Repost: In Honor of Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax, one of the chief creators of the original Dungeons and Dragons, and hero to ten million nerds, passed away today. In his honor I'm re-posting a D&D post of mine from January 25, 2007.


Dungeons and Dragons Theology

I'm a little embarrassed (but not very) to say that I've been playing D&D again. However, it has recently given me a profound and powerful theological insight, and it's only fitting that I share it with the internet.

So, in Dungeons and Dragons, one person tells the story of what happens to you, and you decide what you want your character to do. It takes place in your imagination, and in your friends' imaginations, but you roll dice to see how well you do at a given task.

You get to roll a 20-sided die. When you get a "1", you do really, really poorly at a given task. When you roll a "20", you do really, really well. For example, I tried to hit a giant ant with my mace, rolled a 1, and knocked myself out.

So, our party of adventurers, "played" by myself and a couple of friends, found ourselves at the end of our two-night adventure. We were facing a huge monstrosity, namely "PRAETOR, TITAN OF THE UNDERDARK!" This guy was like, 25 feet tall, had crazy magical powers, and wielded a giant, flaming battle-ax. Whoa. I was pretty sure that we were all going to die. Which would've been a real bummer to finish a couple of nights of great adventuring.

In the first round of combat, my character ran madly towards the giant beast, foolishly trying to him him with her mace.

I rolled a twenty. It hurt him a lot. Huge, angry mace to the abdomen.

Then, my friend rolled a twenty as well, and it hurt him even more. Crossbow bolt to the face.

Then, it was his turn to attack. The first time he attacked, he took hurt us all with a magical wall of un-dodge-able fire. He tried to hit me with his fire-ax, which would have probably killed me.

He rolled a one. And hit himself in the leg.

We defeated him within, like, thirty seconds, and the crowd of rabble we brought with us surged over him with their pitchforks and hoes.

That was not supposed to happen.

So, here's the important theological point, and I think the reason why I woke up this morning feeling pretty darn happy.

In the struggle against the forces of evil and oppression and empire, it often looks like they have the upper hand. Indeed, it seems that when I and my allies go in against the forces of empire, we often, well, lose.

But sometimes.

Every once in a while.

When you dare to confront the forces of empire and oppression, on behalf of liberation and justice:

You roll twenties. And they roll ones.

And that's all it takes.

And things come together in ways you didn't expect, and your crazy ideas work, and their old ideas fail, and the Spirit moves, and walls crumble and people change, and transformation happens.



May you roll twenties.

David

posted by David Reese @ 2:08 PM

A comic strip about theology. Also vampires.

Clicking here (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/20) will enable you to read a comic strip that I find hilarious. I feel like it also encapsulates the experience of the seminarian.

So, I go to seminary, and I learn all of this crazy stuff, about how people got to agree, kinda, on Christ having two natures, and what womanist theology is, and how to read Judges through the lens of post-colonial theory and stuff.

And sometimes it seems pretty darn theoretical. But it is my firm belief and hope that someday, or perhaps often, the parallels of the presidential phone call will come. It turns out, if you're going to preach on Good Friday, that it's important for you to know what a lot of different people think about Jesus. And if you're going to help build a church, it's important to know a whole lot of stories, from a whole lot of sources. And if you're going to a be a straight white american guy, you get all kinds of daily calls that need you to know what womanist theology is all about.

Maybe this is what seminary is all about.

That having been said, I also know a fair bit about manticores.

the church at night a bit

I went to the service at Primera Iglesia on Ash Wednesday. Here's a poem I wrote, after I went to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen and got to see the church at night a bit.

standing in the dark church
in the room that remembers
one thousand potlucks-
the walls pause with me in the darkness
as i go about my business
setting up or putting away.
puttering around the house of the Lord.

God promises one day I'll have a key,
to walk into the building, to prepare or wait
to stand in the dark church.
the simplest beauty.
the greatest honor.
puttering around the holy of holies.
sweeping up after the saints.

why did Jesus die?

Listen to this: (from Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power by Rita Nakashima Brock)

"Jesus' death was tragic, but it neither had to happen nor was part of a divine plan for salvation... The brokenheartedness revealed in his death is created by the political systems of patriarchal society and was neither inevitable nor necessary. Such evidence of brokenheartedness does call us, however, to take heed and to understand.
Persons we love evoke our compassion, and to claim anyone's premature death is necessary leads us to thinking suffering is something we cannot protest. To make claims that any person's tragic, painful death is divinely willed or necessary for others to be saved mutes our ability to be angry about unnecessary suffering. Such claims dull the acuteness of our caring. We lose our rage at injustice and our passionate desire to eliminate the structures that produce brokenheartedness. We lose heart." (p.93-94)

That's interesting. However: does it ignore the lived experience of people in the pews, for whom there is power in the blood, for whom Jesus' death is a crucial event?

I don't know. We talked about it in class this morning.

Also: in this book, Brock talks a lot about Heart as a powerful, connective strength that subtly defeats more imperialistic kinds of power. I have to think of Captain Planet, and that totally makes the fifth ring all the better. Anybody know if there's a Captain Planet/ feminist theology link? The book is old enough that someone from the show could have conceivably read it...

Perhaps I'll post more good lines/paragraphs from class readings.

Rachael Moved to Chicago

I moved to Chicago. David and I and 12 other people live in a co-op. A picture of the main hallway and the view of a tree through the living room window, and a photo taken outside the house by my mom the day after she helped me move in back in October, are pictured here. Basically everyone has a room and then we share chores, a kitchen, a den and living room and porch. I feel I can be utterly myself in this community, which is such a blessing after living in a foreign land. Vegetarians atheists and queers are welcome here!!!

I got a data entry job through a temp agency. It's really boring but I look forward to coming home to this goofy and eclectic bunch of folks of all ages and walks of life!

I'm looking for a permanent position where I can be using my Spanish, hopefully in a non-profit, a school, a church, something along those lines. I'm looking at teaching elementary school, or ESL, or working in a clinic. If you know of any leads, let me know!

Even though I love the co-op, I want a kitchen of my own, and also the experience of living alone. I've told David I'm going to propose marriage to him sometime in spring or summer, so this may be my last chance to live alone if he says yes!

Last night I was chatting in the kitchen with two housemates about my idea to plant plants in my old worn out dance shoes. They brought up issues of drainage and aeration, and we ended up deciding I should hang them by the shoelaces. I can't wait to have a little home of my own where I can hang plants in shoes! I found a studio and my lease starts on February 28th. I am VERY excited.

Also, I am going to try to take a class at a time at Chicago Theological Seminary.

So things are going well although still in transition.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Brought to you by Chicago Winters

Reasons I walk fast when it's cold:
(really fast!)

1. I get out of the cold faster

2. It warms me up a bit

3. I feel less helpless, like there's nothing I can do to get warm; I feel I am doing something to help my situation. Even if it doesn't make much of a difference, at least I was doing SOMETHING and not just accepting my situation

4. It distracts me from the cold

5. be careful not to slip on ice! go slowly over ice. plus then you look comical speed walking then abruptly going uber-slow with your mitten hands sticking out.

This announcement has been brought to you by: Chicago Winters. Bringing you snow and ice and other extreme precipitation for A Long Time.

liturgical year meditation

So, today's Ash Wednesday.

And it feels good.

I just wasn't feeling Epiphany this year. Maybe I wasn't sitting with it long enough, but it was just not resonating for me. All this light imagery, and revealedness, when I've been spending so much time with Holy is the Dark, and God the Unrevealed, God the sneaky one around the corner, just barely visible but beautiful because of it.

So: Epiphany did not feel exactly like that.

And moreover, I'm not feeling the light imagery for other reasons. All this light/dark, good/evil, white/black stuff raises some really problematic questions about race. AND, all this sight/blindness stuff raises some other, perhaps-similarly-problematic questions about ability. So there's that, that gets in the way, appropriately, for me.

So: epiphany, not so much.

And today I told someone that I was glad it was Ash Wednesday, and usually that just means that it's time to enter the mourning/difficult/struggle time. But it feels really good this time. Like: Ash Wednesday means Lent is beginning. And Lent means that Easter is coming.

I'm often reassuring people that they don't have to rush into resurrection, or into Christmas or whatever. That's why they're seasons and not days, I say. And maybe this year I didn't really get much epiphany into me.

But, oh, Easter's coming.

And Sunday, I went to Hurlbut (my home church) for probably the last time with Ted (my longest-running pastor) as pastor. And he moved around the front of the sanctuary as he preached, naming all the spots we have seen Jesus. Jesus in the nativity scene, Jesus in the Christ Candle, Jesus in the cross, all the way through... Jesus in the pews. It was pretty beautiful. Seeing Jesus, running into that guy at all kinds of random places, and if you miss him this year, you know he'll just be waiting there again, when we come around once more.

My mom got me a poster of the liturgical year for Christmas. It's just a big round circle, with lots of different colors on it.

Alright.

-d

ps- A couple of posts ago, somefolks had its two hundredth post. Huzzah.