Yesterday, for an hour or so, I tossed a plastic stingray, lobster, and octopus onto the floor of the community pool for our 6 year old to swim down and return triumphantly. He loves this game, and so does his younger brother who also took turns throwing the “sinkies” while splashing around in his floaties.
This is an infinite game… a game you play because the game is the point. The practice itself is the source of joy.
It is not a game in which you beat everyone else and feel momentarily superior. (That is a finite game.)
The things that actually give us joy resemble infinite games: learning to love someone, the works of mercy, showing up generously to one’s vocation.
And all of these are sacraments of the infinite game – participation in the love of the Trinity.
Whoa – but what is that like? Meister Eckhart described this love of the Trinity this way:
Imagine a baby looking up at his mother,
and the baby laughs at his mother,
and the mother laughs back at the baby.
And the laughter produces pleasure,
and the pleasure produces joy,
and the joy produces love.
And the love is the Holy Spirit.
The parent, the baby, and the laughter between them – that is the Trinity.
(I nabbed this from a Trinity Sunday homily by the good Lou DelFra, CSC at Notre Dame a million years ago in 2006. I’m still in search of the original quotation.)
For Eckhart, the point of our life is to be open to and shaped by this texture of the Trinity, which enlivens our wonderful world. Tuning to this reality instills in us an infinite mindset that gives meaning and purpose to whatever comes our way.
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