Possibility is a Strange New Land: What is Play's Value?

What does Play do?

A chance to embody radically new perspectives.

An opportunity to embrace failure and experimentation.

A vehicle to explore the edges-places of our discomfort and illuminate shadows.

A reclamation of the energy of desire in service of our liberation.

Gives a big F-off to culture that says that play is…lazy, self-indulgent and unproductive.

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In last month’s letter, we looked at the idea of 'third space' as a liberatory place we can cc-create and inhabit, or that emerges when we are in engaged in virtual and in-person place-making.  We need such spaces of resistance and transformation. [You can revisit that last letter on the Rooted Blog]

We also shared about why 'play' is a crucial element of liberatory world-building within and around and between us.

Today, we want to share some thoughts on the implications of ritualizing playful disruption for challenging the taken-for-granted and opening us up to our birthright creative life energy and flow.

If you ritualize ways to return to an inquiry, such as, “should I keep doing this just because it’s how I’ve always done it?" or, "What's here now?” then what kind of generative imaginative ways forward and through might you discover?

How can ritual help us find our way to into a liberatory flow of creativity and imagination?

Many cultural traditions use the scaffolding of ritual with which to engage with our ever changing world(s).

Think about religious traditions, holidays, and ways of celebrating seasonal shifts, or phases of the moon, depending on where you live. Even the meals you make and the manner in which you prepare them depending on the time of day and year.

Rituals invite us into a different mindset depending on the moment, and they offer us a reminder to embrace what matters, disrupt a familiar rhythm other elements, and to notice where we are now.

On our co-dreaming team, we have felt a disparity between the kind of life-affirming personal and communal rituals that we crave, and the reality of living within a culture that in implicit and explicit ways, places value on things such as...

hyper-individualism,

urgency and speed,

achieving personal wealth and status,

competition with winners and losers,

grinding and achieving,

always moving forward (instead of perhaps, sideways? upside down? inside out?)

Our interest has been in creating a space where the how-we’ve-always-done-it question is ritualized inside portals of imaginative inquiry and PLAY.

We've been working long and (joyfully!) toward our next focus this year in Rooted. It's called: Through the Kaleidoscope - a 9 month journey of Play Creativity, and Imagining Futures.

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Today, we’re inviting you to ritualize this inquiry with others, by joining us one Sunday a month over the course of a 9-month workshop series.

In this course-space, we will....

• notice how we’re already receiving playful nourishment in our personal and collective lives, and delight in it!
• Be open to where play might help us shift & move stagnant energies in our personal, creative, and collective lives.
• Expand our experiential horizons so that we may become available to new ideas, perspectives, and ways of being that could shift our personal and collective futures.

These Sunday Sessions are what we call our 'Anchor (playshops)' within Rooted’s collective programming. We come together in shared virtual space and time to expand our lenses. There are some TRULY INCREDIBLE people joining us for this series, if you wanna take a peak).

This series will be intentional about weaving virtual and in-person un/learning around play, creativity and imagination with support and guidance along the way. If you cannot make a live session, there will be recordings and other asynchronous activities to engage.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Whether you choose to join the program or not, we will be sending a long a short email series devoted to investigating the role of PLAY and IMAGINATION in your own life. So you can expect to receive that in your inbox this month.