Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 26, No. 2, Summer 1987
Editorial
Variations on an Old Theme Many years ago in Boston there was a doctor at the Massachusetts General Hospital whose name was Richard Cabot. He was a m em ber of the famous Boston family of whom it was said, "The Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God." But this Dr. Cabot was different. As a physician, he knew a lot about illness and pain and healing. He also believed t h a t an individual's personal faith and psychological attitude could make a considerable difference in his or her health. For this reason he urged t hat hospitals and doctors not t r e a t the h u m a n body like a machine, but t h a t doctors and others, including ministers, be trained in how to minister to the sick and to the whole person, th at entity t ha t has recently been rediscovered in m any new heal t h agencies and cults. He wrote a book t hat became the foundation of the programs for clinical-pastoral training of ministers t h a t began at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-1930s. It was called T,~e Az~ of Ministering to the Sick. The co-author with Dr. Cabot was Russell Dicks, the Prot est ant chaplain at the hospital. They offered a course for theological students t h a t involved experience as an orderly on hospital wards, study of pain, suffering, illness, healing, under the guidance of doctors, psychiatrists, and experienced pastors, and a considerable am ount of visiting, case report-writing, discussion based upon one's contact with patients. Nobody t hought much of this kind of thing in theological academic circles. We recall consulting with the Dean of the H a r v a r d Divinity School about our desire to t ake the course. He said he supposed it would not do any harm, so why not try it. We did and have never regretted it. But it was another book by Dr. Cabot t hat provided the theme on which we shall offer some variations now. We have lost our copy of the book but have never forgotten the basic theme. The book is called What Men Live By. (In olden times we generally accepted the use of the word "men" in its generic meaning, to include both male and female.) The essential message was stamped on the cover in a design. There was a cross, with each piece of equal length. At the end of each piece was a single word: Work, Play, Love, Worship. To be healthy, said Dr. Cabot, each person should have in his or her life a reasonable balance of these four activities or relationships. We have never found a better definition of a whole h u m a n being t h a n t h a t one. Central to the concept is a balance among the four elements. Too much or too little of any one can wrench the scheme of things out of coherent form and cause distortion and illness in a person's life. Although each element is related to all the others, each also has a life of its own t h a t must be fostered carefully by t u r n i n g our attention alternately from one part of the scheme to another. The center of the scheme is the person in the fullness of selfhood who holds things together. If this central awareness and control fail, then, as Yeats said:
87
9 1987 Institutes of Religion and Health
88
Journal of Religion and Health
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Looking at one's life objectively, one can see circumstances and occasions when this twisting and deforming of one's concerns made one literally ill and desperately in need of reforming and healing. This is the basic theme. Like all good themes, it is clear, simple, easy to remember, but also capable of numerous variations and complexities which enlarge upon the theme but do not lose it. Like a Bach figure, the theme gets home after a long, complicated journey. Or as T.S. Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding": We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. So let us look at the four elements a g a i n - - w o r k , play, lo~e, w o r s h i p - - a n d see what variations and extensions of meaning are possible. We shall take love first, since it is the pr i m ar y reality. It involves a physical union with an instinctual and, in humans, normally an emotional commitment. Even more important, the primal scene, as Freud calls it, is eventually followed by the primal scream, which is the abrupt, traumatic, painful ejection of an individual from the warm, protected safety of the womb into a world full of new sounds, sights, and surprising realities. Our first feelings of love are those t hat come to the infant when arms hold the body firmly and there is w a r m t h and food at a nourishing breast. T ha t is the way, according to m any psychologists--Eric Ericson, for e x a m p l e - - w e learn to trust. The first experience of love is trust. There is a power there t ha t we can count on, t hat seems to care. Slowly in humans, more rapidly in other animals, the individual learns to assert the independent self, to express needs and wishes, to reach out to the surrounding world. From being cared for, we learn at length the importance of caring, and also how to care ourselves. The m a ny forms of love t hat are essential to a civilized community take their rise from this simple, primal love which is nothing more t h a n acceptance of one's need for care and the trust t h a t it will be present. If accident, indifference, or catastrophe denies a child this basic requirem e n t of life and health, the child is already badly wounded. F o r t u n a t e l y society has learned how to provide substitute forms of natural caring, but without caring the wound cannot be healed even if the child is provided for in an external, formal way. The lack of the primal attitude of trust will influence the person's experience of all the other forms of love t h a t make up the pattern of a useful h u m a n life. If we look at love as the ability to trust and be trusted, these m a n y varied forms take on important meanings. Our culture has centered its attention so much on the romantic, sexual aspects of love between the sexes t h a t it has all but forgotten t h a t these other forms of love exist. One loves one's family, if for no other reason because they are there. "Home," wrote Robert Frost, "is the place where when you have to go there, t hey have to take you in." Or as an acquaintance once grimly remarked, "We can choose our friends, but we have to put up with our relatives." The love t h a t holds families together is
Harry C. Meserve
89
not based on sentiment, although genuine sentiment m ay exist. It is a kind of e a r t h y commitment to other h u m a n beings who, for no particular reason, share common roots and origins with you. But there is also friendship, which is or should be a m a t t e r of choice even though it may be also a m a t t e r of chance. We have presumably countless potential friends in the world whom we shall never meet, people with whom we would feel t hat warmth, m ut ual acceptance, and solid trust t h a t constitute friendship. It is just as well t hat we do not meet t h e m all, for the building of a friendship is not a swift and superficial matter. It takes a long time and much attention to find, nourish, and keep friends. And life is short. Romantic love is a reality, too, and no life can be complete unless it has or has had a relationship so deep, so vulnerable, so important the world really seems to t u r n around it. If one has not been or cannot be wounded by love, one does not know what it is and how strong it can be. There are m a n y other forms of love, less personal, more limited, but still powerful and real: the various communities of which we are p a r t - - t o w n , state, nation, church; and religious, cultural, ethnic ties and systems of m ut ual trust and nourishment. Also within the circle of love come those forms t h a t have to do with the h u m a n mind and spirit: the love of knowledge, of beauty, of justice and compassion, and the love of the earth itself. A Zen m ast er was asked by a curious seeker wh at his idea of God was. The m a s t er replied t h a t he really did not know, except t h a t sometimes when he walked he felt the wind in his face and realized t h a t the air was in him and always around him, but never apparent unless the wind blew in his face. And sometimes, as he walked, he would see the sun's bright light sparkling on the waters and marvel at its brightness. Even though the light was around him all the time, he was not aware until it shone in his eyes. When this realization came to him, he would make the gasho sign and say, " T h a n k you very much." So much for the variety and pervasiveness of t r u s t and love. Who could be whole without it? Freud said there were two essentials to the mature, heal t hy life: Lieben and Arbeiten, to love and to work. Most of us have been brought up in great er or lesser degree in what we call the culture of the work ethic. T hat ethic holds t h a t since work is an essential of life no one can survive without working. This was true of primitive h u m a n beings who lived on a subsistence basis and provided for their own basic needs within the nuclear family. As social units grew larger and more complicated, they became more interdependent. No one family did all t h a t was necessary to provide for its own survival. There was always a significant division of labor. Each person contributed something to the common store of the tribe or the regional group or, at length, the nation. Each drew from the larger group other things essential to survival. The process has now grown to the point where hardly anybody is self-sufficient. We all depend on n u mer o u s others, m a ny of whom we never see or even t hi nk about, for the essentials of life. Our work is no longer like the h u n t i n g or fishing or agricultu r al labor of a single person or small group. Rather, our work is some small contribution to the corporate life of a large and complex community or family of communities. Dr. Cabot's point is, however, still sound. Each of us needs to do something t h a t contributes to our own survival and in some way to the welfare and security of the various communities to which we belong. Int erest i ng cultural changes have t a k e n place in the last century in the ideas of who works and wh at constitutes work. These changes have had their origins in m a n y cases in the slow realization of equality between the sexes. A century ago the
90
Journal of Religion and Health
normal rule was t h a t m en worked while women were "at home" and "kept house." The latter occupations were not regarded as work, because, except in the case of the rich who had hired servants, there was no r e m u n e r a t i o n for the person who worked at home at household chores or the care of the young. These roles have undergone tremendous changes, as we all know. It is no longer unusual for a woman to be the principal wage earner or for a m an to care for children, clean the house, or prepare meals. The test of work has become its usefulness for the common good of the family or the community. The importance of work in the structure of h u m a n health is t h a t the person feels useful because a real contribution is being made to personal survival and group well-being. One of the most frequent complaints of the sick, the old, and the maladjusted of any age or sex is t hat they do not feel needed. There is no place for their work; nobody wants it. The emotional torment of unemployment is not only economic problems, but the deeper fact t hat society does not seem to have any use for the individual's skills and energy even when they are willingly offered. One part of the pursuit of happiness, which along with life and liberty has been declared to be an unalienable right, is the need for each person to be involved in work t h a t makes a difference not only in economic rewards but also in usefulness to the community as a whole. We all t hi nk at times t h a t it would be nice to be among "the idle rich"; but if we were, we would be spending our time as m a ny of t hem do looking for ways in which to be busy, challenged mentally and spiritually, and engaged in useful work, recognized as important to some community in which they are involved. Happy is the person who loves the work he feels required to do. A lot of work in the world is hard, dull, dangerous, and unrecognized in any significant way, either material or spiritual. One thinks of gold miners in South Africa, agricultural mig r a nt labor in the fields in m any countries, countless jobs t h a t are repetitive, demanding in attention and physical skill, but not in thought or creativity. In a mass-production society millions of people work at jobs like t h a t with only meagre financial reward and almost no h u m a n satisfaction. They mak e up the masses of the "oppressed" in any society. We should be constantly seeking ways to dignify and humanize work. It may be an impossible ideal, but certainly some progress can be made in helping more people to find satisfaction in the work t hey have to do. Robert Frost wrote a poem on the subject of work and play. It describes how he was splitting wood one spring day outside his New Hampshire home when two tramps came by on their way to town from the lumber camps. The poet was doing for enjoyment what they had been doing for pay. This caused him to wonder about the relation of work and play, and to give us these lines: But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. Play is work we do for love and not for hire. If the poet had had to split wood for a living, perhaps he would not have enjoyed it so much. Still, we have all known in the course of working moments of fulfillment, total engagement, joy, and a lighthearted sense of doing well something we love to do. These are the
Harry C. Meserve
91
experiences that make life worth living. One of the more serious maladies of our time is a lack of humor, of laughter, of playfulness among the busiest, the most responsible, and the most important people. The New York Times last year published several articles about the plight of those successful entrepreneurs and performers in business, politics, sports, and entertainment who work so hard they have no time for tasting and enjoying the h u m a n ends for which work is undertaken. They tend to become workaholics to the point where friends, family, health, the enjoyment of the earth and of h u m a n art and science can no longer find places in their lives. It is not only the proletariat, nor children, nor those who play games for f u n - - i t is the professionals, the grim followers of what William J a m e s called "the bitch goddess success," who have drug problems. The strain is too much for these people, and instead of learning to laugh and play, they drive themselves beyond endurance and seek drugs to assuage the emptiness of being driven. The importance of play is that it helps people to keep their balance, to maintain a perspective, to stand outside their most serious and pressing problems at least enough to accept them and avoid being ridden to distraction by them. We should do all we can to foster and enhance the spirit of laughter and genuine play (not to be confused with the grim big business of professional sports) in ourselves and our communities. A healthy dose of laughter and a sound sense of play will do more to save the h u m a n race than all the heavy moralism of statesmen, pundits, corporate giants, and other movers and shakers. It is worship t h a t holds love, work, and play together and imparts meaning and value to them. In this context we do not confine the idea of worship to the rituals, prayers, and formal occasions of any church or religious body. These things may be more or less important depending on our training, temperament, or stage of growth. Worship is essentially the recognition and affirmation of worth in whatever we are doing or trying to do, in love, in work, and in play. It is love made visible and tangible in h u m a n relations where we have some real power to make a difference. It is work directed to ends t h a t are humane and responsible. It is play t h a t is neither trivial nor corrupted by money, but an action engaged in because there is joy, excellence, and authentic happihess involved for oneself and others. One might say t h a t the life of worship means keeping one's amateur standing so that everything one does is neither for servitude nor exploitation but for the unmercenary love of the excellent and the true. To return, as proper variations should, to the original theme: if we start with love, t h a t is the right place; but love is a mere sentiment, a warm, pleasant, fuzzy feeling unless and until it is put to work. When love is put to work intelligently and patiently, it is no longer just a feeling but a whole world of practical, down-to-earth attitudes and acts requiring persistence, repetition, thoughtful and skillful application, and, above all, faith and hope. People who make their work love in action experience a special and invigorating kind of joy and re-creation, the kind t h a t comes with performing an art, perfecting a craft, or playing a game with excellence and style. None of us is up to this high level of performance all the time, but all of us have experienced it now and then, in some activities and relationships. Those experiences should be recognized as authentic worship, the realization of enduring value and meaning in our own lives and in the world around us. Thus, worship rounds out the cycle by permeating all we try to do and be. "Attain to that, and you carry the center of things about in your mind, and the right place is wherever you are." Harry C. Meserve
Editorial
Variations on an Old Theme Many years ago in Boston there was a doctor at the Massachusetts General Hospital whose name was Richard Cabot. He was a m em ber of the famous Boston family of whom it was said, "The Lowells speak only to Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God." But this Dr. Cabot was different. As a physician, he knew a lot about illness and pain and healing. He also believed t h a t an individual's personal faith and psychological attitude could make a considerable difference in his or her health. For this reason he urged t hat hospitals and doctors not t r e a t the h u m a n body like a machine, but t h a t doctors and others, including ministers, be trained in how to minister to the sick and to the whole person, th at entity t ha t has recently been rediscovered in m any new heal t h agencies and cults. He wrote a book t hat became the foundation of the programs for clinical-pastoral training of ministers t h a t began at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the mid-1930s. It was called T,~e Az~ of Ministering to the Sick. The co-author with Dr. Cabot was Russell Dicks, the Prot est ant chaplain at the hospital. They offered a course for theological students t h a t involved experience as an orderly on hospital wards, study of pain, suffering, illness, healing, under the guidance of doctors, psychiatrists, and experienced pastors, and a considerable am ount of visiting, case report-writing, discussion based upon one's contact with patients. Nobody t hought much of this kind of thing in theological academic circles. We recall consulting with the Dean of the H a r v a r d Divinity School about our desire to t ake the course. He said he supposed it would not do any harm, so why not try it. We did and have never regretted it. But it was another book by Dr. Cabot t hat provided the theme on which we shall offer some variations now. We have lost our copy of the book but have never forgotten the basic theme. The book is called What Men Live By. (In olden times we generally accepted the use of the word "men" in its generic meaning, to include both male and female.) The essential message was stamped on the cover in a design. There was a cross, with each piece of equal length. At the end of each piece was a single word: Work, Play, Love, Worship. To be healthy, said Dr. Cabot, each person should have in his or her life a reasonable balance of these four activities or relationships. We have never found a better definition of a whole h u m a n being t h a n t h a t one. Central to the concept is a balance among the four elements. Too much or too little of any one can wrench the scheme of things out of coherent form and cause distortion and illness in a person's life. Although each element is related to all the others, each also has a life of its own t h a t must be fostered carefully by t u r n i n g our attention alternately from one part of the scheme to another. The center of the scheme is the person in the fullness of selfhood who holds things together. If this central awareness and control fail, then, as Yeats said:
87
9 1987 Institutes of Religion and Health
88
Journal of Religion and Health
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Looking at one's life objectively, one can see circumstances and occasions when this twisting and deforming of one's concerns made one literally ill and desperately in need of reforming and healing. This is the basic theme. Like all good themes, it is clear, simple, easy to remember, but also capable of numerous variations and complexities which enlarge upon the theme but do not lose it. Like a Bach figure, the theme gets home after a long, complicated journey. Or as T.S. Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding": We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. So let us look at the four elements a g a i n - - w o r k , play, lo~e, w o r s h i p - - a n d see what variations and extensions of meaning are possible. We shall take love first, since it is the pr i m ar y reality. It involves a physical union with an instinctual and, in humans, normally an emotional commitment. Even more important, the primal scene, as Freud calls it, is eventually followed by the primal scream, which is the abrupt, traumatic, painful ejection of an individual from the warm, protected safety of the womb into a world full of new sounds, sights, and surprising realities. Our first feelings of love are those t hat come to the infant when arms hold the body firmly and there is w a r m t h and food at a nourishing breast. T ha t is the way, according to m any psychologists--Eric Ericson, for e x a m p l e - - w e learn to trust. The first experience of love is trust. There is a power there t ha t we can count on, t hat seems to care. Slowly in humans, more rapidly in other animals, the individual learns to assert the independent self, to express needs and wishes, to reach out to the surrounding world. From being cared for, we learn at length the importance of caring, and also how to care ourselves. The m a ny forms of love t hat are essential to a civilized community take their rise from this simple, primal love which is nothing more t h a n acceptance of one's need for care and the trust t h a t it will be present. If accident, indifference, or catastrophe denies a child this basic requirem e n t of life and health, the child is already badly wounded. F o r t u n a t e l y society has learned how to provide substitute forms of natural caring, but without caring the wound cannot be healed even if the child is provided for in an external, formal way. The lack of the primal attitude of trust will influence the person's experience of all the other forms of love t h a t make up the pattern of a useful h u m a n life. If we look at love as the ability to trust and be trusted, these m a n y varied forms take on important meanings. Our culture has centered its attention so much on the romantic, sexual aspects of love between the sexes t h a t it has all but forgotten t h a t these other forms of love exist. One loves one's family, if for no other reason because they are there. "Home," wrote Robert Frost, "is the place where when you have to go there, t hey have to take you in." Or as an acquaintance once grimly remarked, "We can choose our friends, but we have to put up with our relatives." The love t h a t holds families together is
Harry C. Meserve
89
not based on sentiment, although genuine sentiment m ay exist. It is a kind of e a r t h y commitment to other h u m a n beings who, for no particular reason, share common roots and origins with you. But there is also friendship, which is or should be a m a t t e r of choice even though it may be also a m a t t e r of chance. We have presumably countless potential friends in the world whom we shall never meet, people with whom we would feel t hat warmth, m ut ual acceptance, and solid trust t h a t constitute friendship. It is just as well t hat we do not meet t h e m all, for the building of a friendship is not a swift and superficial matter. It takes a long time and much attention to find, nourish, and keep friends. And life is short. Romantic love is a reality, too, and no life can be complete unless it has or has had a relationship so deep, so vulnerable, so important the world really seems to t u r n around it. If one has not been or cannot be wounded by love, one does not know what it is and how strong it can be. There are m a n y other forms of love, less personal, more limited, but still powerful and real: the various communities of which we are p a r t - - t o w n , state, nation, church; and religious, cultural, ethnic ties and systems of m ut ual trust and nourishment. Also within the circle of love come those forms t h a t have to do with the h u m a n mind and spirit: the love of knowledge, of beauty, of justice and compassion, and the love of the earth itself. A Zen m ast er was asked by a curious seeker wh at his idea of God was. The m a s t er replied t h a t he really did not know, except t h a t sometimes when he walked he felt the wind in his face and realized t h a t the air was in him and always around him, but never apparent unless the wind blew in his face. And sometimes, as he walked, he would see the sun's bright light sparkling on the waters and marvel at its brightness. Even though the light was around him all the time, he was not aware until it shone in his eyes. When this realization came to him, he would make the gasho sign and say, " T h a n k you very much." So much for the variety and pervasiveness of t r u s t and love. Who could be whole without it? Freud said there were two essentials to the mature, heal t hy life: Lieben and Arbeiten, to love and to work. Most of us have been brought up in great er or lesser degree in what we call the culture of the work ethic. T hat ethic holds t h a t since work is an essential of life no one can survive without working. This was true of primitive h u m a n beings who lived on a subsistence basis and provided for their own basic needs within the nuclear family. As social units grew larger and more complicated, they became more interdependent. No one family did all t h a t was necessary to provide for its own survival. There was always a significant division of labor. Each person contributed something to the common store of the tribe or the regional group or, at length, the nation. Each drew from the larger group other things essential to survival. The process has now grown to the point where hardly anybody is self-sufficient. We all depend on n u mer o u s others, m a ny of whom we never see or even t hi nk about, for the essentials of life. Our work is no longer like the h u n t i n g or fishing or agricultu r al labor of a single person or small group. Rather, our work is some small contribution to the corporate life of a large and complex community or family of communities. Dr. Cabot's point is, however, still sound. Each of us needs to do something t h a t contributes to our own survival and in some way to the welfare and security of the various communities to which we belong. Int erest i ng cultural changes have t a k e n place in the last century in the ideas of who works and wh at constitutes work. These changes have had their origins in m a n y cases in the slow realization of equality between the sexes. A century ago the
90
Journal of Religion and Health
normal rule was t h a t m en worked while women were "at home" and "kept house." The latter occupations were not regarded as work, because, except in the case of the rich who had hired servants, there was no r e m u n e r a t i o n for the person who worked at home at household chores or the care of the young. These roles have undergone tremendous changes, as we all know. It is no longer unusual for a woman to be the principal wage earner or for a m an to care for children, clean the house, or prepare meals. The test of work has become its usefulness for the common good of the family or the community. The importance of work in the structure of h u m a n health is t h a t the person feels useful because a real contribution is being made to personal survival and group well-being. One of the most frequent complaints of the sick, the old, and the maladjusted of any age or sex is t hat they do not feel needed. There is no place for their work; nobody wants it. The emotional torment of unemployment is not only economic problems, but the deeper fact t hat society does not seem to have any use for the individual's skills and energy even when they are willingly offered. One part of the pursuit of happiness, which along with life and liberty has been declared to be an unalienable right, is the need for each person to be involved in work t h a t makes a difference not only in economic rewards but also in usefulness to the community as a whole. We all t hi nk at times t h a t it would be nice to be among "the idle rich"; but if we were, we would be spending our time as m a ny of t hem do looking for ways in which to be busy, challenged mentally and spiritually, and engaged in useful work, recognized as important to some community in which they are involved. Happy is the person who loves the work he feels required to do. A lot of work in the world is hard, dull, dangerous, and unrecognized in any significant way, either material or spiritual. One thinks of gold miners in South Africa, agricultural mig r a nt labor in the fields in m any countries, countless jobs t h a t are repetitive, demanding in attention and physical skill, but not in thought or creativity. In a mass-production society millions of people work at jobs like t h a t with only meagre financial reward and almost no h u m a n satisfaction. They mak e up the masses of the "oppressed" in any society. We should be constantly seeking ways to dignify and humanize work. It may be an impossible ideal, but certainly some progress can be made in helping more people to find satisfaction in the work t hey have to do. Robert Frost wrote a poem on the subject of work and play. It describes how he was splitting wood one spring day outside his New Hampshire home when two tramps came by on their way to town from the lumber camps. The poet was doing for enjoyment what they had been doing for pay. This caused him to wonder about the relation of work and play, and to give us these lines: But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. Play is work we do for love and not for hire. If the poet had had to split wood for a living, perhaps he would not have enjoyed it so much. Still, we have all known in the course of working moments of fulfillment, total engagement, joy, and a lighthearted sense of doing well something we love to do. These are the
Harry C. Meserve
91
experiences that make life worth living. One of the more serious maladies of our time is a lack of humor, of laughter, of playfulness among the busiest, the most responsible, and the most important people. The New York Times last year published several articles about the plight of those successful entrepreneurs and performers in business, politics, sports, and entertainment who work so hard they have no time for tasting and enjoying the h u m a n ends for which work is undertaken. They tend to become workaholics to the point where friends, family, health, the enjoyment of the earth and of h u m a n art and science can no longer find places in their lives. It is not only the proletariat, nor children, nor those who play games for f u n - - i t is the professionals, the grim followers of what William J a m e s called "the bitch goddess success," who have drug problems. The strain is too much for these people, and instead of learning to laugh and play, they drive themselves beyond endurance and seek drugs to assuage the emptiness of being driven. The importance of play is that it helps people to keep their balance, to maintain a perspective, to stand outside their most serious and pressing problems at least enough to accept them and avoid being ridden to distraction by them. We should do all we can to foster and enhance the spirit of laughter and genuine play (not to be confused with the grim big business of professional sports) in ourselves and our communities. A healthy dose of laughter and a sound sense of play will do more to save the h u m a n race than all the heavy moralism of statesmen, pundits, corporate giants, and other movers and shakers. It is worship t h a t holds love, work, and play together and imparts meaning and value to them. In this context we do not confine the idea of worship to the rituals, prayers, and formal occasions of any church or religious body. These things may be more or less important depending on our training, temperament, or stage of growth. Worship is essentially the recognition and affirmation of worth in whatever we are doing or trying to do, in love, in work, and in play. It is love made visible and tangible in h u m a n relations where we have some real power to make a difference. It is work directed to ends t h a t are humane and responsible. It is play t h a t is neither trivial nor corrupted by money, but an action engaged in because there is joy, excellence, and authentic happihess involved for oneself and others. One might say t h a t the life of worship means keeping one's amateur standing so that everything one does is neither for servitude nor exploitation but for the unmercenary love of the excellent and the true. To return, as proper variations should, to the original theme: if we start with love, t h a t is the right place; but love is a mere sentiment, a warm, pleasant, fuzzy feeling unless and until it is put to work. When love is put to work intelligently and patiently, it is no longer just a feeling but a whole world of practical, down-to-earth attitudes and acts requiring persistence, repetition, thoughtful and skillful application, and, above all, faith and hope. People who make their work love in action experience a special and invigorating kind of joy and re-creation, the kind t h a t comes with performing an art, perfecting a craft, or playing a game with excellence and style. None of us is up to this high level of performance all the time, but all of us have experienced it now and then, in some activities and relationships. Those experiences should be recognized as authentic worship, the realization of enduring value and meaning in our own lives and in the world around us. Thus, worship rounds out the cycle by permeating all we try to do and be. "Attain to that, and you carry the center of things about in your mind, and the right place is wherever you are." Harry C. Meserve
