mysticism, political philosophy, and play

To link spiritualism, political philosophy, and play together is, at first sight, rash. What could they possibly have in common, since they clearly are not the same? Mysticism relates to our contact, if we have any, with the “mysterion,” with the mystery that lies at the threshold or ground of all finite beings, among which we are. Religion is a natural virtue, pietas, an aspect of justice. It is our effort properly to relate ourselves to God as the origin of our existence in terms of what we “owe” for what we are and receive, something obviously that can never be fully repaid. This latter fact, our inability adequately to respond to the reason of our being, is why the virtue of religion is related to, but not exactly the same as, the virtue of justice. Justice seeks to repay exactly what is due. Religion thus is conceived as related to justice, yet something beyond it, a kind of noble effort to do what we can for what we are, an expression of our acknowledgment that we exist as finite beings.
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We do not exist in mere justice. If we existed in justice, it would mean that God, out of some deficiency in Himself, “owed” us the “to be” that we possess and that keeps us out of nothingness, something that we are intuitively aware that we cannot do for ourselves. It would also mean that we could adequately “repay” the good of existence itself that has been granted to us by the cause of our existence. In this sense, it would imply that we ourselves are equal to the Godhead, a dubious proposition however tempting to human nature. Already here is the sense that existence itself is something that is rooted in an abundance, or even “super-abundance,” as Aquinas noted, a realm of non-necessity, yet of real spiritual and even material depth that may indeed have much to do with the strange vastness of the cosmos itself. Even natural religion hints in its sense of its own inadequacy that, for comprehension of this reality, what we deal with approaches love, something simply “given,” not something that is “owed.”

Here.