Playfulness and Godliness
I have been a little off the rails the past few weeks. October took my comfy little routines, broke them, and ground their bits into the carpet for good measure.
I was actually okay with it. Lots of good things happened. Each weekend something was going on.
- The first weekend, I helped my younger sister with a yard sale she was having. I took a few things I had to sell, made a few dollars, but got to talk to a lot of interesting people.
- The second weekend was the Sweet Potato Festival in a nearby town. It got rained out, but it was fun. My husband and I bought a sweet potato pie and ate food truck goodies in my car. My older sister and I also spent a day cleaning out the building in our house so we could have a family-friendly, small carnival on Halloween.
- The third weekend was my birthday weekend, and I ended up doing a ton of organizing and recalibrating.
- The fourth weekend, I went to the mountains in Maggie Valley with my two sisters to close up our camper for the winter.
- The day before Halloween, my older sister and I baked cupcakes and finished organizing the building (my younger sister did a lot of the decorating since she lived closer). On Halloween, we had games and candy and a little hayride and a “spooky” trail walk for the kids. It was fun.
During the week, I began going to the chiropractor 2-3 times to sort out a slight twist in my hips that was causing one leg to be longer than the other. Otherwise, my spine looks great, and I think I’m near the end of the adjustments. Yay!
(And correction of the alignment of my body while other parts of my life are getting more in alignment with God didn’t escape my notice. Interesting, I’ve known one leg was longer than the other since 2012. It never bothered me, even when I went through BLET in 2020. A couple months ago I was doing a 5K, and I noticed a slight discomfort and had the thought that I should probably look into that while it was minor. I was talking to my mom about it and how I thought it had to do with one leg being longer than the other, and she said she had the same thing at one time, but she went to the chiropractor and got it all sorted. I’m very happy about it.)
November has felt a bit restless thus far and I keep finding myself trying to figure things out and make elaborate plans and structures around my creativity. These days, I know better to get caught up in all that. So, I went to God with it. I didn’t get any direction right away. I actually had the thought that maybe I would let all the writing go and shift into other creative forms. After all, the world is changing all the time.
I’m still not completely certain how everything will unfold, but I did get a clear directive to get back into learning, into playing, into exploring with curiosity.
Creative exercises are something that I have often loved to do. There’s no pressure for perfection. You can usually be as weird as you want, and that makes it more fun. I’ve used prompts for writing and art in the past. Some interesting things have come out of that. So, I added a section to my Substack: Story-cises
As I came to this conclusion, I remembered coming across an assignment from Fiction class when I was in college (30 years ago!) where we had to make up a short story based on a bunch of random details given to us by the professor. I dug it up and added it as my first post to set the tone of ridiculousness.
The story (I dubbed it “The Book of Joe” ended up being a parody of a man dying, going to heaven, and having a really bizarre time with God. It is an absolute caricature and meant to make (what I thought) were clever insertions of the required details but in a unusual comical, surrealistic way.
I posted it with a note about how it came to be and that was that.
Except, the day after I began to worry that some Christian readers might be offended or think that I was being disrespectful to God. I considered taking it down. I considered posting more articles to push it out of the forefront.
But, I didn’t. I recognized those thoughts were fearful and preying on my doubts. We’re not doing that any more.
God created me to be creative and playful. I am pretty sure I am created in His image in that way.
I haven’t had any negative response from my story-cise, so those thoughts were likely moot, anyway. However, I had a thought about how I would feel and react if someone did question my Christianity based on what I wrote.
It’s something like this:
We are called to be fishers of men, but we may not be fishing for the same type. There are lots of silly, creative people like me with varied experiences that have taught us to find jokes and joy and laughter in all things. I am speaking to them. 🙂