Update #1.1 - Check Mated?

Disclaimer: All stories recorded in this blog are accurate to the memory of the writer, but we know that that can be a faulty guide, so conversations may not be verbatim. Also, all names of individuals have been changed to protect each person's identity.

Well now the honor of retelling the exploits of our first day falls to me, and how much there is to say!

It only seems right to start with the mishaps of the day's beginning, because what would a road trip be without a few minor difficulties. These came in the forms of forgotten electronics, towels, CDs, and all of those other packing items that a male should never be charged with remembering. Just the same, the start was about as smooth as could be expected, and 9:30 saw us on I-59, lunchtime finding us in Chattanooga.

First stop: Rembrandt's Coffee House. Now in truth, this was our third stop after both Starbucks and an ice cream shop had been almost entire void of customers, but as this is where we ate lunch and gave our first serious attempt at speaking with other people, the title sticks. I should also remind you that I will be doing coffee shop reviews of all of the independent coffee houses we hit, but enough right now. For the moment, however, let me content myself with describing the plan and the execution for round one. We decided to start simple with our first attempt: have an interesting conversation with one another within the hearing range of other people, gauge their reactions, and then try to engage them. After all, this was exactly the sort of tactic that had accidentally triggered this trip to begin with. Sadly, without our illustrious Classicist to lead the conversation, we were apparently not nearly interesting enough; that or the topic of "what defines Christian education?" was not nearly interesting enough.

Whatever the case may be, two table relocations later we found ourselves ready for a new adventure and a new approach. For one reason or another, this was simply not working - we had a couple of casual eavesdroppers who seemed to listen to other people's conversations more out of habit than out of interest, but not anything nearly intense enough to justify us risking any more than the 30 minutes we were already overdue on our parking meter. Failure.

Broad Street's own Greyfriar's Coffee & Tea Company was more promising from the start; no sooner had we walked through the door than we were enthusiastically greeted by our vivacious barista who wondered what we would like to drink. Alan, true to form, wanted hot tea, but this was by no means satisfactory to our attendant; he must smell each and every one of the teas available before ultimately making his decision (thankfully he did NOT choose the last selection, which gave off an odor more akin to gunpowder than something you would expect to find in a tea cup). I stuck with my latte and resolved that we would start up a conversation with our friendly barista if anything else failed to materialize. For better or for worse, something else did.

Right after the two of us received our drinks, we turned to find our table near someone who might be interested in striking up a conversation, and an older gentleman caught our eye. I had been watching him since we walked through the door as he was sitting at an empty table with a cloth chess board sprawled out in front of him. Pieces were scattered everywhere on the board, and I kept awaiting the return of his partner whom it now seemed was probably non-existent. "Where did your partner go?" I asked, testing the waters before I sat across the table from him. "I just play anyone," the man responded. "I play here in the afternoons and then at 6 I go down to the YMCA to play with the chess club. I'm trying to get good enough to go back to tournaments," he further elaborated. "So you could use a partner then?" "Sure. Do you want to play?" Alan and I assured him that he would slaughter us, but said that if he were willing to play us, we would love to give it a shot. Wayne (as we now learned his name), was pleased, and so Alan took a seat as the first victim.

Wayne had a slightly skewed mouth (where he talked more out of the side of his mouth than the front) and appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He was soft-spoken and exuded the uncertainty of a man who had been beaten down by life, but he was a good chess player. Eight moves later, "check mate." It was stunning. Now it was my turn to experience demise, but if only we could get him talking about something serious, the humiliation would be worth it.

"So what are you studying?" he asked. "I'm English and he's Classics," Alan said, motioning to me with the last statement. "Classics. I like Medieval things; does Classics deal at all with that?" I've done some modest research in that area, so I simply told him that I knew a little about the Middle Ages, but not much. "What interests you about the Middle Ages?" Alan asked. "I think it's that everything was so clear. Plain. You know what I mean?" "You mean that things weren't hazy like they are today?" asked Alan. "Black and white like chess?" I added. "Yeah. Black and white... just like chess. Good and evil, right and wrong, knights in shining armor, that kinda thing. Not like today where everything is just cloudy and grey." Chess play continued as Alan pursued further: "So I'm guessing you're not a relativist?" "Or at least you don't want to be, it seems," I prodded, probably watching one of my rooks disappear at about this point. Wayne took up the challenge: "Well, life's just full of paradoxes I think; we all live with them... at least anybody who thinks about life. I mean, even Jesus spoke in paradoxes - things that look like they contradict each other."

"Such as what?"

"Well think about some of the things he said: 'whoever wants to save his life must lose it,' 'whoever is first shall be last,' 'if you want to get something, you have to give something first.' " (Clearly he was paraphrasing at this point) "And the same's been true in my life; God's asked me to do some difficult things," Wayne continued.

Alan and I were both feeling pretty good about where the conversation was headed at this point, but what followed was not something we ever could have expected; I hardly know where to start with the rest of Wayne's story other than to assure you that what he said next he said with the greatest sincerity and I have no doubt that he believed every single word that he told us. "Like what?" Alan and I prodded, almost in unison. "Well, for instance, God spoke to me while I was in church a couple of months ago and told me to stop praying for a wife. I've prayed for a wife for almost ten years now and God spoke to me while I was in the choir at church and told me to stop. It's the first time I've ever had a two-way conversation with God." There was silence as I pondered my next move; suddenly chess looked easy by comparison to what Alan and I had just been given to deal with spiritually, but this was by no means the end. "Then the spirit of God came into me and talked to me awhile after that and told me I needed to be a eunuch, and I got really angry. I was mad because I don't want to be a eunuch, so I didn't listen. Then the spirit of God descended on me again and reminded me of our previous conversation and I remembered all of it, and he told me to be a eunuch again. But I still haven't listened because I don't understand why God is telling me that."

Now the chess game was gone from all memory for a moment as I realized our next move had to be a very strategic one that took the issues of the man into consideration but did not fail to recognize that we seemed to be dealing with something fairly serious hear. Was this a joke? No, it clearly was not. This was real, and it was horrifying. Truthfully, Alan and I were given virtually no time to consider (maybe five seconds) before I heard a voice behind me whisper, "you should castle." Castle? What did that mean? I realized he meant I should move on the chess board and, without even processing what he said, I just moved the first piece I saw.

"You really should listen to your elders; he was right, you should have castled. Check mate," Wayne said as he vanquished me and got up to leave. Alan and I tried to convince him to stay, but he said he must go to work immediately and handed us off to another gentleman who had been watching our chess match from behind my shoulder, the one who had told me to castle. Truthfully, I felt that we had been check mated in a much larger battle as we had never been given a chance to respond to Wayne's startling confession; he spoke of his experiences with "God" and then promptly left. There was so much left unsaid, but in a moment's time, how could we have possibly come up with the right things to say? It had taken us totally by surprise.

John now sat down at the table with us. A middle-aged, Iranian, "fancy" restaurant owner with heavily accented English, John initially seemed reluctant to play with us, but after asking him for some lessons, he agreed to provide us with a tip or two. Alan was up first, and valiantly though we both fought to save his king (with some helpful advice), it was a matter of time before John had cornered Alan and it was now my turn for destruction. It came rather quickly, but John (after pointing out my folly), agreed to rewind the game a couple of moves and continue as if I had not just lost.

As the game continued, Alan began explaining to him some about our trip and about our theory that coffee shops were one of the few places left in America where engaging total strangers was acceptable. "What are you? Missionaries?" John asked with a note of skeptical derision in his voice. Perceiving that John did not view this as a positive term, Alan simply responded, "Not exactly. Maybe just a couple of interested students." John seemed satisfied for the time and the game continued (which I was beginning to feel much more positive about).

Eventually Alan tried to break the ice again by asking John if he had any notions about how chess might relate to life. John paused suddenly with a twinkle in his eye and looked at us both before stating dramatically, "oh, life is chess." Both of us clearly looking for an elaboration, he continued: "think about it. I meet someone new on the street and I say 'hi, how are you?' - bang, your move. You then respond and say 'fine thank you; how are you?' - bang, my move again. It's always back and forth. Action-reaction. I put the decision in your court, you put it in mine. If you're pursuing a girl, you plan each move carefully, all designed to causing her to make the right moves in return." Clearly proud of his philosophy (and of his recent chess move), he stopped, glowingly somewhat triumphantly.

We were not done, though: "Well the goal in chess is to defeat your opponent, so if life is like chess, does that mean that everyone else is your opponent? And what's the goal?" Slightly taken aback at this further questioning, John paused before answering: "I guess everyone could be your opponent, but mostly life is about achievement - a bunch of little achievements along the way. If your pursuing a girl, you want to win her affections..."

"and when you've done that, you move on to the next thing," I said interrupting. "Yes..." John answered, perhaps a little miffed at my interruption. "Well doesn't it seem a little cynical to think of everyone in life as your opponent? And what if there is an after life? Does that mean that...." Alan was interrupted before he had time to finish; "now that's beginning to get religious, and I don't talk about that because I'm not a religious person."

John was clearly not one to let something like that just happen to slip out. Perhaps it was because he distrusted our motives in bringing up the topic, or perhaps its because he wouldn't have talked with anyone about these issues, but there is no question that John did indeed approach our conversation in much the same way that he played chess - ever elusive, always shifting, cloaked behind a veil of mystery. For him, life truly was chess, and we appeared to be his opponents, and there was no way that his guard was going to come down. Until otherwise proven, we were enemies and not to be trusted. No matter how many times Alan rephrased or reworded the question, John was not willing to answer. Life was what was tangible and visible, and hence "spiritual speculation" (for such I am certain that's what he thought it was) fell well outside John's area of concern. I had been check mated again by this point, but game was not in vain; I had learned much.

As we walked out of the shop after saying our farewells to the people of Greyfriars, we made our way down to Starbucks where we grabbed a newspaper and sat down in the back of one of the largest Starbucks that I have ever seen. Musing over our two intriguing conversations, it was not long before Alan and I came across yet another vampire movie advertisement in the Arts section. As irritating and detestable as I find such books as Twilight, this was the connection I was looking for; here was the importance of our conversations! On the one hand, Wayne had revealed in his story a sort of hyper-"spirituality" (for it certainly was not Christian); a fascination and seeming connection with the spiritual world that had no connection with the physical one, for a simple reading (and understanding) of the New Testament would have suggested to Wayne that God probably isn't communicating with him verbally, that God is not ordering his castration, and certainly would tell him that the spirit of God does not come and go from his followers! Once a person is a Christian, the Holy Spirit is always with them to help be their guide, and it does not leave and then come back; only other spirits act in that way. So here was Wayne, on one end of the spectrum, representing the same attitude in American culture that books like Twilight and all of the other vampire and wizardry books reveal - America is fascinated by the occult.

On the other end was John, a good materialist. Distrusting, calculated, generally cynical, and convinced only of his own mind and his senses, he represented America's other growing fascination - secularism. With best-selling books like God Is Not Great, The God Delusion, Letter to a Christian Nation, and others on top of the New York Times Best-Sellers list, there is no doubt that there is a growing movement in America away from acknowledging the spiritual on any level, and on a Christian one in particular. Here in one afternoon, in two chess games, back-to-back, we had been given a glimpse into both extremes of American culture, and neither was a very pretty site. In truth, I was pained at Wayne's leaving as I felt there was so much more that we could have explored and so many more things he might have found to grasp onto; the Bible as a foundation for sorting through these issues would have been a good starter. I was sorry for John to, but in a very different way as we had tried to come at him on a number of different levels in a number of different ways, and he would not have any of it.

Still, up until this point I was disappointed with the way things had turned out so far; sure we had been given food for thought and good material to mull over, but it seemed that neither Wayne nor John had left any better off from our encounter, not that we could see at least. Things were about to take a very different turn, however, in our next encounter with our waitresses over dinner. But that story will have to wait for another post as it is already very late.

Goodnight to all and thank you for your prayers!

--Michael Taunton