Recreation & Re-Creation 🛶

when was the last time you played?

Game of Croquet, by Winslow Homer (1865) #

A cool little burner of mine was re-sparked last weekend on our anniversary getaway — and it wasn’t anything to do with recognizing the relational milestone that it was. It was simply because of that otherwise unimportant couple of hours we spent at a coffee shop watercoloring. For the cost of a couple cups of joe, some paintbrushes and paint, and a few of my friend Emily’s books, we kindled in us the Maker-given need to create. It was a delightful way to while away the afternoon.

These were not great works of art. None of them will be framed, I promise you. But that wasn’t the point, of course, the point was to paint. The point was the act of creating, not in the final creation. It was the doing that mattered here, not the done thing.

This past weekend we had Mass in the afternoon (our scrappy parish has to meet in the afternoon once a month because the building isn’t solely ours), so while Kyle and I were sipping our morning coffee in what is rapidly becoming our Up chairs, I said, “I want to go paddleboarding.” So, we strapped on our shoes, leashed up the dog, and the youngest son pumped up the air in my birthday gift — a paddle board.

We walked a few blocks to the river, and I trepidatiously glided out on the water at 9:00 am. The air and water were still chilly, and the dog whimpered and pulled from the shore in desperation to “save” me, herding breed that she is. I didn’t spend much time out there because Finn wanted a turn, but it was enough to hear nothing — the quiet of a morning shared only with fishermen on the shore. I returned, let Finn have his turn, and Kyle and I sat with Ginny and let the cool morning wash over us.

I’ve long known of our call to rest on the Sabbath; it’s been one of my clarion calls: we need to take time away from the demands of life. It’s why I take regular breaks from the internet and why I say no to most opportunities that come my way. But it doesn’t mean I’m good at resting once a week for a couple hours before the new week begins. …In fact, I’ll admit I’m fairly terrible at the enterprise.

But I know it’s good for me. I know I need it. God wouldn’t have made us to sleep a third of our lives, to need to stop and eat (as well as cook beforehand) several times a day if we were put on earth only in order to get stuff done. Jesus wouldn’t have said that Sabbath was for man, not man for the Sabbath, if he didn’t think it was a gift given to us to enjoy and use.

Resting doesn’t just look like lying around, doing nothing (and it certainly doesn’t look like mindless entertainment washing over us), and I think most of us know that. But we still push aside so many ways we could and should rest in the name of too-much-work-to-bother or yeah, but there’s Costco that needs getting to. ‘Recreation’ is simply “activity done for enjoyment when one is not working” and to ‘recreate’ is to “create again; to reproduce.” They both, I think, stem from the root idea that God is The Creator, the originator of all this.

God creates both from ex-nihilo and for pure enjoyment, and while we can’t create from nothing, he does invite us to re-create with him. I’d argue that when we don’t do it enough, we’re missing out on one of the gifts we’ve been given — it’s just sitting there, waiting for us to pick up and enjoy.

I definitely need to play more, to both recreate and re-create. I need to get out of my head, to set aside the to-do lists, to let go of whether I have the time to do something just for fun, or whether it’s worth all the trouble to get out the paddleboard, the paintbrushes, the rollerskates or what-have-you. There’s a reason I’m still ruminating on those few hours painting in that coffee shop and not that other afternoon a few days later spent at the grocery store. I re-created.

Here’s a little reminder that perhaps you need to play more, too. See if you can sneak in an hour or two of it sometime soon.