In a time of chronic stress, breakneck pace, and the weight upon your shoulders, it’s time to work harder and keep on doing what we’ve been doing remember your potent resources and recover your childlikeness.
Reconnect with your original innocence,
hone your capacity for generative ridiculousness,
and don’t skip recess, a 90-minute,
online experiment in childlikeness for men.
Online via Zoom • 90 minutes • Free
It's not enough to talk about it.
Full-bodied knowing is our only path into a second naivete, an emancipated innocence.
This is not spiritual bypassing.
Far from avoiding grief.
This is an honoring of paradox.
Joy and pain.
Before this, you were a grown man with a full inbox.
After these ninety minutes, you'll leave having played, laughed, gone quiet, and maybe remembered something you'd forgotten about yourself.
“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind. And yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”
Octavia Butler
Don’t Skip Recess started as a poem ⬇️
A few years back, during a deep imaginal journey, I asked my ten-year-old self a question: What is important for me to remember as an adult?
He answered without skipping a beat: "Don't skip recess. It's the fucking best part of the day." That's still medicine for the achiever, the get-stuff-doner, the enneagram three in me. Maybe it will be medicine for you too.
Now recess may conjure up memories of scraped knees, bullies, and kickball shame. That’s part of the paradox we’ll unapologetically lean into. At recess, there can exist both a grief and a glory.
For 90 minutes, we will:
🌟 Play, and maybe find a balm for stress
🌟 Encounter our childlikeness
🌟 Share and listen deeply
🌟 Engage with the body
🌟 Experience song, story, and plenty of (Zoom) high fives
“Be joyful though we have considered all the facts.”
Wendell Berry
This gathering draws from the same ridiculous well as Holy Ruckus, Recover the Wild's flagship men's retreat, influenced by
⭐ Rumi's playful sheik
⭐ the Gospel of Matthew's "become like children,"
⭐ Bayard Rustin's angelic troublemaking
⭐ Brené Brown's research on wholehearted play
⭐ Bernard DeKoven's play theory
In Don’t Skip Recess, we bring these old and new wisdoms together, and we let them loose for 90 minutes 🎊
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Matthew Ray Lyda drives a 2012 Honda minivan sporting a unicorn license plate, with three glorious children who could not care less about his credentials and post-nominals like: Soul Companion, Author, Pastoral Sex Addiction Professional, Masters in Theology, blah, blah, blah!
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
George Bernard Shaw
Don’t Skip Recess is a distilled expression of the weekend experience, “Holy Ruckus.”
Below is what men have said about Don’t Skip Recess’ “mother.” 🙂
“I broke through 50-year-old barriers.”
- Kerry Gilpin (Virginia)
“It was an awe-filled and wonder-FULL experience for my inner child and innocence. Phenomenal.”
Superb, original, and creative - John Drinkard
Fabulous and heart-opening - John McCormick
A soulful connection full of laughter, joy, and deep teaching - Eric Slabach
Relinquishing control, speaking truth, and living free - Doug Goulding Sr
Freedom and abandon - Markus Beachy
A time of healing through laughter and tears - Tim Dunn
I reconnected with my ‘inner child’ more deeply than I’d have before as an adult - Dave Kraybill
This gave me hope - Fadzi Ushewoklinze
The “Don’t Skip Recess” workshop set the tone for the entire festival - Kendal McDevit
“This gave me permission to find happiness and play after eight months of grieving the death of my wife”
“This meant so much to me, as deeply moving as any retreat I’ve attended”