To Play Like a Child Again? Reflections from Madeleine L’Engle
I am in a season of anticipation: trying to rest, learning to listen, and waiting on God. Right now I’m feeling like a mass of dots aching to be connected by a smarter crayon.
I’ll be honest. I’ve been taking myself way too seriously lately.
In response, last night I grabbed a worn copy of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Circle of Quiet, the first of her Crosswicks Journal series. I’d bought it at the public library sale for 50 cents a few months ago. I have sweet memories of reading Miss Madeleine’s A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door as a kid.
(If you didn’t read Madeleine’s A Wrinkle in Time you owe it to yourself to slip back into childhood and read the thing. Last night I was reminded just how carefully she puts words together.)
I smiled myself to sleep as I read:
“The concentration of a small child at play is analagous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing…His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself…
…When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child this is: art: prayer: love.” -A Circle of Quiet, chapter 1
What have you done recently (or need to do…) that’s helped you play like a child again?
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