Play: Zen and Zest

First snow of the season and I was snuggled up warm and tight inside. With a busy week looming, I was grateful for the break and took the day off with my girls. I greeted their late-morning risings with hot cocoa topped with whipped cream. As high schoolers, I understand these moments with them will vanish all too quickly.

I even skipped my visit to the gym. So, Lily's invitation to play in the snow would get me out and moving. When they were young, I'd bundle us all up and venture out with them, sleds in tow. As they could go on their own, I opted for comfort and grown-up things. Lily has always been the one to journey into the great white and play for hours. It's good for her soul. She'd lose track of time and the cold and I'd have to remind her to come in and relinquish the chill. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes and heart clear. The purity of concentrated play gave her new life.

In preparing to join her, this time, I broke out my oldest jeans, snow boots, thick socks, warmest jacket, fleece cap and scarf and mis-matched gloves. "We're not going for fashion." she announced. She'd found the snowball mold and we each scooped up the fuzziness, forming perfect balls and began lopping them at each other. Neither of us was a great shot, but it was still good fun. In mixing it up, we exchanged tosses. We ran around the paths we'd created and then I decided to stockpile all the temporary weapons I could carry, sauntered across the street and secretly launched them at the boys, my neighbors, playing inside the fence. My throws were thwarted by the trees and my ability, but the message got across. Out of ammo, I scurried back across the street when  a voice boomed "I know where you live." I giggled and responded, "So do I." When was the last time I'd done something like this ... silly and spontaneous, something that made me giddy? Lily hid herself in the pines. Clearly, I was embarrassing.

Sizing up that we'd made a monstrous mess of the perfect blanket in our yard, we agreed on a little hike (normally it would be a walk, but the snow changes everything) around the neighborhood on this beautiful, crisp, clear, cold and sunny day. The contrast was blinding. Gratefully so. As we sauntered past Phoebe's house, she's a twenty-something, I was inclined to ask her out to play. I knew she'd welcome the invitation, but we had plans for an outing, a more sophisticated one (i.e. shopping therapy), with my oldest.

After we'd returned to the warmth and undressed our layers, I checked the time on my phone. Pheobe had posted on Facebook that she'd noticed us walking by and almost ran out, except that she had no shoes on. I knew she'd be up for a snowy adventure!

What is it about play that, as an adult, is so exhilarating? Probably that it is so rare in our lives. The greatest piece of parenting that no one ever mentioned to me is that it gives you an awfully good excuse to play. Before my children, I had long forgotten the fascination of rocks, mud between the toes and exploring things closer to the ground.

In the work I have been doing the past few years, particularly the spiritual aspects, play has surfaced as a major vehicle. It seems a good medium for exploring the deep stuff. I was thinking about this again, yesterday, after my play in the snow and as I plan the next "Pain as Spiritual Teacher" mini workshop for Saturday during the Victory of Light Psychic Festival. I googled research on play and, especially, play and chronic pain, the focus of this particular workshop series. Only more recently have researchers begun paying attention to adult play and even then, have had trouble recording differences between positive play and addictions or negative play.

There are adult playgrounds in major cities. Can you imagine? Hubs strewn with adult-sized toys and hammocks for napping. Sounds wondrous.

We're so slammed in this culture and divided by technology: got a minute, better check e-mail, voice mail, send a text or see what's happening on Facebook. Some of these are not necessarily work, but they aren't really play either. We're still "on." True play allows us to switch off the busyness.

I find that play and creativity are so tied together. Each takes you beyond your mind and into new and interesting, often restful, but sometimes zestful territory. Like my nieces' daughters. One infant is so laid back that she allows us to position her in yoga poses; we call her Zen. The other, a toddler full of life and not wanting to miss any minute of it, we call Zest.

Play grounds us out of the vortex of work that makes us believe the entire Universe rests upon what we do for a living. Play reminds us that we are not God, but human and in need of balance and a break from ego. Play stokes our inner creative fires, loosening inspiration, revelation, wisdom and joy.

Next time you have the urge or opportunity to play: do it!

• When was the last time I was tempted to play?
• Did I sieze the opportunity?
• If not, why?
• How can play help me balance my life?
• Where do I find Spirit in play?


aaahhh, a snow day
permission to take
time off

and just
be with my girls

who really are
well on their
way to becoming
young women

much too quickly

so this moment
is relished and
I am present

when my 14-year
old asks if I'll
come play with
her in the snow

I accept

and it is a gift
for both
of us

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Baby in my pocket

Crazy, but I've been carrying a two-and-a-half inch, plastic baby doll around in my pocket for three days. I noticed her out of the corner of my eye, laying amid a pile of junk as I was coming up the basement steps.

"What are you doing with her?" my 14-year-old demanded. "I just found her."
"I dunno, just want to borrow her for a bit."
"Okay," she replied.

I knew full well what I was doing with her: keeping her as a token reminder to tend my inner child. I've been on a baby kick ever since an amazing one-year-old's birthday Sunday. I wrote about that last post (http://salonforthesoul.blogspot.com/2014/11/celebrating-miracleness.html)

So she's been tucked inside my Scottish, wool sweater pocket inside a nest of clean, but not crisp Kleenex. Periodically, I reach in and touch her, much like a worry stone. To reassure me that I haven't lost her.

Yesterday, it took my tears and a few confessions for my shaman to tell me that I am burned out and in need of nurturing. "That's why you have the baby." He, as always, was right.

I have felt so tired and overwhelmed this week at the mountain of work awaiting me as I organize a formal board of directors for Artsy Fartsy Saturdays, the arts exploration I launched for at-risk middle schoolers, file paperwork and wade through months awaiting the IRS 501c3 designation. Some days it seems like a super structure built just to keep the program going and growing. Anything but simple. I have so many lists of possible board prospects and a recently acquired knowledge of how to build a board thanks to an intense ArtsWave program I completed. Didn't help that an attorney who handles non-profits warned me at a seminar not to go that route if I don't have to. An incredible amount of work, he said.

More work. More work. More work.

That's all I have been seeing.

Yet that wasn't all I wanted to talk about at yesterday's session. I mentioned the new, local church that wants to help. I was really jazzed about that earlier in the week and found that meeting so affirming. Complete strangers who heard me talk, called my work "passionate, from the heart and making a huge difference." Enough so that they desire to partner with me in helping these families.

Some help. Some help. Some help.

And then there was the other thing I wanted to process with Gary: the close encounter with the snake I'd had in September, While hiking in my little five-finger yoga shoes, I suddenly felt something slimy brush against my ankle. Fortunately, I walked on before it registered. When I looked back, I noticed a rather large white snake coiled, rising up and hissing at me. On another path, a larger black snake quickly slithered across. When my college friends and I returned to the lodge and one went to take a show, she discovered a worm in the drain. Enough. I get the snake message.

One of the first things Gary asked me is if I had meditated and asked the snake what she wanted. Never occurred to me, though the idea was very appealing. He walked me through the ins and outs of snake medicine: that they shed their skin slowly and, in this transformation, are temporarily blinded. That their new skin is bright and alive and they are vulnerable. That they unhinge their jaws to eat large prey and only eat occasionally; they can swallow large amounts. And, then we addressed the kundalini energy. The feminine energy coiled at the base of the spine. 

He imagined I was low on that, so that became a focal point of the bodywork. While I took breaths in a circular manner, coached by Gary, and his trained hands eased my aching muscles, I began to see the snake. The big, white female snake. I normally don't talk during the bodywork portion of the session, but I told Gary that one of my favorite stuffed animals had been a white snake with red-heart eyes. I also giggled and offered that Harry Potter could talk to snakes. "You can, too," he said

Before I knew it, the snake told me her name, Charlotte. "That's the name of a spider and my spiritual friend," I shot back. "Mine, too," she said, batting her big eyes. Soon, Gary released me, I felt energy return and it was time to leave.

I must be insane talking to snakes named Charlotte and keeping mini babies in my pocket.

I've experienced a very low energy day. Perhaps because my off day revolved around the shamanic work, lunch with a friend who wanted to learn about blogging, shopping for a baby-shower gift, arriving home too late to take my youngest to theater practice, attending a two-hour evening Bible study, then picking my daughter up at 10:30 pm.

In the study, we have been slowly exploring Pauls' first letter to the Corinthians. Last night, I was reeled in by the idea that we are God's temple. God resides within and there's no need to go elsewhere. Ah, perhaps I'd better take care of that treasure. Which led me to the 23rd Psalm, which I had studied with my mother's Bible group Wednesday. What struck me was the passage about being made to lie down in green pastures: forced rest.

God may be telling me to take a break. But I trudged on anyway. Stumbled into the studio almost in tears of sheer weariness and prayed for nurturing and encouragement. The phone rang and it was my mother. She called to check in and tell me that a local club she belongs to wants to help Artsy Fartsy.

More help. More help. More help.

And she let me unload a little. Actually, a lot and I felt much better.

Nurturing. Nurturing. Nuturing.

I hung up and checked e-mail before sitting down to write this post. It was almost unfathomable what rolled in. Seventeen potential board candidates that I will meet next week at ArtsWave have an interest in serving Artsy Fartsy! A chemical engineer, attorney, digital marketing specialists, arts professor, financial analyst, HR managers, brand manager, small-business developer, a non-profit consultant, tax manager and a chemical engineer ... oh my.

Don't tell me God doesn't answer prayer.


• How do I take care of God's temple?
• What do I do when I am burned out?
• What signals help me see this?
• How does prayer work for me?
• How aware am I of it working?


she rolled around
in my pocket
a few days

was with me
the time
Charlotte
introduced herself

and I still
didn't get
it

there are
just some
things I can't
do

and are left
only to
one source

God does
answer
prayer

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