Roleplaying Revisited

This article was originally published on the Youth Specialties website back in December of 2005, but has long since been lost to the ever changing landscape of the Internet. I've decided to park it here, since I've been told a few times how helpful it was for practicing Christians trying to defend the hobby of tabletop roleplaying.

Roleplaying Revisited

by Mike Perschon

A pair of feet step into my peripheral vision. I look up to see a male counselor, beach towel and book in hand.

"You ever play fantasy role-playing games?" he asks me after some small talk and counselor-to-camp-speaker banter. The nearly inaudible and conspiratorial way he asks this question is normally reserved for confessions of deep dark secrets, inquiries into "how far is too far" in a dating relationship, or confusion over the erotic imagery of Song of Songs.

When I say yes, he becomes animated. Once a fellow tabletop role-player has been identified, the proper geek etiquette involves a series of "secret handshakes" and esoteric lingo involving the mechanics of gaming, the idiosyncrasies of gamers, and inevitably the question of whether or not I really think it's okay for Christians to play role-playing games.

This isn't an isolated event; I know Christians of every warp and hue who are also avid gamers—a math professor who worked as a missionary in the Cameroon plays an Elven healer who sings his spells of mending, a youth pastor of an evangelical church moonlights as a warhammer-wielding Dwarven fighter. I myself don a "+20 shirt of smiting" once a month to act as "Game Master" or moderator to an ongoing campaign (two years and running) based in Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

In addition to being avid, most Christians who are into role-playing games are "in the closet" because of a number of misconceptions and urban myths which vilified the hobby back in the 1980s. In a faith that's redeemed the alternative cultures of skateboarding and championed the once controversial tool of rock and roll, fantasy role-playing and its adherents remain outcast, forced to carry out their actions covertly.

After gaming for over 20 years and living as a Christian for nearly as long, it is my belief and experience that Roleplaying Games (RPGs) could serve youth ministry but continue to be largely overlooked for reasons which have not been properly evaluated or critiqued, despite the large number of students who are involved in this hobby.

In this article, I will attempt to address the main concerns with RPGs, then demonstrate that contrary to being harmful, fantasy role-playing has potential to assist youth ministry in the areas of socialization and education. This article will not concern itself with defining the history or mechanics of role-playing games as these topics have been extensively dealt with and are readily available through Internet searches.

Mythunderstandings about RPGs

There are two common objections within the Christian community to RPGs. The first is that fantasy role-playing allegedly leads players to become involved in the occult or opens them to demonic influence due to the magical element present in the majority of RPGs. The second is that they are said to contribute to suicide and/or violent crime.

The first reason, regarding magic, comes down to the reality that "if you believe that magic is both real and evil, then there can be no reasonable argument for accepting the game." (1) More relevant to our discussion, if one believes that the magic within role-playing games is real, then this statement is doubly true. This issue depends on whether the Christian gamer accepts fantasy worlds as secondary worlds not subject to the same laws of nature our own primary world is governed by. If one believes the magic of Narnia or Middle-Earth different from the magic prohibited in Scripture, then playing an RPG involving magic would not be an issue.

However, if the concept of imaginary magic is as abhorrent as real magic, then there are other options within the RPG community. A number of very popular role-playing games involve no magic, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, or games based in modern settings such as the modern d20 system. I.C.E.'s Rolemaster provides the possibility of gaming in any era, with or without the inclusion of magic.

The second concern, that RPGs lead to suicide and violent crime, is largely the result of media hype in the 1980s. One of the most notorious examples of this media-misinformation was in the case of Dallas Eggbert, a teen genius who went missing during his first year at college, and a year after the investigation into his disappearance, committed suicide. (2) Despite the fact that the investigation located no gaming paraphernalia other than a gaming magazine in Eggbert's dorm room, that no one could be found who had ever played Dungeons and Dragons with him, the disappearance and suicide were linked by the media to fantasy role-playing.(3) Mazes and Monsters, a best-selling novel inspired by Eggbert's story was made into a TV movie, further obscuring other relevant information from the investigation which stated that Eggbert was a user of hallucinogenic drugs, a homosexual in an era of homophobia, socially challenged and under severe pressure from his mother to achieve academically. (4)

Eggbert's story became the template for the media's treatment of such cases. When Bink Pulling, another teen genius, shot himself, the fact that he admired Adolf Hitler, had killed his own pets and neighborhood animals, and was socially isolated were ignored in favor of the more sensational element that he played Dungeons and Dragons with other gifted students at his school. (5) His mother formed an anti-FRP coalition, which would be responsible for much of the misinformation surrounding fantasy gaming.

Ironically, the evidence pooled by the critics of RPGs served to weaken the conclusions at which they arrived. If game designer Michael Stackpole's estimate of 10 million gamers in North America is correct, then the estimated "125 people killed from these games…should actually be higher."(6) Providing that each of these alleged cases were actually the result of involvement in RPGs, it means that less than 0.000001% of gamers commit suicide, a number far below the national average.

Statistical psychological studies have shown the opposite of what the critics claim; that involvement in a role-playing group "is not positively correlated with emotional instability." (7) Instead of studies into the therapeutic effects of role-playing games on socially challenged and neurotic individuals reveals that gaming groups provide a healthy community.

Shared Fantasy—A Gateway to Healthy Community

In his article "Therapy is Fantasy," John Hughes determined four positive psychological dimensions to fantasy role-playing (8), two of which are especially relevant to the potential use of RPGs as a tool of youth ministry.

Hughes identified that role-playing enabled players to gain greater social skills. In youth ministry, we're often faced with the challenge of the student who lacks the skills necessary for social interaction. My own experiences using an RPG in youth ministry demonstrated how gaming creates a safe environment for socially challenged students to try communicating in ways they would be afraid of in real life situations.

I purposely chose several players for our gaming group who were outgoing and gregarious to play alongside those who were awkward and withdrawn. The behavior manifested by the socially challenged students ranged from compulsive chewing (pencils, pop cans, whatever could be fit into the mouth) to extreme personal space issues. Initially, the group had little contact beyond the gaming table.

As the boys interacted with each other as their "characters," their relationship outside the game began to transform as well. The outgoing students began phoning the withdrawn ones and inviting them out, while the withdrawn students began socializing at youth group, not only with the gaming friends, but with students their gaming friends were connected with as well. Within a year, the student with personal space issues put his hand on my shoulder and asked me what it was like to be married, a question and action that stood in stark contrast to my first experience of him.

RPGs also provide an opportunity for a discerning game master or moderator to observe aspects of the players' personalities that manifest within the fantasy framework in bolder ways than they would in real life. I was often able to talk to the students after a gaming session about choices they'd made within the game, and draw connections with real life situations. RPGs have been used in psychotherapeutic treatments as an aid to "extended character analysis" and were reported to "bypass some of the risks of fantasy-based therapies such as Guided Affective Imagery while allowing emotions to emerge within the therapy in a non-threatening manner." (9)

I've witnessed this in the life of one of the characters involved in the campaign I'm currently running. By observing a recurring pattern that emerged over the two years in the player's gaming choices, we were able to identify an area of personal struggle that he was working out within the safety of the gaming environment.

The value of this beneficial attribute of RPGs cannot be understated, given the fringe group that are stereotypically most attracted to gaming. Young men who find frustration in the transition from childhood through adolescence into adulthood can work out a lot of their inner fears and apprehensions within the role-playing environment, simultaneously forging a small community of like-minded friends with whom they share a favorite activity .

The other benefit identified by Hughes is that role-playing is educational. All youth leaders interested in communicating the gospel to their students find frustration at one time or another in generating student interest in Scripture. Christian gaming RPGs such as DragonRaid incorporate Scripture memorization as an integral part of the rules.

Players of RPGs are voracious about learning everything they can about their gaming world. The possibilities are nearly endless, ranging from Biblical Eras (as Green Ronin's excellent d20 supplement Testament now enables gamers to do) to monastic communities in Europe. If a gamer has to play an Israelite priest, it is likely in short order they'll know more about Mosaic Law than you do. Or imagine a student playing a missionary during the age of Imperialism. In addition to having to know how to communicate the gospel, they'll have opportunity to wrestle through some tough and controversial aspects of church history.

This is where the youth leader comes into the picture. I remember reading an encouragement to teachers, pastors, and parents to take on the role of Dungeon Master or referee, to help guide the direction of role-playing games. Because of misinformation and media manipulation, I think many youth leaders have missed out on the possibility of using RPGs in a positive way. I know there are many youth workers who are closet gamers; its time to come out of the closet and into the light, and begin to use this area of personal play as a tool of the gospel.

Some will respond to this article by saying, "Well of course you think this is a good idea…you're a gamer…you're biased."

Of course I'm biased. No one is objective when it comes to such issues. But if I was writing an article about many other fringe elements of youth culture, my 20 year immersion in that culture would lend me credibility. Instead, I'm viewed with suspicion—my judgement must be clouded, I'm confused, deluded, or completely lost. Christianity has redeemed many other fringe youth cultures—we're prepared to become all things to all people to the students with piercings, tattoos, and loud music. But how many of us will be brave enough to enter the world of the geek, the world of 20-sided dice, miniature dragons, and all night gaming sessions involving 2 a.m. pizza runs?

And will we be brave enough to really, truly enter it, rather than simply wagging a finger and condemning it? To walk without fear into the supposed den of dragons with the words of Hebrews 2:8 ringing in our ears: "God has put everything under our power and has not left anything out of our power." (CEV)

1 Carolyn Caywood. "Rescuing the Innocent: The Lure of Dungeons and Dragons." School Library Journal Mar. 1991: 138.

2 Kurt Lancaster, "Do Roleplaying Games Promote Crime, Satanism and Suicide among Players as Critics Claim?" Journal of Popular Culture, 28 (2), Fall, 71.

3 Paul Cardwell, Jr. "The Attacks on Roleplaying Games," Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter 1994, 158.

4 Ibid., 158.

5 Ibid.

Did You Lose Your Faith?

In the last ten years, if I get into a deep theological conversation with people who have known me a long time, some version of the question "did you lose your faith?" comes up. It takes on many forms, like "do you still believe in the Resurrection?" or "do you even believe God exists?" or "do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?" Even people who don't know me well, upon learning I used to be a pastor, ask some version of these questions.

Sadly, because it's rare anyone asks that question directly, I never get to give my answer: "no, I did not lose my faith. I know exactly where it is." A question like, "do you still believe in the Resurrection?" isn't really asking if I've lost my faith. It's asking if I no longer subscribe to a particular faith as expressed in a particular time and place. It's asking if I'm still an Evangelical Christian, and the answer is, "No, I'm not." But if I'm not an Evangelical Christian, then in many Evangelical Christians' eyes I'm no Christian at all. I've lost the Faith. But again, I'd respond that I haven't lost my faith. I just lost theirs.

An old friend sent me an email asking if I still believed in God. When I responded that I didn't know for sure, that I probably best identify as an agnostic, he replied that I might be an atheist, but wasn't yet comfortable with that idea. That was a few years ago, and I'm no more comfortable identifying as an atheist than I was then. I might not believe that Jesus is God, but I can't go to the point of saying there is no God at all. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't know who God is, but I feel confident in the idea of a design behind the Universe. And in the end, I think it's the certainty of atheism, mirroring the certainty of Belief, that puts me off.

But I can't go on saying, "I'm a Christian" without some qualification. One of the churches I ministered at still calls me up to come speak occasionally, to fill in for the current pastor while he's on vacation. I've started saying no, because, inasmuch as I love to talk and teach about faith, Christianity, the Bible, I'm no longer doing so from a position of Belief. It's one thing entirely to have a difference of opinion over whether Christians should drink alcohol or be pacifists, and another to have a difference of belief over whether Jesus rose from the dead. I've known I was exiting the Christian faith for years now, since the Easter Sunday morning over a decade ago when I walked up to the pulpit to give a sermon and found myself with the same problem as Mary Magdalene: "they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him."

It's taken a lot longer than ten years for me to arrive at this moment of "coming out" about my loss of faith, or as I have come to think of it, erosion. I did not "lose my faith" overnight. I did not have a single moment of dark doubt to mirror the bright illumination of conversion. But then again, I didn't really have a Pauline conversion experience, where one moment I was a terrible, terrible person, and the next, I was someone else.

My "conversion" experience mirrors my journey to agnosticism. While I told people I became a Christian on July 5, 1985 at summer camp, that was just one of many micro-conversions I'd had over a life growing up in the church. I remember one very significant moment when I was eight, also at summer camp, sitting in the chapel and listening to one woman tell a story from scripture while another illustrated that moment on a canvas with pastels. I was enchanted by how swiftly the artist worked. I was also quite taken by the bible of the man I sat beside, one of the camp staff: it was filled with notes and highlighting, and would inform my ideas of what a good bible looked like years later when I had that teenage micro-conversion. I had many moments in Sunday School and youth group where I affirmed an affinity with my parents' faith, making it my own over time. Consequently, in a decade that demanded dynamic conversion stories, mine was terribly boring: unlike the Christian celebrities of the 1980s, I did not turn away from Satanism or drugs (the best conversion stories of the '80s went something like "I was a high priest of the Satanic church, and was doing coke off a naked acolyte when an angel descended..."). I got good grades, (mostly) followed the rules, was a good kid. I didn't drink before I was 18 (unless the liqueur my best friend and I put on ice cream that one time when his parents were out counts), didn't really smoke, and was (as I would learn in later years), by comparison to many of my peers a pretty pure guy when it came to sexual hi-jinks. So when I made a commitment to Jesus in 1985 at summer camp, I was just reaffirming the life I'd been raised to. I grew up in a Christian home, and as I grew older, adopted Christianity as my own.

And up until another conversion moment at a Christian rock concert in 1987, it really was mine. It was interwoven with other mythic tales such as Superman, Star Wars, and fantasy novels. I was as interested in being like Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Conan the Barbarian as I was in being like Jesus. I had yet to discover that those things were incompatible: it's hard to "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you" when the best things in life are ostensibly to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." But somehow, it worked for me: I think it was likely that, up until that rock concert, my faith was more of the Old Testament kind, which was more compatible with the hypermasculine heroism of Conan and acted as inspiration for, at the very least, the origin story of Superman. But after that concert, I struggled to maintain my faith while trying to fit into the homogeneity of North American Evangelicalism. It would be a struggle my faith would ultimately win.

See, when many Christians ask me if I've lost my faith, they want to know if I still believe in Jesus as my personal saviour. And the answer is, "No." I haven't believed in that for many years. I'm not sure how many, because, like my journey toward Evangelical Christianity, my journey away from it took place over years, maybe decades. I looked up possible antonyms for "conversion," and found "enlargement." I like that, because that's certainly what happened to me. Evangelical Christianity shrunk my belief, demanded that it look just like whatever James Dobson of Focus on the Family or some other Christian celebrity with a platform said it should be. I resisted that regularly, and was labeled a "loose cannon," because I kept trying to make my Christian practice my own.

Working for the Mennonites at the end of my professional career as a minister gave me the space to get outside the Evangelical bubble. I found myself in conversation with people who regularly attended church and identified as Christians, but didn't believe in the total inerrancy of Scripture, who debated the nature of the Second Coming, and in some cases, only held the Beatitudes to be worthy of governing one's life. At the same time, I was involved in a church community called The Gathering, which was "church for people who don't like church." It was a good place to rest a while and rediscover what I really believed.

But faith isn't just what you believe. It's a matter of what you don't believe. And the etymological root of faith is the Latin word fides, as in "fidelity." Being faithful to something. I have known, nay have even been, the Christian who believed the right things as concepts, but was unfaithful to them in practice. Could say that Jesus was love, but act in narrow, unloving ways. One of the many erosion points for me was the issue of homosexuality. I could not square the command to love the least of these with the institutional homophobia of North American Evangelical Christianity. Increasingly, as my faith eroded, I had to ask, what am I being faithful to? What should my fidelity be towards?

Erosion isn't just destruction, though. It's transformation. River erosion also involves transport and deposition of the material which has been eroded. Things get moved around. The landscape changes, but the pieces remain. You can't grow up in a Christian home, live as a believing, practicing Christian, and then just turn it off like a light or a faucet. It's all still there, part of what made you. Parts of what made me.

I looked at how Jesus transformed the Hebrew shema, which in the Tanakh says to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. But the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all add mind. According to Jesus's words in those Gospels, you need to love God with your mind too. And my mind was telling me that the way the church was treating LGBTQ individuals was wrong. And I also understood that, no matter how many good arguments I came up with for what the Bible really said about homosexuals, modern Christianity still had a major problem with them, and that, at some level of reality, that is what Christianity is in the world today. So I made a decision to disagree with that particular God. I made a decision to de-convert. It was a moment of micro-enlargement, one of many on the opposite side of the journey of micro-conversions.

I've made many micro-enlargements since then, and cannot say with integrity that I am still a Christian. It would be disingenuous to say so. It leads to too many moments of correction and clarification in conversation. It's easier to just say, "I'm an agnostic." But, as Terry Pratchett wrote in Feet of Clay, atheism is a religious position, and so therefore, agnosticism must be as well. So when people ask if I've lost my faith, I'm at a bit of a loss to reply. No, I haven't. I know exactly where it is, and what it is. I still think about matters of faith a great deal. But I am not a Christian by North American Evangelical standards. At this point, I don't always really fit inside the label of liberal Christian. But that doesn't mean I've lost my faith. I know what I'm faithful to--I'm faithful to many of the things I learned from the Christian scriptures and Tanakh: I believe in the importance of grace and compassion, as well as covenant and community. But I am also faithful to the stories of my childhood, of heroism as exemplified by Superman and Luke Skywalker, as well as the existentialism of Conan and Han Solo. I didn't lose my faith - I found it again, the faith of my teenage years, transformed through years of erosion into something new. The faith you might say I lost? That one was never truly mine.

This is the final post of my Gotthammer blog. It is likely going to also be the first of a brand new space for me to wrestle out my faith through a series of memoir meditations. I wondered about keeping this blog active, but in the end, decided it represented a different phase of my life. I want to write these memoirs in their own online space, as a new "book" you might say. I'll link to that space as soon as I have it active. Perhaps, in the hubbub of life, that will never happen. But I wanted to close the book here, at the very least, and do so with a post that is the most honest thing about my faith that I've said or written publicly in a very long time. 

Eulogy for George Hardy: 1950-2015

The following is the eulogy I gave for George Hardy, a close friend, mentor, and fellow gamer of 20 years. He died on February 11, 2015 after several years battling cancer. 

If I say wizard, some of you think of magic. Others think of Gandalf or Obi Wan Kenobi. Others think of the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. When I think of wizards, I almost always think of George. The history of the word wizard is an interesting one in light of our friend George Eugene Hardy, for the first part, wys, meant wise in Old English, while the second part, ard, is a relative of George’s surname - Hardy. The root word, hard, has always meant what it means today – strength, extreme, difficult to do. So a wizard is simply someone whose wisdom is hard, extreme—greater than normal, someone who can answer the questions others find too difficult. I think in that respect, we can all agree that George was a wizard—an extremely wise man.

  When I speak of George as a wise man, I picture him with his hands folded across his stomach, quietly contemplating the best thing to say in response to a difficult question. And apparently, it was always so. Born in October of 1950 to Marjorie and Mitchell Hardy here in Edmonton, George did not start talking until he was 4. Ironically, given who he would become, there was some concern that he might have had what we now call a learning disability, but when he finally spoke, it was with complete sentences. Those first words would be echoed in many social gatherings to come, when George would stand off to the side, the silent introvert waiting for a conversation worth having to share his wisdom, underestimated by the extroverts in the room who would find themselves surprised when he finally joined in the conversation, able to hold forth on a wide number of topics.

By high school however, his wizardry was unmistakable; he was either top of the class or hot on the heels of the student who was at the top, or competing in annual school science fairs and winning numerous prizes with his friend Bill Klaus. His passion for science was attested to by his well-used chemistry set, and his father’s workbench was constantly covered with George’s electronic works in progress: a modern alchemist.

We often think of wisdom coming with age, and George apparently always gave off a sort of august presence. His Grade Twelve physics teacher, when stumped by a Physics problem and needed his young student’s help, referred to him as “Uncle George”: unsurprising when you learn George won an Alberta wide Physics competition that year. He hoped to be a world class Physics researcher, and accordingly studied that discipline for his first three years of university. In his third year of Physics, George took a Math course and solved a “bonus Math” question from his professor. However, being a wizard, George solved it in a brand new way and was published with his professor—a very rare occurrence for an undergrad student—and was then hired as a research assistant. While he never lost his love of Physics, he also never regretted his choice for Mathematics.

George’s exceptional ability, demonstrated by achieving top honors in undergraduate math, enabled our wizard to skip a Master’s degree and go directly into a Mathematics Doctoral Program at the University of Alberta. His research and thesis took three years to write and, given that it was before the invention of computer math editing software, drove the typist “crazy.” George published research articles during this period, signing his papers “G. E. Hardy” to distinguish himself from renowned number theorist G. H. Hardy.

Upon completion of his Doctorate, George accepted a teaching position at Sackville New Brunswick University, where he taught for two academic years. It was his first time living away from home, though it was by no means the end of his wanderings, neither geographically or intellectually. George traveled far and wide: regular visits to family in friends in Lloydminster and Kelowna, less common excursions as far as England and New Zealand, or as George called it, Middle Earth.

For many, mastery of chemistry, physics, and math would constitute knowledge of the building blocks of our universe. And though he would often quip that “math is life and life is math,” it was not enough for our wizard: he sought what C.S. Lewis called “The Deeper Magic,” the truth by which all things, not just atoms or complex formulae, are held together. In 1977, George was influenced by another George, George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, to start thinking about faith, prompting him to take up and read. The idea of Star Wars’ fictional Force got him wondering about the possibility of a real Force, and he began reading the Children’s Bible given to him when he’d attended Rupert Street Presbyterian Church with his mother and brother as a child. George made his first public confession of faith a few years later, in the summer of 1979, on a camping trip with his brother Walter and some of Walter’s friends during a sharing time around the fire.

George continued to grow in his Christian faith and decided to move to Jacksonville Florida where he attended Luther Rice Theological Seminary, completing a three-year Master of Divinity program in 1984. He served in a Fellowship Baptist Church and was ordained with that fellowship. His intention was to be a missionary to Portugal but he was unable to raise enough financial support. Years later, during a one-year academic sabbatical, he served as a short term missionary in Cameroon, Africa. That trip not only made good on his missionary calling, but also on the meaning of his last name, Hardy, which means “bold, daring, and fearless.” While his humility would have prevented him from seeing his adventures abroad that way, anyone who has ever tried spicy Cameroonian cuisine will know the risks George braved. Despite many outings for Mexican food, I was never able to find a dish that was too spicy for him. I like to think that George simply had a mission calling closer to home. Famed mathematician Paul Erdӧs, who was the external advisor for George’s doctoral thesis, had a concept of a book in which God had written down the best and most elegant proofs for mathematical theorems; he consequently referred to math lectures as “preaching.” While I cannot say if George thought of his lectures as such, George was a teacher and preacher to the end of his days, whether he spoke on the certainty of mathematics or the mystery of theology.

At the Gathering, a church plant he helped start and sustain, he was playfully referred to as “the Reverend Doctor,” a title meant in jest that held great truth: he was both academic and believer, a rare combination. As an academic at the University of Alberta and then, for many, many years, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, George’s first love was always the imparting of knowledge, not the hoarding of it behind ivory towers. When asked what was on his “bucket list” following his diagnosis of terminal cancer, he replied that he wanted to continue to teach and serve as Chair of the Mathematics Department as long as possible. And he did end up teaching nearly to the end of his days. As a fervent follower of Christ, George had a unique gift for mentoring and encouraging others in their spiritual journey. He devoted himself faithfully to a number of church congregations, alternately as youth sponsor, tech-of-all-trades, pinch-hitting preacher, and generous giver.

Despite his trademark response to the greeting, “How are you?”— “grouchy as ever,” and the occasional invitation to “turn to the Grouch side,” or his own take on the F-word, “fun,” George was no Oscar, no Emperor Palpatine, no Grinch. Consider his love of games, which he sometimes described as puzzles with a random element. Rules were read as mathematical formulae and matters of probability, which meant that inevitably, once George understood a game, he was a formidable opponent.

Anyone who beat George at a game that involved strategy could attest to having really accomplished something – they beat the wizard. From duplicate bridge to fantasy roleplaying, games were a space where his math-mind met with his desire for community and found an outlet for both.
His unique combination of intellectual brilliance and personal humility, together with a playful, pun-filled sense of humor, endeared him to many. As a child, the person who understood him best was his mother, who he was particularly close to. Leave it to a mother to be the first to see the qualities it would take the rest of us years or months to recognize, and draw close to George. He remained a bachelor his entire life, but like that physics teacher so long ago, many of us could have easily called him “Uncle George,” given how much he felt like family for so many. His legacy is the memories held fondly in hearts of the many he has touched with his life. Both in the past month at his bedside, and here today, many have gathered to pay respect to that legacy. Near the end of the stage musical of Big Fish, one character states “A man is as rich as his friends. I am a tycoon.” So it was with George.

And so, even in death, our wizard guides us towards wisdom. Certainly, in certain knowledge, for he had much, and put great stock in it. Ostensibly, in theological mystery and musing, for he plumbed those depths and scaled those heights daily. But collectively, as with any good math problem, wherein we must show our work as well as give an answer, George’s bonus question, the difficult and hard problem he had an excellent answer for, was community: his students, his Padawan learners; his coworkers, his Rebel alliance; his friends, his Fellowship of the Ring; and his family, brother Walter, sister-in-law Nora, nephew Thomas, and niece Amanda, his very own Shire. Though our wise man has departed for the Undying Lands, his knowledge, his faith, and his wisdom remain like seeds planted in our hearts and lives.

Sing me to Sleep

As I write these words, my cousin is dying. Earlier today, she underwent surgery meant to save her life, one of many she has endured in a life that has always been threatened by fragile health. The surgery could not save her; my uncle is at her bedside for one final vigil.

Last year, I learned that a high-school friend lost her husband. This past week, she lost one of her ties to him: her mother-in-law passed away.

Two weeks ago, my wife's grandmother died, after years of dementia.

I mourned each of these in different ways. My cousin's has been the hardest, for she is not yet gone, and I weep mostly for the father at her bedside, for I refuse to explore the corridors of the pain he is feeling. They overwhelm me. I can imagine my own death...but to imagine my child's?

I used to have answers for moments like these, and then I learned that there are no answers for grief. I no longer have the confidence of the faith I had in my twenties and thirties. Somewhere along the way, I went from an expectation of life beyond the grave to satisfaction in the life I lead today. I no longer anticipate an afterlife. I wouldn't say I don't believe in one, but I am no longer living for it. I am living for, as I once sang in lyric, "this breath I now steal."

I suppose I'm an agnostic when it comes to the afterlife. If there is one, then that will be lovely. If there isn't...

When I confess these things to my friends in hushed tones they ask if I'm scared about that. I probably will be, but I stumbled upon a perspective the other day, and it's given me peace.

If there is no afterlife, then when I die, I will cease to be. My consciousness will fade to black, and that will be the end. For many, this is terrifying.

And yet I do it every night. Some times, it comes upon me without warning. My eyes close, and I cease to have conscious thought. I rest. I dream. But the me that speaks and thinks and acts is asleep. Between dreams, there is nothing. When I first go to sleep, I welcome that falling sensation into darkness.

And this is why I mourned differently for my wife's grandmother than I do for my cousin. Jenica's grandmother wanted to rest. After 90 years, she decided it was time to sleep. She refused to eat, and waited for the end to come. And when it came, she was listening to her daughter play piano.

But the other deaths cause me pain. They are what terrifies me. The life cut off. To use the language of Ecclesiastes, the golden cord torn. The bowl shattered. It is on nights like this that I am most challenged to see a pattern in a senseless world, where the rain falls on everyone, good and bad.

Since I received the news about my cousin, the lyrics to "Asleep" by the Smiths, as sung by Emily Browning have been running through my head.

Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
I'm tired and I
I want to go to bed

Sing me to sleep
Sing me to sleep
And then leave me alone
Don't try to wake me in the morning
'Cause I will be gone
Don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
Deep in the cell of my heart
I will feel so glad to go 

I do not think these are the words my cousin had in her mind earlier today, before she closed her eyes, waiting to go into surgery. I am certain she wanted many more years. I hope, as the lyrics go, that "There is another world / There is a better world / Well, there must be." But that is only a hope, and not something I have any confidence in anymore. And while those lyrics might have had a darker meaning in the minds of Steven Morrisey and Johnny Marr, I hope they'll be the words in my head when I go into that good night. That I will have lived long enough that I will be ready to close my eyes and go to sleep.

For Andrea.

Why I'm Looking for a Church Again

My wife and I are back in the market for a church. We were attending a big Pentecostal church for about a year and a half, but then I made the mistake of wanting to get involved as a leader of a Bible study. This was a mistake for several reasons.

First, because this church, which kept saying it was about the "things all Christians can agree on," was just as Pentecostal as any PAOC affiliated group I'd experienced previously. I hoped they might be different, because they kept saying they were different. I was dubious about the idea that there is anything all Christians can agree on, but decided to keep my mouth shut, since I really wanted to have a church to attend with my family. But once I indicated I wanted to teach the Bible, something I trained six years of my life for, and then spent another ten actually doing, I was told that I needed to pass through seven fiery hoops which represented the seven-fold Spirit of God in Revelation (okay, that's not really true, but it might as well have been). I would have to become a member, take membership classes, sign a contract, and agree to everything this church believed. Initially, I didn't see that as a problem, until suddenly we went from "things all Christians can agree on" to "things only conservative Charismatics believe." We came to a compromise by which I would co-lead with someone else who was already a member in good standing.

The first study night proved to be the next pitfall, because apparently no one studies the Bible in big churches; you get a leader's guidebook that gives you a bunch of lame discussion starters but never requires that you or your group do anything more than read the passage briefly. You can then talk about whatever the hell you want, just so long as it doesn't involve exegesis or historical context. Too heady. Too weighty. And to top it all off, you get a shiny DVD with some guy you've never met sharing his story of conversion. This wouldn't be so bad, if our study was about conversion, but it wasn't. It was about waiting on God. The Bible passage was (drum roll...it's a Pentecostal church...drum crescendo...) the second chapter of Acts, as the apostles wait on God on the day of Pentecost. This would be infuriating all on its own, given that it's typical of most churches to have a screaming bias to one or two favorite passages, and Pentecostals are exceedingly fond of Acts 2. But I really couldn't be too mad about that, since we really weren't studying the passage anyhow.

So I'm watching the shiny guy from the shiny DVD tell us his conversion story in a study about waiting on God, when he says the following words: "And then something happened, which I can only describe as demonic oppression."

He did not follow up that statement with a lurid tale of fiery pentagrams, bastardized Latin phrases in a Cookie-monster voice, or floating even five inches above his bed. It made me pine for the days of Mike Warnke. In the 1980s, when conversion stories involved demons, they were at least colorful and entertaining. All I could think was, "that was the only way you could describe it?" How about depression, or drugs, or bad gas? How about a deep mood swing, or a shit day? And more to the point, what the hell does any of this have to do with waiting on God?

I waited for him to roll that demonic oppression around to the topic of waiting, but it remained the first speed-bump in the evening's discussion.

The second came when one of the attendees claimed that modern Christians have it harder than the early Christians did, because we have so much awful stuff to deal with. You know, the usual grocery list of things conservative Christians think are destroying the fabric of space and time: porn, gays, gay porn. I wanted to say something about living in a society where stage plays involved massive dildos, or one where women were second-class citizens, or one where you could own slaves, or, say turn Christians into light fixtures using pitch and FIRE, or something about being eaten by lions...but I was simply too stunned to speak.

So I vented to Jenica on the way home about these speed-bumps. When we got home, I took a look at the book we were supposed to read as an accompaniment to our so-called discussion of the Book of Acts. The first chapter was about the writer meeting the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and arguing against same-sex marriage. While this was to be expected, given the source, the way the author talked about countries that allowed for same-sex marriage resulted in the third speed-bump, which was more of a giant-sized pot-hole, like the one that the Alien Tripod rises out of in Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The author said that he didn't want his country to "fall into darkness, as other countries had."

Darkness.

Admittedly, it was the start of Edmonton's descent into darkness, our annual shift into the long night (we live close to Winterfell), when eventually, the sun sets at 5:30 p.m. and rises at something like 7:30 a.m. Physical darkness, yes. Spiritual darkness?

Sorry. No. I love Canada. I love Edmonton. I love that conservative, red-neck Alberta has passed permissive same-sex marriage laws. Even before my paradigm shift towards openly supporting same-sex marriage, I was in favor of the law, because it was just. It was fair. If two hetero people "live in sin," they have civic rights related to common-law marriage, even thought they aren't married. If two same-sex people just live together, they have none of these rights, fornicatin' be damned. What's the sense in that?

At any rate, a line had been crossed. I came out of the closet and admitted that, not only was I not opposed to gay marriage, I supported it. If the church would prefer I desist in being a teacher's helper because of my views, I was cool to step away. I'm not interested in being a shit-disturber anymore. At least, not to the faith community I belong to. It's disruptive and often hurtful. I prefer to live my life and hope others see it as an example.

So we left. Sadly, that was last fall, and we still haven't found what we're looking for, which will be the subject of some upcoming posts, including "What I'm Looking For in a Church and WTF doesn't it exist?" and "OMG! Hip Churches, Hip Pastors, Lame Exegesis of the Third Commandment."

Between God and Geek

You can see the year I started my Ph.D. by the number of posts here at Gotthammer. The yearly posts drop from 50, then 94, then 26. Before Gotthammer was a blog, it was a regularly updated personal website (remember those?). But when I started my research, I decided to keep my steampunk work separate from Gotthammer, because this was my personal blog, and I needed to affect a different persona as "The Steampunk Scholar."

That work is done now, and I've learned a lot about blogging and branding from running Steampunk Scholar over the past four years. I've learned that focusing on a particular theme is one of the keys to a successful blog: find a niche, claim it, and build an audience around that niche. Gotthammer has never had a focus other than "stuff I'm interested in."

That changes today. From today forward, the sole focus of Gotthammer will be as a space where I'll dialogue about the intersection between God and Geek. I've been pondering writing a memoir of growing up Geek in a Baptist church, about being Geek at a Baptist Bible college, about being Geek as a pastor. Now that I'm no longer a paid minister, I feel like I have the freedom to say what I really think, to talk about the struggles I had growing up loving Dungeons and Dragons but keeping it secret, keeping it safe. My original idea was to make a new blog called The View From the Balcony, which was where I sat in church through my teen years, but I own the domain name for Gotthammer and I think it's still a part of my journey.

I know the world doesn't really need another blog, but I feel like it could use one where someone like me, a Baptist-turned-ecumenical-left-leaning-Christian-who-is-also-a-geek writes about faith and fantasy, about spirituality and SF, the holy and horror. But this isn't going to be one of those sites where I blog about how the Matrix has spiritual themes. This is going to be me telling my stories, the ones I've told as a youth speaker, and the ones I never did because I'd never be asked back. I'll tell you why I hate Zombie Jesus, but like Cthulhu-mas. I'll tell you about the time my friends and I LARPed back before there was LARPing, and ended up in the South Saskatchewan river in Canadian Tire rafts, dressed in fatigues. I'll tell you about dating an atheist and seeing Jurassic Park for the first time. I'll tell you about how my views on homosexuality changed. I'll tell you about the time I nearly got fired for playing D&D with students in my first job as a minister. Then I'll tell you about how I actually got fired. We'll talk about the Bible, but also about the I Ching and the Ramayana. I will not be debating doctrine, but simply telling my story. Tony Campolo says that "theology is biography," and in my case that's very, very true.

My current bias remains Protestant Christian, but very ecumenical, and not terribly orthodox. I'm as informed in my views by mythopoesis as I am by theology. There's an actual word for this - theopoetics. I've read the material on it, and while I don't hold any hard metaphysical theories nor subscribe to any one person's ideas about it, I am convinced that literature tells us much about who God is. After all, the Bible is literature. As a child, I was as persuaded by Superman as I was by Sunday School to follow the Way. I think of both as foundational stories that have shaped who I am, and am no longer concerned with whether or not the story of Jesus is historical. I don't believe Superman is real, but in a very real sense, I believe in what his stories are about. Likewise, while I have a hope that the Gospels are true in a historical sense, I no longer feel a burning need for them to be proven so. I know this means that for many Christians I'm no longer in the club, but frankly my dears, I don't give a damn. I weep when Ian McKellen as Gandalf speaks of heaven in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. Just because that eschatology belongs to Middle Earth doesn't mean it can't speak to my desire for something more, as C.S. Lewis put it. But that more isn't restricted to hoping for heaven. Reading Gilgamesh, or the Tanakh from a Jewish perspective has helped me see the beauty in a world that ends. And Journey into the West has helped me look outside my Western frame to tread the balance between life and illusion. I no longer operate as the man of one book, but as a man of many texts, who synthesizes them. But I grew up in a very particular vein of Canadian Christianity, and one can never stray too far from one's roots, even if it's only to curse or hack at them. I embrace my roots, but my branches have stretched far from Evangelical thinking. 

So I'll be migrating my science fiction and fantasy reviews over to Triple Bladed Sword. I'll be adjusting the labels, and editing old posts to update my perspective on things (not changing the original text, but amending it with afterwords about where I've grown, so the site is never misleading). 

I don't plan on updating more than once a month, to ensure the posts are worth reading. I had plans to do this as a book, and maybe it will be that someday. But for now, it's just a blog, at the address I've had since I started writing on the web in 2002. But here we are, over a decade later, and so much has changed. I'll be here, telling my story. Feel free to come and listen, and join in the conversation.

Seven Sacred Seasons: Carnival

Well, the year of the Rabbit is coming to a close, and the year of the Dragon is just around the corner. This will be the last of my posts in the year of the Rabbit, and I wanted to ensure I got the final Sacred Seasons post in before the Rabbit descends and the Dragon rises. Carnival was the Gathering's answer to how depressing January can be in our hemisphere. It's dark: some days, depending on where you work, you don't see the sun at all. It's cold, as in the-ninth-level-of-Dantean-hell cold. It's Suicide Awareness month. And finally, it is the time between Christmas (yay!) and Lent (boo). That is to say, it's the time between a celebration of light and the observation of wandering the desert. Knowing Lent was going to be about giving things up, we decided that the season between Christmas and Lent should be opposed in some way to the dreariness of the weather and the doldrums following the common emotional mountaintop of Christmas.

Our solution was a season of festival, mardis gras, carnival. Rather than a single Shrove Tuesday, we wanted to eat pancakes spiritually for several weeks. So Carnival season at the Gathering was about holy parties: the kind of parties Tony Compolo encouraged us to throw in The Kingdom of Heaven is a party.

Rough Creatures - A Play for Advent, Scene 7

"Rough Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties. Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least, intelligible.

Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter; no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God, a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits.  



CAST

The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the Inn.

Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade

Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the Inn, hoping for the coming of the Messiah.

Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore

Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore

Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.

Anno – The Abess’ husband

Woman – a traveler who comes upon the Inn in labor

Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion

Act 3

Scene 5

(LIGHTS UP on SIMEON and ESTHER playing chess; ABBESS is holding the child in her arms, cooing and rocking her. RACHEL looks at the child over ABBESS’ shoulder. FEN sits at the table, playing with the nativity figures.)

RACHEL:        Can I hold her now?

ABBESS:         You’ll have plenty of time for holding this baby when Anno gets you to the city.

RACHEL:        You’re sure you won’t come?

ABBESS:         We’ve been through this too many times already. Just let it be Rachel.

ESTHER:         Well, it is kind of you and Anno to help us to get there.

ABBESS:         It’s not too much trouble. Most of your luggage went with your fiancés (she raises her eyebrows suggestively at this word) so taking what you have left with the dogs isn’t too much work. Besides, a blind man could find his way to the new city with the trail all those people left behind.

ESTHER:         Checkmate.

SIMEON:        You’ve been practicing! You were never this good when I was teaching you. Who have you been playing against? (He looks accusingly at RACHEL who shrugs her shoulders. FEN giggles and sort of hides in her Christmas book. SIMEON pulls down the cover.) I should’ve known! A conspiracy! (He stands up and walks over to ABBESS and the child.) Aren’t you beautiful. You are the hope of all the people who have gone onto the city. You are the one they are talking about—the first new child of the City of God!

ABBESS:         But she wasn’t born in the New City. She was born here, in my inn.

SIMEON:        That’s true, but who wants to believe the first child born after the plague was born in an inn?

FEN:                Just like baby Jesus.

SIMEON:        What?

FEN:                Jesus--the baby in the story. He wasn’t even born in an inn, just a shelter, where the animals were kept. And he was the Messiah.

SIMEON:        I’ve told you already Fen, that story is not from the Torah—

FEN:                I think it’s true all the same.

SIMEON:        The Messiah is a king, not the son of a peasant girl.

FEN:                Moses was really the son of a slave—and he rescued the people from being slaves.

SIMEON:        Yes but that’s different.

ABBESS:         How?

SIMEON:        Because it’s different. I don’t know how.

ABBESS:         Well, someone once told me that sometimes life isn’t what we see, it’s what we believe. Well, sometimes life is just what we see. And today I saw hope born here in this Inn. Not in your magical City. And isn’t that what the Messiah was to bring? Hope? Light in the darkness?

SIMEON:        “From the lips of children—you have ordained praise.” Let me not be too set in my ways oh Lord. (He looks at FEN.) You are right Fen. All these years you have listened to me, and in the end saw what I could not. And what is good enough for Messiah is good enough for this little one.

   

RACHEL:        She needs a name.

ABBESS:         Hope.

RACHEL:        Not the name I’d have expected coming from you Abbess.

ABBESS:         Well I’m full of surprises today.

(ANNO enters with several packs and lugs them toward the stairs.)

SIMEON:        Where are you off to?

(ANNO looks at SIMEON, confused. Then he looks to ABBESS for an explanation.)

ABBESS:         I hadn’t told them yet.

RACHEL:        Told us what?

ANNO:            We’re going to the City with you.

(ESTHER and RACHEL give excited squeals and hug ABBESS. SIMEON smiles.)

ESTHER:         So you were lying!

ABBESS:         Not entirely—Anno is holding me to going, like I asked him. But I still have one foot stuck in the door here.

RACHEL:        What made you change your mind?

ABBESS:         Hope.

RACHEL:        Abbess, I told you I’d take good care…

ABBESS:         Not the baby. I started hoping for…something else, anything else, more than just surviving.

ANNO:            And if you all knew how difficult it was for her to say that…

ABBESS:         Get on with your packing! We’ve got a fair bit more to load on the sled.

ANNO:            Come give me a hand, Fen?

FEN:                Sure.

(ANNO heads up the stairs while FEN gets up from the table and heads for the landing. ANNO opens the door to the outside from offstage, and a bright light shines down on FEN. She screams.)

ABBESS:         Fen! Are you all right?

FEN:                (shielding her eyes) What is it?

ABBESS:         I don’t know. Anno! Anno!

ANNO:            (offstage) I’m all right! (Footsteps on the stairs, Anno reenters onto the landing) You’ll never believe it…the clouds have broken.

ABBESS:         My God…

FEN:                What does that mean mama?

ABBESS:         It means that light…it’s the sun. (She looks down at the baby cradled in her arms.) You really did make it to see the dawn.

ANNO:            It’s sitting in the sky over top of the line of tracks the people left going to the City. You can see them all, but it’s so bright…the snow, it’s all so bright. It’s like the whole world’s turned pure white.

SIMEON:        “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

FEN:                The sun is in the direction of the city?

ANNO:            Yes, to the West.

FEN:                Bethlehem. We’re going to Bethlehem.

(LIGHTS DOWN.) 

Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent, Scene 6

"Rough Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties. Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least, intelligible.

Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter; no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God, a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits.  



CAST

The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the Inn.

Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade

Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the Inn, hoping for the coming of the Messiah.

Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore

Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore

Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.

Anno – The Abess’ husband

Woman – a traveler who comes upon the Inn in labor

Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion

Act 3

Scene 5

(LIGHTS UP. The room is empty. The chessboard is abandoned, the game not complete. SIMEON and RACHEL must have given up on the game. ABBESS enters from the kitchen, holding the baby in her arms, singing a lullaby. ANNO enters from the landing, takes off his jacket and pours himself some coffee. He sits down at the table.)

ANNO:            How is she?

ABBESS:         A healthy baby girl from what I’ve seen so far. I think she’s going to make it.

ANNO:            Last night you didn’t seem so sure.

ABBESS:         Last night I didn’t have any hope. (She is looking at ANNO, her eyes smiling. ANNO realizes the change, and that he was part of it.)

ANNO:            I’m sorry I was so harsh.

ABBESS:         No, I needed it. You know it takes a sharp pick to cut through hard ice.

ANNO:            You were pretty hard.

ABBESS:         I was pretty icy.

ANNO:            Nothing like a new baby to bring a thaw.

ABBESS:         Especially this one. She’s going to be fine, (looks at sleeping child) aren’t you?

ANNO:            And what if she isn’t?

ABBESS:         Then we’ll have to hope the next one is.

ANNO:            Are you just saying that?

ABBESS:         Yes…and no. I’m not too good at this hope thing Anno, we’ll have to take it all one step at a time. But I sure want her to live. Only now I understand that I don’t have to die a little bit every time one of these little ones doesn’t make it.

ANNO:            I forgot to ask—the father, will he be taking care of her?

ABBESS:         That boy who came with the girl? Not her husband. He lived in the same settlement as her. She got left behind because she was a whore. I guess Southtown got self-righteous when they headed for the new city.

ANNO:            The new city’ll have whores. All places do.

ABBESS:         You and I know that, but you know people. Especially when they’re moving to the ‘city of God.’

ANNO:            So she’s got no family at all.

ABBESS:         She has us. Rachel mentioned last night she wouldn’t mind taking her as her own, seeing as she’s been unable to have a baby herself.

ANNO:            Rachel’s going to the city with that young man she met.

ABBESS:         She is.

ANNO:            That baby won’t be ready to go for at least a month or two.

ABBESS:         Suits me fine. I wouldn’t want to help set everything up anyhow.

ANNO:            I’m not sure that would bother Rachel much; she’s never been afraid of hard work, all I’m saying is—

ABBESS:         I’m not talking about Rachel. I’m talking about me.

ANNO:            But you said we weren’t going—

ABBESS:         I know what I said. Now you listen to what I’m saying.

ANNO:            I’ll never understand you, ‘Bess.

ABBESS:         You don’t have to understand me Anno. Just love me. And help me do this. I’ll need your help, your strength.

ANNO:            I always thought you were the strong one.

ABBESS:         No, I’m just the loud one. It’s you I lean on for support.

ANNO:            I don’t know what you want me to do.

ABBESS:         Hold me to this decision. Help me make the journey. And just love me.

ANNO:            That I can do…has that child been fed?

ABBESS:         She has.

ANNO:            Then let’s lay her down for a rest, and I’ll thaw you out some more.

(ABBESS smiles as ANNO places his arm around her and they walk to the kitchen exit. LIGHTS DOWN.)

Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent, Part 5

"Rough Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties. Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least, intelligible.

Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter; no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God, a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits.  



CAST

The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the Inn.

Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade

Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the Inn, hoping for the coming of the Messiah.

Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore

Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore

Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.

Anno – The Abess’ husband

Woman – a traveler who comes upon the Inn in labor

Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion

Act 3

Scene 3

(The music begins to fade out, and the Lights Fade Up. ANNO stands at the bar, putting things away. ABBESS enters, looking tired and sweaty. The Inn is quiet, and there are a few PATRONS lying about  on the floor, sleeping. ABBESS steps over them. )

ANNO:            How is she?

ABBESS:         (shaking her head) She wasn’t strong enough to bear the baby and live.

ANNO:            And the baby?

ABBESS:         Alive…for now. But we’ll see. If the child sees the dawn…why the hell do we keep calling it dawn? No one’s seen the Sun for over a hundred years. Might as well call everything night.

ANNO:            Hope, ‘Bess. Hope.

ABBESS:         My hope died with that girl Anno. This whole lunacy of going to Tinker’s City of God…all these people are doing is trading real estate. Two generations and we’ll all be dead.

ANNO:            Maybe they’re healthy babies being born somewhere else in the world.

ABBESS:         Yeah, same place Simeon’s Messiah is living no doubt.

ANNO:            (After a silence) What if the baby lives?

ABBESS:         Hm? What do you mean?

ANNO:            Well, if the baby lives, will you have hope?

ABBESS:         What the hell are you talking about Anno?

ANNO:            I’m talking about you. About us. About everything. Hope isn’t something someone gives you Abbess. It’s something you grab for yourself. If you get everything given to you, then that’s not hope anymore. It’s just life.

ABBESS:         You’re trying to talk about things over your head Anno.

ANNO:            No I’m not! I’m talking about what I see, and what I know. Look, if you say you’ll only have hope when the sun shows it’s face, then you will never really hope. Because once the sun’s there, you can’t hope for it to be there. It already is.

ABBESS:         You’re confusing me. I’m too tired to talk about this.

ANNO:            Dammit Abbess, this is important! I’m saying if you don’t have hope now, you never will! You’ll always be hoping for something else! If the baby lives today, you’ll say you won’t have hope until she grows up! And when she grows up, you’ll say you won’t have hope until she finds a husband! And then it’ll be children! And so on! You have to hope today!

ABBESS:         Why Anno, what good does it do? Will that baby live just because I hope she will? Will it bring the sun out if I just hope it does? What will it change?

ANNO:            You. It’ll change you, ‘Bess.

(ANNO walks out. ABBESS stands, stunned that her husband has spoken with such thoughtfulness and passion. SIMEON enters from the kitchen area.)

SIMEON:        I heard shouting. Is everything all right?

 

ABBESS:         Anno was bringing my attention to some things I’ve been overlooking around the Inn.

 

SIMEON:        Strange timing. What was so urgent?

 

ABBESS:         Hope.

(Simeon looks perplexed. He is uncertain of what to say. ABBESS goes to the bar, gets down a bottle of whiskey and pours herself a shot. FEN enters, bleary eyed.)

ABBESS:         What are you doing out of bed?

FEN:                Papa came to say goodnight to me and woke me up when he kissed me—gave me whisker burn.  So I came down to find out how the lady and her baby are.

ABBESS:         (Pouring another shot.) The baby is doing pretty good so far sweetheart.

FEN:                Is it a girl?

ABBESS:         It is. What do you have against boys?

FEN:                Nothing. I just would rather have a girl to play with. I’ve seen how the boys play with Rachel and Esther…yuck.

ABBESS:         Well, it won’t always seem ‘yuck’ to you, but I’ll thank God for everyday it does.

FEN:                How is the baby’s mama?

ABBESS:         She died, Fen.

FEN:                Just like my mama.

ABBESS:         Just like your mama.

(There is a silence.)

FEN:                Where do they go?

ABBESS:         Who?

FEN:                The people—when they die?

ABBESS:         Well, we bury the body out in the ice…you know that.

FEN:                Where’s the rest of them--the part that talks and laughs?

ABBESS:         Well, my mama used to say that part—our spirit, flew up above the clouds to where the sun is.

FEN:                Is that true?

ABBESS:         Well, I sure hope—(realizing what she’s said, and what it means)—I sure hope so Fen.

FEN:                I wonder what the sun looks like.

SIMEON:        Well, my father told me the sun is a star, so it would look like the star in the book Tinker brought you I would guess.

FEN:                Really?  If that’s where we go, then why don’t we all just go to sleep and die so we can go there too?

SIMEON:        (thinks for a moment) Well, if we all went off and died, who’d be around to change diapers on all the new babies? Or teach little girls to read?

FEN:                That’s true.

ABBESS:         Enough questions. Back to bed with you. I have to go relieve Rachel. She’s been watching the baby.

FEN:                Simeon can watch me—

ABBESS:         I said to bed.

FEN:                All right.

ABBESS:         (Gives FEN a kiss on the cheek.) Goodnight sweetheart.

FEN:                Goodnight. (She turns to SIMEON) Good night, Simeon.

(SIMEON blows her a kiss. FEN catches it and puts it in her pocket, then exits up the stairs.)

ABBESS:         Thank you.

SIMEON:        For what?

ABBESS:         For not correcting me when I told Fen where we go when we die.

SIMEON:        Didn’t seem to need correcting.

ABBESS:         That’s not what you believe, is it Simeon?

SIMEON:        I didn’t believe in a lot of things before Tinker told us about the city. I talked to you about hope a lot Abbess. I didn’t realize how little I had until tonight, when got what I’d been hoping for.

ABBESS:         The girls?

(SIMEON nods.)

SIMEON:        If I’d really had hope for them, I’d have had faith in them, in their decisions. That God was watching out for them when I wasn’t. And now—how do I become part of their lives again?

ABBESS:         That’s what Anno was saying to me. That I say I’ll have hope when something happens, that I really don’t have hope at all.

SIMEON:        Wise man.

ABBESS:         I need to go spell Rachel off from watching the baby.

SIMEON:        Do you think she’ll live?

ABBESS:         I hope so. (She smiles.) I guess it does change you.

SIMEON:        What was that?

ABBESS:         Nothing. Get some sleep Simeon.

SIMEON:        Soon.

(She waves as she goes. SIMEON gives her a half-hearted response, and goes to the table. He stares at the chess board. RACHEL enters, looking very tired.)

SIMEON:        Rachel.

RACHEL:        Simeon.

SIMEON:        How is the child?

RACHEL:        Sleeping. Just like I’ll be doing soon.

(RACHEL heads for the stairs. SIMEON is obviously in some turmoil. As she reaches the stairs, he speaks up.)

SIMEON:        Do you want to play some chess?

RACHEL:        (Turns to face SIMEON, a look of slight shock on her face.) So now I’m good enough to play chess with? Now that I have a man who wants to marry me? Is that it?

SIMEON:        No—no…that’s not it.

RACHEL:        Well if that’s not what it is, then what is it? What’s changed? Two weeks ago I was just a whore, not worth talking to. Now I’m your daughter again. What’s different Simeon?

SIMEON:        Do you remember the story of  Hosea?

RACHEL:        Of course. Didn’t you know? It’s every whore’s favorite book of the Tanakh. (she smirks.)

SIMEON:        On my lips I always called you Rachel.  But in my heart I called you Lo-Ruhamah…not my loved one. But tonight, when I saw that woman dying while she was giving birth, I looked away and saw you standing beside her, being so strong, so confident, helping Abbess. And I didn’t see a—a whore. I just saw my little girl. And I wanted to tell you that, but I didn’t know how I could after everything I’ve said, and the way I’ve treated you since your mother died.  I’ve not been a good father.

RACHEL:        You’ve been a terrible father.

SIMEON:        I just said that! This isn’t easy you know.

RACHEL:        I read that story over and over--Hosea. And I pray to God to bring a man who would be like Hosea, and marry me, even if he knew all the choices I made. But I always said, “It’s impossible. Not even my own father loves me—how could any other man?”

SIMEON:        You father was a foolish man.

RACHEL:        And that’s different now?

SIMEON:        (quoting) I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.' " Please, Rachel, give me a chance to be your father again.

RACHEL:        (thinking a while) No. Not yet. You can work up to that. Let’s just start with that game of chess.

SIMEON:        Yes. That would be a good start.

RACHEL:        I’ll need some coffee though.

(SIMEON sits down at the table, turns the board to RACHEL. She is pouring coffee for the two of them as the lights FADE DOWN. Music plays again.)