One of our play correspondants has found himself in one of the least playful places in the world at the moment - Jerusalem. Bernie DeKoven, guru of the New Games movement in the seventies and an indefatigable innovator with social games, has been giving "laughter" seminars to a range of Israeli teachers and therapists (including some excellent cross-partisan organisations like Hand In Hand).
As for the Gaza thing: if you're Jewish or Palestinian, it was a violence that was done to you, even if the violence was not your doing - a deep, shocking, deafening violence that was so thunderous you can't hear much of anything else - your family, maybe, your neighbors, your friends. You certainly can't hear anything that comes from the "other side." Not love, not grief, not caring, not explanation, not apology, not words of peace. And most definitely not play.
Play is one of those words that can only be spoken in a "still, small voice," that in times like these can be only be heard over the din of war by children and puppies. The rest of us have to wait for quiet, inside and out. Even clowns can't make themselves loud enough. Even people like the Israeli group called "Pharsh - the official military of the silly revolution" (thanks for the link, Pat Kane), or the "laughter therapists" you nevertheless might find doing their work in the bomb sheters in S'deroth; can't be silly enough to change anything - not right now...
...Teaching laughter, fun, games, play - it's a funny kind of work, a funny kind of gift we have to bring. Not anything that you might call a "cause." Not anything that you might think of as revolutionary. And yet, something having very much to do with peace, after all.
