Returning to Creative and Spiritual Playfulness

God calls us to recall and return to the experience of being intrinsically connected to the Light through creative play.

Why are we asked to play? Play is about being, seeking, and learning. It is about adventure, risk, and growth. It is about discovery, discernment, and courage. Play is about learning to move with our questions while experiencing curiosity and awe.

Young children experience their greatest developmental growth in their play. Children’s experiences in play coincide with their yearnings, and their spiritual leadings (even before they have the vocabulary to name them). As adults, many of us have learned ourselves right out of play. Through our educational systems, through family, community, and societal expectations, and through our own senses of gathered shame, most adults stop playing.

Why are we asked to creatively play? Adults also tend to stop being as creative as we were when we were very young. As we move away from creativity and playfulness, we stop accessing Spirit in those practices, and often it becomes more challenging to discern what God would have us do. God asks us to return to our center, to our creativity and playfulness, and to practice gentleness with ourselves.

Creative play serves as a magnificent tool for returning to a comfortable and exploratory relationship with God. God asks us to walk back into the emotional spaces where we dropped our creativity, and our experience of pondering and dreaming. God asks us to pick up the last crayon or paintbrush or piece of clay with which we remember making something and continue. Yes, our artwork will resemble a child’s if we last made art in kindergarten. Yes, it will be silly and filled with mistakes and learning. Yes, God will create with us the more we open ourselves to fascination, curiosity, and play.

Join us for a creative, playful, and Spirit-filled evening. Together we will explore, learn, listen, create, reflect, and share in wonder. All are welcome. No particular artistic experience or skills are required.

Please have a cleared space to work, several sheets of paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers and/or pastels, and a favorite pen/pencil. It is helpful to have a computer, tablet, or phone with a webcam/camera for this program.

Leader(s)

Jesse White is a narrative expressionist artist and writer. She is the author of the upcoming Pendle Hill Pamphlet God’s Invitation to Creative Play (PHP #468). Her vocational background is in teaching and in expressive arts therapy. Jesse served as the Arts and Spirituality Coordinator for Pendle Hill from 2013-2020 and currently serves as the Director of Pigeon Arts, a cathartic art-making organization serving the Greater Philadelphia area (please see pigeon-arts.com). She also is pleased to serve as clerk as Frankford Monthly Meeting (PA).

Travel directions to Pendle Hill.