Up, Up and Away

By Paul Roberts

Wouldn’t it be cool if all of the Sacred Community Garden members ( that’s our creative community membership community - click here to find out how to join now!) had Sacred Community Garden shirts, and the logo was a big S, with the C and the G worked into it, and whenever we wanted we could wear our shirts, but underneath our regular shirts, and then, when we left the house to go play at a creative rendezvous, we could rip open our shirts like Superman used to do, and our creative play muscles would take us up, up and away, like when we were kids, and time would seem to stand still while we were playing, and if we saw another SCG member playing we cheered them on and didn’t tell them they were acting childish, and…

Last Saturday on our Weekend Watering page, I began a discussion about the Creative Rendezvous activity, and I’d like to continue that discussion today. For you Julia Cameron/Artist’s Way fans, she refers to this activity as an artist date. On our website we define the creative rendezvous this way: 

Take yourself on a fun and playful outing each week.  A one to two hour outing all by yourself.  This is to provide inspiration.  This can be done in your home or outside your home.  The main goal is to have fun.

I mentioned last week that I may need to have a conversation with Carol, or perhaps with all of our Sacred Community Garden members, about reworking that definition, along with the “rules” for a rendezvous. I am less concerned today about reworking the actual definition, but I do want to challenge us all to play around with it a bit, in hope of understanding it more.

Read through our definition again. Right now.

Next, choose the one word from the definition that you believe best sums up what a creative rendezvous means to me.

Well, look at that! You read my mind.

Some time ago (25 years, to be slightly more accurate) I wrote a college paper on the importance of play. I titled it “The Importance of Play.” Pretty clever. The best written parts of it were where I was quoting other people. One of those people was a gentleman by the name of O. Fred Donaldson. I’d like to borrow from him again, if I may:

“We have allowed ourselves to be deluded and burdened by an idea of play that defines the world as a contest and each of us as contestants.”

Donaldson speaks of our need to recover “the lost traits of childhood play - immediacy, spontaneity, kindness, belonging, simplicity.”

“Play differs from a contest in the fact that play produces a sense of belonging, joy and self-esteem, whereas a contest produces a sense of separation, joy only in the defeat of another, and subsequent stripping of the opponents self-esteem.”

If you want to read more of Mr. Donaldson’s Pulitzer prize nominated work, get his book Playing By Heart.

If you want to get in touch with your inner artist, try a creative rendezvous.

And if you are a visual artist who wants to design the SCG logo, let us know. I need some new shirts.

***********************************************************************************************************************

Tell us about the experience of play at your latest creative rendezvous. Or send us that Sacred Community Garden logo you drew up.

To leave a comment on our blog, you can use Disqus.  It is easy to sign up.  You can use Google, Facebook, Twitter or your email.  There is no cost.  Just put in your name and email address and create a password.  Then confirm your account with the email they send you.  Then you can use Disqus to comment on the blog.  We would love to hear your thoughts.