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Professor of pastoral theology (emeritus), Princeton Theological Seminary

Donald Capps

With a motorcycle and a flair for adventure Hamman has discovered what children know and adults have forgotten — that the created earth is a playground filled with pleasures, delights, and stimulating peril. He develops his discovery into a proposal for living by identifying the enemies of playfulness, offering practices that open ourselves to play-full propensities, and by encouraging us to see that God is play-full too.

Howard Chandler Robbins Professor of Pastoral Theology & Congregational Care, Wesley Theological Seminary

Michael S. Koppel, Ph.D.

Hamman has written an insightful and practical book on faithful and artful living. Filled to the brim with helpful, practical suggestions and stories, A Play-Full Life calls readers to engage imaginative creativity in relationships with God, self, and others.

Robert K. Davies Professor of Systematic Theology, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

James H. Evans, Jr., Ph.D., Litt.D.

Hamman has succeeded in recalling the importance of play as an essential feature of life and I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how to be more open to the reality of God in our lives.

Hope College, author of The Pursuit of Happiness

David G. Myers

Ever the sage, pastoral counselor, Hamman offers an inspiring guide with A Play-Full Life. Loaded with wisdom, it presents practical tips to a more imaginative, creative, authentic, mindful, and grace-filled life.

From the Introduction

I smelled God. Maybe you have, too. It happened in northern Montana as I was making my way along forest and fire roads on my off-road motorcycle with my riding partner, Barry. We were nearly two thousand miles into our journey already, having left Michigan a few days earlier, but only on Day One of "our ride," and not knowing what the next twenty-five hundred miles would bring as we set our sights on the Mexican border crossing of Antelope Wells, New Mexico. We were on the Continental Divide Trail that follows the Rocky Mountains from Canada all the way south into Mexico. Somewhere I missed a turn and we were lost - again. It had not taken us long to realize that getting lost was going to be an integral experience of this journey.

Asking for directions can be freeing, and soon we were heading back into the Rockies under deep purple clouds. We stopped to don our rain gear just as a torrential storm exploded above and around us. Even with our off-road motorcycles, traveling on gravel in these circumstances is dangerous, so we stopped and took shelter beneath some trees, reckoning on there being taller trees in the area for lightning to strike. A herd of deer nervously crossed the road a few yards from us, sniffing the air as if they knew something we didn't.

The storm blew over in about fifteen minutes, and blue sky appeared. It was then that I smelled God. It was an intense smell that filled not only my nose and lungs but also every fiber of my being. I hadn't known: God smells like a pine forest freshly washed by a torrential thunderstorm.

Not worrying excessively when one gets lost and smelling God are both normal experiences if one lives a play-full life. How spiritual and life-giving it is to discover life and nature and God beyond any knowledge or past experience one might have! Smell is a powerful sense that awakens one's spirit and creates new memories just as one can feel particularly alive in a moment of significant adversity.