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Two weeks ago in “Game Not Over” I shared a half-outlined, nebulous sermon series idea about lessons I’ve learned from gaming. In it, considering roguelikes, I mentioned: “there’s something about their hard-earned progression that offers a particular experience of accomplishment and challenges me to be patient (which is not easy for me, but that’s another email).” This is that email. Another genre I enjoy are survival crafting games. You as the player find yourself in a situation, typically an unexpected or catastrophic one, and your primary goal is to survive utilizing the resources available to you… “available” being a relative term as they need to be earned, typically through a progression of exploration, experimentation, combat, and hard-earned lessons. Part of what I love about the genre are the ways progression typically unfolds. In Grounded, when you find yourself shrunk to the size of an ant and in an unfamiliar backyard, the chopping tool you made out of easy to find plant fiber and pebbles isn’t strong enough to cut down mushrooms or utilize crow feathers and discarded food. So you explore, you hunt bombardier beetles and larva, and you make a better one. Your capacity for chopping, hunting, gathering, and building all improve and sustain you that much more. When you begin a survival game, it can be a frantic experience of managing hunger, thirst, safety, rest. As you progress, these become more sustainable. My first night in Grounded was an intense, dark experience building a lean-to out of clover leaves on top of a baseball hoping the prowling spiders below wouldn’t notice me. I was sick from drinking bad water and the clumps of edible-ish stuff I’d gathered barely kept me from starving. Much later, none of those needs are difficult to maintain, and the spiders fear me (sometimes). Such experiences remind me of the quote attributed to Steve Jobs: “The journey is the reward.” In most situations, gaming and otherwise, I find it easier to focus on the more obvious goals and can find myself rushing headlong towards them. The reward is completion, winning, achieving. But a game that rewards patient exploration, where slowing down, learning, paying attention not just to the marker of the next quest but everything in-between because of what you might learn and how it prepares you to more ably tackle what you’ll find offers a different perspective. This perspective is present as I write from Lakeland where the culmination of years of work will take place Saturday morning when I’m ordained. I’m surrounded by friends, colleagues, and mentors that have been a part of this journey. I was voted on and cheered for Thursday night, and that certainly felt like a victory. Saturday morning, Bishop Tom Berlin will lay hands on me and charge me in the name of God “to preach the Word of God, to administer the Holy Sacraments, and to order the life of the Church”. I can’t even imagine what that moment of achievement will feel like. But I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the rewards of the journey. Its challenges and joys. The progression of mental and emotional health. The comprehension of call and purpose. The people I’ve had the joy of knowing and serving alongside. These have less pomp and circumstance than me getting dressed up in my robe and kneeling before thousands of people this weekend as I’m recognized, charged, and a stole is draped over my shoulders, but they are no less a reward. And while I’m still working on the patience required to recognize these moments as they take place on the way to the next more obvious achievement, mostly I want to thank you for being a part of this journey. I thank you for the ways you share yourselves with me and with San Marco Church. I thank you for the journeys you are on and the ways they intersect with my own and the work of God’s kingdom. To share ministry with you is a beautiful, wonderful, exciting, amazing reward, and for that I am intensely grateful. I am, as ever, yours. Privileged and humbled by the opportunity to be your pastor, and thrilled by the journeys we are on and that lie ahead of us. May God’s grace guide us and help us recognize and revel in their rewards every step of the way. Rev. Ben Richards
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