Beyond Games

        The pale blue plastic peg sat silently in the ruby red car that had all the structural integrity of our family’s Ford Pinto.  We were about to begin to play the Game of Life.  It was always curious to me that the starting line didn’t include spaces and scenes from Elementary School such as,

“Someone makes chocolate milk squirt out your nose at lunch, go see the school nurse and miss a turn.”

Or how about a place on the board from Middle School,

“Giant pimple appears on picture day, spin a five or high to convince your parents you have the bird flu to stay home.”

Or from High School,

“Congratulations you have your first job, realize that someone named FICA is suddenly very interested in you, give 7.65 percent of your income.”

Good times.

None those experiences and events of early life are on the board.  Instead the game fast forwards and you face a forced choice of needing to decide should you take the long road of college or shorter path of work?

Your blue or pink plastic peg waits expressionlessly for you to decide.  And we could certainly critique that for many people in our culture this isn’t really a choice.  There are circumstances and social prejudices prevent and serve as a blockade for people to attend college.  But, you take a deep breath to remember, Milton Bradley was a beloved child of God too ~ blessed and broken as the rest of us.

It does remind us that there are those moments when we are faced or forced into a choice; which road should you travel, traverse, and trudge down to make your way in the world?

Pause for a moment to ponder a few of the intersections in your own life.

What to do as graduation day approached?

When to stay or leave a job?

Or when your first child has colic at nighttime.  And your sleep deprived brain is trying to remember if the magic formula that worked last night was five times around the table clockwise or counter clockwise?  That is not on the game board either, but was a part of my game of life.

Again, good times.  

Like the board game, we don’t get much backstory on the parable of the prodigal family (Luke 15:11-32) who puts the "fun" in dysfunctional or what exactly led to the younger son fly, fleeing the nest.  We don’t know if maybe the two brothers always fought and were at each other’s throats?  Or maybe there had recently been an argument which was heated, hurtful and harmful moment where words were said at family dinner causing the younger one to say, shout, “I am outta here.”  We don’t know if maybe the two were always opposites.

The younger one might have always up for an adventure.  He may have dreamed one day to be a camel driver or longing to go explore Egypt; while the older one saved his pennies and dreamed of purchasing that new plowshare.  We don’t know if maybe the family always lived separate lives, never seemed to connect.  And in the large gaps of the back story of the Prodigal Sons, we are delighted to insert our own stuff.  We can tend to project and place onto this narrative our own family dynamics, because goodness knows my older brother always saw the world black and white and I needed space to roam and breathe.

Like the board game, the two pale blue plastic pegs of sons seemingly select different pathways.  But how different are they?  One physically leaves, but I get the feeling from the older son that he emotionally, spiritually left his father years ago.  One sets off for a distant land, but it feels like there is also a distance between the older son and father even as they live under the same roof.  Each have a chance to offer a speech.  One a confess of brokenness and the other a confession of frustration that had been pent up, pushed down for far too long.  Both remind us that pain that is not processed is passed along in some way.

Like the board game, both of their paths will at the end converge and come back together when the father invites both to the party.  We know all too often, that some family members never come home.  Some parents never throw a party with an ice swan sculpture but instead use an icy silent treatment.

Which is why I love that the ending of this story is like an unresolved chord.  We are left hanging and hovering there.  Because unlike the Game of Life where you count up your money to see who wins, which perhaps is a harsh, hard mirror of a reflection of our values as a people still today, this story doesn’t have an easy to swallow ending.  Which rings true in my life.  Reconciliation with family and friends doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes we are left hovering in the air like Wiley E. Coyote of cartoon fame when he would hold up a “Yikes” sign before dropping down hundreds of feet.

We don’t know what happened the day after the party.  Did the older brother eventually come in, grab a lamb shank with extra mint jelly?  Did he do so glaring and daring the younger brother to come over and talk with a silent sneer on his face?  Did the grace of the father un-harden his heart, those words, “All I have is yours” break through the barriers and blockades, the years of resentment that had clogged his soul and sight until he realized that grace is not a transaction or a balance sheet or a zero sum game.  All I have is yours.  The father can say that both to the younger and the older son, because God isn’t play a game with us.

There is no game of grace.  No rules that say the one with the largest bank account gets to retire in God’s love and the rest of us go to Shady Acres, which we all know is just short hand for loser-ville.  While grace is a precious resource ~ it is inexhaustible, inclusive, unconditional and unceasing; but that kind of grace is offensive because the rest of the world doesn’t work that way.  We were taught, ever since your plastic peg was put in that flimsy car on the Game of Life that there has to be winners and losers; you are either good or bad.  It is what Richard Rohr calls dualistic thinking and we are excelling at it today in our country, in our comments on-line, and in our common life together.  To move into both/and sense, where there is goodness and grace in all things and in all people is really the invitation of faith.  To be sure, some dualistic thinking is absolutely necessary and needed.  When I go into a restaurant, I need to make a decision because the wait staff doesn’t deserve a philosophical platitudes from me about how both the salad and soup are equal in God’s eyes.  Just order.  But there are times when we need to set aside our judgment, our categorization and our compartmentalization of everything, to see that everything and everyone belongs.

So this week...spend some time entering into the trace of grace that everything and everyone belongs.

Question it...
Play with it...
Pray it...

And we will return again to this idea in a few days.

Grace and peace