A reflection from the Infinitely Precious podcast
Hello, beloved.
For months now, we’ve been walking together through what I call the ripening dimensions of life — the ways we’re always moving toward greater ripeness, or sometimes away from it, in any given moment. (A little Aramaic trivia for you: the root of the word “good,” in the language Jesus spoke, is ripe. So when I talk about ripening, I’m really talking about becoming more fully what we already are.)
I started with four of these dimensions. Then six. Then eight. I figured that was the whole list.
I was wrong.
A few months ago, sitting quietly, I realized there was a ninth dimension I’d missed entirely: ripening playfulness.
There Ought to Be Room for Wonder
I think there ought to be room in our lives — no, I’ll say it stronger than that — I think it’s a core principle of a well-lived life that we make room for wonder, for awe, for joy, for doing something simply because we enjoy doing it.
Yesterday afternoon, my family played a board game together after lunch. Nothing profound. Just an adventure game where you genuinely can’t tell who’s going to win until the very end. We laughed. We learned things along the way. It wasn’t intensely competitive, and it didn’t need to be. It was just fun.
And I think that matters more than we usually give it credit for.
There’s room to stop and delight in the call of a turtle dove outside your window. To watch a hawk circle overhead. To sit on a beach and watch the waves roll in and catch — just for a second — how astonishing it is that this ordinary, everyday thing is also so beautiful.
I had one of those moments recently, riding home as my daughter drove us back from a long trip to see family. A storm sat off to the west as the sun was setting, and in one small dark patch of sky there was just this glow — a bright, burnt orange aura right on the horizon as we crossed the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. It touched something deep in me. I couldn’t have told you why. It just did.
We Take Ourselves Too Seriously
Sometimes we take ourselves — and our theology, and our whole way of looking at the world — very seriously. Sometimes too seriously.
Ripening playfulness is an invitation to step back and remember that this is one dimension among the nine I’ve named (and however many more you might name for yourself — six, sixteen, it doesn’t matter) that simply asks us to be joyful. When we see a bird in flight. When we hear a good song. When we’re chatting with a friend. When we’re walking the grocery store aisle and stumble across something we didn’t even know existed.
Life can be serious. It is serious, a lot of the time — there’s death, there’s violence, there are things that weigh heavily on all of us, and I don’t want to minimize any of that for a second.
But finding joy, playfulness, and pleasant moments in the midst of that seriousness isn’t a distraction from a spiritual life. It’s a gift. A special one.
And honestly? I think the divine one who inhabits my life — and yours, and the whole universe, while somehow also being more than that universe — delights in playfulness too. Just look at what evolution handed us: an almost absurd diversity of color and shape and size and movement, galaxies beyond our imagining. That doesn’t read to me like the work of something purely serious. That reads like play.
I feel it most clearly with children. Talking with them, playing with them, reading to them, taking walks with them. Even now, I get a small taste of that delight when I remember walking with my own kids, or my nieces and nephews, out on the sidewalk or through an open field, watching the world catch their attention in ways it had stopped catching mine.
Where is the wonderment in your life right now? Is it ripening? Is the plain joy of being alive — of taking this breath — part of your day?
A Practice: Two Questions
So here’s what I want to invite you to try, at least to begin with. At the end of each day, ask yourself:
Where did I find delight today?
And whether or not you did, ask a second question:
Where did I miss the delight that was right in front of my face?
That first blossom of spring. That first bite of an apple, fresh off the tree. Pineapple. Peanut butter. Whatever it is for you. Where did you get so caught up in rushing to the next thing that you missed the delight of the first bite of your sandwich, or the first sip of your coffee — or tea, or iced tea, or Coke, whatever it may have been?
Where did you miss the delight because you were already out of the moment?
If you’ve been with me through this whole series, you’ll hear how this connects to what came before. Ripening attention — being present to the moment — is often what makes noticing delight possible in the first place. Ripening intention, entering your day looking for the moments that might offer you delight, being awake to it. Ripening release, letting go of whatever keeps you from being present enough to notice the simple pleasures in front of you. They’re all threaded together.
And maybe, as you ask those two questions each evening, you can also start looking for playfulness on the way in — a bit of gentle teasing with a friend that makes them smile, a moment that makes you giggle because you shared something small and delightful together. That’s so often the thing we miss in life.
Closing
I hope you find some playfulness this week. And not just this week — every week going forward. May you ripen in playfulness. I’m going to try to do the same: to stay awake enough to catch a taste of delight as it comes to me.
This closes out the nine-part Ripening Series. Next week, we pick up something new.
Remember — delight or not, whether you’re experiencing it right now or only wishing you could — you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
This post is adapted from the Infinitely Precious podcast episode “Ripening Playfulness.” Listen on [Spotify / Apple Podcasts / infinitelyprecious.org].
Infinitely Precious 