Parabola's Winter 1996 issue:
Play and Work All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, the old saw goes. But who knows where one ends and the other begins, much less perceives the balance? --from the editorial Focus
Cover: Detail from "Children's Games" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1560. Oil on oakwood. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
In this issue:
- "Spontaneous Effort" by David Rothenberg - When the moment strikes
- "No Shadow Draws the Water" by Robert Aitken - Imaginative interaction as play
- "A Natural Harmony" by David Fideler - Cosmological forces at work
- "First Things" by Eric Gill - Reflections on the nature of vocation
- "A Child's Ground of Discovery: An Interview with Margaret Flinsch" - Primordial play and eternal work
- "Sunwise Blessing" by Mara Freeman - Celtic prayers to work by
- "The Rung of Service" by Martin Buber - The struggle of availability
- "Wielding the Force of Presence: A Picture Essay" - Pictures by Linda Butler, text by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
- "Working for a Living" by Jean Kinkead Martine - Awakening to the call of the office
- "Exercising Oneself" by Meister Eckhart - The impartiality of duty
- "Time Is a Child Playing" by Richard Lewis - How we find out about the world
- "What 'Play' Is" by Johan Huizinga - Engagement and absorption
- "Why Life is Hard" by Hesiod - A mythic origin of labor
- "Holy Work and Pious Play" by William A. McIntosh - Campin's Joseph in his workshop
- "Magical Wars and Spirited Debates" by Stuart Smithers - The Vedas' and Upanishads' view of play
- "The Creator's Game" by Joseph Bruchac - Lacrosse, cosmic celebration
- "Life as Gymnastics" by A. R. Orage - Growth by inner exertion
Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world
- "Cloth, Clay, Wood, Reed" / Liberian - retold by Esther Warner Dendel
- "The Reef Came to Be in Sorrow" / Marshall Islands - retold by Daniel Kelin
- "Forbidden Door" / Moroccan - retold by Laura Simms
- "Joe Magarac" / North American - retold by Robert Parillo