recreation

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

143:3.2“Now you should go to each of your eleven breth­ren and talk with him pri­vately, say­ing: ‘The Mas­ter de­sires that we go apart with him for a sea­son to rest and re­lax. Since we all have re­cently ex­pe­ri­enced much vex­a­tion of spirit and stress of mind, I sug­gest that no men­tion be made of our tri­als and trou­bles while on this hol­i­day. Can I de­pend upon you to co-op­er­ate with me in this mat­ter?’ In this way pri­vately and per­son­ally ap­proach each of your breth­ren.” And An­drew did as the Mas­ter had in­structed him.

143:3.3This was a mar­velous oc­ca­sion in the ex­pe­ri­ence of each of them; they never for­got the day go­ing up the moun­tain. Through­out the en­tire trip hardly a word was said about their trou­bles. Upon reach­ing the top of the moun­tain, Je­sus seated them about him while he said: “My breth­ren, you must all learn the value of rest and the ef­fi­cacy of re­lax­ation. You must re­al­ize that the best method of solv­ing some en­tan­gled prob­lems is to for­sake them for a time. Then when you go back fresh from your rest or wor­ship, you are able to at­tack your trou­bles with a clearer head and a stead­ier hand, not to men­tion a more res­o­lute heart. Again, many times your prob­lem is found to have shrunk in size and pro­por­tions while you have been rest­ing your mind and body.”

143:3.4The next day Je­sus as­signed to each of the twelve a topic for dis­cus­sion. The whole day was de­voted to rem­i­nis­cences and to talk­ing over mat­ters not re­lated to their re­li­gious work. They were mo­men­tar­ily shocked when Je­sus even ne­glected to give thanks—ver­bally—when he broke bread for their noon­tide lunch. This was the first time they had ever ob­served him to ne­glect such for­mal­i­ties.

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

143:3.6The third day when they started down the moun­tain and back to their camp, a great change had come over them. They had made the im­por­tant dis­cov­ery that many hu­man per­plex­i­ties are in re­al­ity nonex­is­tent, that many press­ing trou­bles are the cre­ations of ex­ag­ger­ated fear and the off­spring of aug­mented ap­pre­hen­sion. They had learned that all such per­plex­i­ties are best han­dled by be­ing for­saken; by go­ing off they had left such prob­lems to solve them­selves.

143:3.7Their re­turn from this hol­i­day marked the be­gin­ning of a pe­riod of greatly im­proved re­la­tions with the fol­low­ers of John. Many of the twelve re­ally gave way to mirth when they noted the changed state of ev­ery­body’s mind and ob­served the free­dom from ner­vous ir­ri­tabil­ity which had come to them as a re­sult of their three days’ va­ca­tion from the rou­tine du­ties of life. There is al­ways dan­ger that mo­not­ony of hu­man con­tact will greatly mul­ti­ply per­plex­i­ties and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties.

143:3.8Not many of the gen­tiles in the two Greek cities of Archelais and Phasaelis be­lieved in the gospel, but the twelve apos­tles gained a valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence in this their first ex­ten­sive work with ex­clu­sively gen­tile pop­u­la­tions. On a Mon­day morn­ing, about the mid­dle of the month, Je­sus said to An­drew: “We go into Samaria.” And they set out at once for the city of Sy­char, near Ja­cob’s well.

70:1.136. Recre­ation—war was looked upon as recre­ation by the young men of these early times. If no good and suf­fi­cient pre­text for war arose, when peace be­came op­pres­sive, neigh­bor­ing tribes were ac­cus­tomed to go out in semifriendly com­bat to en­gage in a foray as a hol­i­day, to en­joy a sham bat­tle.

48:4.19While the hu­mor of Uran­tia is ex­ceed­ingly crude and most inartis­tic, it does serve a valu­able pur­pose both as a health in­sur­ance and as a lib­er­a­tor of emo­tional pres­sure, thus pre­vent­ing in­ju­ri­ous ner­vous ten­sion and over­se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion. Hu­mor and play—re­lax­ation—are never re­ac­tions of pro­gres­sive ex­er­tion; al­ways are they the echoes of a back­ward glance, a rem­i­nis­cence of the past. Even on Uran­tia and as you now are, you al­ways find it re­ju­ve­nat­ing when for a short time you can sus­pend the ex­er­tions of the newer and higher in­tel­lec­tual ef­forts and re­vert to the more sim­ple en­gage­ments of your an­ces­tors.

• introduced idea of wholesome r.

124:1.13Je­sus con­tin­ued to grow phys­i­cally, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, so­cially, and spir­i­tu­ally. His trips away from home did much to give him a bet­ter and more gen­er­ous un­der­stand­ing of his own fam­ily, and by this time even his par­ents were be­gin­ning to learn from him as well as to teach him. Je­sus was an orig­i­nal thinker and a skill­ful teacher, even in his youth. He was in con­stant col­li­sion with the so-called “oral law,” but he al­ways sought to adapt him­self to the prac­tices of his fam­ily. He got along fairly well with the chil­dren of his age, but he of­ten grew dis­cour­aged with their slow-act­ing minds. Be­fore he was ten years old, he had be­come the leader of a group of seven lads who formed them­selves into a so­ci­ety for pro­mot­ing the ac­quire­ments of man­hood—phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, and re­li­gious. Among these boys Je­sus suc­ceeded in in­tro­duc­ing many new games and var­i­ous im­proved meth­ods of phys­i­cal recre­ation.

• admired Greek games

124:3.7It so hap­pened that just at this time the an­nual com­pet­i­tive games and pub­lic demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal prowess be­tween the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis were in prog­ress at the Scythopo­lis am­phithe­ater, and Je­sus was in­sis­tent that his fa­ther take him to see the games, and he was so in­sis­tent that Joseph hes­i­tated to deny him. The boy was thrilled with the games and en­tered most heart­ily into the spirit of the demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ath­letic skill. Joseph was in­ex­press­ibly shocked to ob­serve his son’s en­thu­si­asm as he be­held these ex­hi­bi­tions of “hea­then” vain­glo­ri­ous­ness. Af­ter the games were fin­ished, Joseph re­ceived the sur­prise of his life when he heard Je­sus ex­press his ap­proval of them and sug­gest that it would be good for the young men of Naz­a­reth if they could be thus ben­e­fited by whole­some out­door phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Joseph talked earnestly and long with Je­sus con­cern­ing the evil na­ture of such prac­tices, but he well knew that the lad was un­con­vinced.

• introduced idea of wholesome r.

124:3.9Later on, Je­sus saw the Greek am­phithe­ater at Je­ru­sa­lem and learned how hate­ful such things were from the Jew­ish point of view. Nev­er­the­less, through­out his life he en­deav­ored to in­tro­duce the idea of whole­some recre­ation into his per­sonal plans and, as far as Jew­ish prac­tice would per­mit, into the later pro­gram of reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties for his twelve apos­tles.

• established mid-week holiday for r.

138:6.2It was at this time that Je­sus es­tab­lished the mid-week hol­i­day for rest and recre­ation. And they pur­sued this plan of re­lax­ation for one day each week through­out the re­main­der of his ma­te­rial life. As a gen­eral rule, they never pros­e­cuted their reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties on Wednes­day. On this weekly hol­i­day Je­sus would usu­ally take him­self away from them, say­ing: “My chil­dren, go for a day of play. Rest your­selves from the ar­du­ous labors of the king­dom and en­joy the re­fresh­ment that comes from re­vert­ing to your for­mer vo­ca­tions or from dis­cov­er­ing new sorts of recre­ational ac­tiv­ity.” While Je­sus, at this pe­riod of his earth life, did not ac­tu­ally re­quire this day of rest, he con­formed to this plan be­cause he knew it was best for his hu­man as­so­ciates. Je­sus was the teacher—the Mas­ter; his as­so­ciates were his pupils—dis­ci­ples.

139:6.5The apos­tles all loved and re­spected Na­than­iel, and he got along with them splen­didly, ex­cept­ing Ju­das Is­car­iot. Ju­das did not think Na­than­iel took his apos­tle­ship suf­fi­ciently se­ri­ously and once had the temer­ity to go se­cretly to Je­sus and lodge com­plaint against him. Said Je­sus: “Ju­das, watch care­fully your steps; do not over­mag­nify your of­fice. Who of us is com­pe­tent to judge his brother? It is not the Fa­ther’s will that his chil­dren should par­take only of the se­ri­ous things of life. Let me re­peat: I have come that my breth­ren in the flesh may have joy, glad­ness, and life more abun­dantly. Go then, Ju­das, and do well that which has been in­trusted to you but leave Na­than­iel, your brother, to give ac­count of him­self to God.” And the mem­ory of this, with that of many sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences, long lived in the self-de­ceiv­ing heart of Ju­das Is­car­iot.

• ever alternates with service

25:7.2Though you will have earnest and pro­gres­sively dif­fi­cult tasks to per­form on the mor­ontia train­ing worlds of Neb­a­don, you will al­ways be pro­vided with reg­u­lar sea­sons of rest and re­ver­sion. Through­out the jour­ney to Par­a­dise there will al­ways be time for rest and spirit play; and in the ca­reer of light and life there is al­ways time for wor­ship and new achieve­ment.

• is restful

27:1.2Rest is of a sev­en­fold na­ture: There is the rest of sleep and of play in the lower life or­ders, dis­cov­ery in the higher be­ings, and wor­ship in the high­est type of spirit per­son­al­ity. There is also the nor­mal rest of en­ergy in­take, the recharg­ing of be­ings with phys­i­cal or with spir­i­tual en­ergy. And then there is the tran­sit sleep, the un­con­scious slum­ber when en­ser­a­phimed, when in pas­sage from one sphere to an­other. En­tirely dif­fer­ent from all of these is the deep sleep of meta­mor­pho­sis, the tran­si­tion rest from one stage of be­ing to an­other, from one life to an­other, from one state of ex­is­tence to an­other, the sleep which ever at­tends tran­si­tion from ac­tual uni­verse sta­tus in con­trast to evo­lu­tion through var­i­ous stages of any one sta­tus.

• worship is the refreshing play of Paradise

27:7.5All the arts of all the be­ings of the en­tire uni­verse which are ca­pa­ble of in­ten­si­fy­ing and ex­alt­ing the abil­i­ties of self-ex­pres­sion and the con­veyance of ap­pre­ci­a­tion, are em­ployed to their high­est ca­pac­ity in the wor­ship of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. Wor­ship is the high­est joy of Par­a­dise ex­is­tence; it is the re­fresh­ing play of Par­a­dise. What play does for your jaded minds on earth, wor­ship will do for your per­fected souls on Par­a­dise. The mode of wor­ship on Par­a­dise is ut­terly be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion, but the spirit of it you can be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate even down here on Uran­tia, for the spir­its of the Gods even now in­dwell you, hover over you, and in­spire you to true wor­ship.

• ever alternates with service

28:6.17Ser­vice—pur­pose­ful ser­vice, not slav­ery—is pro­duc­tive of the high­est sat­is­fac­tion and is ex­pres­sive of the di­vinest dig­nity. Ser­vice—more ser­vice, in­creased ser­vice, dif­fi­cult ser­vice, ad­ven­tur­ous ser­vice, and at last di­vine and per­fect ser­vice—is the goal of time and the des­ti­na­tion of space. But ever will the play cy­cles of time al­ter­nate with the ser­vice cy­cles of prog­ress. And af­ter the ser­vice of time there fol­lows the super­ser­vice of eter­nity. Dur­ing the play of time you should en­vi­sion the work of eter­nity, even as you will, dur­ing the ser­vice of eter­nity, rem­i­nisce the play of time.

• ever alternates with service

48:4.1Joy­ful mirth and the smile-equiv­a­lent are as uni­ver­sal as mu­sic. There is a mor­ontial and a spir­i­tual equiv­a­lent of mirth and laugh­ter. The as­cen­dant life is about equally di­vided be­tween work and play—free­dom from as­sign­ment.

• Urantia play life philosophically sound

48:4.20The prin­ci­ples of Uran­tian play life are phil­o­soph­i­cally sound and con­tinue to ap­ply on up through your as­cend­ing life, through the cir­cuits of Ha­vona to the eter­nal shores of Par­a­dise. As as­cen­dant be­ings you are in pos­ses­sion of per­sonal mem­o­ries of all for­mer and lower ex­is­tences, and with­out such iden­tity mem­o­ries of the past there would be no ba­sis for the hu­mor of the pres­ent, ei­ther mor­tal laugh­ter or mor­ontia mirth. It is this re­call­ing of past ex­pe­ri­ences that pro­vides the ba­sis for pres­ent di­ver­sion and amuse­ment. And so you will en­joy the ce­les­tial equiv­a­lents of your earthly hu­mor all the way up through your long mor­ontia, and then in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual, ca­reers. And that part of God (the Ad­juster) which be­comes an eter­nal part of the per­son­al­ity of an as­cen­dant mor­tal con­tributes the over­tones of di­vin­ity to the joy­ous ex­pres­sions, even spir­i­tual laugh­ter, of the as­cend­ing crea­tures of time and space.

• play life of child Jesus

123:4.2The play life of Jew­ish chil­dren in the times of Je­sus was rather cir­cum­scribed; all too of­ten the chil­dren played at the more se­ri­ous things they ob­served their el­ders do­ing. They played much at wed­dings and fu­ner­als, cer­e­monies which they so fre­quently saw and which were so spec­tac­u­lar. They danced and sang but had few or­ga­nized games, such as chil­dren of later days so much en­joy.

123:4.3Je­sus, in com­pany with a neigh­bor boy and later his brother James, de­lighted to play in the far cor­ner of the fam­ily car­pen­ter shop, where they had great fun with the shav­ings and the blocks of wood. It was al­ways dif­fi­cult for Je­sus to com­pre­hend the harm of cer­tain sorts of play which were for­bid­den on the Sab­bath, but he never failed to con­form to his par­ents’ wishes. He had a ca­pac­ity for hu­mor and play which was af­forded lit­tle op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion in the en­vi­ron­ment of his day and gen­er­a­tion, but up to the age of four­teen he was cheer­ful and light­hearted most of the time.

74:6.7The Adamic chil­dren at­tended their own schools un­til they were six­teen, the younger be­ing taught by the el­der. The lit­tle folks changed ac­tiv­i­ties ev­ery thirty min­utes, the older ev­ery hour. And it was cer­tainly a new sight on Uran­tia to ob­serve these chil­dren of Adam and Eve at play, joy­ous and ex­hil­a­rat­ing ac­tiv­ity just for the sheer fun of it. The play and hu­mor of the pres­ent-day races are largely de­rived from the Adamic stock. The Adamites all had a great ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mu­sic as well as a keen sense of hu­mor.

84:8.3The vi­o­let race in­tro­duced a new and only im­per­fectly re­al­ized char­ac­ter­is­tic into the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­mankind—the play in­stinct cou­pled with the sense of hu­mor. It was there in mea­sure in the San­giks and An­don­ites, but the Adamic strain el­e­vated this prim­i­tive propen­sity into the po­ten­tial of plea­sure, a new and glo­ri­fied form of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The ba­sic type of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, aside from ap­peas­ing hunger, is sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and this form of sen­sual plea­sure was enor­mously height­ened by the blend­ing of the San­giks and the And­ites.

44:3.43. The play builders. Enor­mous ed­i­fices are uti­lized dur­ing the sea­sons of rest, what mor­tals would call recre­ation and, in a cer­tain sense, play. Pro­vi­sion is made for a suit­able set­ting for the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors, the hu­morists of the mor­ontia worlds, those tran­si­tion spheres whereon takes place the train­ing of as­cen­dant be­ings but re­cently re­moved from the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets. Even the higher spir­its en­gage in a cer­tain form of rem­i­nis­cent hu­mor dur­ing their pe­ri­ods of spir­i­tual recharg­ing.

84:8.5Ad­vanc­ing ce­les­tial be­ings all en­joy rest and the min­istry of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors. All ef­forts to ob­tain whole­some di­ver­sion and to en­gage in up­lift­ing play are sound; re­fresh­ing sleep, rest, recre­ation, and all pas­times which pre­vent the bore­dom of mo­not­ony are worth while. Com­pet­i­tive games, sto­ry­telling, and even the taste of good food may serve as forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. (When you use salt to sa­vor food, pause to con­sider that, for al­most a mil­lion years, man could ob­tain salt only by dip­ping his food in ashes.)

48:4.11All be­ings en­joy this sort of re­ver­sion ex­cept those who are in­her­ent Cre­ators, hence au­to­matic self-re­ju­ve­na­tors, and cer­tain highly spe­cial­ized types of crea­tures, such as the power cen­ters and the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, who are al­ways and eter­nally thor­oughly busi­nesslike in all their re­ac­tions. These pe­ri­odic re­leases from the ten­sion of func­tional duty are a reg­u­lar part of life on all worlds through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses but not on the Isle of Par­a­dise. Be­ings in­dige­nous to the cen­tral abode are in­ca­pable of de­ple­tion and are not, there­fore, sub­ject to re-en­er­giz­ing. And with such be­ings of eter­nal Par­a­dise per­fec­tion there can be no such re­ver­sion to evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ences.

48:4.16The need for the re­lax­ation and di­ver­sion of hu­mor is great­est in those or­ders of as­cen­dant be­ings who are sub­jected to sus­tained stress in their up­ward strug­gles. The two ex­tremes of life have lit­tle need for hu­mor­ous di­ver­sions. Prim­i­tive men have no ca­pac­ity there­for, and be­ings of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion have no need thereof. The hosts of Ha­vona are nat­u­rally a joy­ous and ex­hil­a­rat­ing as­sem­blage of su­premely happy per­son­al­i­ties. On Par­a­dise the qual­ity of wor­ship ob­vi­ates the ne­ces­sity for re­ver­sion ac­tiv­i­ties. But among those who start their ca­reers far be­low the goal of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion, there is a large place for the min­istry of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors.