i’ve been reflecting on my various groups of friends ever since marie’s and my joint birthday party.

i’m a member of numerous communities. there’s my gathering – of course it’s a microcosm of my church, my house, my bike posse. there’s our weekly ultimate games with the folks from amgen, and of course i’m always welcomed by (most of) the folks from zoom soccer. i’ve got a strong community of close friends from my college years, most of them from intervarsity, and even older friends from over a decade ago – we bonded through the tuesday night gaming at the camas library and later through the ministry of peace/rulezero. there’s even a sense in which my workplace can be seen as a community.

of course in a larger sense i’m also a member of greater communities – my neighborhood, my city, my nation. the greater communities of nerds, the brotherhood of the saints, the family of all cyclists on the roads today. but for the most part these groups are abstractions, we aren’t affected by these larger entities in the same way we are directly challenged by the people we are in relationship with.

it’s been interesting recently to step back and really look at what it is that makes a community tick, and .83 has been a prime example. the group’s only been riding together for 9 months now and already we’ve had an amazing amount of bonding, fun, drama, and the full works. like any group it seems a defacto leadership has evolved, folks who invested early and often and were a part of the original vision for what having a riding posse could be like. still, this community is a tough one to be in because it is, in many ways, ruthless. people who don’t fit into it immediately are openly ostracized and eventually driven away. there is a strong sense of ‘us vs. them’ even though with a group of now forty or fifty cyclists, who are ‘we’? the only thing we have in common is that we bike, but there are some other commonalities. most of us drink beer. we’re almost exclusively white males and educated. it’s unlikely that this demographic will ever change, and even now there has been a minor backlash from the ‘leadership’ to differentiate the casual members from the more serious. different people respond to this idea in different ways but ultimately among the close group of friends at the core there will likely be little change.

i’ve been a member of a failed community such as this before. the rulezero gamers, aka the camas crew, is really the second iteration of a group of friends that bonded over common activities and developed, at least to my mind, deep relationships over the course of five years. in the end though these friendships were broken apart, some which i am certain will never be fixed, by a combination of our own selfishness and foolishness. it took me a full three months before i spoke with any of the people involved, and i was the least damaged by any of it. eventually we regrouped and some of the friendships have been rebuilt, but grudges do not die quickly amongst my friends. i wonder if .83 will traverse this arc? certainly a group of people, loosely bound who are all looking out for themselves is a veritable powderkeg.

in contrast, my gathering has been a community struggling with a reason to continue at times. unlike .83 i don’t think most of the group looks to biblestudy with such anticipation as to start a forum thread the day before the ride counting down the hours with representative pictures. in contrast to the rowdy racousness of a typical .83 forum fight or bike ride there’s too little passion. on the other hand there is genuine concern for each other and our failings, for what they are, are hopefully acknowledged and repented of.

of course questions still abound. what lessons can each group i am a member of learn from each other? how can i uniquely participate in each community as fully as i am able without stretching myself too thin and giving one group short shrift? where i am called to leadership how do i act with humility and where i am not how do i support those that are?

list of movies i am excited to see this year:

1. serenity
2. … nothing?

of course, most of my friends have already seen the film thanks to wilson’s backroom dealings (and obsessive nature!), but hopefully i’ll have a whole round of new converts to take with me when it comes out next month.

if you haven’t yet seen firefly, i highly, highly recommend it. i’m late to the game on this one by a few years; i vaguely recall it first coming out and being unimpressed. i immediately forgot about it, and only thirteen episodes (three of which were never aired) it was cancelled.

turns out, i was wrong. science fiction western though it may be, it’s really a cleverly-done character story. joss whedon may not have done everything right by me, but with firefly he hit the nail square on the head. it’s got a perfect balance of action, wit, intrigue, and character development. for a fox television series it has a remarkable depth; for example the episode jaynestown explores the idea of ’symbols’ from multiple perspectives while still remaining one of the most fun episodes of the series.

between items two and three below is a local item that should not be missed. my good friend rochelle is having a birthday party at my house on the tenth. this party promises to be one of epic proportions that will make our previous party this summer look like two things: jack, and shit. and jack left town.

not only will this party feature a keg of delicious beer, it will have not one but two live bands. the first is argo, a cool group of indie rockin’ kids that have some good tunes and of whom rochelle was totally a band-stalker. the other one is a little band you may have heard me speak of;

optimus rhyme.

is playing.

at my house.

this weekend i am attending the penny arcade expo with five thousand other ubernerds, and i volunteered to help out working security for the concerts as a PAX enforcer. last year i just hung out backstage, this year i figure i should make an effort to at least be somewhat useful. the theater seats only 1600 folks and will assuredly fill up with nerds. optimus rhyme is playing there. two weeks later? my house. crazy.