Don't Stop Believin'

I'd never, ever, ever have thought it.

I was there when the song came out, way back when.  If you'd asked me, at that point in time, if I thought it was destined to be a classic, I'd have laughed in your face.

"Don't Stop Believin'?  The Journey song?   Thirty years from now, my not-even-dating-their-mother-yet children will be singing this?"

Hah, I would have gone.  Hah!

Overwrought and radiant with the Velveeta-Cheez of that peculiar era, I'd have never have placed it as anything other than the stuff of momentary nostalgia as my generation sagged into middle age.

Yet, at the pool during a swim meet this last winter, it was piped in after some pop-stuff that I'd be hard pressed to identify.  And the kids sang along, not half-heartedly, either.  They belted it out, loud and strong and together.  Kids.  Not parents.  Kids.  These are kids who were two decades from being conceived when it was out there on the radio, or on one-a-them newfangled CD thingummies.

It's a central part of the repertoire of my younger son's School of Rock House Band, the song they end on, the one that everyone piles on stage and sings along with.

It's going to feature in an end of year choir performance.  The song keeps surfacing.

Why?

It's hard to say.

Why does culture pass on one song, rather than another?  Why does a society value and hold on to a thread of music?  Sometimes it's beauty, and sometimes it's intensity or silliness or grace.

And sometimes we just like it, because it's goofy or it evokes a feelin' we..um..want to hold on to.

Human beings can be strange that way.

Gaming and Spirituality

For significant chunks of today, I've been prepping for a presentation on gaming, part of a first-Wednesday of the month series of evening seminars at my congregation.   As a pastor and a gamer, I've got a strong appreciation for both the joys and the ethical challenges in gaming.

There are some ethical sinkholes in the gaming world, to be sure, virtual La Brae tar pits for the soul.  But to be honest, none of them are any worse than handing Ayn Rand to an impressionable teen.  Grand Theft Auto might make them a bit more thuggish, but at least it doesn't make them prone to bombastic, overlong, compulsively self-absorbed right-wing prose.

As I've been prepping for what will be a general survey of the ethics of gaming, I find myself wondering if this new medium can be a spiritual thing.   Games can tell wonderful stories, to be sure, filled with deeply real characters that genuinely move us.   Those of you disappearing into Mass Effect 3 this week know what I mean.  Games can make us laugh.  Games can be filled with wit and humor and grace.  Games can genuinely stimulate us mentally, forcing us to think as deeply as any brain twisting puzzle.  Games can be as creatively open and playful as a box of LEGOs in the hands of a child.  Games can be art.

But can they be spiritual?  Sure, an eight hour nonstop gaming session can put us into a pretty altered state of consciousness, but that's not quite the type of spirituality I mean.

Can a game give us that sense of wonder and mystery that comes with the most evocative music, or the most beautiful paintings?  Can it give a sense of being connected not just to the creative intent of the human being who made it, but the deeper reality of the Creator who formed that human being?   There is certainly art that does this, cinema and music that causes deep stirrings of the Spirit within us.   Ron Fricke's Baraka stirs that in me, as does the early work of Kurosawa and Bergman.  The music of Arvo Part also speaks it.

But games?

Some have come close.   The spare, subtle games produced by thatgamecompany seem closest to that for me.  Next week, I'm looking forward to the release of Journey, the latest in their series of remarkably elegant and haunting releases.  Like prior games flOw and Flower, each delightful in their own way, Journey seems less like a traditional game, and more like a powerfully primal meditation.   It's only three hours long, but the reviews so far have affirmed that those three hours are deeply memorable and affecting.

As with any unusually grace-filled thing, I'm eager to experience it.