Fluxxed!

I thought it was Life that  I liked.

I was wrong, though.  When I googled it, it turns out it was just Careers.  

One of the websites did offer the comment, though,"if only real life was as simple as the game of careers."  Maybe I'm not the only one who has ever confused the two.

Careers was a board game we played as kids.  Success was measured by achieving levels of fame, money and happiness that each player decided for themselves.  Winning was being the first to achieve your own goals.  And everyone played on the same board by the same rules.

We played it a lot.  And enjoyed it, no matter who won.  Kind of like life.

But this past Saturday I played a new game.  My sister and brother-in-law and their son Sean -- our nephew, were over for dinner.  We were celebrating both Jim's and my 65th birthdays, which seemed far less a milestone than we had thought they would be.  Both of us are still working full-time for a few years yet because life and careers haven't turned out quite like we were taught they would -- like they did in the old days.

The game was Fluxx -- a card game Sean gave me a few Christmases ago, that it turns out I had not yet even opened, but that he and his friends enjoy playing.

The game is chaos.  I found out the only unchanging rule is you play the cards you hold in your hand.  Beyond that?  It's anyone's guess.

The cards are of four types -- Actions you can take, Goals you can put on the table for all to have to achieve, Keepers that help you achieve a goal, and Rules you also put on the table that become binding for all players as soon as you put them there.  Within the four categories, every card is unique.  And sometimes odd and irrational.

The result as people play is unsettling.  Both the goal of the game and what you need to achieve it constantly change.  The actions you can take at any time are random, limited and sometimes unhelpful.  The rules of the game are never set and are constantly being changed, added to, manipulated, and even erased by other players.  Which means at almost every stage along the way you have no way of knowing really how close or far you are from achieving anything like success.  Kind of like life.

No wonder it's called Fluxx.  

I can think of other names for it as well.  Including a few I can't mention here.  But maybe also including Life.  And Careers.  At least as we experience these things today.

Sean really liked it, though.  He did well.  In the end he won with an amazing, complex play of the ten or twelve cards he had amassed in his hand that in a sequence of plays he used to change the goals, rewrite the rules in his favour, make good use of his keepers, and make him the winner.  

He not only survived the game's intentional chaos, he revelled and excelled in it.  I, on the other hand, had by that time already emotionally checked out. I was exhausted by the chaos.    

I used to like Careers.  I probably used to like Life as well.

But I also find myself wanting to play Fluxx again.  

I wonder if I might get better at it.  I wonder if it might be therapeutic.  Somehow healing, to learn to play well the cards I have in my hand.  As unique, odd and irrational as they may be.

Trick or treat

I heard a conversation on the radio yesterday about a proposal to relocate the observance of Hallowe'en permanently to the last Saturday of October and also make that weekend, rather than the first weekend of November, the time for the time change.  The main reason seemed to be to allow kids to go trick-or-treating not on a school night, and to give them even more time to sleep off their sugar rush on a Sunday morning.

Really brought home the secularization of our holy-days.  Also made me imagine somewhat fancifully the delight among the vast array of dark spirits -- once believed to be afoot and seeking openings into our world on the Eve of All Hallow's, at such secular naivete, and how it leaves us so foolishly vulnerable.

Traditionally (in Celtic regions, at least) the night of Oct 31 to Nov 1 has been regarded as the time of transition from summer to winter -- the beginning of the "dark half" of the year.  As any time of transition, this is by nature a "thin time" when spirits pass more easily than usual between this world and the other.  And given the time of year, it's dark spirits and the malevolent -- or even just mischievous, souls of the dead that especially seek entry into our world, our homes and our lives. 

And how to protect one's self and one's home and family?  By appeasing the dark spirits (or people dressed up to represent them) with treats, and/or by warding them off with your own representation of an evil spirit or a soul of someone dead (think jack-o-lantern).

But of course we don't believe in any of that kind of stuff anymore, do we? 

And if Hallowe'en is really just about candy and how much of it can be bought and collected, why not shift it to Saturday night and let the kids sleep in the next day?

Of course, it isn't just about that.  It's also about community, and about grumpy people like me having our hearts enlarged as we happily hand out candy to total strangers, try to guess at their costumes, and savour their happy voices.

And that could be done just as well on a Saturday.

But I wonder ... do we lose something when we schedule holy-days and once-spiritual activities according to our convenience? 

I wonder if our desire to rationalize everything that has spiritual roots is perhaps a sign that there truly is something dark and sinister in the world around us, that we have unwittingly allowed to take over our house and our lives?
 

Clear the decks

It's time.  I've known it for some time.

It's the season.  And for several weeks I kept saying, "I really need to clear the deck."  

Said it in so many ways.  With so many different words.  And always with such good intentions -- even longing, to do the one needed thing.  Or with wistful resignation.  Or, to be honest, also at times as quiet lament and complaint.

It really is true that the more we talk about doing something, the less likely we are actually to do it.  The mere talking about it somehow satisfies some little powerful part of our brain into feeling we have done something -- enough for now, about it.

But Monday I said only, "I'm going out to put the deck stuff away," and then went and did it.  And the only reason I had to say even that much was so Japhia would know where I was going and what I was doing.

And now it feels so good.  To have and to see and to walk into the space cleared, stripped down, simplified and prepared for the coming dark and cold.  

There will come a time again to pull all the stuff out and set it up anew.  See what still works.  Replace old with new where needed.

But for now it feels so right to have shed the extraneous, and to rediscover the bare bones of what really is and always will be no matter what.  The foundation of what will be again.

And I wonder what other decks might still be waiting to be cleared.



 

Through a glass darkly ...

It looked ugly.

Five or six kids were standing on one side of the street, one of them throwing something at one kid alone on the other side.  The lone kid on the other side was not hit, picked up whatever it was that had been thrown, and defiantly threw it back.  Neither side moved from where they were.

I was sitting inside the coffee shop at my usual table, inside the front window.  I was looking out, watching these high school kids on lunch break as they played out their drama on the street. 

I could see that the lone kid was black.  I wasn't sure about the identify of the five or six on the other side, but mostly they looked white.

I felt shock at the scene.  In Canada.  In Westdale.  In front of me.

I felt dismay to feel confronted by such racial division and violence in a place I consider home.   That's been good to me.

Remembering another incident of racist violence some months ago in a parking lot, I knew the only action I would choose if any seemed necessary or helpful, would be to leave the safety of the coffee shop to stand with the lone kid.  No more.  But no less.  

I waited to see if I should get up, go out, and be ready to stand with him.  I wonder now, was I the only one at that moment watching, holding my breath, and readying to act?

For fully a half minute, then a minute, and maybe a few more the two groups -- rather, the group and the lone kid, stood facing one another across the street.  I couldn't tell if any of them were saying anything.  I saw a few gestures.  But couldn't understand what they were gestures of. 

I grew anxious.

And then I saw the lone kid start to saunter across the street.  Slowly.  Agonizingly slowly.  I looked for any clue in each step-- the slightest sign, as to what this meant.  Or would mean.

Then halfway across the street the group itself became less a group distinct from and against the lone kid.  The kid kept walking towards them, and they seemed suddenly to be several groups of two or three.  The lone kid as he reached the other side blended in with them.  The now six or seven of them milled about.  Were clearly all friends who had been acting out some play-drama among themselves.  And now were happily making their way down the street together.  Wherever they were on their way to.

I relaxed.

And went back to my work.

But not without wondering.
 
About how quickly I interpreted the scene the way I did.  About when and how I learned to do that.  About the sadness I felt at this change in me and in us.  But also about how good it felt to know I was prepared this time to act in some helpful way if necessary.

A loss of innocence.  

But the growth of something else in its place.  

Maybe even better than innocence.

The universe in a grain of sand ... and a brief moment's smile

 
A few evenings ago I was sitting in my car, waiting for a turn in the light. Waiting for the green arrow so I could make my turn left onto Main Street from Cootes Drive.

With the University and McMaster Children’s Hospital on the left there was a lot of pedestrian traffic to watch while I waited.  Mostly university students.

One couple stood out.  A man and woman, just a few years older than the undergrad crowd, but old enough to notice.  Dressed one step less self-consciously than the students around them.  Looking a little weary.  Walking away from the hospital to cross the street in front of me.  The man was carrying a small cooler.  Dark blue with a white handle.

I watched them for a second as they began across Cootes Drive in front of me.  Then my gaze went ahead of them to where they would be in a few seconds -- to the other side.

There, another woman stood out.  Maybe late twenties or thirty.  Also less self-consciously dressed than the students who breezed around and past her.  Also a little weary-looking as she stood on the sidewalk’s edge, waiting for the signal to cross Main, close enough to the curb’s edge not to be in the way of the students.

I wondered about the two of them – the three of them.  The couple and the woman.

As the couple reached the far side of the street – the corner where the woman stood waiting for her own crossing in another direction, in the midst of and set apart from all the students around them, the three turned to one another and shared – offered to each other, a little smile.  Only that.  But definitely and quietly that.

At that point the light changed.   

The woman started out across Main and the young couple, without missing a step, made the little turn a bit to the right to begin the short walk into Ronald McDonald House.

One woman off for a short walk or an errand, maybe before heading back into the hospital to see her child.  A young couple after a day sitting at the bedside of their child, walking back to their temporary refuge together.

So much anxiety, exhaustion, hope and love they must have been carrying – alone and together, like a cross.  And in that quick and simple smile, a welcome grazing gift of the love of God.

Pay it forward

It was the "pay it forward" that caught my attention and made me start listening more intentionally to their conversation.

"Yeah, you know, 'pay it forward,' " he repeated to his friend, as though it were the most natural of human impulses that surely everyone must understand and practice in some way.

His friend -- every Saturday they meet to talk about everything and anything, at the coffee shop where I like to write my sermons -- seemed at a loss for words.  Either because he didn't get the concept, or because he couldn't believe his friend would actually do such a thing.

"Yeah.  You remember that time I put up my house to post bail for that kid?  The one who was picked up and charged.  His mom contacted me to see if I could help.  He didn't do it, and we knew it.  I believed her.  So I used my house to put up $100,000 for bail so he could stay out and keep his job while it got sorted out."

"And what happened?"  I was glad his friend asked the question that I didn't feel free to, sitting at the next table over and just kind of listening in.

"The charges were dropped.  He didn't do it.  And he got on with his life.  And he's done well."  And then a few seconds later, "And you know ... he never thanked me for it.  Or the lawyer who helped him."

Spell-bound until that moment by the wonder of his friend's risky generosity, the second man almost thankfully now had something comfortable to say.  "That's pretty low class!" he offered.  Pause.  "Really low class!" he repeated.  "Some people in this world just don't know how to act."  He was clearly glad to be back on familiar territory, back from that strange world where his friend's story about paying it forward had taken him. 

His friend didn't follow him back there, though.  Just quietly said, "I felt good.  It felt good.  I was glad the way it turned out okay for him."

Silence.  

And then from the second man, a quiet "You're a good man."  Guarded, but not grudging.  "I don't know if I could do that."

Pause.  Then a quiet, accepting, non-judgemental repeat of the three words, "Pay it forward" from the first man, before the two of them got up to say goodbye and move on to other, separate appointments for the day.  A warm hug, and they moved from their corner table back into the heart of the shop on their way to the front door and the street.

No more than a half-minute later one of the shop staff came to wipe their table, and noticed a leather satchel left behind on the floor tucked between the wall and the leg of the chair where the "Pay it forward" man had been sitting.  The kid picked it up, and it was clear he had no idea who had been sitting there.

I told him it was the two elderly black men.  That that chair was where the bigger of the two had been sitting.  

He knew immediately who I meant.  They were regulars.  He ran off to see if he could still catch them.

And maybe ten seconds later, from my table inside the front window, I saw the "pay it forward" man walking out the front door, out into the neighbourhood, across the street towards where his car was parked.  

With his leather satchel restored to him, carried nonchalantly under his left arm.

Rest in Peace

I'm sad.  And a little bit anxious.

At first I was just surprised and a little repulsed.  

It was the smell that got my attention.  

Today is garbage collection day on our street -- a day later than usual (like this blog entry) because of the Labour Day holiday on Monday.  I was on my way to the back yard shed to get the can of yard waste from last week's weeding.  And as I got near the shed, I smelt it.  

The awful reek of rotting flesh.  The smell made me look down.  And that's when I saw it.

The rotting remains of a partly eaten grey squirrel carcass.  Lying in the grass two feet from the back shed door.

I've no idea what got it.  My guess is a neighbourhood cat.  But who knows, maybe somebody's been trying to get rid of rodents and it found some poison laid down somewhere.  Maybe it died a natural death, but I kind of doubt that.  

I thought about scooping up the carcass and including it in the trash.  But I didn't have gloves handy.  Japhia was waiting in the car.  We had to leave to drive the grand-kids to school.

I left it there.

And now I am sad.  And anxious.  I wonder if it's one of the pair of squirrel friends I have enjoyed watching all summer, and wrote about last week.

I am going to have to keep an extra close and caring eye on their usual meeting place.  See if only one shows up.  Or the two.  

Or none.

And now that I'm home from the errand with the grand-kids, there's still time.  And gloves in the back shed.  The garbage has not yet been collected.

I am going to go back, and take care of the remains of that grey squirrel.  

Amazing the different ways our hearts get opened.  How the muscles of compassion get stretched and flexed.  How we learn to be more human, more alive in the image of the Creator.