| Editor's Note: Issue 14 |
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“Reclaiming an appropriate practice of play is one of the challenges
of adulthood . . . playfulness is the fruit of the Spirit, since as a quality
of being and a habit of mind and speech, it is inseparable from so many
other virtues—receptivity, openness of heart, trust, confidence, grace, even love.”
—Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies It’s also the reason we selected “Earnest Jest” as the theme for Ruminate’s 13th issue, which is a kind of collaborative experiment in earnestly gathering admiration for jest. It pauses and looks closer, asking questions like “What if I were a Lodgepole pine?” and considers the architecture of humor, the weight of a heavy anti-superhero. It echoes with Scott Kolbo’s statement that “We learn something important when we laugh at ourselves” (page 22), showing us that there are many different ways to laugh just as there are many different practices of play. For Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck it is musing over the impractical act of writing fictional letters to her kids at summer camp, and for David Holper it is the news that a 50-year-old man has less than 1500 weekends left in his life. For other contributors it is playing with the very form and structure of their work—the characterization, the words, the narrative. Nels Hanson’s “Montana Freefall” practically dumps the reader into the story mid-sentence, playing with our expectations for authorial guidance, back-story, and set-up. And Amber Folland reminds us in “The End of a Long Season” that humor never cancels out sorrow or grief, but that life’s quirks present themselves everywhere and that beauty can come from a pitcher’s mound. All of these contributors, and indeed, our own human experiences, invite us to engage in jest—in writing a poem, dreaming up a character, or practicing laughter. A practice, it just so happens, that I am impatiently trying to teach my seven-month-old daughter, who has yet to find her laugh. I have a feeling she is secretly just getting a kick out of watching her mother act like a big goof. Oh well. At least I’m getting in some good practice. As my daughter is teaching me, if we accept this invitation and do engage in earnest jest and thoughtful play, then we are granted a perspective that is humble with its childlike openness and can reveal the colors, bumps, and contours of the life that He gives us. What a gift! May this joy be real for you this winter and may you find a time for jest that truly is the fruit of the Spirit. Much peace and grace, Brianna Van Dyke |
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