Stretching and Hacky-sac for Seniors in Church

Dear Church Members:  

It has come to my attention that we are growing, as a church body. Hallelujah! We should be getting more and more senior citizens.  Huzzah! What can we do to enhance the quality of their lives, while at the same time reaching out to offer them opportunities for regular fellowship with each other? I suggest stretching and hacky sac.

Stretching: Stretching is a glorious pastime, sadly enjoyed by relatively few people. There is no reason the elderly could not glean manifold benefits from stretching. Sure, common objections include an understandable resistance to demon-possession, given the understanding that yoga practitioners are said to ignorantly worship beings other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even while they are “without excuse” (Rom. 1).  In light of this, I generally recommend stretching newbies go gently in the beginning, and cultivate a habit of purity in their voices.  For example, we should abstain from saying phrases or key words such, “Om” or “shanti shanti”.  Those little bija mantras purportedly represent sounds calling on various deities so we Christians want to stay far away from that sort of thing.  

          Still, general stretching so long as you don’t say “om” can be a good thing for the body, and I think, even relaxes the mind.  Sometimes it is good to get away from the hustle and bustle of modern city life and retreat into a cocoon of stretching replete with awareness of Jesus, reciting the psalms, while tying your body in knots. Since you have to hold the stretches for a few minutes each, it is a good time to pray and meditate on psalms.

          Clothing needs to be loose and adequate to cover the whole body. Yoga aficionados delve in wearing skin-tight, indecorous, wholly unbiblical clothing that leaves them conspicuously self-conscious, handicapped in an inability to meditate deeply on God’s Word.

Old people like to meditate, and yes, we often see them fall asleep while meditating. I know I do. It is practically guaranteed for me, and that is all good, as a friend of mine says. Sleep, too, is a many splendored thing for the believer. We stay up late whenever a brother-in-Christ comes over to spin a yarn or share a burden, and we do not want to cut his time short.  So, we need to replenish our sleep debts whenever we can.  Stretching is a good way to get yourself settled down to sleep.

Hacky Sac:

Hacky-sac is a little-known cooperative game from the 80s, played predominantly on college campuses in the continental U.S.  Hacky Sac is an endearingly festive game wherein participants kick and knee a small sac back and forth for the sheer joy of keeping the sac aloft.  As “cooperative games” suggest, there are no winners or losers, prima facie redolent of Christian values in the main.  Rather than pitting participants inexorably against one another, it is non-competitive, a joint effort if you will, dare I say, imbuing the whole gathering with an exquisite sense of delight, even at times precipitating small eruptions of joy, when the group achieves a long row of successive kicks without letting the sac drop to the ground. 

One dominant goal is to regularly get everyone to contribute at least one kick. So, a successful period of play that produces seven successive rounds where each participant contributed is far more vivifying to the inveterate hacky-sacker than a considerably longer team effort which relies more on the superior skill of but a portion of those present.  This means that inevitably that higher skilled players will work in sacrifice, working to dive and save wild kicks, guiding the sac back towards the center, and after retrieving a wild kick and “stabilizing” it, then passing off gently towards a person who has not yet touched it to facilitate the team goal of producing a greater number of rounds!  Exciting, no?  Indeed.

 

Flexibility:  Hacky-Sackers enjoy enhanced flexibility as a result of regular play. This is a clear boon to those who suffer from arthritis, for regular, gentle movement is a great help in this malady.

Fellowship:  Hacky-Sacking, by its nature, selects for and fortifies self-sacrifice and an appreciation for others, esteeming others more highly than oneself (which I sense is somewhere in Scripture, and if it is not perhaps ought to be, no?) .

Delight:  Hacky-sac gives delight to the accomplished devotee. God gives us each a body to care for, and there is something right about honing the coordination, strength and conditioning of one’s body.  Hacky-sac as a hobby cultivates a sense of respect for one’s own body, to where deep visceral satisfaction following a round of hacky-sac leaves one independent of junk food or solace-eating.