Ruins

Having recently posted my talk for a recent church event, called Ignite, I realized that I had never done so for the same event we held in January. Here it is. The pictures were the powerpoint presentation.

-------------

Good morning everyone. Most of you know that I spent 10 of the last 15 years living in Europe- in Germany and England. I miss many things about our time there, and I’d like to share with you today one aspect in particular: ruins of castles and abbeys. We’ll start with castles.

Castles became increasingly prevalent in Europe from ~1000AD. Castles were popular for obvious reasons. They protected borders, trade routes, strategic spots, people, and goods. They could house armies and be a base for nearby raiding. And they were numerous- at one point, there were ~20,000 castles in Germany- the most in Europe.

Castles reigned supreme for centuries, but it would not last. With gunpowder and advances in technology, artillery could break through stone walls by the 1400s, and the structures gradually became obsolete (though still effective even in Napoleon’s time- some castles were used against him and destroyed by his army as they swept through Europe in the 1800s). Today, what remains are four types of castles: real (never destroyed or seriously altered), restored (rebuilt, often in more modern styles), romantic (built after the age of fortification, in the 1800s), and . . . ruined.

Today 80% of German castles are in a state of ruin (and half of those have only ground-level foundations (if that!)). Some have disappeared entirely; we know about them only through literature. Castles were expensive to upkeep; when they became obsolete, they were abandoned or auctioned off. They decayed naturally, or were used as a quarry- it was a valuable source of dressed stone for local residents.

Abbeys
Hundreds of monastic communities developed in Great Britain starting in the 1100s. Over the centuries, some of these had become impressive estates, with beautiful buildings and ample land for crops or livestock. In fact, monasteries owned over 25% of all cultivated land in England.

In the 1530s, the Reformation swept through England. In 1534, the English parliament broke from the Papacy and established King Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Two years later, Henry started disbanding religious houses in what would be called the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He ultimately shut down about 800. He took their money and removed the roofs of their buildings, stripping the valuable lead and rendering them uninhabitable. Much was lost- libraries, artwork, and livelihoods for ~7,000 people. Historians disagree on the motive- money was one obvious factor (Henry made £500M in today’s money through this act), but reform may have also been on Henry’s mind. Regardless, it created many abandoned religious sites that fell to ruin and can be seen to this day. 

So What? 

Be it castles or abbeys, I love ruins. I like them more than intact structures of antiquity. I am at peace amidst the decay. Why? I think it’s because ruins show us an important truth about our reality- they are powerful examples of the tension between God’s commands to build and flourish, and our finite and seemingly vain existence. The grass withers, the flower fades. Yet our work has meaning and purpose well beyond our own lifespans. We’ll explore this more in the devotional I’ll give shortly [which may be my next post].

Homestar Runner

the regulars featured in Homestar Runner animations

I recently saw an ad were everything was 50% off at the Homestar Runner store. That name took me down memory lane . . . care to walk with me?

Launched in 2000, Homestar Runner is an online animated web comedy series featuring a zany cast of characters. Per its Wikipedia entry, "it uses a blend of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to popular culture, in particular video games, classic television, and popular music." The 'main' toons featured Homestar Runner and his friends as they did random things, but the site soon branched out and had several 'side' series.  You can view the entire toons catalog or go directly to selected sections (number produced in parentheses following):

- Main Toons (21)

- Shorts (~100) 

- Holiday features (74)

- Strong Bad Emails (209), where the show's snarky bully answered fan email

- Teen Girl Squad (15), a poorly-animated show about four teen girls drawn and voiced-over by Strong Bad

As indicated by quantities, the most popular section was the Emails. 

Some toons were great; some were meh. (Ultimately, this is one of those series you need to be in the mood for, like Monty Pyton.) I generally enjoyed it for its randomness and parody of pop culture. But the very best thing about this was who I was watching it with.

I shared a townhome with two friends from 2003-2005, and watching Homestar was a recurring group activity. I think Strong Bad emails came out every Tuesday, and we would huddle around the computer in delightful anticipation as it loaded. We'd then explore the other sections for new videos. It was a great time. Here were some of our favorites:

- Marshie the Marshmallow, a talking marshmallow trying to sell you the product in normal times or on special occasions like Malloween commercial

- Cheat Commandos, a GI Joe parody

- Trogdor, the one-armed dragon who would eventually get his own board game (in real life)

- Limozeen, the heavy metal band who would eventually get their own TV show . . . in space

I moved out in 2005 when I got married; Homestar isn't my wife's brand of humor, and so I fell away from it. So did the creators- they took a long break (with no warning or news) for years, only coming back recently (and then, only occasionally). Though its glory days are in the past, I remember it fondly for what it was and the fellowship it enabled.

Railroad Rivals

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Railroad Rivals. For 1-5 players, it takes 30-60 minutes.

Overview

In the golden age of railroads, twelve main companies spread their networks across America. Railroad Rivals is a tile-drafting and tile-laying game where you work to expand your city connections while investing wisely in company stocks. Order matters- at the start of each round, you will have a chance to bid to be first player. But bid too much and you may find yourself behind the competition. Do you have what it takes to succeed?

game in progress; image from here

For the sake of example, let's say you are playing a four-player game. Each player is dealt three city tiles. Each city has a railroad company named on each side and a load value (the number of load randomly drawn from a bag and placed on the city when that tile is laid). Four more city tiles and four stock tiles are laid out in public view. 

Select Tiles

In player order, select a city OR stock tile. Once all four players have chosen, then you select again, choosing the opposite category of what you selected the first time (so select a stock OR city tile).

Place City Tiles

In player order, place a city tile onto the common map. It must be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and the touching sides must have matching railroad companies. Lay your train across these tiles to indicate that you own the route. Randomly draw the number of load cubes listed on the city tile and place it there.

Deliver Goods

In player order, deliver one load between connecting cities and remove it from the game. Whoever owns the connection you deliver the load through gets 3 points (if the load cube's color is the first to be delivered this round), or 2 (if the color was delivered for the second time) or 1 (if three or more times). Then advance the stock of that railroad company by one on the scoring board.

To set up for the next round, lay out four more city tiles and four more stock tiles. Then players bid for the right to go first using the points they have accumulated. The winner pays the points and shifts their position to first (pushing the others down one but maintaining their order). The next round begins. Play continues until all cities are gone. Then stock values are added to the final score (if I have 3 stocks in the PRR and it is worth 5, I get 15 more points). Highest score wins!

Review

This is a neat little game. It is simple enough to understand but has enough choices to make it hard to master. Sometimes you are stuck without being able to place a city (if your city sides don't match any exposed on the common map), and when that happens you cannot place a train or deliver goods, leaving you at a marked disadvantage. That knocks it down a peg in my book, but it is a solid choice overall and is a nice dose of nostalgia for train enthusiasts to boot.

Rating: B+

Books, Blogs, and Bicycles

Every year, my church puts on a speaking event called "Ignite." Similar to TEDD talks (but limited to 5 minutes instead of 20), it is a great time. This year, I presented on books, blogs, and bicycles. A transcript is below.

------------

Good morning everyone. I’d like to share three of my hobbies with you today, the odd way they came to be, and what I learned from it. First up, books.

BOOKS: In 2011, we moved to England. Small children and consistently poor weather limited my options to quiet, indoor activities. I decided to begin reading in earnest. A few months in hooked me . . . ever since I’ve read 40-80 books a year. I’ve created reading lists to learn about topics and read books I would otherwise avoid. I’ve grown so much from the wisdom, knowledge, experience, and skill of others. But even as I enjoyed this new hobby, it exposed a weakness . . . I have a terrible memory. Wanting to have lasting benefit, I thought on ways to retain what I had read, so I started a blog.

BLOGS: In 2012, I started blogging about the books I read to help me remember them. I quickly came to love this, too, and it soon expanded- I started doing summaries of important Christians works. I posted about movies, travels, board games, and reflections- posts where I wrestled with various topics, to include my own fallenness (hence the blog name). I came to enjoy it so much that I started a second blog in 2020, to explain, explore, and enjoy my favorite card game. Ten years later, I’ve posted about 1500 times- 700 of which are book reviews.

Blogging has helped me in several ways. Einstein said “if you cannot explain something simply, you do not understand it well enough.” And Scott Berkun said “good public speaking is the result of good private thinking.” I try to make my blog posts concise, correct, complete, and compelling. That is hard to do- I am not a natural writer. It forces me to think, process, and engage the subject in ways I wouldn’t otherwise. This helps me understand, explain it simply, and speak. So blogging has turned out to improve my writing, thinking, and speaking ability. 

BICYCLES: In 2020, the pandemic descended on Germany. I didn’t mind being locked down and indoors- I had my books and blog- but I needed physical activity, too. Gyms were closed and running was out due to injury. I was exasperated and had nowhere else to turn . . . and then I remembered my bicycle. Basically unused for nearly 10 years, I pulled it out of the shed and picked a direction. As I cycled up my first big hill . . . I had to get off and walk, as I was in no shape for the sport. But I persisted, and a few weeks in, I had a new love.

Bicycling gave me the exercise I needed, but opened other doors, too. It helped me learn the local community- we are called to serve in a time and place, and we so should know that time and place- but most importantly, it justified trips to the bakery. (Ich möchte ein Strudel!) I got to take in 2,000 years of history on routes that took me by Medieval castles, renaissance towns, and the ancient border of the Roman Empire, quieting my pandemic-weary soul as I reflected upon a sovereign and everlasting God. 

Reflecting on it all: As I look back on the past ten years, I see that three of my favorite hobbies were born out of environmental limitation, personal weakness, and psychological exasperation. And the Lord has used these things to grow me in ways I never expected. Stepping back, these experiences have helped me see that the uncertainty in our present age- in both our church and culture at large- can be approached with confidence. Not that things will turn out the way we want or expect: “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” . . . “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.” (2 Cor. 12:10 and Rom. 8:28a)

Destinies

Today's review is of the 2021 release, Destinies. For 1-3 people, it takes 90-150 minutes.

Overview

In a Medieval fantasy world, you assume a role (like huntsman, nun, or noble) and find yourselves in a town plagued by various horrors. Your ultimate goal is to fulfill your destiny (the secret and unique win condition on the back of your role card) before the others, even as you all seek to rid the town of this mysterious menace. Will you prevail?

Destinies is an app-assisted game. The free app is best displayed on a smartphone, as you will need to scan the cards (role and item cards have QR codes) whenever the app dictates, and you will need to pass the device from player to player so the knowledge they gain from the actions they take remain known only to them. 

The turn structure is simple: refresh one die (add a purple die to your dice pool if you can), move up to two squares, and take an action (generally talking to someone or exploring a site of interest). If you move on to an unexplored tile, turn it face up and follow the app's instructions on placing people/items/sites on it. If taking an action, choose one of the options the app gives you and do what it requires. This could be rolling some/all of your dice to decide the outcome of a test, scanning an item you have, or something other. When your turn is done, pass the phone to the next person. Play continues until someone has completed their destiny.

an example of a map used in one scenario; image from here

The test mechanic merits explanation. You have three skills and a track for each (see example below). Your role dictates where the wooden discs are placed in each track to start, and your adventures/decisions throughout the game can move the discs left or right. When required to make a test, look at which type of test. Roll the dice in your pool (to the right of the role card)- you must roll the white dice, but can opt to roll the purple too. Add up the total number rolled, and then look at the corresponding test track (let's say it is green for this example). If you rolled total of 9, you look at the 9 on the green track and count all discs on or to the left of it (two in this example). This is your number of successes for the test. Enter that number in the app to see how it resolves. The white dice go back in your pool, but any purple dice rolled stay out until an instruction (or item you use) tells you to 'refresh' them, which means putting them back in the pool to be eligible for use.

the character board; image from here

Review

This is my second app-assisted game, and it plays very similarly to Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth (JIME). And both are solid. Here's what I liked about Destinies:

- the map tiles are drawn beautifully

- the test mechanic is cool

- the rules/turns are simple and move quickly

- the items and QR codes are integrated well

- the secret win conditions and knowledge are an interesting twist

- the box is designed very well- all components have a place and plastic lids keep things in order

Here's what I didn't care for:

- the miniatures are very small

- the app's instructions (about your options) aren't always intuitive, and if you hit a button by accident, there is no correcting it

- it seems less replayable (than JIME). Once you know the roles, you will know their win conditions, so the hidden knowledge aspect erodes over time (and gives advantage to those who have played before)

- it is limited to 3 players

- it takes a long time. Each session will probably run more than two hours. Though the turns move fast, you need to go through a lot of them to get through an episode.

I played the introductory scenario (a stand-alone situation) with my two boys, and we all enjoyed it, though it did drag on. Ultimately, I think you JIME and Destinies are similar enough that you needn't play both; choose one and stick with it through a multi-session campaign. Both have their pros and cons, but both are good.

Rating: A

How to Inhabit Time (James K.A. Smith)

We cannot escape the reality of living in time. "We, both individually and collectively, are products of a contingent history. Our identities are bound up with roads taken and not . . . our character and capacities reflect histories that amount to our own story. A faithful Christian life is a matter of keeping time with the Spirit. But what the Spirit asks of us always reflects history- our own, but also the history of the church and the societies in which we find ourselves. 'What do we do now?' is one of the fundamental questions of discipleship." 

"This book is intended as a wake-up call to the significance of your temporality, our temporality- awakening to the way history lives in you, the way we inhabit history and history inhabits us, and the way futurity pulls us and shapes us." It's about "discerning the spiritual repurcussions of a history that precedes you, lives in you, and shapes the future to which you are called." Smith calls us to contemplate and recognize these realities. Ultimately "the point is to transform our attention to reality by reframing our focus." "Knowing when we are can change everything."

"Consider this book an invitation to the discipline of what we might call memento tempori. Remember you are temporal." "Each chapter of this book is an exercise in cultivating temporal awareness, a new angle on the ways the Spirit courses through time." Smith does this by looking at a number of areas, in bold below and followed by select thoughts:

The spiritual significance of timekeeping

We normally think of disorientation as a purely physical concept, but it can be temporal, too. 

"A lot of contemporary Christianity suffers from spiritual dyschronometria- an inability to keep time, a lack of awareness of what time it is." "We don't recognize how much we are the products of a past, leading to naïveté about our present. But we also don't know how to keep time with a promised future, leading to fixations on the 'end times' rather than cultivating a posture of hope." 

Though God does not change, what faithfulness looks like can be a product of time and place. Ignoring this is a problem that "actually generates unfaithful responses to the present." There are seasons (in our personal life stages, communities, and cultures as a whole), and recognizing this "attunes us to receive God's grace in different ways in different eras of life." This should not demoralize us; "Our being subject to the conditions of temporality is not a prison but a focus."

"Spiritual timekeeping is fundamentally a matter of awakening to our embeddedness in history and attending to our temporality- both individually and collectively." It is "discerning how time shapes us, as both history and future."

"We need to remember that at the heart of Christianity is not a teaching or a message or even a doctrine but an event. God's self-revelation unfolds in time, and redemption is accomplished by what happens." "Because Christianity is fundamentally a 'happening,' we rightly understand it only in terms of story." One result is that "Faith is a how and, more specifically, a way of living in light of an event." "Being a Christian, then, is not so much a matter of believing something about God as much as living in light of this event's cascading effects on history. Christian faith is ongoing participation in the Christ-event which continues to rumble through human history. Christianity is less a what and more a how, a question of how to live given what has happened in Christ."

Smith argues that "spiritual timekeeping [ST]- living out the faith with a disciplined temporal awareness- is informed by four fundamental convictions." 

1. ST "is the working out of our creaturely finitude as creatures embedded in time." This includes "how to forget, how to remember; how to mourn, how to enjoy what's fleeting; how to wait, how to hope."

2. ST "reflects a sense of time shaped by covenant." Jesus's promise to never leave nor forsake us "is a promise of a presence through history- not above it or in spite of it."

3. ST "is nourished by Jesus's promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time."

4. ST "is animated by the future."

How to face our forgetting

When and where we live impacts and shapes us in ways we don't always realize. "[T]o be temporal is to be indebted to a past and oriented toward a future." It is "to be the sort of creature who absorbs time and its effects." "We move through time not just ticking along from moment to moment but with a temporal halo of retention and anticipation."

This past/inheritances shapes us; it can "constrain and channel the way we live." Recognizing this "doesn't lift us above the vicissitudes of history. It only makes us newly attentive to our conditioning, perhaps less confident in the purity of our good intentions and more conscious of our limited purview, our mixed motives, the ways even our best plans can unravel in unintended consequences in a future we can never control."

"When we recognize that we are embedded in a when, a pressing question dawns from this recognition: When are we? And where is God in this when? Where is the Spirit afoot in our now?"

We are also contigent. "Contingency means that of every history we can say 'It didn't have to be this way' and 'This is the way it is.' The question at the intersection is, Now what? How to live forward?"

How to learn from ghosts

"Our past is not past; it oozes into the present." "Sometimes this fuels possibility and opportunity  . . . [sometimes] anxiety and rage. A buried past is not dormant. Ignoring the past is not a way to escape it. Indeed, the buried past probably takes more than it gives." So we must face it.

Our pasts, both individually and culturally, mean that "we are bundles of potentiality, but the possibilities are not infinite. We are thrown into a time and place, thrown into a story that is our history, and these form the horizons of possibility for us . . . that is not a limitation as much as a focusing, a gifted specificity. This corner of earth I've been given to till. Thes neighbors I am called to love. These talents I'm exhorted to fan into flame."

The bad things in our past (done by us or to us) can be of surprising value. "God's sanctifying presence in my life doesn't erase what's gone before. Indeed, what God has prepared for me depends on what has gone before. My personal history isn't something to regret; it is something God can deploy in ways I never could have imagined." 

The good things in our past are blessings to be celebrated, but nostalgia is dangerous. "To walk back a life is to lose it; to get what nostalgia craves is loss. To have your life back would be to lose everything that unfolded and what God wants to use." We must remember that "because of my past, God's renewing Spirit can birth in me insights, empathy, attention that are exactly what someone needs in the world."

How (not) to be contemporary

"Too many forms of Christianity merely endure the present as the price to be paid for reaching an atemporal eternity." That is not what God calls us to. "The Christian inhabits time as cyclical and linear." Our annual church calendar- a liturgy of sorts- invites us to participate in these events as all the saints who have been (and will be). "The present matters, but now is not only the present. Our now is pregnant: it bears possibilities from a past that will be borne into a future." "Past and present permeate each other; the now is porous."

How to love what you'll lose

"Learning to live with, even celebrate, the transitory is a mark of Christian timekeeping, a way of settling into our creature hood and resting in our mortality."

Moments can be lost by the desire to seize them. "Bent on capturing the moment, [we] are no longer present to it." Thus, "to live mortally, we might say, is to receive gifts by letting go, finding joy in the fleeting present. This is temporal contentment: to inhabit time with eyes wide open, hands outstretched, not to grasp but to receive, enjoy, and let go. Sometimes knowing this won't last forever compels us to hold hands in the present."

The Fall corrupts, yes, "but to dwell mortally is to achieve a way of being in the world for which not all change is loss and not all loss is tragic- while at the same time naming and lamenting those losses that ought not to be." 

How to inhabit your now

We all experience seasons in life. "Seasonality means that, rather than being governed by the unceasing ticks of a minute hand, our lives unfold in eras." And these can be "episodes of duration rather than punctiliar events." It is important "to grasp our seasonal location."

Each season has good and difficult aspects, with different blessings, trials, and expectations. "Seasons are transitory yet focal. Seasons are temporary yet bequeath to us something we carry forward. Seasons ask something of us. They both take time and give something back." "Giving ourselves over to the season is a way to receive what we need to take from it into the next." "If there are seasons in which we should expect certain kinds of experiences to befall us, there are also times when certain actions are expected of us."

"God's nearness looks and feels different depending on the season you're in. You will also find that Scripture sounds different, depending on your season. Or rather . . . you fill find yourself differently attuned to the same Word you've heard a thousand times before." "God and God's Word remains the same, but the place and season in which I (and we) hear it creates new resonances, new epiphanies."

How to sing Maranatha [come, O Lord!]

"Christians are a futural people. Every day we pray for God's kingdom to come. But as long as we are praying it, it hasn't yet arrived, which means we are also a waiting people."

Yet we wait for what's to come. "We are never called to turn back the clock. Appeasl to God's actions in history are not invoked in a spirit of 'Golden-age-ism'; Eden is never celebrated as our destination. Our pilgrimage is not an Odyssean return. We are pulled toward a home we've never visited. We are oriented to what is coming, not what has been."

But this waiting is not done inactively. "If you believe Christ is coming, the key question isn't When? but How? The question is not How long have we got? but rather How should we live now, in light of that expectation? How will the future shape your present?"

---------

This book is outstanding. Smith has a way with a sentence- this work is peppered with prose that is simple and succinct yet profound and powerful. So many phrases were like gut punches of insight, and their frequency left me reeling- but thankful.

Rating: A+

Tales of the Jedi: Season 1

Tales of the Jedi is a six-episode series of shorts (each running 12-18 minutes). It focuses on formative moments in the lives of two Jedi in particular: Ahsoka Tano and Master Dooku.

It is hard to get any real depth in such short episodes. The first three were boring; the last three were excellent. You should be familiar with Episodes I-III and the Clone Wars series for these to make any sense, though. These are more connective tissue between established tales than independent stories.

Rating: B