PERMISSION TO PLAY : Community : #p2play

As its summer, all I can think about is the wild, lovely abandon that I felt as a kid when the summer rolled around.

The bright mornings when I’d burst out the front door, freshly scrubbed and breakfast-ed and ready for anything.

The slower, warm afternoons, when my friends and I would lie in a row across the grass, staring up at the clouds and catching a breath.

The late evenings, the sun going down after bedtime, and us lingering in the pinky-aqua-golden sky until our parents’ calls changed from “first call” to the more urgent tone of “you better get yourself in here now!”

I remember drinking Kool-Aid from tiny paper cups with crowns printed on them in my neighbors’ backyard. Shopping trips with my mom or grandma to the grocery store up at the corner, where I was allowed to linger by the ice-cold frozen cases and pick a special treat for dessert. Riding up and down the bike on my bright green bike for hours on end, so happy to do just that.

Leaves flapping in the summer breeze. The ice blue cold of the first swim of the summer. Windows open at night, stars sparkling through. Dark adventurous afternoons at the movies. Summer camp, with its long bus ride and myriad foreign activities such as canoeing and walking trails.

In summer, my “community” was the whole entire world around me. That was the case for all of us kids who lived on Taylor street. We had our own little wild tribe of imaginary characters, which came to life on the driveways and swingsets of every house on the block.

This week, I spent time outside, just *being* out there. Observing, listening, receiving. The world is different, my tribe has long gone from populating Taylor street to exchanging “hello’s” on Facebook, my green bike has turned into a large car with a booster seat in it, I now go outside for a breath of fresh air instead of an entire ten hours, but that community of the world around me still calls to me.

Here’s what Mary Oliver has to say about it all:

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver