Having fun

It's a warm sunny day, the sky is clear and the noise of the traffic is increasing outside my window.
It's not 'rush hour' - or what passes for rush hour in our small city - it's the time for literally hundreds of  passionate car owners to drive past, honking their horns, and waving their flags  ...

They're having fun - meeting with others from around the country who share their obsession - for that's what it is -  with all things 'Americarna' - the old gas-guzzlers, their style and swank, their classical lines and highly polished exteriors, their beauty and brightness, their growling engine power, and the sheer joy of driving with the air blowing stressors away ... just for a day.

And all around Taranaki maunga [mountain] the country schools' children will gather to wave the flags they've made as the cars drive past - or even stop for them to pat and marvel and wonder at colours and contours ... igniting in little boys and girls dreams and flights of imagination and tales to tell when they get home that night.




Above the honking horns and revving horsepower, others are having fun too.

Five small planes take over the airspace and revel in flight - loops, rolls, close formation flying and then the smoke-tailed displays writing across the empty sky for all who take the time to look up.
                                                                           
There's more risk up there of course but for some that's part of the fun: the stakes are raised, the adrenalin rush expands thinking and acting; nothing can beat the thrill and sheer joy of human being and machine playing in the free expanses of the air.

Having fun.

How free are most of us to take the time to have fun, perhaps to do something that is 'unproductive', even a bit silly?


Chances are that some of you reading this will be a bit like me - we love the idea of having fun but, for a whole host of reasons - personality, upbringing, life events  and current circumstances - somehow collude to hamper our capacity to 'lighten up - they get in the way and we are the poorer for it.

Maybe one of the things Jesus was thinking of when he told his disciples that to enter the kingdom of heaven, they 'must become like a little child ...' [Matthew 18:2-4] was meant as a reminder, even a warning to them and to us, that we need to reclaim our capacity to have fun, to play, to experience the world with the freedom and joy of a beloved child, so our holy creativity - our God-energy - can have its way with us.

Where will you have fun tomorrow?
And the next day?
And the next?