Exploring Play as Medicine for What Ails Us
Rev. JT Smiedendorf
August 31, 2025
Text: Psalm 33:1-3
CENTRAL FOCUS:
To illustrate the energy of play as a medicine for violence, personal liberation, and social justice.
From The Message version:
Good people, cheer God!
Right-living people sound best when praising.
Use guitars to reinforce your Hallelujahs!
Play Divine praise on a grand piano!
Compose your own new song to the Holy One;
give God a trumpet fanfare.
In light of the tragedy here in Minneapolis on Wednesday, it may seem strange to talk about play, but I ask you to stay with me. What we discover may be surprisingly relevant. And I want to add that there was nothing playful about what happened at Annunciation Catholic Church, nothing funny about the deaths of 8-year-old Fletcher and 10-year-old Harper, and that, of course, being tearful and upset is quite appropriate. I was and still am. That being said, I’d like to share about the soul medicine of play in a serious and often violent world.
Dr. Stuart Brown is the founder of the National Institute for Play, a non-profit organization committed to gathering, initiating, and translating research on play into programs and resources for all. Trained as a physician, psychiatrist, and clinical researcher, Dr. Brown first discovered the importance of play by discerning its absence in a carefully studied group of homicidal young men, beginning with the 1966 University of Texas Tower mass murderer. The research has demonstrated the negative and sometimes violent consequences of a play-deprived life.
Dr. Brown, in a Ted Talk on play, shared an experiment where one group of rats is denied play as they grow up. Then a cat scented collar is introduced to their group and to a control group who were allowed to play normally. Both groups, at the smell of the collar, ran and hid. Seems wise. But only those rats who were allowed to play eventually, tentatively, came back out to explore again, to see if the danger had passed and to resume life. The play-deprived rats never came out again, even to eat.
Play research tells us that play is about more than fun, more than temporary stress relief. As these two studies tell us, the lack of play can lead to the death-dealing forces of crippling fear and anxiety and of extreme violence ruling the day, ruling a life. These research examples certainly suggest play can be more than mere distraction.
The late theologian Jurgen Moltmann explored such a possibility in his work A Theology of Play. In it, Moltmann explores how play is essential to our lives and to the coming of the New Creation for which God longs.
Said Moltmann,
We must learn to distinguish between the alienated forms of merely apparent good fortune and the liberating forms of enjoyment… it is possible that in playing we can anticipate our liberation and with laughing, rid ourselves of the bonds which alienate us from real life.
Liberating forms of enjoyment. Moltmann is claiming that play can serve the sacred purpose of helping anticipate our liberation into real life, valuable and vital life.
And Moltmann knows that this claim about play can be confusing for those of faith who deeply care about what seems often a sad and serious world so obviously out of step with God’s intention of Goodness for the world. That’s what it so clearly was this Wednesday in Minneapolis at Annunciation Catholic Church and School, a sad and serious world so obviously out of step with God’s intention of Goodness. Moltmann captures a voice I know I have right now when he says,
But how can we laugh, how can we rejoice without care when we are worried, depressed, and tortured by the state of the world in which we live?… Is it right to laugh, to play and to dance without at the same time crying out and working for those who perish on the shadowy side of life?
My hunch is that play is somehow, strangely, a medicine for me and for all of us, even amidst the shadowy side of life, amidst the worried, depressed, and tortured state of the world.
For the high-minded church, it is medicine—especially when we pursue the social gospel and rely so much on the serious prophetic proclamation of the moral and the right. My concern is that without play we are drawn into an exhausting conventional fight with the external and internal graceless powers and principalities, drawn into the same game of winners and losers, of fault finding, of calling people out rather than inviting them in, of getting power over, of being overzealously righteous, of becoming Puritanical in the cause, of limiting ourselves to the ego’s unimaginative efforts.
My hopeful invitation for us is to experience and integrate play so that our foot soldier moral effort is transformed, that it becomes infused, enthused, and enlightened with the aesthetic of the beauty and heart of God’s vision, that we, like our children, engage not in a Christian military march, but rather in a Lord-of-the-Dance step to make our way in whatever kind of wilderness we find ourselves in.
And given Dr. Brown’s research on how play is anti-violent and pro-resilience, and how its deficit is crippling for children, my hope for all the children is for enough play so that they are not alienated from their own inner child and the power of wonder and enthusiasm that comes through children and through the little ones still inside us older ones. I wonder when the shooter from Wednesday stopped playing and laughing.
Again, Moltmann from Theology of Play,
The images for the coming new world do not come from the world of struggle and victory, of work and achievement, of law and its enforcement, but from the world of primal childhood trust.
Play is an avenue to fostering a transforming energy of trust that liberates and heals.
In other words, play is meant to be part of what energizes our resilience in life and allows us to be an Easter People who “keep on keepin’ on” in building community and doing justice no matter what may come.
Anyone know the name Romaine Patterson?
Romaine Patterson was a friend of Matthew Shepard’s, a young gay man who was murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. Romaine was a Laramie resident shocked by the hate of the Westboro Baptist protesters who came to protest at Matthew’s funeral. When the trials occurred months later, she was ready for them. With her inspiration, she and others stood by in giant angel costumes complete with giant angel wings to shield family and friends from the view of the ugly and hateful words those lost Westboro souls tried to project. If Romaine had only been in the heavy and serious mold of moral foot soldier resistance, she might have thought to turn up at the courthouse and out shout the misguided protesters, to beat them at their game. Instead, she wanted to play a different game (a smarter game, in this case, because the Westboro people love controversy and attention and opposition). Romaine’s creative, even playful, strategy of angelic blocking and ignoring was more service to the spirit of the good.
I want to practice the playful angelic creativity that was seen that day in Laramie. I want to be in a different mode of energy that is more life giving, and therefore more sustainable, in expressing a peace and justice witness.
Moltmann suggests that creative play and imagination indeed help us sustain and be smart in our change efforts, especially when faced with the forces and faces of fear.
Says Moltmann,
The power of the powerless lies in such liberations from fear, in their laughter at the expense of deified rulers who are nothing after all but dolled up dwarfs… All liberation movements begin with a few people who are no longer afraid and who begin to act differently than expected by those who are threatening them.
Acting differently than expected by those who are threatening—no longer afraid. Love it.
Sounds like freedom to me, life giving freedom.
In addition to a kind of resilience and freedom from the old games and limits, I think play has the potential to deepen our community building and connection.
InterPlay is an embodied practice inspired by the improvisational performance world that promotes knowing the wisdom of the body. Co-founders Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter say,
Some think that the answer to the question, “Will you play with me?” may be more important than the answer to the question, “Do you love me?” Play with me, and I know I belong. Our willingness to play tells the truth about our desire to be ourselves with someone.
You might remember a delightful connection to others when in a time of unselfconscious play. Maybe you were quite young. Maybe it’s been a long time. There’s something about that shared free expression in that kind of play that generates energized connection, engenders light and love.
With the world as it is, how can we be Christ Light on our feet and in our play with each other so that we can be more effective, resilient, and vital, even when life is intense, sad and serious?
Play, celebration, song, praise.
These are some of the qualities of the Holy Spirit when it is fully alive, when it trusts in the Divine Creation as Psalm 33 from The Message version of Scripture spoke today.
Good people, cheer God!
Right-living people sound best when praising.
Use guitars to reinforce your Hallelujahs!
Play Divine praise on a grand piano!
Compose your own new song to the Holy One;
give God a trumpet fanfare.
There is a reason that our scriptural library contains a book titled “Lamentations.” There is a sacred role of lamenting; there are wise times to lament. This is one of those times. We should always lament the untimely death of children, those in Minneapolis, those in Gaza, and those around the world. They all have names. Fletcher and Harper are the names this week here in Minneapolis (that we know of).
What can we do to pay tribute to these young ones? What is a faithful response to such a senseless act of cruelty? We can choose to create a world, as best we can, where this doesn’t happen. Sensible gun regulation, yes. Adequate mental health support for the young, yes. Awareness of our young people so that we can notice when they are losing the thread and drifting away, absolutely. And, we can be a community that integrates a playful spirit in life, one that is not merely distraction from life, but play that is liberation from the death dealing forces that know only heaviness and seriousness, that have lost the thread of delight in creation and the wonder of living. Let us lament these deaths and let us be those who nurture the spirit of life.
AMEN
Dedicated to
Fletcher Merkel, 8
Harper Moyski, 10