Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: community

Weirdos Looking For Other Weirdos — January 14, 2026

Weirdos Looking For Other Weirdos

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Now, today, the site prompt is “In what ways do you communicate online?” and that fits very nicely with why I opened my computer to write this morning. This is not the silly snacks conversation, this communication topic cuts to the heart of who we are as human beings.

Sometimes, I can’t sleep. After finding a bedtime routine that was working (first, reading a chapter or 3 of a book I like, then laying like spoons with the Angel for a few minutes, and I seem to drift off immediately, mostly sleeping through the night), I apparently decided to change that up, for whatever thoughtless reason. Last night’s great idea was to scroll through Instagram for a half an hour, then turn the light off and…what exactly did I think would happen? Laughing at NFL memes and cat videos isn’t conducive to anyone’s winding down process. Usually I don’t even take my phone into the bedroom, but last night, I did.

So, I was downstairs eating a bowl of cereal, watching People’s Court on YouTube for an hour, then to bed, only to wake up with a splitting headache a couple of hours later. My watch says I slept for 3 hours with no “deep” sleep. Maybe those things aren’t to be trusted, but I feel like I slept 3 hours with no deep sleep, so maybe in this instance it’s accurate.

Anyway, I was up watching a board game documentary on Amazon, called The Hobby: Tales From The Tabletop. (There apparently is another doc called just The Hobby, which concerns the trading card industry. This is a confusing coincidence, if it’s not related, but also interesting.) This doc is about people who love modern board gaming. I say “modern,” because it’s not Monopoly or Life. Instead, these games are complicated stories that have instruction booklets that are pages & pages long. It’s much more D & D than Scrabble, more Call of Duty than Pac-Man. There are tournaments and role-playing. It’s the kind of subculture that I just love; it reminds me of the absolute treasure that was Chicken People.

It like the wide, wild, world of sexual fetishes, without the NSFW element. They exist, hidden in plain sight, and are totally overlooked. And the more I discover, the more I realize remain below the surface. There really is something for everyone.

But when I watch these documentaries, it is further evidence that, as the Bible says, “it is not good for man to be alone.” We are made to be together – whether here, in blogs, online communities, chat rooms and message boards, or in churches, clubs, cults, groups, and arenas. There are countless spaces we’ve created to connect, and it doesn’t matter how or when, or how odd it is to me, I am thrilled when each of us finds our people.

This desire drives almost every action, no matter how small. Who we do “it” with is mostly more important that the “it” we do, but the “it” is the beacon that draws us together. I’m not going to the “Wingspan” world Championships, but I certainly would go to a Morrissey convention or a baseball game or a Sunday morning service. We’re all weirdos looking for other weirdos to move through & make this life more beautiful, and when we find them, we hold on tightly. Or we should hold on tightly.

Life can be long and hard and it can hurt like crazy sometimes, we should all have a hand to hold, a person who gets down in the dirt next to us when we’re mourning – we should all have people to love and be loved by. AND a person to play “Sagrada” or “Blood Rage” with, if that’s your kind of thing.

Bowling Alone — June 23, 2023

Bowling Alone

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I read that more people are bowling, but leagues are suffering. The reason is because we are bowling alone!??! Bowling alone. Have you ever seen those social media posts that say, “tell me you’re ____ without telling me you’re ____.” Tell me your society is busted without telling me your society is busted: Bowling alone is increasing while bowling together is down.

I recognize that relationships are out of fashion. Our religion is individuality and self-reliance. The main tenet of the social contract is superficiality. I’m fine, it’s fine, everything is fine. Even when, especially when, I’m not and it’s not. Membership is suffering everywhere, because commitment is suffering everywhere. This seems like a relatively insignificant consequence of modern life. Who really cares if we don’t commit to institutions through such an antiquated concept as membership? Maybe. But the list of problems with bowling alone is infinite.

But most, if not all, of these problems can be traced back to a self-obsessed view of the surrounding world. How do you make me feeeel? How does it make me feel? What are you giving me? Are you feeding me enough of what I want? If the answer to any of these is less than positive, treating me like I deserve to be treated, I will move on and never look back.

Close relationships need friction to grow – up and down. Beautiful flowers we can see and enjoy, but also the kind of roots that go deep enough to withstand all kinds of weather. Mark Manson writes, “Greater commitment allows for greater depth. A lack of commitment requires superficiality.”

The Angel and I, we know things about each other, love things about each other, that no one else sees. We only see them because we have committed to any terrain, any obstacles. We only see them because we committed to each other, regardless of…well, anything. Our roots go very, very deep. We bowl together.

Community is an inherently unselfish activity; a community is a selfless organism. We give up certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities for others to gain certain rights, privileges, and responsibilities. The illogical part is that, in becoming smaller, we find a new significance and value that we couldn’t have dreamed otherwise. Illogical, but absolutely true. I sacrifice the ability to date any and every other woman, when I say yes to the Angel, but that sacrifice is hardly loss, considering the knowing, intimacy and love we have built over 20+ years.

When we join a bowling league, we give up some flexibility and individuality, but we have partners, teammates. When we’re not there, we are missed. How many spaces care if we don’t show up? If no one knows my name at the mega church, no one will know my name when I’m not there. There’s a humongous difference between “Where’s that guy that sat there 2 weeks ago?” and “Where’s Chad? He doesn’t usually miss. I’ll text him, see if he’s ok.”

I’ve believed that I am an island, that I can do it myself, and I’ve been way too proud to admit when I can’t. I’ve hurt my back more times than I can count moving furniture rather than call somebody to help. But I don’t believe that anymore. Instead of disappearing when my heart or spirit breaks, I make some calls and tell the truth. All of it. And the dark periods get shorter, more manageable, less dark.

I wish we’d tear up that social contract, shred the pages with all the lies of isolation as virtue, and write a new one. We can start creating a new world right now, today, but none of that happens by ourselves, alone in a cave. This is something we can only do together.

Bones Brigade — June 14, 2023

Bones Brigade

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I’m at the beach right now – well, not at the beach right now – I’m at the hotel in a Delaware beach town. While the rest of my family sleeps, I am in the common area writing. This weekend is Father’s Day, it’s my second favorite Sunday of the year to give a talk, so I’m working.

But while we’re here, I watched a documentary on Amazon called Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about a revolutionary skateboarding ‘team’ (probably more accurately called a skateboarding family.) I grew up with the VHS tapes and Thrasher magazine, so I am very familiar with skateboarders like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Mike McGill, and the Bones Brigade.

Of course I knew the skating, the tricks, the video games, the impact and artwork, but as usual, that is only a small part of the story. In fact, they’re the least compelling part of the story. Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen (the ones I didn’t know as well) were insecure and damaged, and the damage didn’t make them any less beautiful. What this film accomplished extraordinarily well, was to detail this time for these people – the highs & lows, the glory AND the heartbreak, the 1st place finishes as well as the times each quit and returned home. The depth and texture of reality made them even more beautiful, if that’s possible.

I think that’s what makes a person like ex-President Trump so difficult to embrace. He curates an image without pain, self-doubt, or flaws. He is only bombastic confidence and success, and that makes him appear like a caricature, like he’s attending a masquerade party where this is what a “man” says and does. I don’t know Donald Trump, and I know to mention his name in any context invites rage. But yesterday, he was in a courtroom to plead ‘not guilty’ to 37 counts and was described as humble and downcast, eyes down and hands folded in his lap. This snapshot of brokenness did what nothing else has, ever: humanized him. (Now, last night he was back to the character, so who knows?) He was far more relatable in the courtroom than he has ever been on a stage or television screen.

Maybe what made the Bones Brigade so honest and open with their fragilities and imperfections was the love they had for each other. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe they loved each other into vulnerability and authenticity, or maybe their vulnerability and authenticity opened the door into this deep love. It’s hard to imagine a football or baseball team that would have held Rodney Mullen with such kindness, grace and respect, or that would have been a family to him, where he was, who he was, regardless of his place in today’s competition. All of the members spoke with protective reverence of both he and Hawk as they both made the decision to not win as much, or at least not make winning the only goal.

All of these dumb cult documentaries I watch always leave us with a question: How does this happen? How do people get caught up in this insanity? And the answer is always the same, we’re all looking for community and relationship, and when we find it, (hopefully it’s a ground-breaking skateboarding family and not some crazy religious leader who only wants to sleep with the young girls in the group), we lean in. I’m pretty sure former President Trump doesn’t have a circle like that, who will accept him unconditionally, protect and walk with him – politics might not be the best place to find it. But these boys/men sure did, and they changed so many of us by simply building a home and letting us watch.