The Art of Asking Better Questions (J.R. Briggs)

"We live in a world that has conditioned us toward answers . . . asking good questions is a lost art." So begins J.R. Briggs in his book The Art of Asking Better Questions. An outline follows.

"Asking better questions is a mindset. It is a posture. A way of life." And when we ask more (and better) questions with genuine interest in, and love for, others, everyone wins. "Asking great questions has the power and potential to improve the quality of every single area of life—your relationships, your career, your faith, and your future." And so this book is "about questioning-asking, where we wseek to ask questions that emphasize honor, care, discovery, and growth."

Why do we ask questions? For clarity and engagement. To cultivate connection and intimacy. To "scrutinize our presuppositions and help to dismantle assumptions." The questions we ask reveal our values and shape our thoughts. Asking genuine questions means giving others attention, which is a gift and form of generosity; questions "make conversations go deeper and last longer."

The author's four essentials to asking great questions:

- Curiosity. "Curiosity shines a spotlight, brings awreness to our assumptions and blind spots, and opens doors."

- Wisdom. We must ask questions wisely. "The questions we ask, how we ask them, and why we ask them at all reveal a great deal about who we are at our very core."

- Humility. "Great question-askers are fully aware of and quite comfortable with their ignorance."

- Courage. We have "to be confident in our lack of knowing, to willfully admit we are ignorant about a particular topic."

And he provides the Four Levels of Good Questions:

- Level One: Questions for information (simple facts).

- Level Two: Questions for interaction (thoughts and emotions).

- Level Three: Questions for understanding (feelings and desires).

- Level Four: Questions for transformation (vulnerability and intimacy).

He then looks at various things, including:

- The questions we ask ourselves. What does that reveal? Do we assume others are asking the same questions?

- Why does God ask questions? What does that reveal about His heart? 

- Why does Jesus ask questions? Here, he looks at the centrality of questions in Jesus' life, the six reasons He asked lots of questions, the types of questions he asked, and more.

- What questions do we ask God? How does question-asking help spiritual formation?

He concludes with practical ways to ask better questions: nine ways to prepare, 20 practices you can do while asking questions, and how to look back and reflect.

He offers several resources in the back of the book, including a discussion guide, lists of questions to ask yourself, discussion questions for faith communities, and fascinating facts about the questions Jesus asked.

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I liked a lot of things in this book. I need to ask better/higher-level questions, and this gave me the tools to help. It reminded me of the importance of good questions and how they cultivate connection and community. It was valuable to study how God asks questions. This is a good resource.

At the same time, the book got repetitive; he spends a lot of time across several chapters convincing us of the need for and benefit of questions. I was sold early, so that got old and muddled the distinctiveness of each chapter. This could have been shorter.

I did like that he offered lots of questions throughout the book; here are my three favorite:

How can I be helpful?

Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?

Why am I bothered right now? 

Rating: B

The Two Towers Deck-Building Game

Today's review is of the 2013 release, The Two Towers Deck-Building Game (hereafter, Towers DBG). For 2-5 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview

You are one of the heroes from The Two Towers movie; your goal is to have the most victory points. In this deck-building game, each player starts with a 10-card deck (one of which is based on your chosen hero) and draws 5 cards per turn. On your turn, you play the cards to gain power, with which you buy cards in the 'path' or defeat arch-villains; in either case, the chosen cards go into your discard pile, which is shuffled to make a new deck when you run out of cards. Over the course of the game, your hand will get increasingly powerful. Can you prevail?

The game contents; image from here

This game is a sister to The Fellowship of the Ring DBG and nearly identical; the only difference here is wall cards which provide an alternate way to end the game. 

Review

In the same game family as the DC Deck-building Game, this has all the pros and cons of that line. It is quick to learn, fun to play, and a little strange that you can buy villains from the path to incorporate into your deck (though thematically I can buy it if you look at it as 'gaining experience' from defeating them). The addition of wall cards was a helpful way to accelerate the game's end (sometimes these drag on). Overall, recommended for a light experience. 

Rating: A-

Tournament at Avalon

Today's review is of the 2020 release, Tournament at Avalon. For 3-6 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview

You and your friends are invited to a tournament at Avalon, in the legendary time of King Arthur. Your goal is to have the highest health when the first person is eliminated (drops to zero health). Do you have the strength to prevail?

Tournament at Avalon is a trick-taking game . . . where you don't want to take tricks. You start with 400 health. Each player has a special protagonist and companion that grants them unique abilities (see below illustration). Companion abilities can be activated only after a player falls to or below the health level indicated on the companion card (and this varies by protagonist/companion). 

the protagonist/companion cards; image from here

Each round, players are dealt 12 weapon cards, passing three of their choice to their left (or right; it alternates). Then the player with the lowest health starts the first trick ('melee' in the game's parlance) by playing a card. In clockwise order, the other players follow suit (if they can) or play an alchemy card (wildcard) or special weapon card. If a player has no legal card to play, they are 'shamed,' discarding a card and taking 5 damage. The lowest number takes the trick, putting the card pile in front of them, then playing a card to start the next melee. Play continues in such fashion until one or more players have no cards left. Then each player tallies the damage from the cards they have taken (generally 5 points per card, but some do 10 or 25 points of damage), lowers their health total accordingly, and the godsend cards are dealt.

Godsend cards provide boons to players who are hurting, granting special abilities that can help them (or hurt others). These cards are dealt to players from lowest health on up; the number of players who get a card first depends on the total playing and the round. But then there is a second dealing of godsend cards if the current leader is 100 or more health points ahead of others, so it is possible for players to draw more than one godsend card per round.

The game ends whenever a person drops to zero health (probably after a round completes). Then the players with the highest health wins!

Review

This is a sister game to 2017's Tournament at Camelot, with largely the same rules and basic weapon cards, but with new character/companion pairs and godsend cards. The games (or cards in them) can be mixed and matched to suit your fancy, or combined to play with 7-8 players.

Overall, this one was okay. Thought I rated the sister game highly, this one felt too complex and chaotic/confusing when you added the godsend cards. (I looked at Camelot's godsend cards and found them a touch simpler.) It has its fun moments, but seems to drag on interminably (it took way longer than 45 minutes). It was fun to have new protagonist/companion abilities, so I'm tempted to just pull those out, put them in with the Camelot game . . . we'll see. This one is okay, but check out Camelot first if you like Arthurian lore and trick-taking games.

Rating: B-

A Field Guide on Gender and Sexuality (Ligonier Ministries)

This book, produced by Ligonier Ministries, "offers biblical answers to questions about gender, sexuality, and identity." It is separated into four categories with seven questions in each:

• Being Human
• Homosexuality and Transgenderism 
• Events and Associations
• The Gospel and Love

Topics include (but are not limited to) what it means to be made in God's image, the purpose of sex, thoughts on identity, sex, gender, and same-sex attraction, attending certain events, showing compassion, and more.

This work is a solid starting point for people seeking to learn what the Bible says on these hot-button topics. In general, it does a good job. Relevant Scriptures are presented well. In some places, the answers felt overly stark and perhaps not as nuanced as wisdom would require (I questioned an answer or two). And there is more to be said on these matters (but it is an introduction, so brevity is expected). Overall, recommended.

Rating: B+

Jack (Marilynne Robinson)

Jack is a love story. It is about John Boughton, a hopeless ne'er-do-well and preacher's son, and his relationship with Della Miles, a teacher and bishop's daughter. Set in post-WWII St. Louis, their interracial romance is illegal; Jack must navigate this tense situation while he deals with his own self-loathing and checkered past.

Jack is hopeless. "No one had done him any real harm, except himself." He clings to Robert Frost's verse as a life summary:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

After a stint in prison (ironically for a crime he did not commit), he lives in a sort of self-imposed exile, living off his brothers' generosity and spending time doing odd jobs, being a bum, engaging in petty theft, or alcoholism. He believes that "he had nothing to give anyone, that his life was an intricate tangle of futility . . ." and takes to keeping away from people, figuring that "keeping his distance was a favor, a courtesy, to all those strangers who might, probably would, emerge somehow poorer for proximity to him." Intensely lonely, he wonders "How do people live?" Then came Miss Della Miles.

Della has bright prospects, fraught though they be with the realities of being a colored woman in that era. She has been to college, has strong family support, and has her life ahead of her. Through a series of odd events, Jack and Della meet and, shockingly, enjoy each other's company. They fall in love. Jack realizes "that there is nothing more I want from life. If I could imagine an eternity of sitting here with you talking nonsense, there'd be nothing more I would want . . . " But their relationship is star-crossed from the start as Jack wrestles with his past and how/why good should come to him, and what it means to love and be loved.

Jack tries to push Della away. He warns her: "I'm ridiculous. It never changes. Every day is a new proof." "I'm ruining things. I do that. I try to keep to myself, and it happens, anyway." He wrestles with her love and grace: "Flourishing seemed wrong in a man so disheartened as he was." He confesses to a pastor: "forgiveness scares me. It seems like a kind of antidote to regret, and there are things I haven't regretted sufficiently." He is confronted with the reality that "Shame was a very old habit with him. He had long considered it pentitential, payment extracted in the form of steady, tolerable misery, against a debt he would never settle."

As Jack wrestles, Della sticks by his side. His pastor reminds him that the good things he does are just as much a part of him as his failures. And that there is grace for the latter: "If the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust Him to see to it. He knows where to find you. If He's showing you a little grace in the meantime, He probably won't mind if you enjoy it." In this world where guilt and grace meet, what should be his focus?

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Set in the same world as her other novels (Gilead, Home, and Lila), it was a delight to find out more about the wayward son that was mentioned in them. As with the others, here Robinson writes powerfully and poetically on themes of brokenness and grace. She does that well. That said, I wish a few things were different:

- one scene dragged on interminably

- it was sometimes hard to follow the chronology of events; I couldn't tell the flashbacks from the current storyline in places. I couldn't tell if that was deliberate (an echo of Jack's internal confusion) or unintentional

- the racial theme wasn't covered nearly as much as Jack's internal wrestlings, making it seem mildly imbalanced

- you never see Jack and Della come home to Gilead; I had hoped for that (which was covered in Home) to be examined from his perspective

Overall, though, this remains an excellent and worthy read. I was engrossed and enchanted.

Rating: A-

Agricola

Today's review is of the 2007 release, Agricola. For 1-5 players, it takes 30-150 minutes.

Overview

You are a farming couple struggling to survive. Starting with a plot of land and wooden shack, your goal is to survive—no, thrive—by building the homestead through plowing and sowing, animal husbandry, home improvement/expansion, and maybe even a trade or two. If you have the most points at the end of the game (14 rounds), you win!

Agricola is a worker placement game. You start with two workers, a 3x5 homestead with two wooden shacks on it, and a common board with ten possible placement positions to start. On your turn, you place one worker on an available slot and collect the resource(s) or perform the action shown. Players proceed clockwise, placing workers until all are on the board. Then workers are removed, resources replenish (additively if none are taken in a given round), a new placement option comes out, and the next round begins (unless it's harvest time—see below). 

Placement options include (but are not limited to) collecting resources (wood, brick, reed, ore, wheat, food, etc.), obtaining animals (sheep, cattle, boar), building (fences, stables, additions to the home), growing the family, plowing fields, sowing crops, and more. You could also play occupation or minor improvement cards (which are dealt randomly at the start of the game), which can provide much-needed assistance. You could also buy a major improvement (like a stove that allows you to turn animals into food); the possibilities are many. You'll need resources of all kinds, so place wisely!

game in progress; image from here

After rounds 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14, it is harvest time. Each player harvests their fields (if applicable), feeds their family (paying two food per member or taking begging card(s) if they cannot), and breeds their animals (if possible). 

At the end of round 14 there is a final harvest and then points are tallied. Highest total wins!

Review

I was excited to finally play this classic game; I wasn't disappointed. It is brutal (I couldn't feed my family one harvest and it cost me), and there is a lot going on, but there are always meaningful choices and interesting options. Replayability is high due to the 1) variability of placement cards and 2) occupation/minor improvement cards. As a new player, I felt like I was stabbing in the dark at a strategy, but I got the hang of things as the game progressed (and sense that your occupation/minor improvement cards go a long way towards dictating how you play a given game). There is a sense of urgency with only 14 rounds, making it play quickly.

A minor downside: the first player definitely has an advantage each round, and you need to spend a worker to take that mantle. Overall, though, this time-tested classic (which saw a revised version released in 2016, many expansions, and a deluxe version come out in the last year) is a winner.

Rating: A-

Masters of the Universe

Prince Adam's world is shattered as a child when Skeletor invades Eternia. Years later, Adam lives in exile on Earth, desperately seeking the sword of power that will enable him to return and fight back. When he makes his return, he is shocked at the state of his world. But he is just Adam—always weak, always the runt. Does he have the power?

I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected. It is nostalgic and the humor is good (but doesn't make sense unless you are familiar with the eighties television show). It is delightfully (and intentionally) corny in places—it doesn't hesitate to make fun of itself (and in so doing, the cartoon of old). It has a few spots of language and innuendo, which I found mystifying and out of place with the intent. But it also packs a surprisingly deep message. 

This film seems to both reflect and reject post-modern thinking. Adam learns that power is not necessarily brute force—that kindness and empathy are powerful in their own right—but at the same time, there is evil in the world that can't be cured with therapy or listening; there are Skeletors out there that need to be defeated with power. In this sense, the movie is a mix of stark eighties moralism (which featured heavily in the cartoon) and a more modern emphasis on compassion and understanding. And, surprisingly, I think they got the right mix.

Rating: B+