The End of a Dynasty

My cousin John and I used to go to the Bennigan’s near my house a lot. Like a whole lot. We went so often that the drink specials the nights we went were the beers we drank. We went so often that we were able to get a table in record time during their crazy St. Patrick’s Day celebrations despite showing up after it had started. We had gone so often that we achieved a status both desirable and shameful. We were regulars.

Throughout our run at Bennigan’s we got to know the bartenders and wait staff, and sampled virtually everything on the menu. We grew to love the Bennigan’s as it must have loved us. Along with Mustache (we never learned his real name) we just about single handedly kept that place afloat. But with the economy as it had been and with eating out being the luxury that it is… well, a dream can only last so long. Bennigan’s filed for bankruptcy and soon, too soon, our Bennigan’s was gone.

It’s hard to describe the sense of loss that one feels after losing a favorite bar. It’s like coming out of a long term relationship and having to worry about dating again. Where do you even start? You’ve cut ties with other places because you had the perfect one for you. After a number a false starts into the bar dating world you just sort of give up and go wherever your friends want to take you. Sometimes you get lucky though.

Despite Bennigan’s being a thing of the past, a lover fondly remembered if you will, a new place has risen from the ashes.  In the same building as our once beloved Bennigan’s a new restaurant has sprung up. They’ve traded the Irish theme for something that seems sinisterly Canadian, but they have beer, a decent bartender, and the sense to have a local beer on tap. I don’t know how this new relationship will go. I’ve only given it one chance so far, but I am giving you fair warning now Blue Oak Grill… the game is afoot!

Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

This past weekend marked the seventh time I’ve been in a wedding. I’ve served as everything from a ring bearer (though that would bring my count up to eight) up to the best man. In fact I’ve been involved in just about every part of a wedding from planning to decorating without ever actually having the faintest glimmer of getting married myself. To some that might be a depressing thought, but as I stood up at the altar with my friend Jeremy this past Saturday I was reminded how fortunate I am in my friendships.

When I think back to all the weddings I’ve been in I’m awed at the number of true friends I’ve gained throughout the years. For most of my life I have considered myself a loner; a man of few, but faithful, friends. As I stood at the altar with my friend Jeremy this past Saturday, I was able to look out into the congregation and see a number of the people who impacted my life while I was in Lubbock. On top of the great friends I had made in life up until college, there were a great number out there who were just as faithful and just as close. If a man can be judged wealthy by the strength and number of his friendships then truly I am a wealthy man.

Despite having gone years without contact with some of the people there, the renewal of friendships was not awkward or even hesitant. We had been friends before, we were friends again, the only thing that had kept us from being as we were was time and distance. It is always a powerful moment when you can be apart from someone for so long and still come back as though you had never been away.

While I could talk about every one of the guys I spent time with last weekend and how our friendships were still strong and true, there were two in particular that I am always amazed by. Jon, the sports guy who had nothing in common with me, and Junior who I barely know but who has made sure I’ve not been a stranger when he is around.

My friend Jon is the least likely friend I have probably ever had. He loved sports, disliking people who disliked sports, and being a wild card in the contest of wits that comes with a group of guys. From the first moment we met each other, we knew we wouldn’t be friends. I made a comment about how football was no more socially relevant than Star Wars and the battle was on. I had taken over Jon’s room in the apartment when he got married, and he had even gone so far as to put his old high school football picture in my air vent to make sure that my room would always have sports blown into it. Despite our differences and my dislike for most sporting events, Jon ended up inviting me on a road trip to Albuquerque for the Sweet 16. For some reason I said yes, and that one weekend changed our friendship forever. Jon is one of my great friends, and a man I look up to as someone who follows his heart and loves his wife. He puts on a proud demeanor but I’ve never seen a man willing to do more for his family to the point of giving up a job he enjoys.

Junior is a different story. I barely know Junior, but that hasn’t stopped him from making me feel like an old friend. The first time he stayed at our apartment he entered with a bloody rattlesnake that he told us he was going to make into a hat band. This past weekend I was able to see him in what must truly be his element. You see, Junior is the Mexican Situation. He likes women, and he’s good at talking to them. I saw him pull two girls in record time at the bar after the wedding. However, much like The Situation, when the girls ended up being nice and 99.9% unlikely to head back to his place at the end of the night, he got up and told me in a loud voice, “These two aren’t going to work. We’re going to need to find some new ones.” It was awesome and hilarious. Here were two women not two feet behind him and he dropped them like grenades to head on to the next one. There was no next one that night, but I’m sure he won’t stay lonely long.

In the end, all of this is to say that despite constantly being in weddings without having one myself, I am not disheartened. I’ve seen that I have a vast group of great friends who have been, and always will be there for me. I’m not sad that I haven’t had a chance to be the groom myself, but a word of warning to all those whose weddings I’ve been involved in… when my turn comes I’m going to remember you. We may have to rent two churches and all of Men’s Wearhouse, but you guys are coming and I want you up front.

Grace: What Was God Thinking?

I wrote a post the other day detailing my thoughts on how our society has twisted the fundamental meaning of grace and forgiveness into a blank check for sin. I have included the content of my original post after this, and will include some follow up thoughts after it.

Original Content Begins Here:

Grace is something I quite literally thank God for every day. Because of grace our sins are forgiven and we are able to have a deep, personal relationship with the creator of the universe and all that is in it. I owe my very soul to grace and the price that was paid by Jesus Christ to make that grace available to me. When you look at grace like that you may wonder where I got my title, and I’ll admit that it is through no fault of God’s that grace has managed to fail us so much in society today. Our problem comes from the fact that so many people today, and I include myself in this statement, have mistaken grace’s forgiveness of sin with the absence of sin as a whole.

What I mean by that is that since we recognize that sin is forgiven we pretend, sometimes extremely vocally, that that sin does not exist. For example, sex before marriage. Our society has decided that because it is so prevalent, and because God is a graceful and forgiving God, that it doesn’t matter if we fornicate to our hearts content. In fact, if you call someone out on it you will be accused of “judging” them which is not a Christian thing to do. The same could be said about gossip, homosexuality, coarse language, divorce, or any of another thousand things we have written off. We, as Christians or at least people who like to consider themselves as such, recognize that God has a problem with these things. We recognize that if God has a problem with something he created a nice word to describe it (sin). But because we have allowed it to become an acceptable part of the culture around us and because we figure we’re forgiven anyway we do it and then get mad if someone calls our actions what they are.

There is a whole list of things that we have managed to twist due to our misunderstanding of grace and our selfish desire to do what we want rather than what God wants. I have a hard time understanding how we can accept that there is an infinitely powerful, wise, and loving God who was willing to send His Son to die for us and yet we cannot accept the fact that He sent Him because of our own actions. We casually sin, and get mad if we are called into account for it. I’m tired of us being complacent Christians who are fine with living a life that is displeasing to God because our society and our selfish desires have convinced us that our sin isn’t so bad, and hey even if we do mess up we’re already forgiven anyway so mind your own business.

New Content Begins Here:

Something else that I have noticed in our constant battle to turn grace and forgiveness into carte blanche for a multitude of “menial sins” is our desire to fight the fact that God doesn’t change with our assertion that society has. This is essentially repetition of my points above, but as time has gone on we, both as Christians and non-believers, have allowed our views of what is acceptable and tolerable to include more and more acts and attitudes that God clearly defines as sin. As our society has changed and “menial sins” have become more prevalent we have started arguing with God over whether the definition of sin has changed. Our attitude towards God has become much like the scenario where our grandparents see a girl in a spaghetti strap top, look at her with contempt, and our response is “C’mon grandpa, it’s 2010!” We want God to see that times have changed and that He should get on board.

What our change in attitude has done to us as both a Church and a people, is allow us to believe we can change God’s mind because we have decided to change ours. If we spent half as much time striving after His ways as we do trying to convince ourselves that we know better than He does, not only would we be better worshippers, but we would have stronger relationships with others as well. Looking at sex before marriage through this lens, we would miss out on temporary pleasure and satisfaction, but our focus would be able to remain on the purpose of a relationship in the first place. Relationships don’t exist simply to provide sex, sex is there to be a boon to relationships (specifically marriage relationships.)

What it comes down to over time, is that we as individuals have decided to look at sin not as something that is wrong, but as a word that makes us feel guilty about something we want to do. Our desire for immediate satisfaction overwhelms our desire to please God. At the moment of sin, we are usually aware that we are in the wrong, it is simply that we care more about doing what we want than we do about doing what is right. God has promised us that we will not be tempted more than we can bear, and yet we manage to be tempted by things we purposely put in front of us. We have become a people who seek out temptation and embrace the sin behind it, then wail against God for calling it a sin in the first place. God will not change, and yet only through him can we mold our hearts to accept this truth. Until we can stop fighting against what God calls sin and start embracing what God calls good we are always going to live a life of guilt and mediocrity.

I call myself and all Christians to put down our swords and accept that God has the victory. We know what sin is. We will still stumble and do it despite our best efforts. Forgiveness has been achieved for all sins for all time. Now let’s not flaunt that forgiveness to live a life in the flesh, but rejoice in that forgiveness as we strive to become more like Christ.

Some People Run Marathons…

Yeah, some people run marathons, but I have decided to run a marathon gaming session through the entire Suikoden game series. I know, I’m as impressed as you probably are. I can imagine you sitting at home (probably just you Joey) and thinking to yourself, “Man, we talked about this already, if I wasn’t married I would totally be over there watching it because that would be the highlight of my life, but now I am married so I have real stuff to do. Real awesome stuff.” And I can’t say I blame you. I would trade positions were it in my power, but alas.

What that brings me to, is the fact that of all the video games I have ever played this series holds the most value. Suikoden was the very first game I ever bought with my own money as a kid. It was a proud achievement, and the first of many hard earned dollars that have gone to this hobby of mine. I began the playing this past Friday, April 2, 2010. Here is my journey so far.

Day 1: Put in around 2:30 hours to get through the opening mission up to the main character’s supposed betrayal of the corrupt Empire leading to my escape from the Imperial Capital Gregminster to the Liberation Army hideout at Lenankamp. No new party members as of yet.

Day 2: Leveling only, there was too much stuff to do IRL for me to get much done storywise, so I went ahead and knocked out a little level grinding (pretty unnecessary at this point) and managed to save up some sweet sweet bits ($$$).

Day 3: The Lord’s day, so again minimal play time other than some leveling and a trip to Sarady to deliver the Liberation Army’s blueprints for the Fire Spear. I also fell asleep while playing at this point and the game save now shows four more hours than I actually played.

Day 4: Chuck Night, managed to get the HQ Castle and started to build an army of helpful friends up. No falling asleep this time, though again I managed to get in significantly less playtime than I had wished. At this point I started thinking about how this is the shortest of the seven games I have now committed myself to and begun to think about weeping openly at my misfortune.

Day 5: Now we’re getting down to business. I knocked out three of the games big army v. army battles, which I will talk more about when I actually start writing up a daily deal instead of starting this five days after I had already begun the game. It’s amazing how much variety there can be in your approach to how you play this game. There are tons of things you can do to your characters and eventually there end up being 108 total people to recruit. Of those you probably get to put around 75 in your party which gives you a lot of options for how to go about completing the game. The only bad part is that you have to wait until fairly late in the game before you can just build whatever party you want without having to drag three different characters around with you all the time.

Anyway, now that I’ve started the game and decided to update a blog in keeping with my progress I will try to do a better job of actually updating what goes on. The mechanics of the game and the characters I’m using, as well as the bigger battles and duels and how they factor into the gameplay. It’s a really great game, and the series does some things amazingly well that even current gen games have not managed to duplicate, much less improve upon. While it will be difficult to get any story aspects into the blog without writing a novel, I’ll keep you updated with stats of my own including pounds of Salsa Verde Doritos eaten, Diet Mt. Dews consumed (I hope I don’t actually drink this, but I might get suckered in), and times I’ve fallen asleep only to wake up in the middle of the night and start playing again. Until next time…

What I Mean To Say Is…

I have another post all queued up and ready to go, and yet I am finding it hard to publish. It’s not really the issue with posting something that is at least partly private in a public setting, but the idea that if I put something out there in writing that other people can see I might be held accountable to it. Meaning to say something, wanting to say it even, and yet finding myself unwilling to go through with it because there might be a consequence that would be uncomfortable has been something I’ve struggled with my whole life. If I say or write something I can’t take it back whether I want to or not.

While this has been a problem that has saved me some embarrassment from speaking before I knew the whole story or kept me from saying something in anger that I would later regret, I have found lately that it even holds me back from saying stuff that could be great. I know there are people who I have wronged a long time in the past who I would love to have forgiveness from but am afraid to ask it because they might not give it. I already don’t feel that I have their forgiveness, and yet the possibility that I could know I don’t have it has outweighed the potential freedom in knowing that I do.

All too often I find that I am willing to keep quiet because it’s safe rather than speak up when it could set me free. It’s time to stop keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself at the cost of relationships and opportunities. I have denied myself and my friends and loved ones the opportunity to see who I am and to know better who they are. I’m sure sometimes this more open policy is going to blow up in my face, and there’s even the possibility I will regret making the decision at that time, but I think in the big picture my relationships are going to be deeper and I’ll be a better person because of it.

Levels of Nerditude

I’ve been a self proclaimed nerd for quite a long time. I grew up watching Star Wars and reading Lord of the Rings. Many a night in middle school, high school, and even college was devoted to the pursuit of imaginary goals in imaginary worlds through the wonderful medium of video games. Throughout all that time I had always considered myself and most of the activities I had been involved in nerdy. However, there are levels of nerditude that even I dared not cross, but lately the temptation to brave new territory has proven strong.

One of the things I had always considered too nerdy was the television show Star Trek and its many iterations. I couldn’t bother myself watching a show that involved real science for the most part and situations solved using physics or a knowledge of quantum theory. In short, I liked my sci-fi with minimal substance and lots of action. I wanted swords made out of light that defy all possible physics we can think of. I wanted to see a two foot tall little alien lift a spaceship out of a swamp using his mind. I wanted the drama and the intense action with none of the commitment to higher learning that a show like that could provide. Then J.J. Abrams brought Star Trek back into the limelight and managed to make it cool (again?).

While my previous example and its re-imagining may not be a good example to purists of the nerd realm, I think my new found interest in board games with complexity beyond Chutes and Ladders might finally make me cross over. I had always thought games like Risk, and newer examples like Settlers of Catan and Carcassone were games that I could look at as a nerd and say, “I might be nerdy, but at least I don’t play that.” I had effectively ranked myself and set myself apart much like some of my friends who love football make fun of people who enjoy soccer. I knew where the real fun was, and it sure wasn’t in something that takes forever and shows few signs of goal progression. I want action, I want entertainment, I don’t want tedium. Unfortunately, as modern video games have shifted their multiplayer from across the couch to across the internet, board games are one of the few hold outs of true in person gaming that doesn’t force you to fight a dragon or keep track of hit points using a scientific calculator.

One of the things about being a nerd and enjoying games has always been the camaraderie that has been born out of enjoying a hobby that wasn’t necessarily shared by the masses. As video games continue to digitize the fellowship involved in gaming, I’ve realized how much I miss the face to face contact of playing games together. Talking trash over a headset isn’t nearly so great as holding up all your deeds in a Monopoly game and rolling around in fake money. I guess in a roundabout way what I was really trying to get at in this post is that hanging out with other people and sharing a hobby that takes both thought and skill can be a lot more fun, even if it is nerdy, than just shouting at some little kids dominating me in Halo.