Does anyone remember playing Kick-the-can?

            I watched a group of kids playing together, the other day. Well, at least, they were sitting together. And they were playing. On their smart phones, that is. Heads down, thumbs flying, ignoring each other.

            Kick-the-can, as I recall it, required only one piece of technology – an empty tin can. We put it on the ground in an open space, and drew a large circle around it.

            Everyone who wasn’t “It” scattered and hid. “It” had to find them, by calling the hider’s name and hiding place: “I see Jenny, behind the rain barrel!” Then “It” ran back and placed a foot on the can.

            Once caught, the captives had to stay inside the circle. From where they sometimes shouted advice to their still hidden partners.

            Kick-the-can differed from ordinary hide-and-seek, because Jenny – or whoever -- had a chance to escape captivity. If she could kick the can out of the circle before “It” got back, everyone went free.

            At least, that’s how I remember the game. I’m sure it was played differently in other places. Because there were no written rules. The size of the circle, how far away one could hide – everything was open to negotiation.

Learning from playing

            In fact, negotiation may have been the most important part of the game. We worked the rules out together. Face to face.

            “Watch children at play,” writes Peter Gray, a psychologist at Boston College in the U.S., “and you will see lots of negotiation and compromise. Preschoolers playing ‘house’ spend more time figuring out how to play than actually playing.”

            Obviously, he’s writing about pre-smart-phone children.

            So was Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. In his studies of cognitive development, he found that small boys could spend more energy arguing about rules than actually playing shinny or marbles.

            “When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations,” Gray recalls. “We had school… and we played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups. What I learnt in play has been far more valuable to my adult life than what I learnt in school.”

            But, he continues, “For more than 50 years now, we have been gradually reducing children’s opportunities to play.”

A can that needs kicking

            These days, it seems to this dyspeptic grandfather, the rules of play are too often laid out for players. By creators of video games, for example. By adults who run the T-ball league. By international associations that govern soccer, or cycling, or speed skating.

            There’s no room for negotiation, no give and take, no exceptions. Take it or leave it, kid!

            I see the same attitude showing up in the games that adults play -- politics, labour, and economics. Each side starts with its non-negotiable positions, its pre-determined conclusions. No one asks how the rules got shaped, how the sides got chosen. No one asks whether those rules still make sense. Or whether they still enhance the game being played -- by these players, at this time, in this context.

            I can’t blame this on the virtual-reality industry. Today’s adults didn’t grow up with cell phones.

            But somewhere, sometime since the 1950s, society gave up unsupervised play. We’ve forgotten that sometimes cans need to get kicked, to set everyone free again.

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

I got a whole pile of mail about my second column on God, last week.

Hanny Kooyman: “It’s so very hard to define god. I’ve said God IS. No him or her. Just IS. Somehow connects us -- with those that still are here, with those that went. And a lot more, but so very hard to express clearly.”

Frank Martens, who calls himself an atheist: “You have stirred up quite a controversy. Keep asking questions, search for the answers, even though you may never get the one that you know in your heart is the one you want. If you haven’t got the answer by asking questions of others as well as yourself, and by thinking about the possible variety of answers, DO NOT depend on your readers to give you the answer. They are just as inadequate as even the most astute church leader in the country.

            “I have personally chosen to believe that the presence of humans on this earth is purely coincidental, a cosmic accident, a chance happening. All I ask, of everyone, is not to interfere with my beliefs; not to select me for persecution because my beliefs are not the same as yours; and more precisely, don’t hold a gun to my head because I’m different.”

James Russell similarly noted, “I have a hard time distinguishing between your theism and my atheism.

            “We seem to agree that we are both in and of the universe. We also seem to agree that we experience ourselves as individuals while being aware that our individuality incorporates and is incorporated in networks of relationships. As well, I think we’d also agree that we exist as a locus of organic parts and elements which constantly change (and interchange) through interactions with other parts of the universe. I’m also pretty sure that we agree that our mode of existence requires broadly similar ethics.

            If you have to label some or all of this ‘God’, then, I guess, ‘May God bless you.’”

Tom Watson: “Process theologian Alfred North Whitehead saw God as ‘process,’ where everything is interconnected…. He also opined that you could no more think of the world without God than you could think of God without the world. Is that where your thoughts lead you?”

Isabel Gibson asked, “Does your approach change the nature of your worship? I suspect that many people in churches believe more or less as you do -- I wonder why the language hasn't changed? Or is it that I just hear the old images because I expect to?”

Alex McGillvery offered his own definition: “More and more, physics is suggesting the Universe is made of energy and information, not energy and matter, and that consciousness is integral to the existence of the universe as observation is needed to define it. Put the two together, and I suggest the information which informs the universe is love, and the one which observes the universe into being is God.”

Randy Hall: “Like you, many of us struggle in pursuit of ‘truth”. One of my favorite lines is from Buechner's writings when he ponders Jesus standing before Pilate, who asks Jesus "What is truth?" Jesus gives no answer but himself.

            “My own search for truth has brought me to the idea of dimensions of existence and awareness. Russian mathematician Ouspensky wrote of the Fourth Dimension (as did Einstein). This fourth dimension, and perhaps others, open the possibility of realities of which we are unaware or, in Jesus' words, must learn to ‘see’."

David Gilchrist: “You are braver than I. As I near the end of my 80s, I have begun to feel that Who/What God is, is one thing I’m not supposed to know (like the forbidden tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.)”

            David told of being unable to choose a café in Hong Kong, for no apparent reason. When they eventually did find one, they met a Chinese man who had been at Llewellyn Hall with David 50 years before. David was able to put him in touch with another “Missionary Kid with whom he was very anxious to get in touch. He was able to deliver his message. He died within 2 years!

            “That is NOT ‘coincidence’! Like you, I can think of no other term but ‘God’ as the mystery behind it. Somehow, I was being used to answer his prayer, whether spoken or just heart-felt. But that doesn’t explain God at all: it is just evidence to me of the reality of something that I can only call ‘God’.”

Dale Perkins “felt a need to dive into the conversation you started, re attempting to use the word 'God' and convince yourself and us that it means something. For many it means something, so it is worth struggling to define it, and that helps the person feel as though they're addressing a reality which is important to them. For many others it is meaningless, so they don't spend time attempting to define it or have it fit into their lectionary and vocabulary.

            “I don't think getting agreement is a necessary expenditure of time and energy. For too long, institutional religions thought it absolutely necessary to demand a particular resolution of that conundrum, otherwise reality wouldn't be correctly defined and the resulting ignorance would be harmful to everyone in that society. So hundreds of volumes were written and thousands of sermons preached and tons of rituals prescribed and executed, and for the practitioners it felt as though they were doing something valuable for the well-being of followers and those who only witnessed on the sidelines.

            “Now in the final quarter of my life I've come to the place where I feel zero compunction to engage in the exercise -- I don't need it myself, and I'm not convinced others are helped by doing it or witnessing others doing it vicariously. Better for me simply to delve into exercises and words/vocabulary/definitions which contribute to the well-being of my life and the lives of others (including the global reality where it all gets played out).

            “What is important for me is -- can life continue for our species and all other life-forms? Or are we living out the End Times?”

Brian Ames: “I too wrestle with the existence of ‘God’ and have done so for many years. I believe strongly that there something other than ‘me,’ but I cannot perceive what that should be. Therefore as I get older, now 72, I try to live as I think I should do, mainly ‘do unto others as you wish them to do to you’.

            “Having said that, there are times when stupid comments, useless behavior, denial of history, and so forth causes me to react and I speak my mind. My mother, an English war bride, said to me many years ago, 'Son, you do not have to abide stupidity.' But she tempered her statement by adding: ‘It is better to walk away from it (stupidity) than to reinforce it by heated comments.’”

Lillian McLeod: “I too struggle with the God I believe in.  As long as I can recall, even as a child, when asked ‘How do you know there is a God?’, my reply has been, ‘I don't know how I know, I just know!’

            “Thanks for tackling this difficult subject.  Many of your points make sense to me.  I look forward to the comments from other readers.”

Robert Caughell turned to science fiction: “I am reminded of Yoda in Star Wars trying to explain the existence of middiclorians/the Force to Luke: ‘They/it exists in all things and binds the Galaxy/Universe together’. We once thought that the speed of sound could not be broken. The speed of light may one day be broken or bypassed by ‘warp’ technology [which means that] God’s thoughts/presence could be everywhere at once. That is what makes God God.”

Chris Blackburn: “I think you are saying that God is found in relationships with other people.”

            Yes, but also in relationships with non-human things: JT

Steve Roney: “I’m not sure I understand you. You seem to be saying you can only think of God in material terms, and can only believe in a God who is physical. Indeed, you seem to insist on thoughts being physical too, and travelling through space. Angels dancing on pinheads, then?

            “Descartes could offer only one justification on which to accept the reality of the physical world more or less as we perceive it: that a benevolent God would not allow us to be deceived.

            “So it is nonsensical to say ‘I do not believe in God unless he is physical.’

            I thought I had said the opposite: JT

George Staley: “Perhaps the reason we can't find God is that we are God (or part of God), so God isn't 'out there', God is everywhere, including within.” George recommended Neale Walsch’s "Conversations with God" series. “The information in this book put everything into perspective and changed the way we look at life (and God)…. See if it explains the unexplainable in a way that speaks to you and elucidates God, life, and the universe in a new manner that resonates with your inner being.”

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…

·       Ralph Milton’s most recent project, Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal -- consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

·       Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

·       Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

·       Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

·       Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

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            My webpage is up and running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and about five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

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