Rituals as Creative Play for Adults + Playful Ritual Objects
Monday, June 15, 2009 at 7:38PM
Mike Karlesky in Play and Adults, Toys & Play Objects

Erich Vieth makes some fascinating observations in his post Religious rituals as creative play for adults?:

Though the growing children eventually put their stuffed animals away, these animals “teach” the children symbolic meaning.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see religious and governmental rituals as extensions of the creative play of childhood. The objects of a ritual can be seen as a “transitional objects” that bridge the gap between often times disturbing real-life experiences and one’s hopes and fantasies.

Vieth brings forward to adult life author Susan Linn’s point that childhood play things embody comfort and create tangible connection to ideas and concepts (i.e. a blankie equals safety). Vieth argues that the objects of our adult rituals share similarities to childhood play things in that they embody concepts and symbolism and provide comfort in a tangible form.

Vieth’s comments got my wheels spinning. Objects are important in and to ritual. Think about it. We build entire museums around ritual objects. What would happen if we made ritual objects smart? Built their interactions to capture and enhance the ritual moment? We would be creating, in effect, adult toys (not those adult toys) — but objects with which we “play” to connect our physical experience with the symbolic, sentimental, emotional, or conceptual.

Forms a playful ritual object might take:


Update on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 10:15PM by Registered CommenterMike Karlesky

This wedding bouquet is an interesting take on what I’m proposing. It’s meant to interact with the bride at the time of the ritual and have relevance only then while all my examples are intended to carry the moment of the ritual forward.

Article originally appeared on Note the Smile (http://notethesmile.org/).
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