The Red Box

One of the things I’m trying to bring back into my life is the wild play of imagination.

As a kid, I discovered Science Fiction and Fantasy, and those have remained my mainstays, storywise. When I was young, it was Asimov and Clarke and Tolkien and Le Guin. Bradbury, yeah! Lewis, Heinlein, Norton, hoboy!

I can point to two Great Discoveries in my youth. One was in 1986, when I discovered The Magazines. No, I don’t mean *those* magazines, you dirty minded folks. I mean the SF mags. There was a friend of the family (my sister may guess who, and laugh or grimace in amusement) who went to perform at a SF convention, and brought me some swag — which included, among other things. some SF magazines. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was there, and several others. I didn’t even know such things existed, and man I got hooked fast. I subscribed right away to IASFM, and loved the mags for years.

But the other Great Discovery had come earlier — The Red Box. You know the one, if you’re a geek. The Dungeons&Dragons Basic Set.  I was reminded of it this week when Wil Wheaton blogged about it: this isn’t a book, it’s a time machine.

Damn, I loved me that game. And it cascaded over the years to many other role-playing games, until college came and I decided it was time to grow up. Which was true, but in the wrong way, and I realize now that I lost something then. Because play is a wonderful thing. It strikes me that when you look at religion, you see a lot of play. Now, I know what the smart-assed might be saying right now, but no, really. I’m thinking of the creative aspects of religious ritual, the ways they change and warp and alter as people play with them.  Look at the photos of Holi on the Big Picture.  That, my friends, is some seriously fun play right there. Humans love to play. We never outgrow it, or outgrow it to our detriment.

Play, I think, is the closest I come to any idea of what people mean by “spirituality.” One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog, aside from the personal exploration, is summed up in the idea expounded by Greta Christina of making atheism/nontheism a safe place to land. Play, I think, is an important part of that. New kinds of play, new takes on the old religious forms of play, you name it. Create spaces where people can explore their creativity and urge to play.

The great thing, of course, is that atheism doesn’t have a priesthood saying that certain kinds of play are forbidden or wrong or nasty (remember the anti-D&D hysteria of the Christian Right in the 80s?).

As for me, I dearly want to sit down with some friends and some dice and pretend like crazy. Because damn, that was fun, back in the day, with that ol’ Red Box.