Play, prayer, and the precariousness of life.

Brian and I were recently in KY, and on our way to a climbing area, following Google maps, we ended up on what we thought was a road (because why the hell would Google maps put us on NOT a road!?). It started out a road and turned into, well, less of one. Since our van went up in smoke (RIP), we’ve become the proud owners of a 4x4 Tacoma, and so were able to navigate some drop offs and huge rocks and ditches and puddles, places where the “road” was almost completely washed out or invisible. We didn’t know-know, yet, that the truck could handle this stuff, and there was also a sense that we were driving deeper and deeper into a different kind of unknown, farther and farther away from civilization itself. Dear Jesus, please let us get out of here alive, and let Brian not have a stroke, I found myself praying. We don’t like being away from the familiar and this was way, way, way out of our comfort zone. It was not fun and did not feel playful. 

Then, when we realized we were likely not going to get where we wanted along this via negativa, we needed to turn around. But we had to re-navigate the ditches, huge rocks, puddles, and, what’s the opposite of a drop off? I’m happy to report that the truck fulfilled its purpose. It was made for this and got us out of there without breaking into a million pieces. The two of us were incredibly jostled but not hurt or dead. But just because we got out of there undamaged and alive, doesn’t mean we’re going to want to do it again. We bought this truck so that we’d be okay in case we got into situations like these, we didn’t buy it so that we could go get ourselves into them on purpose. And certainly, we will never again follow Google maps off the beaten, paved actual road in rural KY.

Even in play, there is a real sense of danger and risk. Some would say a thing cannot be defined as play unless there is real risk. Instead of risk, we could say in a more positive light, adventure. When play and life is risky, when we venture out to explore the unknown, we end up feeling precarious, unmoored, unstable. In her book Deep Play, Diane Ackerman looks into the way-back history of the word play, to one of its earlier versions in Indo-European, plegan, which means “to risk, chance, expose oneself to hazard. 

A pledge was integral to the act of play, as was danger (cognate words are peril and plight). Play’s original purpose was to make a pledge to someone by risking one’s life…. At its heart plegan reverberated with ethical or religious values. Soon plegan became associated with performing a sacred act or administering justice, and it often appeared in ceremonies. 

Looking into other languages and cultures, Ackerman writes that “words for play mainly gave rise to words used in love play, battle, or religious rites (feast and festival also trace their etymology to play). What do these activities have in common? They all require daring, risk, concentration, the ability to live with uncertainty, a willingness to follow the rules of the game, and a desire for transcendence.”

She goes on to say that the word precarious is related to the word play, emphasizing that an inherent part of play is risk taking, getting out of your comfort zone, feeling shaky. I looked up the word precarious myself, of course, to see if she was right. The more modern definition of precarious means that some thing is physically shaky and in danger of collapsing. Think, house of cards, rickety stairs, a Pittsburgh bridge. But the physical shakiness of something we assume in the definition now used to be more of a metaphor for the feeling of danger, of risk, of peril, of things being dependent on chance, or someone else's whim. So precarious has its roots in the Latin word prex meaning ‘prayer,’ and later precarius meaning ‘obtained by entreaty.’ 

Ackerman suggests, “The word ‘prayer’ derives from the Latin precarious, and contains the idea of uncertainty and risk. Will the entreaty be answered?” So I think if precarious is related to play at all, it is by way of prayer. Play feels precarious if you're doing it right? Maybe while we play, we pray… for endurance, for our bodies to do what we have trained them for, to win? Prayer, likewise, feels precarious. “Will the entreaty be answered?”

This winter, precarious is how I feel about life too, like everything could change in a second when you're the least prepared for it. Not “normal” change, but sudden unexpected change. I hold precarious in my heart as an almost constant flutter, like it is trying to take flight and leave my body entirely. I felt this intensely when we were off-roading in KY. I’d rather my heart beat steady. I’d rather feel secure and safe. I want stability and comfort, health and well-being to be a given. But it isn’t. The world is in chaos.

I think this feeling keeps us at home more than we'd like— Brian and I. We'd like to travel and climb more, but sometimes, more often than we want to admit, this precariousness talks us out of walking out the door. If life itself feels so precarious, why add to it with climbing and its inherent— even if limited— risks? Let’s just stay home and watch TV, read a book, crochet a bucket hat, climb at the gym. Be safe. It was easier to indulge our wanderlust when the kids were younger, when they lived with us. As long as we were together, there was a feeling of safety, of surety. As long as we were together, it would all be okay, and we could go anywhere. 

Part of why I’m feeling this way is that we aren’t all together anymore. Now that the boys live on their own, things feel so unstable. What if we go far away on a long trip and something happens to them? Not that they are helpless without us, but what if something bad happens to them? What if we can't get back in time? It’s like my own trembling heart is literally walking around outside of my body, who knows where, doing who knows what. My mother-mind is still on high alert. Being worried for my kids' safety is part of my nurturing self. Now that they don’t need me much, I think that part of my brain must be shorting out or something, on overdrive before it shuts down. Will this part of me shut down? Will it be a relief if it does? I kind of want it to. I’d really like to not care so much. It would certainly be easier.

Another part of this anxiousness, if I’m honest, is due to hormonal changes. Much of my life I’ve fought against naming my emotional states and moods as hormonal, to diminish them to mere chemicals. In my youth, I hated it when I was upset about something and my mother would ask me if I was about to get my period. Like, I wouldn't be feeling those feelings if I wasn't? My mother’s question felt very dismissive. However, in my older age— my middle age— I’ve accepted, even happily, that some of what I'm feeling could be hormonal— please, let them be— and that maybe these feelings aren't “true,” “real.” I hope feeling wobbly and shaky is hormonal, and therefore holds the potential of being balanced out. Then these feelings might diminish or stabilize so that I can just, please God, get a good night's sleep. 

But honestly, how can I worry? about sleep, about not having enough fun and joy in my life, about health and well being, about our next road trip? My own experiences with true, daily instability pales in the face of what many people in this country and certainly worldwide, are feeling as true and debilitating and life threatening instability. My life is a playground when I consider the lives of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the stranger, the oppressed, and the persecuted. Their lives and livelihood is precarious in a way I will never understand. They are wholly at the mercy of often not benevolent people in power. 

Right now, I’m specifically thinking about the refugee families who have arrived in the US this month, several in Pittsburgh, who have suddenly been abandoned, cut off from aid. The very agencies who brought them here— legally, with a promise of aid from the federal government— have been hobbled for who knows how long. Ninety days at best. Three months seems like a long time to be here without anything.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to arrive in a country that was at the end of the line, supposed to be your refuge, a safe place to finally rest and make a life for your family. Here is the definition of a refugee adapted from World Relief immigration definitions: “Refugees resettled to the U.S. are identified by the U.S. government abroad, flown to the U.S. and then resettled in partnership with faith-based or non-profit organizations that partner with the U.S. State Department.” They are usually fleeing a place where life is unsustainable, brought here with a promise by the federal government to be cared for. The individuals undergo lengthy, in depth vetting. Some have been in limbo for decades. My understanding is that the recent executive order allowed for refugees already here to remain and be given the promised aid. And yet.

 It’s hard enough for me to imagine how these families could come and settle here when they were being given a helping hand— I volunteered through our church to walk alongside a few families that a local resettlement agency had brought into Pittsburgh. I could never do what these refugees did, what they needed to do to survive. I will likely never have to even consider that. 

Part of the reason they are able to do it is because they have this dazzling image of what life in the US will be like. They have such dreams and are so excited to come here. They are in love with the idea of the freedom they hope to, expect to experience. This country is probably feeling very disappointing and unfriendly and cold to these families about now. Maybe they dreamed too big, wanted too much.

The prayer is that there are a few people, maybe some small private institutions, churches, who will be willing to reach out and give them aid. Will I be willing? Will you? Will this cobbled together help be enough for them to dare have a life? Right now, they really just need groceries. I also pray that their own resilience kicks in and they weather this hopefully temporary hurricane. I do think the legality of the sudden cut-off of promised aid is being questioned, thank God. But wouldn’t you know, it’s way harder to get something started back up than it is to shut it down.

It seems right that the word precarious should have a connection with the word prayer. For me, feeling shaky and uncertain and afraid invokes prayer, in the religious sense. A call for help to a higher power. A lot of people respond this way to uncertainty, hardship, even if they aren’t sure what they believe in. A natural human reflex, perhaps. I pray to God because I believe he is, in some way, my constant companion. Maybe others pray to a better part of themselves or some other god. You say the prayer, and then you wonder, Will the entreaty be answered? Maybe you wonder, Did anyone even hear me? 

When I pray, I believe the entreaty will be answered, but when and how are really the questions that remain. It often isn’t the answer I expect or want: I have prayed for the healing of a dying nephew, and the answer ended up a heavy but gentle, No. And sometimes it’s right on the money: I have also prayed for the life of my own son after a traumatic head injury when he was three, and the answer was, after a seemingly long, silent wait, Of course. There is no way to reconcile the two, and so I chalk it up to mystery. It’s a cop out that I’m totally fine with.

That the words play and pray could be related is the icing on the cake for me. Both play and prayer pull us a little bit out of the present now, into the spiritual realm. I think that’s the transcendence Ackerman writes about. There, maybe we come into contact with our better selves, our truer selves. Maybe in both we can become more holy, or in closer contact with the holy. Prayer is an automatic part of this game of life that we play. The game of life is risky. We are players with no control over the game.  All we can do is submit to the rules, though we don’t get to make them. We ask for help, for a clue, for a map. Part of our life is about figuring out what the rules actually are. It’s a lot like that road Brian and I mistakenly took in KY— the Road Less Traveled, indeed— and you just make your way along it the best you can with the tools you’ve been given— like a 4x4 and an old flip phone that gets really poor reception in the best of circumstances, but that says No Service a good bit of the time.

Somehow, very, very loosely, the following quote seems to go along with this rambling, precarious essay. Indulge me because it’s a good one. Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: 

There is not a guarantee in the world. Oh your needs are guaranteed, your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the most stringent of warranties, in the plainest truest words: knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you." … Your needs are all met. But not as the world giveth. You see the needs of your own spirit met whenever you have asked, and you have learned that the outrageous guarantee holds. You see the creatures die, and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you're gone. You have finally understood you are dealing with a maniac.

I’ll end this here on more of a feeling than any kind of answer or conclusion. Writing has given me a chance to play around with ideas that have been wobbling about my brain, somewhat chaotically. Pray, I hope you don’t mind.