enjoyment, or deep absorption.
Flexibility – It allows for improvisation, variation, and surprise.
“As-If” Framing – It involves a shift in perspective, where things can be otherwise than they are.
Low-Stakes Freedom – It provides space to experiment without severe consequences.
Whole-Person Engagement – It engages body, mind, feeling, and often relationship.

These qualities distinguish play not by what we do, but by how we do it.

The Opposite of Play:
Constricted Becoming

The opposite of play is not simply work, but a constriction of experience—a closing down of openness and possibility.

Where play is free and flexible, its opposite is marked by:

rigidity
compulsion
instrumentalism
anxiety or fear
deadening routine
alienation

In such states, activity continues, but without aliveness. The creative advance narrows, and experience becomes confined.

Play in Childhood:
Six Foundational Forms

In children, play appears in especially visible and formative ways:

Physical Play – movement, running, climbing, and roughhousing that build strength and coordination
Language Play – sounds, rhymes, jokes, and word invention that cultivate expression
Exploratory Play – discovering new environments and possibilities
Constructive Play – building, shaping, and creating
Fantasy Play – imagining roles and alternative worlds
Social Play – interacting, cooperating, and negotiating

These forms are often interwoven, revealing play as a primary mode of growth, learning, and self-discovery.

Play Across the Lifespan

These same forms do not disappear with age; they evolve, differentiate, and deepen, taking on new layers of meaning and expression:

Physical play becomes exercise, dance, sport, and embodied enjoyment—ways of inhabiting the body with awareness, vitality, and sometimes even grace. It can include not only exertion, but attunement: feeling one’s way into balance, rhythm, and presence.
Language play becomes humor, storytelling, poetry, and subtle forms of conversational creativity. It includes irony, metaphor, timing, and the shared delight of meaning-making with others.
Exploratory play becomes lifelong learning and curiosity—intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. It appears in reading, travel, dialogue, and the willingness to question assumptions and encounter the unfamiliar.
Constructive play becomes art, craft, design, cooking, writing, and the building of projects and communities. It includes not only making things, but shaping environments, institutions, and shared forms of life.
Fantasy play becomes imagination, vision, and creative thinking. It is present in literature, film, speculative thought, and the capacity to envision alternative futures—what the world might become.
Social play becomes conversation, collaboration, humor in relationship, and the improvisational flow of shared life. It includes the subtle give-and-take of interaction, the rhythms of intimacy, and the co-creation of meaning.

Over time, these forms often become less outwardly visible but more inwardly integrated. What was once spontaneous activity becomes a cultivated disposition—a way of inhabiting experience itself.

Quotes on Play

All quotes are from Spirituality and Practice
Springboards for Reflection

In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold.

— Diane Ackerman in Deep Play

The comic spirit masquerades in all things we say and do. We are each a clown and do not need to put on a white face.

— James Hillman

To play is to listen to the imperative inner force that wants to take form and be acted out without reason. It is the joyful, spontaneous expression of one's self. The inner force materializes the feeling and perception without planning or effort. That is what play is.

— Michelle Cassou and Stewart Cubley in Life, Paint and Passion

Laughter is a holy thing. It is as sacred as music and silence and solemnity, maybe more sacred. Laughter is like a prayer, like a bridge over which creatures tiptoe to meet each other. Laughter is like mercy; it heals. When you can laugh at yourself, you are free.

— Ted Loder

Play exists for its own sake. Play is for the moment; it is not hurried, even when the pace is fast and timing seems important. When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.

— Margaret Guenther in Toward Holy Ground

Be patient also with life itself. Those who love life are tolerant of its ups and downs, its reversals and leaps forward. Those who love life enjoy playing it by ear, engaging life without a printed score, simply flowing with its melody. By keeping our agendas flexible and minimizing our demands, life can be a melodic song. Whenever circumstances interrupt the normal rhythm of life, those who cultivate patience and inner freedom are able to improvise with a life situation like jazz musicians, making up music as they go along. The emphasis in playing it by earis on playfulness. Those who use that gift of the Holy Spirit make their way gracefully through life.

— Edward Hays in The Great Escape Manual