ISBC 29 - Rethinking (Happy) Endings

Chapter 29 of Hope: A User's Manual

Jul 27, 2024

Justice work is an infinite game. The goal is to keep the game going, to make the world better so we can keep making the world better.1

Do you know what the best selling game in the world is? It isn’t Tetris from back in the day or something like Call of Duty in recent years or even a venerable sports game like the Madden series. Guesses?

Minecraft.

It doesn’t have fancy, photo-realistic graphics like many major games today. It doesn’t take the latest tech to run it. While there are some parts of it that can be played competitively, there is much of it that has nothing to do with competition but instead has to do with imagining, building, creating, and collaborating. It is amazing what people have created in this virtual world. People have created real-world locations like downtown Chicago, or Venice, or Petra as well as fantasy creations like Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings and countless Star Wars locales. I have played around with it a few times but it never really connected with me (I like games with stories and objectives and endings - ask me about my deep sense of satisfaction when I 100-percented several of the Lego Star Wars games). But several of my kids have been playing Minecraft for years and still continue to play it.

Minecraft is an infinite game because for much of what the game is, there is no ending, there is no point when every objective is completed.

I love what MaryAnn said about the work of justice and the work of hope here. “Justice work is an infinite game. The goal is to keep the game going, to make the world better so we can keep making the world better.” The goal is to keep the game going, keep making the world better so we can keep making the world better. I love that.

It can be exhausting to think of EVERYTHING that needs to be done in the world right now (in fact, it seems as I’m writing this that the list just keeps getting longer - sigh). But that doesn’t mean to give up and stop playing. It means that some days we can really push towards it and some days we do a little bit and some days we rest. All of it.

I love this epigraph to the beginning of a later chapter in Brian McLaren’s book Life After Doom. He quotes Anthropologist and author Sarah Kendzior when she writes:

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave—and it is often hard to be brave—be kind.2

There are times we can be and need to be brave and take big actions and sometimes when we can be and need to be brave by simply being kind and everything in between.

So what is stirring for me right now as I write this is simply these two words.... Keep playing. Keep playing.

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed