Catholic scholar Johan Huizinga, in his classic Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, said play is \u201ca free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being \u2018not serious,\u2019 but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.\u201d Michael Novak, in The Joy of Sports, agrees: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Aquinas concluded, as one scholar summed it up: \u201cGod 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\u2019s playfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whenever we take a Sabbath\u2014or whenever we find time to play\u2014we remind ourselves from where we\u2019ve come and to where we\u2019re going. We\u2019re living into our purpose and destiny. We\u2019re practicing for eternity. This is why Peter L. Berger, in his book A Rumor of Angels, says that play is a \u201csignal of transcendence.\u201d<\/p>\n