InMediasRace

Liches. Devils. Golems. Vampires. Dragons. Dungeons.

I spent my teen years around some shady characters.

The ritual was regular, although I could not attend as often as church. But sometimes I could grab hold of my sister’s coattails quickly enough to score a ride in her boyfriend’s nicotene-marinated Tercel, across the river and up the windy hill to his house. Once there, we began preparations: The precious books were produced from modern leather satchels; paper, mechanical pencils, dice, and yes, often alcohol bottles would start to decorate the small living room of his parents’ doublewide, until we were ready.

The Gaming Session commenced.

I cannot tell of the awful things witnessed in our minds’ eyes as we wove our illicit stories. Halflings–small human-like creatures with pointed ears–were seized by the hands of minotaurs and flung into piles of manure in a game dubbed “Halfling Toss”. Adventurers were magically seduced by pond nymphs, only to realize, upon an unlucky roll of the dice, that they could not perform. One elf on a stealth mission was brutally cut down by opposing knights after he forgot to activate his perfectly functional invisibility ring. To be fair, he provoked them.

Such are the horrors of life and death in other worlds.

What I did in taking part in The Gaming Sessions was anathema. Christians can’t play Dungeons and Dragons–or Vampire, Mage, Mafia, or other role-playing games–because they are evil. Any Bible-reading believer knows that.

Or do they?

In the Bible, a man is told by God to cook and eat his own excrement.

Samson, a man destined to free Israel’s people from oppression, allows himself in his arrogance to be seduced multiple times, revealing secrets that lead to his downfall.

A corrupt and fat king is killed with a sword driven into his abundant corpulescence. A Roman soldier’s ear is severed. Joshua displays the heads of sinful kings on a pike.

A woman falls out a window, pops, and her innards spill onto the ground. Dogs come and devour her remains. Supernatural boils mar Job’s body. The Ark of the Covenant causes tumors to appear on the genitals of the Philistines.

The Bible is the story of humanity. More accurately, it is the story of one human who is also God: Jesus Christ. But it is uniquely human.

Somewhere in our modern American Christian narrative we have forgotten this. We rightly revere this book as inspired by God Himself, as set apart from others. But we manufactured the idea that its subject matter is “clean”. Infallible, yes, but not clean. It is anything but. Gore, malice, witchcraft, betrayal, prostitution, and all sorts of ugliness are constant themes in this book. The key is why these themes occur.

While his imagery and mythos are not always orthodox, William Blake was right when he spoke of the Bible as the codex for all creativity. More than we know, modern film derives its themes from the Bible, and precisely because the Bible is such an honest and emotional work. What screenwriter could look at the book of Genesis, or Esther, or Acts, without gaining inspiration?

But in order to be an inspiration, the Bible must be above all truthful. The book is truth itself–living word. If it is to be such in a fallen world, it must describe life in that fallen world in full detail, without generalization. I find it an object of endless fascination that here exists such a messy story of dirt and blood and thorns, and yet it is infallible. Its message heals lives. No other book can make that claim.

Now why can’t Christians play Dungeons and Dragons?

It’s a sad answer, really. It’s not because their parents say they can’t. It’s not because they couldn’t learn.

It’s because most couldn’t run a game if their soul depended on it.

When you’re a dungeon master (DM), you create whatever kind of story you want. Want to roam around different dimensions? Grab the Manual of the Planes. Want sand pirates? Peruse the Sandstorm book for some ideas. Want a clean story whose characters are anthropomorphic ferrets who read to little children? Ok, sure…but good luck finding players on a Friday night.

As the DM, you’re a storyteller. There’s a rush and a power about that. You control the tenor and tone of an adventure in an interactive way. It’s fun, and it requires imagination–a commodity so many of us Christians have forfeited for the bland landscape of fundamentalism.

Yet the gaming community can offer so much to Christians to educate them about a supernatural mindset that allows for fantastic events and miracles. Take this recent post on Penny Arcade:

As a setting, we’ve emphasized on multiple occasions that the Bible is woefully underutilized. Once you start looking at the book from a gaming perspective, the genres jump right off the [beep!] page. Obviously, Exodus - the period covered by the game - should be an MMO. Jonah? Adventure. Samson is an Action RPG - he literally equips a weapon mid-narrative. David? JRPG. Armageddon? Tactics. Dead Sea Scrolls? CCG. Song of Solomon? Dating sim.

Revelations? Survival horror.

(See http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/30/. The game Tycho refers to is The Bible Online, now called GodStoria [www.godstoria.com].)

Gamers see the Good Book in a whole different light, and one that could revitalize half the Bible studies in this country. C.S. Lewis said through the character of Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that many of us don’t read the right kinds of books: namely, fairy tales. Fairy tales give us a view of a world where so much more than the mundane is possible. This is a mindset that God can use to great purpose in a Christian life.

The tragedies of the fundamentalist-gamer debate are two: the ignorance on the Christian side, and the dishonesty on the gamer side. Christians who believe in a world that was built in seven days should have respect for geeks who build worlds in their basements: they’re doing so because they’re made in God’s image, with God’s creativity. Geeks who espouse an agnostic stance and believe science is dogma should take a better look at why they enjoy fantasy novels so much.

Here’s an example of how I believe the discussion should really go down:

FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN (FC): I believe God created the world in seven days, and supernaturally put all the animals, plants, and people here during that short time.

GAMER (G): Wow, interesting origin story. So this God can do anything he wants?

FC: Exactly. He could rip a hole in reality and send all sorts of fantastic creatures spilling out onto Earth if he wanted to.

G: Does everyone know about him?

FC: No; early on, humankind turned evil. But God had a plan to reconcile them to himself, so now people can come to him freely.

G: Does he give his followers any sort of powers?

FC: Yep: healing, a spirit of power, and what I believe you’d consider huge ranks in Perception.

G: I believe in a universe that evolved over the course of 13 billion years, but hey, that’s pretty freakin’ cool. Does this God ever visit his world?

FC: He did once, about two thousand years before the present day, in human form. His coming was prophesied about 700 years in advance. Prophecy also says he’s coming back, although it’s a mystery when. After he left, he gave his spirit to his followers. It’s invisible, but everywhere.

G: So what happens at the end?

FC: God judges the entire earth, the good and the evil. The evil, having made their choice to reject him, go away from his presence; and the good get to stay to see the Earth remade into the paradise it was meant to be.
–

I’m no creationist. But if any Christian is honest about his beliefs, he will realize that he’s living in a fantastical world of angels, demons, spirits, souls, miraculous healing, miracles, and yes–even magic.*

This should lead Christians to a greater faith. God really could supernaturally step into your life at any moment–and probably has, without you even knowing it. (God doesn’t suffer from Paradox backlash, for you Mage players.) Prayer works. Miracles abound. The world is built on a family, a lineage–not simply a common ancestry but a story–a story run by God himself, and you are more than a non-playing character in that story. You are royalty.

And that’s where your imagination enters, intertwined with the divine, stamped indelibly–even unto death–with a unique mark that is yours and God’s. You have a role to play. You have God-instilled creativity. Don’t censor yourself because you believe in some trumped-up purity of the central book of your life. Dig in. Create. Get messy.

Now roll for initiative.

[4 Nov 2010 - 13 Oct 2011]

The short of it is, it’s bad. That’s one thing we must be careful about. The Bible talks about magic arts in exclusively negative terms. Will your neighbor’s 14-year-old Wiccan daughter really be able to cast a hex on you after she picks up the necessary supplies at The Gilded Dragonfly paganmart? Probably not. But I believe in demons, and when people start talking about their “spirit guides” and mediums and “The Secret”, I have to believe that it’s demons they’re talking to.

And yes, just like anything, roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons can mutate into unhealthy excesses. Running a world–just like writing a story, or cloning sheep–is akin to playing God, and that can lead to dangerous mindsets. But let’s exercise some moderation here, shall we?

A little poem penned at work today. Mostly a recollection.

–

The gravelly odor of diesel

and the blunt pungency of rubber upholstery;

The rise and fall of  the gear-sound

and a hissing exhale.

This great yellow creature rumbles toward my home.

I enter its belly, step aboard and ride

Until we arrive, fall in a line out its ear

And into the castle.

I arrived home late last night–around 3am–from a friend’s birthday party. We had danced for hours, and I was already on less sleep than humans should have, so my mind was not quite with me as I backed my car into a parking space beneath a low tree that grew up and out over the road. I hit the gas to ease into the space and heard a crunch. My taillight, I thought. Well, that sucks, but it should be easy to fix.

I got out of the car and inspected the damage. It wasn’t my taillight: the crunch I heard had actually been a crumple of the metal on my Subaru Forester’s hatchback door. A small stub of a branch protruding downward from the trunk, which I hadn’t seen from the driver’s seat, had caught the top of the car and punched a vertical dent just above the rear window, about four inches long.

To me, cars are tools. We use them to get us from place to place. And they’re not only transportation but protection. If a rock hits our windshield, the glass is designed to protect us from injury. Any one of these things can happen while driving on any day in any kind of car no matter how expensive, so I’ve long been of the opinion that when a car gets a ding, or a sizable dent as mine had just received, it’s part of its lifespan. If it doesn’t affect the drivability of the car, it shouldn’t be repaired; fixing such innocuous issues seemed simple vanity to me.

Yet now that I was looking at my car’s first major blemish, I couldn’t stave off disappointment. I felt I’d failed to take care of it. This little imperfection would be visible to anyone driving behind me, a statement that I didn’t care enough about my possessions to care for them and fix them when they get broken. Maybe the driver behind me would assume I’m not affluent enough to afford the repair bill. Maybe he’d assume I was a bad driver since it was a mark from an obviously botched back-in. In any event, it just looked ugly.

It bothered me, and it bothered me that it bothered me. Luckily, I was too tired to think about it much and headed to bed. (Fatigue can be a great ally when trying to gain control our thoughts or fears.) But when I got up this morning and remembered what had happened, I got that little feeling of sadness again. Should I repair it? Why did I care so much? Had I been totally fooled in believing that I was above this kind of vanity?

Growing up, I had a very strong sense of perfection versus imperfection, of beauty versus ugliness, and the exemplary versus the mediocre. I learned early to order things via hierarchies: best, good, bad; large, medium, small; McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s–and to know when things were out of place. This sense came very early, and I have no doubt that it was from nature, not nurture. How do I know this? When I was a baby, one day at breakfast some of my Cheerios dropped to the floor. I pointed at them and made whiny noises to my mother until she picked them back up and put them on the tray of my high chair. That’s my particular blend of obsessive-compulsiveness, and it’s been aging for twenty-nine years.

Such tendencies have abated in recent years, but they still manifest themselves in events like these. My car’s body was no longer perfect. It was stained, blemished, and for that reason part of me rejected it. Wanted to fix it. Make it right.Yet as I do with so many events, I began to think of this allegorically. My own body is scarred in multiple places. That happened in a car as well, when I nearly died on a sunny winter day at 17 years old. God healed me and I survived to make a full recovery–but certainly not unscathed. My scars number around eight, on my arms, legs, and torso. The emotional scars I’ve sustained in life I’m sure number far greater. I am not perfect either, and have not ever been. Now in a way, I was demanding something–from my car, of all things; an inanimate object–that I couldn’t even lay claim to myself.

Scars. We all receive them, visible or not. They are a universal part of the human experience, and I can say this with confidence because even the only perfect human who ever lived boasts scars; and not just one, but five. I was reminded of something a friend of mine said around four years ago: “Jesus Christ is content to walk around as the only blemished thing in his perfect heaven, in order that we can be there with him.”I was awestruck at that statement, but I am more awestruck now as I see it from the other side of this simple lesson. God himself is not above scars. And if that is the case, then his idea of perfection (as with so many things) is totally different from mine.

Far from the opposite, when we align ourselves with our Maker our wounds are what temper us toward perfection. Jehovah in his wisdom has seen fit to keep the world as it is, with all its danger, adventure, risk, and reward, and with that comes the certainty of injury. Rather than coddle us like an overprotective parent who seeks only to guard his children from scrapes and bruises, he throws us into the world and tells us to subdue it. Risk ourselves. Take our treasure, put it out on the market, and realize returns. That is why I love him and believe what he says. It terrifies me that I may not risk everything he wants me to risk before I leave this world, but I will choose to risk some of it, and that is infinitely better than a lifetime of Floaties, booster seats, and child-proof locks. God doesn’t gate us off from some rooms; He leaves his house and all its wonders open for us to crawl around and explore.

Returning from church this morning, as I walked to my apartment door I turned back to look at my car. I couldn’t suppress a laugh. I don’t really know where it came from, but I have a good idea who put it there. Somewhere in the morning the disappointment had left me and been replaced with what might be called pride. My car was growing up. It had some character now. And that scar will forever remind me of an amazing night with my friends, a night that had me so exhausted from fun that I’d backed into a tree.

While he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.

 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” He said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment.

When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, he said “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. News of this spread through all that region.

- Matthew 9:18-26

My study of the Bible has been devoted to the Old Testament for at least a year now. Realizing how long it had been since I visited the Gospels, I began reading Matthew again a few weeks ago. I have been stalled on this passage for a day or two now, believing there is more to it that I need to think on. Writing has always been my best form of organized thinking, so I share my thoughts now here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Punctuated

So long(.)
Since I’ve tried courting(,/;)
I’ll leave(.)
The decision(’)s for you(./,)
To make the best choice(./,)
You must know about the fishes and birds.

I am a bird(.)
Who says(?/,)
“I fly close to heaven(”)
(“)And hunt you,
(“)But don’t(.”)
Think I’m a bird(?/;)
I am a fish(.)
Who drowns in his doubts(?/.)

I do(.)
Your beauty(:)
Injustice.

I am whichever one of these(;)
That you are not(.)
A bird or a fish should not matter.

Dammit.

27 November 2003

punc·tu·ate (pŭngk’chōō-āt’) v. -at·ed, -at·ing, -ates. 1. To provide (a text) with punctuation marks. 2. To interrupt periodically. 3. To emphasize or stress.*

Interwoven

So long
Since I’ve tried courting
I’ll leave
The decisions for you
To make the best choice
You must know about the fishes and birds.

I am a bird
Who says
“I fly close to heaven
And hunt you,”
But don’t
Think I’m a bird
I am a fish
Who drowns in his doubts

I do
Your beauty
Injustice.

I am whichever one of these
That you are not
A bird or a fish should not matter.

Dammit.

27 November 2003

in·ter·weave (ĭn’tәr-wēv’) v. –wove (wōv’), -wo·ven (wō’vĕn), -weav·ing, -weaves. –vt. 1. to weave together. 2. To blend together: intermix. –vi. To intertwine.*

–
*Source: Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988.

A tiny ruby ball upon my skin
Reminds me of the flood I hold within
My frail and flailing, fleeting, fragile corps
Which someday will be invalid no more.

The living liquid wraps itself around
The wound, and starts in perfection to bind
My skin to skin; my body mends itself
In finely-spun linen from He who dwells

Outside of corporeal things—of pain and death,
Of pride, of want, orgasm, sin, or breath;
For when this vessel is devoid of blood
His own He’ll give, and bring me home for good.

(30 October 2000,
7 May 2004,
16 November 2008)

This is the first of what I hope to be a long collaboration between myself and George Walsh, an incredible musician I’ve known for about fifteen years now. This song was written and recorded from 12-13 November 2009 at George’s studio in his home, and is a testament to how easy it can be for any of us, as Christ followers, to reunite and do amazing things with the creative imperative God has placed in our hearts–even after long years of absence.

The lyrics are inspired by Psalm 8:1 (an oft-adapted psalm), and Habakkuk 3:18.

Tom Burke and George Walsh - “The Will”

(Note: You may need iTunes to open this file. I couldn’t get it into mp3 for some reason; I’ll convert it a little later if requested.)

Today’s stock market plunge gave me a lot of hope. I’ve been waiting for a front-row seat at this show for at least two years, when CNN started playing up the fear on a particularly tasty level.

The following is a quick list I jotted down today as I thought about what good things could come out of another Great Depression, if the Government does what it should do and leaves the economy alone. It’s a little idealist, at times tongue-in-cheek, but not altogether farfetched, I think you’ll agree.

On October 1 2008, the Government is still deadlocked on a bailout bill for Wall Street. The American economy collapses into a serious depression. As a result:

1. Businesses change their hours and expectations of their employees. They start conserving energy and allowing people to telecommute more often. This allows fathers and mothers to spend more time with their children, and takes millions of cars off the road, putting less strain on the infrastructure, transportation systems, the environment, and emergency services.

2. Households remove extraneous expenditures, such as cable television. As a result, families start spending more time together. Crime decreases in the next generation.

3. Gas prices rise beyond affordability, in the long term causing extended families to choose to live nearer each other. Since they can no longer afford assisted living facilities, the elderly are forced to rely on their families, who take them in in their later years. This results in increased health and longer life among those elderly who do not suffer from debilitating health conditions. (In future generations, effect #7 ensures fewer health complications among the elderly.)

4. Americans finally start pursuing alternative energies in a meaningful and serious fashion, creating millions of new jobs. The Big Three car companies all but abandon combustible engine vehicles and bring back the electric car, revitalizing their revenues, creating thousands of new jobs, and removing millions of gas-burning cars from the road. (See also #10.)

5. Entertainment expenditures of all sorts plummet, causing the populace to seek cheaper forms of amusement, such as outdoor play, camping, hiking, sports, and fishing. This in turn helps families form stronger bonds, and brings more of the population into rural, rather than urban, areas, because the lower cost of living there. (See also #3.)

6. As a result of spending less time with iPods, the Internet, movies, and television, mental and physical health increase across the country. The number of obese children decreases dramatically, as well as those on Ritalin and with juvenile diabetes. The drug industry takes a big hit when sales of antidepressants drop to record lows, and loses a chunk of its hold on Government.

7. Families who have moved into rural areas begin growing their own vegetables in order to save money. Americans’ health improves.

8. More young people are forced to take after-school and weekend jobs in low-paying positions to help support their families. This bolsters their confidence, gains them experience in the work force and pride in their work–and means that Americans now want and take the jobs that in the recent past were relegated only to illegal immigrants.

9. Americans become distrustful of large, global banks and start putting their money into smaller local and regional banks. This mentality helps grow small businesses across the country, and stunts the formation of gigantic financial institutions such as AIG that can, alone, threaten the economy’s stability.

10. Transportation of humans and cargo by train increases greatly, helping stem global warming.

They feed me with hunger.
Too much salt, chased with just enough sugar
that my tastebuds rave and are sick
in the same thick instant.

Color and spiky sound wrestle on my tongue,
Trying not to be swallowed,
wanting to linger in their power
over the yawning mind, stretched
in fatigue and want,
despite itself.

When will I be full?
Bite by byte I gnosh and scarf
and comb my tongue, my brain
with its senses;
I stage plays with ASCII characters,
I play symphonies from system errors,
I paint and unpaint with Ctrl+Z.

Will I ever swallow my meal,
or will it swallow me?

Christians can be really stupid sometimes. On the good side, it gives us a connection with the rest of humanity that most non-Christians don’t think we have (cf. the “holier than thou” mentality). On the bad side, it can tend to lead those of us with untrained minds into some very snarled labyrinths of thought, which sometimes take years to successfully exit.

A very good man at my second church gave my Sunday school class some very bad advice one day. I was about sixteen. We were discussing ambition, in a general sense, which my male, work-oriented mind translated to “choice of career”. My friend, the teacher on that day, said, “You shouldn’t aim to do what you want in this life, because if you do what you’re good at, then who gets the glory? That’s right: you do, not God. So look for the thing that God wants you to do, and follow after that.” At the time, this made sense to me. So a little switch-track was flipped in my brain, and my thoughts began a course along these newfound neurons, striving to find that thing that God wanted me to do, the plan he had for me. After all, if he has a perfect plan, then he’s got one thing, and one thing only, in mind, right?

For years I labored to find this thing. It became a sub-conscious search, always running like daemon program in the background of my mind, in constant contrast with whatever I was doing at that period of my existence. Life moved me forward, from school to school, from school to work force, and still there was that uneasy feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing: i.e., what God had in mind for me. It bludgeoned me day by day because I felt powerless to change my course without knowing what I was supposed to change to. I had no pride in what I did, because it was just the layover to what I eventually would take hold of, and then I’d have satisfaction.

Then I reached my current church. And one day, our pastor gave a unique sermon. He talked, as so many Christians do from week to week in America (for I believe this is a singularly American way of thinking) about God’s plan for our lives. And he said something I’d never heard before. He said, “I believe that if you’ve trusted Jesus Christ for salvation, then wherever you are now is exactly where God wants you to be.” And he didn’t limit that to the present: he went on to say that God had most likely been working in our pasts up to this point, even before we came to believe, and that he would continue to work faithfully in the future, so that every step we would take from here on would be likewise counseled and sanctioned by God’s will and his hand.

I’m ashamed to say that this seemed unnatural to me at first. My heart balked at it. Humans have free will, and we won’t always make the exact right decision, will we? If we were really all aligned with God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will, we’d be in Uganda handing out food to the poor and hungry, right? Hubris told me that it was up to me, and me only, to direct my steps and make sure I was conforming to God’s plan. Yet at the same time, because of recent lessons that rendered my human arrogance a less useful defensive weapon, my heart was also more open to this idea of constant guidance than it had ever been, and when I thought more about it, I realized how beautiful an idea it really is. Why wouldn’t an all-powerful God be in control of his servants’ lives? Why wouldn’t the benevolent God we know exists be intervening for the best? My hubris, creeping up just outside my peripheral vision, as it’s so skilled at doing, had kept me from realizing my creator’s power. As if I could usurp God.

This is a matter of pride. I’m not saying my former Sunday school teacher was an awful, prideful man; but I think he fell prey to a misaligned belief system stemming from the bad kind of pride.

Christians tend to deride the word pride. We fear it. It was Satan’s sin, after all, and one could say the mother who gives birth to the other deadly sins. This is true: it’s a dangerous thing to be. But it’s also a healthy one.

We English speakers have only one word for the light and dark sides of this human state of mind. We say, “He’s too prideful,” but we also say “You should take more pride in your work.” When my parents told me they were proud of me, I never thought they were encouraging satanic behavior. The good pride is a healthy part of life: it is the tasty fruit of a job well done, a day full of hearty work. And it spurs us toward improvement, encourages us to love what we do. But Christians get ascetic about pride. We think we need to eschew every form of it, run away from the very word in any sense. So we stop taking pride in our jobs, in our families, in our accomplishments, because we think it somehow drains the reservoir of God’s glory on Earth. As if we could ever remove a drop of it. Even though all creative energy comes from his Spirit anyway, and all glory will eventually flow back to him, I really don’t believe that God hordes our accomplishments for himself, robbing us of any sense of satisfaction for them. I think he shares. And I don’t think he minds if we’re proud of them, especially if we’re proud in the knowledge that it’s all a gift from him anyway.

So when you look at your son, be proud. When you finish the project on time and under budget, be proud. When your daughter gets her scholarship, be proud. When you get done cleaning the bathroom, hey, be proud for that. God rejoices with you. Just remember the Source.

And I really think we need to jettison this belief in one special way that God is going to direct our lives. Wherever go, there we are for him to use. Let a little hippie in: go with the flow. Let the wind, or the job, or your Ford Escort take you where you wind up. The fields are white all across the globe. There’s always work for you and God to take pride in.