:: Aletheia ::
Blogging Craig's mental space...

I've been experiencing a personal renaissance of playing games and doing exercise. It's lots of fun.

Over the last few months I've starting Taekwon-do training again (again), playing golf a couple times a month, and playing basketball with the school's social team. I've been enjoying the normal good feelings that come with exercise as well as the aches and pains from motivating atrophied muscles.

I've also been trying to get through a serious looking volume of German philosophy. I'm hoping to finish by tomorrow night. The author, Gadamer, talks of play as a way of understanding the self.

"This suggests a general characteristic of the nature of play that is reflected in playing: all playing is a being played. The attraction of a game, the fascination it exerts, consists precisely in the fact that the game masters the players...Whoever "tries" is in fact the one who is tried. The real subject of the game is not the player but instead the game itself. What holds the player in its spell, draws him into play, and keeps him there is the game itself." (Gadamer, 106)

I'm enjoying being tried. Unfortunately I feel that I keep losing! This is temporary, but I really like getting lost in act of play. Somehow becoming one with the game...Feeling the ball...Feeling the swing...It's a form of transcendence. In this way, it's a form of worship.

Can I paraphrase 1 Corinthians 10:31 whilst removing it from its theological context? I will anyway:

Therefore, whether you play basketball, golf, or whatever you do, do everything so as to experience the glory of God.

He's sparked some other ideas which I'll write up over the next week or so.

Want to go 9 or 18 holes around a golf course? Skype me or email.

Quote from Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Second Revised ed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1997.

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