Catholic scholar Johan Huizinga, in his classic Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, said play is “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.” Michael Novak, in The Joy of Sports, agrees: “The first free act of the human is to assign limits within which freedom can be at play. Play is not tied to necessity, except to the necessity of the human spirit to exercise its freedom, to enjoy something that is not practical, or productive, or required for gaining food or shelter.”
Thomas Aquinas concluded, as one scholar summed it up: “God plays. God creates playing. And man should play if he is to live as humanly as possible and to know reality, since it is created by God’s playfulness.”
Whenever we take a Sabbath—or whenever we find time to play—we remind ourselves from where we’ve come and to where we’re going. We’re living into our purpose and destiny. We’re practicing for eternity. This is why Peter L. Berger, in his book A Rumor of Angels, says that play is a “signal of transcendence.”