Introduction

Peace is Child’s Play: An Introduction to Original Play and the Sanctuary Alliance
O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D.

We give children life.
It is our duty to act in such a way that they do not ask why.

"If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children..."
--Gandhi

Introduction
Peace is a place already there in the child, who takes nothing more seriously than what adults dismiss as sentimental and childish.

The purpose of this short booklet is to introduce original play and the sanctuary alliance. This booklet is divided into four brief sections, each of which is meant to be only an introduction. For more detailed descriptions and explanations you can read Playing By Heart and/or contact Fred Donaldson as listed in Part 4. Part 1 describes original play; Part 2 reveals why original play is important; Part 3 presents the sanctuary alliance training process; and Part 4 gives contact information.

Original play speaks heart-to-heart, hand-to-hand. Original play cannot be fully communicated and understood with words. While our discussions are phrased in words, they obtain their wisdom only when our experience gives them meaning. This booklet is not a substitute for playing. The truth of original play is transmitted by touch, laughter, tears, dirt, and grass stains; anything less is hearsay. Original play is an extraordinary level of kindness in which one feels a sense of connection shared by all life. Like the sure attention of a mother's hand on a hurt child, we can touch each other and in so doing signal our belonging. It takes two for this new belonging to catch hold and light a fire in the hearts of people. The ideas in this small booklet are the steel to be struck against the flint of your spirit. In this process the flint (spirit) is held gently with its dry tinder (mind); then the steel (this booklet) is struck with a glancing blow across the edge of the flint. If there is no spark, one tries again. When a spark lands on the tinder and it begins to smolder, you carefully blow on it--not too hard and not too soft--until it glows. As with all things in the matter of the sprit we are in constant danger of destroying the fragile substance into which one wishes to breathe new life. This process is like the lighting of tinder; do not subject it to outside criticism, or skepticism, or even constructive suggestion. It must be cherished inwardly. When it catches then no amount of wind will put out the flame, but only increase its energy. Then perhaps, you, too, will discover why children play.

Part 1: Original Play

"Fred, you know play is when we don't know that we are different from each other." --five year old David

Deep in the human heart is a belonging consciousness that is Creation's simplest, oldest, and deepest wisdom. This belonging consciousness is original play, a gift from Creation to all life. Original play expresses a deep and universal intent to belong, something imperishable in the bank of human memory, which seeks to surface in the world through the lives of children. It is a behavioral code of peace that confers and confirms a sense of belonging from all life to all life. Children carry this code of peace with them in their original play. Original play is expressed as a covenant with life, a kind of secret contract in the human spirit to fulfill childhood's promise. I call this "the Godsend Conspiracy" whose purpose is to reinstate the original meaning of childhood into the direction and growth of the human spirit and thereby fulfill childhood's promise. This is a compact between Creation and children that restructures the social contract between adults and children and between humans and life. Original play is a model of sentient kindness inherent in Creation reflected in a relationship of giving and receiving in which we share the rapture of being alive, that ineffable experience where reality is the same in oneself as in everyone else, and where action emerges out of the present moment without reflection, where one simply knows how one should relate spontaneously, without thinking, to every moment in life. This is the experience of play's kindness that is both a point of departure and a direction of spirit in which original play's two gifts are shared: you are lovable and there is nothing to be afraid of. When we break this contract with life, we inflict a fatal wound not only on children, but also on the human spirit. With such a poverty of spirit we perpetuate our wars in the torn bodies and fragmented hearts of children. It is our responsibility as adults to provide children a world in which they can thrive, not merely survive.

Part 2: Childhood-A Dream Unlived

"Your playing small does not serve the world."
--Nelson Mandela, inauguration speech, 1994

There are four conditions that make original play so important. First, our current approaches to peace do not work; second, it is a necessary new consciousness from a unique source; third, this new consciousness is universal; and fourth, the new consciousness is a practice and more than a nice idea.

An unsafe childhood is an indictment of all humanity. Our current contest consciousness is a dead end. Our contest consciousness makes wisdom and the ecological mind impossible, splintering our selves and severing our ties with other life forms. Separated from the universe, we become frightened of the universe in which we live. Afraid, we do not know how to act. Not knowing how to act, we destroy not only our place in the scheme of things but also the scheme itself. In this process of destruction children are robbed of childhood. As numerous national and international reports and commissions have reported we have abdicated our responsibilities because we lack the imagination, vision, and courage to create both the psychological and physical environments which allow children to feel safe and thrive.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates point out that, "Many children--too many children--live in a culture of violence." Save The Children, for example, estimates that 100 million children died during the decade1990-2000 because of adult inflicted living conditions. In fact, UNESCO has pointed to a "Global aggressive culture" that is destroying our children. Too often children are forced to abandon living in order to simply stay alive. This profound forgetting and negation of childhood carries with it a feeling of emptiness at the heart of being and turns childhood, potentially our most creative period, into a neglected pastime. In place of play we fill children’s lives with drugs, competition, violence, and addiction to things. Pressed into service not of love, but of fear, childhood is stripped of its vitalizing capacity. The result is children who lack compassion, are uneasy with intimacy, wear masks of bravado, and are fearful in the presence of difference. When we adulterate child's play we destroy what we cannot make. As Mother Teresa points out, "unless kind hands are given in service and generous hearts are given in love, I do not think there can ever be a cure for the terrible sickness of feeling unloved." Childhood, the deepest and most cherished dream of life's first spirit remains just that, a dream unlived.

We cannot solve our serious problems with the consciousness that created them.--Albert Einstein

Where do we find the new order of consciousness that Einstein suggests we need? How do we provide leadership when we are the problem? The answer to our persistent reliance on contest and war as problem solving processes is where we would least expect to find it. It is hidden in plain sight. To put it succinctly--peace is child's play. An answer is, and has always been right in front of us. Peace begins with children, not adults. Gandhi told us this. Here is the different order of consciousness that Einstein told us was necessary. But this poses a problem for us. Adults do not take children seriously. While we may give lip service to the importance of children being our future, we do not live our lives in a way that demonstrates such a belief. But life often uses the small and seemingly insignificant to evoke the great and meaningful. Childhood is an untapped natural resource of great promise and children are a valuable part of humanity's common heritage and are able to contribute to the most elementary of human rights: the right of everyone to be loved and to be free of fear. The original play solution to humanity's long standing problems of conflict and peace is unique. Not based on contest, original play is a fundamentally different kind of relationship than those we are used to. Children know that there is more in our original play than we perceive. There are dimensions that seem hidden from us and encrypted in childhood. Children can help us wake up to the full spectrum of experience that awaits us in the world. They can mentor us to find ways to thrive and to be of use that nourish both ourselves and the world, calling from us that which is deepest and best in ourselves. Like other activities one goes to the masters to learn, one must go to the masters of original play if one wants to learn the skills. Simply put. One must go and be apprenticed to children. What this means in practice is that original play cannot be learned from adults. This is truly unique.

"Children know in their minds that all children are the same, all human beings are the same."--The Dalai Lama

Third, original play is a universal process, not relying on any social, cultural, or linguistic, indeed, not even human patterns of communication. It is precisely this disassociation of categories that are so essential to everyday life that is required of us in play. Original play is a relationship independent of categories such as male and female, adult and child, even human and animal. It is truly a meeting place where we can feel our belonging beyond the isolation and separation imposed by the categories we imagine are so crucial to life.

"Now go and do heartwork."--Rainer Maria Rilke

Fourth, original play is neither another ideal, nor is it a clever idea. It is a practice, a unique lived relationship. Those wanting to learn original play must serve an apprenticeship with children. The skills are learned from children, not by mere observation, but by participation. Children don't practice play. They play. Original play is a process that can only be forged and refined through practice. In play nothing is acquired theoretically; everything is experienced. It is only through practice that play's love and belonging is revealed. Yet, ultimately you must forget about practice and technique. The more you play the more there is to learn. After years away, however, we approach what once came so easily with the effort of one who hums because he or she has forgotten the words to the song. We are not even sure what it is we are supposed to practice. Simple, yes. Easy, no.

Part 3: An Apprenticeship in Original Play

"Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation."--Aldous Huxley

Becoming an apprentice to children isn't easy. The first step in coming out to play is "getting down." Physically and emotionally one becomes a beginner. This is a fundamentally different kind of relationship to the world requiring a total reorientation to one's whole array of thinking and behaving. One does not learn original play by attending a workshop or even a dozen workshops. There is no quick fix. Getting one's ego or self out of the way requires intense and focused practice. What is required in play is a metamorphosis. As adults we approach play like the caterpillar, who looks up at the butterfly and exclaims, "You're never going to get me up there!" He's right; it's not the caterpillar that flies. Just as with the caterpillar, a transformation is required for an adult to play. To come out and play requires trusting my inner capacity to see and experience beyond the surface of appearances to the more fundamental dimensions of reality. Original play requires that I be a beginner. For adults to be a beginner is far from easy. In a world in which everyone is trying to be an expert being a beginner is a radical act. I must give up the scaffolding of adulthood, the structures that I have erected to help me survive in the contest world, if I am to go beyond to the direct experiencing what the children and animals require of me. This letting go may be the hardest part of playing because our habits of contesting are so strongly developed and resistant to being dismantled. We want to know the score. We want to know if we are playing correctly, according to the rules. Am I winning yet? To become an apprentice in original play is taking the responsibility to meet life with kindness. The practice of original play is making contact with that which is common in all life. What makes my child playmates so ordinary and special at the same time is that they are willing to come out to play and love, rather than retreat in fear and desperation. They do the one thing that most of us seek to avoid at all costs: to act wholeheartedly and put our entire bodies into a situation, and to refuse numbness and protection in favor of love and immediacy. In doing so, they add a measure of grace to the world. It's not that they know more; it's that they are more. Such kindness seems beyond human capabilities. It is, however, nothing more than that requested by Jesus and Buddha. While the skills of original play are learned from children and animals, its principles can be practiced in all human endeavors. Simple, yes. Easy, No.

The Sanctuary Alliance

A safe childhood is not a privilege.

The Sanctuary Alliance is a global vision and strategic partnership that develops practical strategies and mobilizes individuals and communities to better safeguard children. The Sanctuary Alliance is consistent with the 1976 United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development's (ICPD) vision for human development, and the appeal to humanity made by Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The Sanctuary Alliance project is truly a radical reconfiguration of how we think about childhood and act toward children. We begin with the assumption that children have something valuable to share with the world. The Sanctuary Alliance is a partnership of people committed to prevent and eliminate violence against children and take the steps necessary to ensure that the benefits of childhood are available to all children. We believe that the most effective safe haven for a child is another human being.

Vision
Peace is a relationship already there in a child, who takes nothing more seriously than what adults dismiss as sentimental and childish. Simply stated our vision is: children are bearers of peace.

Mission
Our threefold mission is clear and ambitious: to protect children, revive and preserve childhood, and make conflict obsolete. We accomplish our mission by introducing, developing, and implementing a unique and innovative primary care bond through original play called the sanctuary relationship.

Training
To accomplish our mission requires a unique partnership between children and adults. The Sanctuary Alliance is based on original play as a reciprocal mentoring process in which children mentor adults in the skills of original play while adults serve as safe havens in whose protection children can thrive. The training has three objectives:
•To train adults to serve as sanctuarys for children (sanctuarys here refers to people, not places)
•To have children mentor adults in the skills of original play
•To motivate and mobilize community support for safe childhoods.

The Apprenticeship Training process has three modules. These modules are progressively more experiential in nature and are designed to enhance one's emotional and physical ability to respond safely and effectively in our increasingly complex, contradictory, and competitive world. Because the masters of original play are children, participants spend increasing amounts of time in play with children as they progress from workshops to apprenticeship. People who choose to go on into apprenticeships will recognize that to become a sanctuary is a demanding process.

•2-5 day introductory workshop-- The introductory workshop is meant to introduce adults to the vision and practice of original play. It includes both discussion and experiential practice.

•2-5 day intensive workshop -- The intensive workshop is designed to help adults become accessible to the lessons of play taught by children and also how to keep oneself and others safe. This workshop is intense and focuses on the emotional and physical aspects of adults becoming apprentices to children.

•Individual mentoring apprenticeships--This begins the adult's real learning in how to join in the reciprocal relationship of original play. This is the time when an adult decides if he or she wants to take their learning and put it into in the “real” world of children. At this stage each adult apprentice in consultation with Dr. Donaldson tailors the play experiences to meet their individual apprenticeship needs. Each apprentice, for example, finds within their community a suitable place to play with children. A suitable place may be anywhere there are children, including but not limited to schools, hospitals, and child care centers. Currently the Sanctuary Alliance is active in the United States, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and South Africa.

Part 4: Contact