[FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Mystics on Play: August 16, 2019]
The Harris-Walz presidential campaign has talked about itself as “joyful warriorhood” and Tim Walz has praised Kamala Harris for “bringing back the joy” to today’s politics. Harris brings humor and needed satire to the political scene and Walz follows suit.
This certainly is in contrast to the Trump-Vance mood that often seems morose and apocalyptic.
The recent Paris Olympic Games brought back a sense of Joy to the world stage, so readily mired in the realities of wars and famines. Joy is not outside suffering or in denial of it. But it is larger and can embrace it, much like Rabbi Zalman Schachtner used to say, “there is more good than evil in the world—but not by much.”
It is good to put Joy forward and to fill up on it frequently and especially in dire times. After all, Thomas Aquinas tells us that “joy is the human’s noblest act.” Our times call for noble acts.
Here we share a past DM that accentuates Joy.
Today science is underscoring the importance of play. Neotony is a scientific term expressing our capacity to stay young and stay playing. Meister Eckhart says, I am younger today than I was yesterday and if I’m not younger tomorrow than I am today I would be ashamed of myself.
Ashley Montagu, in his study on Growing Young, reveals that of all the animal species we know, the human is unique in its capacity to continue play throughout adulthood. An insect never plays; a chimpanzee plays hard as a youngster but loses play as an adult; an adult human can play right up to death…and with death.
To recover the mystic in us is to recover the child and play. Perhaps the time has come to play with God more than to pray to God, and in our play true prayer will emerge. And we will emerge younger, fresher, greener.
Play is circular, curved, Sara-circle-like among children, and wherever adult ritual has not lost is celebrative and erotic energy. When people come together to meet eye to eye, feeling or vulnerability happen.
Interestingly, the Jewish word for celebration, kagiyaah, is related to kag, to draw a circle or go round; to kagur, to be girded; to kug, a circle….
Thomas Aquinas likes to compare contemplation to playing. He says: “Two features of play make it appropriate to compare the contemplation of wisdom to playing. First, we enjoy playing, and there is the greatest enjoyment of all to be had in the contemplation of wisdom, as Wisdom says ‘My spirit is sweeter than honey.” (‘Eccl 24:27)
Second, playing has no purpose beyond itself. What we do in play is done for its own sake. The same applies to the enjoyment of wisdom. Proverbs 8:30: ‘I delighted God day after day, ever at play in God’s presence.’”
Adapted from: Matthew Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 283f.
See also Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp.79f.
And Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 33-40.
Banner image: Kamala Harris laughing after speech honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Civil Rights Act in Los Angeles on June 30, 2014. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
We are told in Scripture that “Wisdom plays.” Do we? How adept are we at working, loving, and living “without a why”? Can we develop that whylessness more regularly and deeply—to “live in order to live” and “love in order to love” as Eckhart puts it. In this way we might be finding ourselves playing a lot more than we do currently.
Recommended Reading
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way.
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times
A stunning spiritual handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of Aquinas’ mystical/prophetic genius, offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action.
Foreword by Ilia Delio.
“What a wonderful book! Only Matt Fox could bring to life the wisdom and brilliance of Aquinas with so much creativity. The Tao of Thomas Aquinas is a masterpiece.”
–Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
4 thoughts on “On Joy in Today’s World: Return to Joy?”
Thank you Matthew for sharing the same message by the mystics Aquinas and Eckhart that contemplative Wisdom is the Spirit of Joy and Play. The only thing that I would add is that the Spirit of Divine of Love & Wisdom Is a Living Joyful Spirit within and among Us in our daily lives Being~Becoming the Divine Flow of LOVING Healing Creative Diverse Wholeness~ONENESS in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT of Our Evolving COSMOS…
I, too, have been feeling more positive. It’s like a great archetypal shift is underway, with the rise of the divine feminine personified by Kamala after millennia of oppression and the collapse of the ossified patriarchy reflected in Trump’s meltdown. Joy, enthusiasm, engagement. It’s thrilling.
Thank you for putting in the clip of Kamala with Drew Barrymore. I love her laugh, and after all the doom and gloom we have experienced lately, it is refreshing and gives me hope–something hard to find sometimes!
Young adults are told to ‘get serious’ from younger and younger ages. Adults are told to be ‘justice fighters’ and to make that a lifelong mission. We as adults are also told to ‘get serious’, get educated, get a good job, start a family, buy a big home, and look to achieve more and more. Is it any wonder that the ‘joy’ gets zapped out of our lives and is replace by a pressure ‘to be’ as society sees and pronounces ‘to be’, to be? Seriousness has seriously crowded out joy in our lives. We have to start saying ‘NO’ to many societal and familial expectations that ‘creep’ into our lives and say YES to Joy and make room for Joy as a permanent resident in our state of being, and not just a visitor. — BB.