The Spiritual Practice of Play

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Rev. Carrie Holley-Hurt
October 26 2025
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

Play is the most natural state for children, but it somehow disappears from our lives along the way. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Rev. Carrie explores the power of play.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

– 17th century proverb

Affirming Our Mission

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

Reading

SUMMER DAY
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sermon

Happy almost Halloween!

I love this time of year. Halloween is my favorite holiday. It doesn’t have the stress and commercialism of Christmas. It doesn’t make me feel ethically weird like Thanksgiving.

And its way more fun than trying to fall asleep while listening to fireworks.

And … You get to dress up.

And… You get to give candy to people who are dressed up.

All the cute costumes, the funny costumes, the handmade costumes….the scary costumes.

I love it!

And don’t even get me started on all the movies, the books, and podcasts that are perfect for getting you into the season.

But I think that the number one reason I love Halloween is that is about play.

Its a use-your-imagination-and-get-into-your-joy-kind of night, and we need that. We need play.

Play is pressure relief valve and who isn’t feeling pressure right now.

Whether its school, relationships, or the daily deluge of news, things are a lot right now.

Playing can help us manage how we respond to the world And it connects us. It connects us to ourselves, to one another, and to a what we want.

And because of this play is a powerful spiritual practice.

A powerful spiritual practice for everyone! – because it heips relieve stress and build resilience.

When we play we release endorphins, which are hormones that make us feel good. Play also helps to reduce our cortisol levels, which is a hormone our body makes when we are stressed …and when our cortisol levels are really high for a long time, that starts to hurt our bodies and our brain.

Play, like the breathing which just did, helps regulate our nervous system. Helps us to calm down.

And that improves our overall well-being and makes us more resilient. Unicef found that Play even protects children “from the negative impacts of prolonged exposure to stress”

And Lynn Barnett found that “Highly playful adults feel the same stressors as anyone else, but they appear to experience and react to them differently, allowing stressors to roll off more easily than those who are less playful,”

Stress regulation and resilience is so important to our spiritual well-being.

If we aren’t regulating ourselves. If we aren’t making time to boost our mood and decrease our stress levels then we are essentially just ping ponging back and forth from one news item or one stressful event to the other.

That is a recipe for burnout. Which makes it harder to live in alignment with your values. And it certainly doesn’t help you answer that question Mary Oliver asks us, about what we will do with our “one wild and precious life.”

I mean I guess the answer is that “I allowed all the sad in the world to jerk me around” but …. do we really want to do that?

This is why play is a spiritual practice. Our spiritual practices are those things that help us to feel centered, that help us slow down so that we aren’t just reacting in life but rather being intentional. Play’s stress-relieving properties also helps us to put things into perspective.

Play does that and so much more.

Like to connect.

When we play we are connecting to ourselves. What do I like, what don’t I like” Does this work for me or not” What does it feel like to dress up like this and feel powerful, or scary, or sweet” What does it feel like when my body moves this way or that way.

Listening to all the musicians today, I can imagine that finding the sounds that felt good or interesting to them required some level of play.

When we play we are learning what we like to do and who we are. And this process happens throughout our lives if we let it.

When i was a kid, I would spin forever and ever and it was just the best thing. Now, that feels more like a punishment.

We learn about ourselves when we engage with play. Even if we learn, thats not a fun thing for us any more.

We also connect with others when we play.

We have a big impact on each other’s emotional state. If I’m stressed, its probably going to stress out my kids and vis versa. But when we play together,

we are bonding with each other,
experiencing joy and building trust with one another,
releasing endorphin together…

And all that leads to co-regulate. Meaning we can work together to bring ourselves into a more positive and joyful place.

Finally, play helps us connect to those things that are bigger than ourselves, like our vision of the future.

I’m thinking about how we spend time dreaming up the world we want and how that can be a form of play. Marsha P Johnson, a trans and queer activist who may have thrown the first brick at Stonewall used to gather up her friends, and they would pull their money together so they could rent a room just for a little while so they could dream about the future they wanted. A future that was full of joy and freedom. They were playing together and in their playing together they were dreaming.

And of course lately there are the frogs. Or at least the people in the frog costumes that have been protesting in Portland. These people in big silly blow-up costumes standing in front of very intimidating-looking people in riot gear.

Their use of play and playfulness is doing so many things.

First, its giving all of us a sense of joy and hope.
Secondly, it highlights how weird this all is.

The juxtaposition, the way that the silly frog costume is so opposite of the intimidating federal agents, is a way to use play and whimsy to highlight that the federal govemments response is absurd. According to L.M. Bogdan

“These outfits are just the latest iteration in a long history of using whimsy and humor in political protests, known as “tactical frivolity.”

But what I find really beautiful about this playful form of protest is how it brings the world we are hoping for,

a world where our nervous systems are regulated.
where joy is abundant.
Where humor is easy to come by.

All because we are living in a just and beautiful world So when those people don their frog costumes or their axoloti costumes, they are bringing a vision of that world, that one we are working so hard for, to come to us in the here and the now. All through their “tactical frivolity.”

Connecting us to one another and pointing us to the higher thing we are working for – A more beautiful – A more just – And a more playlul world.

Now I hope I have convinced you of the power of play and that is indeed a spiritual practice. But I know that some of you are probably feeling a bit uncomfortable, especially if you are like me and find play really challenging.

I was so good at it as a kid but as work and responsibilities filled more and more of my day, play started fading away.

But I don’t think its gone, I think that play is just different throughout your life and I think, we have to be more intentional about carving out space for it as we get older.

My least favorite question is when someone asks me what I do for fun. Because, I feel a lot of pressure to say something that will sound acceptably fun to them. Luckily, I like to rollerskate, so I got that going for me. But its often very hot so l don’t do it very much. So I hate that question because it reminds me of how little I do the one thing that people might actually identity as fun.

But here is the thing, play is just anything that, according to the National Institute for Play ….and no, I did not make that institute up.

The National Institute of Play says,

“Play is a state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of the sense of time. …and (that it) is self-motivated so you want to do it again and again.”

So play is anything that feels good, brings joy, helps you to focus on that joy, and something you want to do.

So while I do love skating…. I also find sense of joy, pleasure, and I will lose sense of time when I am reading a good book, or letting myself think about big questions like “Do we have UU saints? – And if so – Who? – and if not – Why?”

I feel joyful and motivated when I am spending time with certain friends. And very often, I get in the zone of focus and joy when I am writing sermons. Not always – but often. So even sermon writing can be play to me.

Aren’t I lucky!?

Play is powerful and it’s personal. One girl’s fun spinning is another woman’s terror, so to speak.

So find what works for you so you can gain all these beautiful stress-relieving, resilience-making, connection-creating benefits.

And do it often.

Because your nervous system needs it.

And you need it.

As People who are committed to a more just and more beautiful world, we need it.

We need it to imbue our lives with what we are trying to create.

May we find ways to bring play it into our lives so that we might live our one wild and precious life to the fullest.

Amen

Extinguishing the Chalice

We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.

Benediction

May you, even in the midst of so much stress, stop to play.

And may your play bring you back to yourself.

May it fill your cup, and may it give you strength and resolve in spades.

And may it remind you of all that you are working for.

Go and play.

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