My heart has been heavy since the recent death of my
brother. Perhaps that is why I have especially treasured times of joy and laughter
these past few weeks. Riley, one of our grandsons, recently decided to play
basketball, a different organized sport in our family, though I have great
memories of my sons playing basketball for hours on our driveway while they
were growing up. My husband and I went to watch one of Riley’s basketball games.
We sat against the wall along the edge of the basketball court as the two teams
of 8 year-olds played. The noise was deafening, especially since there was another
game on the adjacent court. When the whistle and buzzer sounded there, the players
on our side of the divider froze. It was hard to tell where the sound came
from. The players had a great time racing up and down the court and trying to
hit the basket. Some of them already showed talent. No one cared much about the
score. The rules are modified for the young players, so I found myself confused
on occasion as I tried to remember the few rules of basketball I learned years
ago as a member of the pep squad at my high school. Despite the deafening din
of pounding feet and bouncing balls and the noise of the whistles and buzzers,
it was great fun.
A week after our grandson’s basketball game, my husband and
I sat on the edge of the basketball court at Baylor University to watch a different
kind of basketball. He had surprised me with tickets to the Harlem
Globetrotters, and not just any tickets, but courtside seats. He hoped they
would draw me out onto the floor and into their crazy antics. I fell in love
with the Harlem Globetrotters as a little girl, but had never seen them in
person. Ticking this item off my bucket list took a long time, but it was worth
the wait. I don’t remember when I last laughed that hard. For a time, I forgot
my sadness as I laughed along with the rest of the crowd at the silliness on
the court, from a ball filled with helium that floated into the rafters, to one
of the players grabbing a child from the sidelines to use as a shield to
protect himself from a bigger player, to my favorite part: an instant replay acted
out in slow motion, using a beach ball instead of a basketball, narrated by the
Big Easy, the tallest player on the court. I hated to see the game end.
As we headed home, I contemplated the joy of our time at the
game, and how much lighter my heart felt. I thought what fun we could have
taking our grandkids to a Harlem Globetrotters game, but then thought perhaps
Riley should learn the rules a bit better first, since the Globetrotters broke
every rule of basketball I knew, and some I didn’t, from one coach stalking
into the middle of the court with his own rulebook to deride the referee, to
the player who pulled himself up to stand on one of the goals so a teammate
could throw him the ball, which he promptly dropped in the basket. A different
kind of joy than watching 8 year-olds learn basketball, a joy punctuated with laughter,
made all the more poignant because of the sadness of the last few weeks. I’ve
been teaching an adult Sunday school class at my church. The most recent lesson
was on prayer. One of the theologians in the study talked about joyful play as
a kind of prayer. I like that image. To be truly joyful is to be in God’s
presence, which is the purpose of prayer after all. There’s something holy about
pure, unbounded, joy. God designed us for love and for joy. When we are filled
with joy, we are near to the heart of God.
Grace and Peace,
Donna
