The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Leaning Into God's New Creation (Horizons in Religious Education)

Believers and teachers of faith regularly know the in-breaking of Gods Spirit in their midst when revelatory experiencing unexpectedly shifts habits of thinking feeling and doing toward more life-giving ways of being and becoming. When the moment is right Spirit breathes new life into dry bones. Though religious educators have much practical wisdom about facilitating learning that is creative and transformative sharper concepts cases and theory can help them do it more critically and assist learners to practice openness to wonder surprise and authenticity. The Grace of Playing explains how we can create the conditions for revelatory experiencing by understanding it in light of playing. The notion of playing as if can be powerfully reclaimed from ecclesial ambivalence casual speech and commercial interests that often lead playing to be associated with childishness frivolity or entertainment. This book theorizes adults playing for the sake of faith drawing on D. W. Winnicotts psychoanalytic theory a revision of Jurgen Moltmanns theology of play biblical texts medieval devotional practices as well as art and aesthetics that help local faith communities engage in theological reflection. Communal forms of playing in/at Gods new creation provide insights into pedagogies in which learners are creating and are created anew. Courtney Gotos book The Grace of Playing is a major breakthrough heralding the place of play in education and especially in educating religiously. It opens us to a source of grace that heretofore has been generally neglected. Ours is surely a time that needs to embrace and celebrate the gift of play--and it is free (gratia). --Thomas Groome Professor of Theology and Religious Education Boston College; Director of Boston Colleges Center for the Church in the 21st Century; author of Will There Be Faith? The Grace of Playing is an important new book. Drawing on theological psychological and aesthetic discussions of play Goto re-envisions playing as revelatory experience--encounters with divine mystery ourselves and others culminating in new life-giving ways. In this original robust and highly accessible work Goto transforms how we think about imagination grace Spirit and faith in liturgy and religious education and offers a powerful fresh framework for doing practical theology. --Charles R. Foster Professor of Religion and Education emeritus Candler School of Theology Emory University In this book Goto coaxes religious educators to step into the sandbox with theologians psychoanalysts medieval nuns and holy fools Issei Garden Angels and juvenile offenders to show what it takes to teach communities of faith to play with God and one another for loves sake. Be prepared to cast aside facile notions of escapist play for a theoretically sophisticated and existentially hefty introduction to revelatory experiencing. A marvelous aesthetic practical theological playground for contemporary Christian religious education scholarship. --Mai-Anh Le Tran Associate Professor of Christian Education Eden Theological Seminary Courtney Goto not only invites the reader into gardens of graceful action and reflection she also encourages him/her to engage in the risky enterprise of doing theology in a truly interdisciplinary way. In this book the performance of religious education as play produces new performative theologies. This is practical theology at its best! --Bert Roebben Dortmund University Courtney T. Goto is Assistant Professor of Religious Education at the Boston University School of Theology and a codirector of the Center for Practical Theology. Her research interests include aesthetic teaching and learning; imagination creativity and embodied knowing in adult religious education; and intersections of power privilege and culture in practical theology. Goto is a third-generation Japanese American United Methodist.