Now I’ve had a “Monopoly” phase, and I’m having a “Settlers of Catan” phase, and I’m beginning to see the differences.

I first saw the differences last week when I won a game of Catan and realized it wasn’t that gratifying.  Sure I was the first one to get 10 victory points (or 12 in Seafarers Catan), but it seemed so anticlimactic.  After all, in Monopoly, the winner not only wins, but squeezes the “game life” out of every other player.  In Catan, you cross a finish line, but you’re left with the feeling that if the game were one point longer, you would have lost.  There seems to be all this uncertainty.

Which is what I sometimes feel about being a follower of Christ.  Like most areas of my life, I’m looking to win somethng, or to be rewarded in some way because I’ve followed well, or unfortunately, I want to follow better than everyone else (mainly because of my competitive spirit).

Then I look at the life of Christ, and plainly see that winning and losing meant very little to Him.  Oh we like to take Paul’s words in our American culture and use them to fit into our nice Christian systems and world views, but it seems to me that Christ couldn’t have given a rip about winning, empire building, crushing the opposition of people who don’t believe (see Peter’s Ear incident) or even getting the right answers on a Bible test.  He lived.  He loved.  He brought justice.  And in the end, he was killed for it.  Which of course brought more love and more justice.

Sometimes I wonder if that is the kind of game I’m playing?

I’m a huge fan of Monopoly and have played many a game of this wonderful and long game with friends like Mike, Joel, Darren, Brandon, Jon, and others who have decided to take me on in this amazing game of “crush the competition.”  I even have a Monopoly T-shirt given to me by some friends in my church.  It would be safe to say I have spent over a hundred hours playing Monopoly.

And now they are coming out with a Monopoly Movie, led by the Gladiator director, Ridley Scott.
I’m trying to think if this would be a good idea or not.  Like the writer for Collide Magazine says, “Our guess is that the movie will be extremely long and will end with all the characters giving up all their money and real estate because they’re sick of playing.”

Will “Monopoly” be a Box office hit?

I wanted to knock out my friend with this box

Its no surprise to people that I like to win.  I enjoy it very much.

So last night I ran into a bit of a quandry as 4 other guys entered my house for an inpromtu game night.  We decided to play “Settlers of Catan”, a trading/build your own civilization type board game.  Usually this particular game is four players, but we happened to have the expansion pack, which allowed us to have 5-6 players.  We had 5.

So how much do I like to win?  This is a question I have asked myself alot in the last several years.  I certainly have toned down my competitive nature in the last few years, which has been good for events like board games and pick up basketball, though in life, it has tended to make me a bit complacent (But that’s for another post).

So as we started the game, two of my friends playing found themselves on the outside looking in, and it quickly became a three player game in practice.  So as the game progressed, the other two turned their attention away from winning to making sure I didn’t.

We finished the game, and I was pretty irritated.  One of my friends, (who’s probably reading this now, and who I will not name, nor do I want him to name himself) who was particularly helping the winning competitor, started calling me a “sore loser” for being irritated.  I don’t really think I was actually being a “sore loser”.  I was only irritated because it felt like if I’m going to invest time into a 3-hour game, I would prefer there not to be an asterisk by the winner’s name.

All that said, I had a great time last night with my friends, and I realize that nights like that are much more than who wins the game.  But I ask you now, because I value your opinion:

By being irritated, was I being a “sore loser”?

Carie and I love to play the game Boggle.  Okay, I love to play the game Boggle and Carie tolerates it. So I got this idea.  What about seeing who in the Martyholman.com world would win in a big nasty internet game of BLOGGLE – or the art of playing the game Boggle on my blog.  So here are the rules:

*Be the player with the highest score card at the end of a 3 minute time period.  Please keep your own time and be honest.  You score by listing words of the highest point value you can find in the four rows of letters. 

*You’ll just need to go back and forth between the comment section of this page and the letters and type your found words as a comment.

*Letters in words must always connect, although they can connect in any way possible (back and forth, up or down, etc…)

*Proper nouns (Smith, Ohio, France, Heinz, etc…) and abbreviations are not allowed.

*Point values  3 letters=1; 4 letters=1; 5 letters =2; 6 letters=3; 7 letters=5; 8 or more letters=11

*Don’t look at the other peoples answers who might have played before you!

*3 MINUTES ONLY; Be honest.

Todays Cube:

L   I   U   T
A  E   E   U
G  I   O   T
N  A  H   F

Here we go!

My life group had a cookout last night.  This is a new game that Ben Erickson taught us.  It proves that a group of adults can have a good time with one pen, dice, and paper.

Who is in this video?

Decisions are hard sometimes.  Making the right decision can be even harder.  We face all sorts of decisions everyday that we don’t think twice about, and then some, both of consequence and otherwise.

Like for instance the decision I had yesterday when a friend of mine called me up and invited me to join him for the Celtics-Mavs game tonight, which according to this poll, is the 2nd and 3rd best team in the NBA right now.

The situation:  I have life group tonight (our small groups) and its at our house and I really believe in authentic community, and it’s italian dinner night and 100 other things on my mind.  The other end:  I love the Celtics (specifically the new Celtics).  Always have. Ever since the 80′s when my dad and I would sit in front of the TV and watch Larry, Robert,and Kevin dual away at Magic, Kareem, and James.

So what decision do I make?  I’ll tell you tomorrow, but I’ve learned this:  Some decisions don’t have a right and a wrong answer.  Some just are.  You go with what feels right based on your past experiences, present circumstances, and future hopes and dreams, and “hopefully” represents the direction you want your life to go.

In this case, both answers in different ways represent a good direction.

What would you do?

Sunday Morning @ Fellowship was cancelled yesterday,and I missed everyone, though I did have a nice day with family. 

I woke up early Sunday morning because I had to make the decision to have church or cancel, which ended up not being as much of a choice as I thought it would be.  It was bad.  All day the wind blew.  All day the snow came down.  All day there was a quiet storm.

So I had breakfast with Carie and Jessica and Tom and Tina and Phil and Leslie.  It was a blast!  Throughout the day we relaxed, decorated the Christmas tree, read, watched football,opened gifts, and played mega monopoly.

Now I want you to know I absolutely love monopoly.  I play often and even have a monopoly posse in Mike Burns, Darren Bell, Brandon Peper, and Jon Koch.  One of the thing I love about monopoly is how it teaches me to trade and be wise with investments and money in a buying/selling scenario.  I’m always learning to be fair and balanced in the trades that I apply, because if they are not, I could easily be taken advantage of, or I could take advantage of someone’s charity, an equal offense.

After last night’s victory in mega monopoly, a game which I’m growing to love (nine more properties, skyscrapers, and train depots), I have won 3 games in a row.  This is magnificent because before this, I had not won a game of monopoly for a few months.  I was in monopoly draught, and nobody likes to be in that kind of a draught.

If you’d care to try your hand at monopoly with our posse, please let me know, and I’ll make sure you’re involved the next time we come together to dominate the world.

So I’ll leave you with a new picture of Carie and I after decorating our tree.  Have a great Monday!

Until next time…