Are You a Player?

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button above.

Rev. Michelle LaGrave
January 7, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Play and playfulness are easily overlooked aspects of faith, development, and spirituality. Join us for a playful New Year’s service filled with Robert Fulghum readings.

Chalice Lighting

EXPLORING WHO WE ARE
by Melanie Davis, adapted

Under the right circumstances, playing around the fire is a delight -imagine being gathered round a firepit as the crackling flames invite us to sing, dance, and roast a marshmallow or two.

Our chalice also invites us to play, although with ideas rather than with marshmallows. The flame encourages us to explore who we are, who our neighbors are, and where we are on our spiritual journeys.

Today, we light this chalice in the spirit of play. Let us trust the light to guide us in this hour and in the days to come, finding joy along the way.

Call to Worship

ENTERING THE BRIGHT WORLD
by Shari Woodbury

Let us enter this sacred sanctuary
the way a soft infant enters the bright world:

squinting in wonder
holding to another
taking it all in.

Let us open all our senses
and let our synapses spark
one connection after another

as we make sense of the world
and find joy with each other
and follow the instinct to play.

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

First Reading

WHAT ON EARTH HAVE I DONE?
Robert Fulghum (excerpts)

PLAYER Definition: Persons with enough nimbleness of mind to accept a surprise invitation to jump into a quick game of imagination. People with a loosey-goosey sense of mischief. Players are also Laughers. And you can’t tell the Players by the way they appear on the outside.

Example: Here’s a uniformed city bus driver standing in the door of his vehicle, staring into the rain.

An invitation from me, passing by: “OK, here’s the deal: I’ll pay for the gas, and you’ll drive us to California to the beach at Santa Monica.”

With a straight face he says, “OK, meet me here at midnight. It’s the end of my run and they won’t miss me or the bus until morning. I’ll get some barbecue.” He smiles. A PLAYER.

Consider this lady with a shopping cart full of oddball stuff standing beside me in front of the cheese counter at the grocery story.

My invitation: “I like the groceries in your cart better than mine. Want to trade? You take mine and I’ll take yours. Could be interesting when we get home.”

She smiles. Checks out my cart. “You’ve got a deal,” she says. We take each other’s carts and roll away. Later, she’s waiting for me at the check-out counter. She knows and I know: we weren’t really going to go through with it. But those few moments of madness brought new meaning to “going to the store for a few things.” And the lady knows the game. A PLAYER.

On the other hand: There’s a tailor shop on Queen Anne Avenue. Sign in the window says “ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS FOR MEN AND WOMEN.” The tailor is standing in the doorway. I stop.

“I’d like to get altered and repaired,” I say.

She looks at me cautiously. Goes inside. Closes the door. NOT A PLAYER.

Second Reading

WHAT ON EARTH HAVE I DONE?
Robert Fulghum (excerpts)

Here’s me again, at a well-known company to pick up copies of a manuscript. I am visibly annoyed – this is my third trip to get what was promised yesterday. The anxious clerk, Miss Saucer-eyes, is obviously new to the herd behind the counter and doesn’t know what to do with me or for me. The work is still not done, despite promises. Getting mad won’t help.

“OK, I won’t make any trouble,” I say, “Just give me a really clever, off-the-wall creative excuse – the wildest thing you can think of. Make me laugh and I’ll go away.”

Miss Saucer-eyes is mute. This situation was not covered in training school last week. “I’ll speak to my manager.”

Definitely not a PLAYER. But the story continues.

Miss Saucer-eyes retreats to the back of the shop and consults with her boss, a high-energy, sharply dressed woman, who marches briskly toward me with a steely look.

She leans over the counter and explains: “Sir, you may not know this, but this store has been a front for the Irish Republican Army for years. We’re supposed to be turning in our firearms, and it seems a bazooka is missing from the inventory. When we find the bazooka, things will get back to normal. If I were you, I wouldn’t make any trouble – just come back tomorrow, OK?”

A big league PLAYER.

A garbageman in charge of a monster truck. Lousy day. Cold. Rain. But he’s a Player. This time the invitation comes from him. As I pass by, he says, “Hey, you look prosperous.”

“Thank you. I feel prosperous.”

“You look like a man who might have some frequent-flyer miles.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Lots of them.”

“Listen, I need enough to get me to Buenos Aires, one way.”

I’ve got enough. They’re yours. But what’s in it for me?”

“Take the keys to this garbage truck. It’s yours. Even trade.”

“Yes! I’ve long had an urge to drive one of those things. I’d like to dump a load of garbage in a certain person’s front yard. It’s a deal.”

“You got a license to drive a truck?”

“Well, no.”

“Deals off. I can’t be part of anything illegal, but no problem. Get a license. I’m here every Monday.”

As he drives off, I wonder how many other people on his route get offers from him every day. He has all the nervy characteristics of a nonstop all-day PLAYER.

One final example: A double whammy I didn’t see coming.

Clerk in a bookstore – older lady with dyed red hair. “Can I help you?” she asks.

“Happy birthday,” I say. (Always makes people smile – sometimes you’re early, sometimes late, but sometimes right on. An invitation to play.)

“Well, I hope you’re coming to my party,” she says. “We need someone to jump out of a cake.”

“I’m your man.”

“You’d be expected to go-go dance naked.”

“Then I’m not your man.”

“My mistake. I thought you looked a little kinky.”

A PLAYER.

A lady waiting in line behind me overheard this bookstore babble and drifted away from the counter and out the door. She missed her chance.

Probably not a PLAYER.

Later, as I walked by a sidewalk table at a nearby coffeehouse, I spot the lady who fled the store.

“Sorry, hope we didn’t annoy you,” I said.

She smiled. “Oh no,” she replied, “It’s just that I jumped out of the cake last year. It hurts my feelings to think they’re looking for a replacement.”

A PLAYER after all.

Sermon

In our readings this morning, Robert Fulghum is, essentially, asking each of the people he encounters: “Are you a player?” This is a not inconsequential question. Are you? Or you or you or you? Are you a player?

Several Christmas’ ago, I got my spouse, Micah, a game he’d been wanting for a long time. It’s called Forbidden Island and the game is about retrieving four treasures from different parts of the island and then getting off the island before it floods. Micah was reading the directions aloud and while I understood the object of the game easily enough, I couldn’t quite see how the rules I was hearing would align with a strategy until I heard, Micah say: “We have to work together.” Oh. Ooh. Then it made sense. It was a cooperative game. I had been listening with the assumption that it was yet another competitive game. But this time, we would win or lose together.

As it turns out, the game of Forbidden Island is much like the game of Real Life. We have to work together to get anywhere we really want to go. For a long time, people believed that evolution was primarily a matter of survival of the fittest, the ultimate in competitive games. More recently, anthropologists have come to understand the essential role that cooperation – plays in evolution. Humans were, and are, able to evolve in the ways we do because we cooperate in meeting common goals. The strategy for the game of Real Life is cooperation.

And this is important because as Peter Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College says: “Play primarily evolved to teach children all kinds of skills, and its extension into adulthood may have helped to build cooperation and sharing among hunter-gathers beyond the level that would naturally exist in a dominance-seeking species.” In other words, not only is cooperation essential to the path of human evolution, but play is what helps us learn cooperation.

Play has other benefits as well. Lisa Barnett, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says we play because it is therapeutic. In the work environment, play speeds up learning, increases productivity and improves job satisfaction while at home, play helps with bonding and communication. She says that playful adults have better coping skills. While they feel the same stressors as everyone else, they experience and react to these stressors differently. Playful adults can transform stressful situations into something entertaining, which then allows stressors to roll off more easily than for those who are less playful.

The late Edwin Friedman – rabbi, family therapist, congregational consultant, and author of what is pretty much “the Bible” of congregational systems theory said that: “A major criterion for judging the anxiety level of any society [that is congregation] is the loss of its capacity to be playful.” In other words, playfulness, and the ability to be playful, is an essential attribute of a healthier congregation or family or individual.

And so the question remains, are you a player? Fulghum gave us a definition of a player as a: “person with enough nimbleness of mind to accept a surprise invitation to jump into a quick game of imagination. [A person] with a loosey-goosey sense of mischief.”

I’m guessing that some of you might have noticed some mischief going on around here the last month or two with miniature versions of some of the staff popping up here and there. In case you missed it, here’s some photographic evidence.

Images on the screen of Barbie dolls outfitted as church staff members and their personal equipment.

Of course, Robert Fulghum is not the only person to try to define what a player is. According to researchers who published a study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences there are four types of playful adults. (Wallace, 2017)

- those who outwardly enjoy fooling around with friends, colleagues, relatives and acquaintances;

- those who are generally lighthearted and not preoccupied by the future consequences of their behavior;

- those who play with thoughts and ideas;
- and those who are whimsical, exhibiting interest in strange and unusual things and are amused by small, everyday observations.

I think I’d definitely put Robert Fulghum in that last category.

Or, with a hat tip to Kelly, who brought this back from the last LREDA conference, we can think about these 8 play personalities as identified by a researcher named Stuart Brown.

Let’s try to have a little fun with this. I’ll describe the play personality and then whoever feels like they have that personality can raise their hand. You can raise your hand as many times as you’d like. (This is one situation in which you are not limited to having only one personality.)

The Joker – Play revolves around silliness and making others laugh. Jokers tend to be the “class clown” in school, and may engage in play through telling jokes, doing funny impersonations, or playing practical jokes.

The Kinesthete plays through movement. They experience pleasure in movement and feeling the result of physically pushing their bodies. While this category may include athletes, competition is not the main focus; the joy of engaging in the activity takes precedence. The Kinesthetete’s play might take the form of running, dancing, sports, yoga, swimming, hiking or walking.

The Explorer is enthusiastic about, and engages in play by exploring the world around them. The Explorer’s play can be physical (going to new places) emotional (search for a deepening of emotion through music, art or movement) or mental (researching a new area of interest or reading a book).

The Competitor engages in play through competitive games with specific rules, and enjoys the thrill of winning. The games can be solitary, such as trying to beat his/her top score in a video game, or social, such as competing in a team sport. Competitors may also play through observing and being a fan of competitive sports.

The Director engages in play through planning and executing events. They are the organizers of the social world and may be the instigators of a weekend up North, or throwing a party. Directors may be active in creating a facebook group, or organizing a meet-up.

The Collector plays through engaging in seeking and holding onto the most, best and most interesting collection of objects or experiences. They experience bliss in finding a new piece/experience, organizing or showing off their collection. The Collector may be interested in coins, purses, shoes, cars, or photographs (the possibilities are endless!)

The Artist/Creator plays through creating and making things. The Artist/Creator may engage in drawing, building, or sculpting, painting, singing, knitting, gardening, woodworking, or any number of creative endeavors. The Artist/Creator may also take joy in fixing or making something work, like taking a part a broken item, cleaning and replacing parts, and putting it back together again.

The Storyteller engages in play through adventure into the imagination. They may enjoy reading novels, writing, or watching movies and theater. Storytellers enjoy being immersed in a story, experiencing the thoughts and emotions of characters in the stories.

Well, that was fun! So why does it matter whether we play, or are playful, in church? In addition to keeping levels of anxiety down, there are probably many, but I’ll share two more for now.

One is that in our playfulness we turn toward each other as play partners. We become less self-absorbed and more community oriented. In order to play with each other or play off each other, we need to pay attention to each other and how our wants, needs, hopes, dreams, personalities, and even our cultures differ. Music, staff, ministry teams play can also support us in meeting the goal of becoming more radically welcoming. Once we know, understand, and care about our needs we can better meet them. Think about that explorer personality.

Another possibility relates to the work of faith formation. We have covenanted to encourage one another to spiritual growth. In order to be thea/ologically or philosophically flexible we need to be able to be both creative and open to change with our ideas. For some of us, this aligns with process thea/ology specifically. G_d, or Love, or that which is Ultimate is continually in process and so are we. Being playful helps us to be more flexible.

So… it doesn’t really matter what kind of player you are, just that you play and play often. And, if you are not a player, or not much of a player, know that you can learn to play. Play skills are something you can teach yourself by observing the ways in which others play or by trying out one of the play personalities we talked about today.

Today is the first Sunday we have gathered all together since the start of the New Year. Last week, you ritually let go of those things you wished to leave in the past, with the Burning Bowl service led by Bis. Now it is time to choose what it is you would like to take up in the New Year. I invite you to consider taking up play. The interim period can be a stressful time. Learning to play together, or how to play together better, can relieve some of the stress and anxiety inherent in any transition, including an interim ministry. Plus – it’s fun! And who doesn’t want to have more fun? The only question remaining is … Are you a player?

Amen and Blessed Be

Benediction

As you venture into the new year …
may you find a nimbleness of mind and spirit,
may much love and laughter await you,
and may all that is Good hold you and keep you. Amen and Blessed Be

SERMON INDEX

Most sermons during the past 24 years are available online through this website. Click on the index link above to find tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on a topic to go to that sermon.

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