Mr. Magorium hires Henry Weston, an accountant, to adjust the accounts of the Emporium.

Henry is a very serious and humorless man. Henry is working behind a window, intent on his work, when Eric approaches the window with a request, written on a piece of paper, held up to the window for Henry to see.
Do you want to play checkers? It reads.
I did when I was a kid. Henry writes his response.
(Eric) Want to play?
(Henry) When I quite working.
(Eric) How about after work?
(Henry) I never quit working.

This is not just a story about work. (I have friends, including Sabbath Moment friends, who have lost jobs and would be grateful for the opportunity to work.) This isn't about jobs either. It is a story about how our fixation--or busyness or distractions or work--will absorb us. And in the end, we see our value tied only to this burden of busyness. (It helps if we convince ourselves, "we are busy with matters of consequence.")

This is a story about the way we perceive our identity. And ultimately, about how we perceive what is important.

Trapped (like Henry), we lose our sense of play.
And we lose our sense of rest and restoration.
And we lose our sense of wonder.

Which means that this is also a story about the invitation to wake up.

The planet needs people who wake up. So... what if waking up begins with wonder? What is waking up begins with gladness, curiosity, gooseflesh, delight?

Without wonder we approach life as a self-help project. Eugene Peterson reminds us, "We (only) employ techniques; we analyze gifts and penalties; we set goals and assess progress. Spiritual formation is reduced to cosmetics."    

I have a full plate right now. Perhaps you can relate? And when the treadmill beckons, the inner-Henry comes out.
It hit me the other day, standing at the Self-Help table in a Barnes and Noble. (I'll 'fess up. I needed to peek at what these books are promising in order to know what I need to imitate.)
The first book I picked up got my attention. It boasted, "This is the one book we've all been waiting for!" (With a promise like that I opened it just to see if it included a tube of some mind-boggling anti-aging cream, or a least a sexy photo.)
The other books offered instruction, assured to "transform" my life.
One, in nine ways.
Another, in nine days.
Still another, in nine steps.
Which made me wonder what ever happened to seven?
Until I saw a book that offered results in three steps.
And then I saw the book that told me I couldn't "just live" my life, I needed to "overcome" my life.
That was enough to make me dizzy, so I left the store without buying a single book. And sat in a Starbucks sipping an Americano.

And I decided that Eric had the right idea: Today I don't need to overcome. Today I need to play.

So. Do you want to play checkers?   

Play = an openness to a part of me that has been closed or discounted.

Which means that play is not so much an activity, as a suspending of control. Or as Henri Nouwen taught us, "Love is not something you have. Love is something that has you. You do not have the wind, the stars, and the rain. You don't possess these things; you surrender to them. And surrender occurs when you are aware of your illusions, when you are aware of your addictions, when you are aware of your desire and fears."

It is the same with play.

Here's the question for every one of us: How do we recapture that child in each of us; that child still smitten with wonder?

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives... All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso

Remember the scene in The Sound of Music, when Frau Schmidt delivers bolts of fabric material to Maria (that the Captain had ordered from town to make new dresses)? When Maira asks for more material to make play clothes for the children, Frau Schmidt curtly lectures, "The von Trapp children don't play. They march."

Here's the deal:

Where is the play in your life?
Where is the rest?
Where is the wonder?

Where is the gladness?

Where is the gooseflesh?

It is Advent Season, and I see a connection to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. Advent is about "awakened waiting," which involves being roused, being shaken up. Eric invited Henry to an awakening.

In December 1944, 37-year-old Father Alfred Delp, S.J., was imprisoned in Tegel Prison in Berlin, having been arrested months earlier on suspicion of being part of the Resistance movement against the Nazis. While in prison, he wrote a series of Advent and Christmas reflections during what would be the last Advent of his earthly life. In an astounding spirit of hope, he writes: "The kind of awakening that literally shocks a person's whole being is part and parcel of the Advent idea. It is precisely in the shock of rousing... that a person finds the golden thread which binds earth to heaven and gives the benighted some inkling of the fullness it is capable of realizing and is called upon to realize." (Fr. Gregory Schenden)

Yes. And I see this awakening to wonder--this inkling of the fullness--as a seed coming to life when given the right conditions.

I have been fortunate to have a week of play. On Florida's west coast, in a place with warm water, warm air and warm sun--not a bad trifecta. And medicine for any blue mood that can well up the week of one's 60th birthday. My friends--some of them for more than 30 years--gather. We tell stories, some tall and not remotely connected to reality, but somehow still very true, some laugh-from-the-gut funny, and some reminders of how we find ourselves at this place in our lives because of an invitation to "play checkers," an invitation to be open to wonder.

I'm tempted to give in to the second guessing that comes with birthdays, but it helps to gather with friends (we are blessed with musicians in our midst) at night to sip birthday Scotch and sing John Denver, Peter Paul and Mary and Jim Croce, into the very late hours.

As Kurt Vonnegut's uncle used to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"