Play comes in all forms. There is nothing you can’t play with. You can play with an idea. That’s what I do here on Facebook, play with an idea, and sometimes I play with it all day. Right now I’m playing with the Idea of play.

How do you play with something? There is a surrender in play, an emptiness, and in that emptiness a freedom from effort. So play is effortless effort. You have to give up the fear thought: What will people think. So in play you can’t see yourself through the eyes of other, an object in their eyes. The truth is that the object in their eyes, is in your mind. So when you see yourself as an object through the eyes of your own mind, you mind is split into conflicting halves. The apple is divided. And you can’t play unless you give yourself to the play, and if you don’t possess yourself—having given half yourself to the eye of another—you don’t have a whole self or mind to throw into the play. Only half goes in, and the other half stands back commenting on and measuring your performance.

Play is also acting a role, acting a playful role. My playful role is that of a Martini Priest who is serving a communion with life’s insights discovered in the backyard. Play is a metaphor. When a child plays with a rock in a sand pile, the rock is not a rock, it’s a car. Disbelief is suspended, and the child believes it’s a car, while at the same time in the back of the mind he knows it’s a rock. 

So I play that the Martini is the Eucharist. In the metaphor, the glass of gin is gin and it is not gin. It is gin/blood of Christ. The Martini is the Holy Grail, in play. For you to get the benefits of the Holy Grail, you have to drink it in play. If you sit back with arms folded and say: that is just as martini. It’s not the holy grail. Well, then it’s just a martini to you. You miss the meaning of the play.