Over the Top

Ragne Kabanova | Dreamstime.com

What did the morning worship service at Radiant Church in Surprise, AZ and my lunchtime spumoni ice cream stack at Cowboy Ciao in Scottsdale have in common? They were both over the top.

The pastor filling the pulpit last week galloped up the church aisle on a horse. This week a different pastor rappelled from the ceiling down a rope into the pulpit. This shenanigan illustrated the sermon series, The Journey.  I loved it!

My spumoni was dressed up like a Vegas showgirl. All the good stuff you’d expect to be packed inside this Italian delicacy—pistachios, chocolate, cherries and marshmallows—piled like bling on top of the ice cream. I ate it up (with some help).

  Such drama is not to everyone’s taste. Poorly executed, theatrics can overwhelm the message and dull the palate for what truly nourishes us. In the hands of talented people who respect the elements they are working with, the results can bless our spirits.

When the Ark of the Lord entered Jerusalem King David did not give a speech, he leaped and danced before the Lord. His wife Michel looked down from her window and was filled with contempt. To be sure Michel was not predisposed to appreciate her husband’s antics. She had been returned to her marriage by force.  Still, God saw fit to judge a heart barren of any appreciation with a barren womb.

I can’t wait to see what will happen in the pulpit next week. It involves a rock.

2 Samuel 6:16 

Baseball as Theatre

Not being a sports fan I watch a baseball game as if it were a stage play. Like any good theatre production, acting and staging are critical to my enjoyment. Admittedly a baseball game is longish—three hours to a play’s usual two and a half—and the chit chat in the air can be tiresome. Last game, every time De Jesus came to bat the woman behind me recounted how her niece married a De Jesus and was on her third pregnancy.  This commentary is not forthcoming at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. But many of the elements of drama I do appreciate play out on the baseball field.

Prophets, Playwrights and Shepherds

Don’t these times just cry out for a Jeremiah, a man with God’s words in his mouth? Wouldn’t we welcome a Shakespeare with the wit and wisdom to fence with human foible? How about a Moses with a mandate to move his people to a place of prosperity?

 I’m looking for prophets who can state clearly, “this is what you are doing wrong and this is what you need to do to turn it around.” I’m watching for playwrights who can do justice to the world stage. I’m waiting for that shepherd who can part the seas that rage before us.

I’m listening for their voices, and I’m hearing a few.

When violence reminiscent of the sixties sci-fi novella A Clockwork Orange raged in London,  Britain’s chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks laid the blame squarely at the feet of moral decline (See the Wall Street Journal 09/20-21/2011). He finds it indefensible that we have placed the entire child-rearing burden on mostly single mothers. “By the time boys are in their early teens they are physically stronger than their mothers. Having no fathers, they are socialized in gangs. No one can control them.”  Sacks concludes that governments can’t change lives, only religion can do that – “not as doctrine but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good.” Sacks calls us to return to our Judeo-Christian heritage.

In Oregon, Ashland Shakespeare Festival director Amanda Dehnert examines the sin of pride in human behavior.  She has staged Julius Caesar with a chilling urban guerilla force that drives a dagger into the heart of the audience. When Vilma Silva in the role of Caesar demonstrates the power of an actor to both summon and suppress audience response, we come face to face with how easily people are manipulated for political ends.

I thought about this edgy production when I watched our local production Annie, a delightful, feel-good romp. Who would dare bring Annie into the 21^st century?  Instead of the work house, today’s Annie might have a short life at the intersection of child trafficking and the sex trade.  I don’t think it would sell many tickets. Still, there is hope for true grit in some recent stage plays that pack a power punch. Two Pulitzer winners, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts and Next to Normal by Brain Yorkey and Tom Kitt come to mind. The first laughs at family dysfunction and then parades the terrible wounds. The second dramatizes the devastation of mental illness. Perhaps it takes a dramatist to help us seriously consider the pain of what we normally treat as sitcom fodder.

Shepherds are more difficult to identify. Certainly some leaders are surfacing, people who have pledged to spend their vast fortunes down to the last penny to solve world problems. Bill Gates is tackling hunger. Warren Buffet is making strategic investments in the stalled U.S. economy hoping the right jumpstart will get the engine going again.  There are others, but none who can roust the oppressors with convincing plagues on their houses or offer heart transplants to the oppressed who want for faith, hope and courage. Only the Good Shepherd can do that. We may find ourselves with an enemy at our backs and a seawall in our face before we recognize him.

Gold

Singing praise songs in church on a Sunday, I became aware of how like our thought life a praise song plays. I focus my conscious thought on what the words and phrases mean in a song like In Under Your Wing*:

I will lift up my eyes to the hills

For I know where my help comes from
You will sustain my weary soul
For it’s by Your grace I stand here today.

Focused attention forms the melody of my thoughts, but soon I hear a harmony.  It’s the nether song of the muse introducing a contemplative accord or a cognitive dissonance into my praise:

The hills – the peaks of Yosemite were beautiful this morning.  Jesus, why don’t I look up more? We should go into the park next week after the holiday crowd leaves; no, we shouldn’t, we have to get ready for the carpet installation. Focus!

By your grace I stand here today – and, where is everyone else? Attendance is light today. I wonder if the kids bothered with church today. Focus!

Thank you Jesus that I am in this place, with the beauty of your world in my backyard, singing with this praise choir of precious souls. I am blessed.

The harmonic balance of tension and peace give depth to praise in the much the same way that subconscious thought – the kind that comes through the door at our invitation or bursts into our interior rooms unbidden – gives rise to understanding and creativity.

Sometimes my soul yearns to hear a descant. Musically, a descant is a counter melody that floats above the main melody and carries the theme. A counterpoint in the life of the mind might be the still, small voice we all long to hear.

Folk singer John Stewart performed a song called Gold. It had a wistful refrain:

“People out there turning music into gold.” 

Although the gold he yearned for was the money that could be made from music in the right market, this is a beautiful phrase when placed in a different context.  People turn music into gold when they direct their song to God. Perhaps our praise is the gold that paves Heaven’s highways.

*Christy Cooper

The Easter Choir

A choir blends more that voices. Up there is my lovely daughter-in-law, a spring daisy pompon in a field of flowers. Young faces group below her like a freshly planted border of pansies. The overhead lights bounce off their shiny knees and illuminate their upturned faces.


Above their heads a bouquet of people – some stand erect and still, like bearded iris, other sway like tall grass in the breeze of the music.

A chair is placed aside the risers to accommodate one senior singer. He is dressed all in brown, an early planting now fading in color and drooping in stance as he leans on a brown cane, but his face radiates with praise.

The choirmaster multitasks. He’s a master gardener keeping the raised bed of basses and tenors in harmony with the terrace of altos and row of sopranos. He pulls one and then another out to bless the Lord with a solo phrase of song, taking the microphone himself to join a trio in front. A hand rises in the air and keeps the beat for him when his attention is elsewhere.

From a seat near the front of the stage at the First Baptist Church in Watsonville I sing a joyful song too, appreciating the balance the worship band has achieved, allowing my eyes to rest on the guitar player, my son.

I know these people were plucked from their busy lives, pulled together hastily to form a choir for Easter. I also know that when God’s people gather to sing and play, angels sing and play with them. A choir blends generations, talents, even Heaven and earth for moment.

Rewriting History

“I willingly turn off my brain to get through the racism and sexism on every other page,” Bruce Holland Rogers writes in defense of his love of Tarzan pulp novels. For the sake of a good story, I’m willing to do that too. When the sex strays into gratuity in film or when a hero spits out a racial slur in a novel I note it briefly and edit it out. At question is whether I want someone else to assume this task for me, or for school children. I do not.


The most present controversy is whether Mark Twain’s newly released journals should be banned from public schools or rewritten to remove the offending racial slurs. The terms in question are offensive in our day and they were demeaning in his day, but culturally acceptable at the time he wrote.

Eliminating the offense by banning the book or rewriting a treasure has two effects: We lose a teaching moment and children lose the opportunity to develop a critical thinking skill. Could we not present such writing in the context of history and then have a lively discussion of how things have progressed? Could we not go deeper – what words do we use today that we may be judged on in the future?

Stories laden with language that offends universally go out of print if they have nothing else to recommend them. Stories with raw language and gripping plots stick around. I’ve developed my own fine line of how much profanity I will tolerate for the sake of a good story. I’ve also developed an appreciation for the role of the profane in literature.

I recently posted a devotion titled “Season of the Witch” on FaithWriters.com. I was exploring the concept of the witch as an archetype rather than a literal being. Some reviewers felt I was treading on dangerous ground (with them, I was). Others were inspired by my suggestion that many of us experience a witching hour or season that can lead to useful self-examination.

A last thought. I watched Sonora’s Stage 3 production of Big River. The director made a creative decision to leave the n-word in play. It was a powerful account of the dignity of a demeaned slave. It made everyone uncomfortable to watch the effects of both intentional and thoughtless hurtful speech. (I felt deeply for the actors who had to deliver and receive such offensive lines.) I think the director made a good decision; up to you whether you bought a ticket or not. I highly doubt any of the young people in the audience walked out feeling they were now in possession of a new word that enriched their vocabulary.

Leaving the Stage

I’m feeling the truth of Shakespeare’s words –the world is a stage and we are the players.

Driving down the grade yesterday morning I had a vision of my mother’s final exit. Stoic until the end, fighting a lonely battle with life, she drew people in and pushed them away at the same time. She embodied all the mystery of life, fighting for autonomy while holding death like a secret within her. The feistiness that so often seemed to us to be misplaced endeared her to the staff that cared for her in her final days. Feisty woman, perhaps, was the role life assigned her.

Feistiness is a touchy and quarrelsome reaction but also a spirited one. Much of what my sister and I said to my mother ignited unintended, often shocking, responses. In retrospect, she cared deeply about things we didn’t pay much attention to. Things like politics, nutrition, privacy and family history.

Mom took her last breath early on the morning of August 1, 2010. In her final year, she grew more accepting of the love people offered her. Although we were by her bedside much of the time, I suppose it is fitting that we were not there when death finally came. By choice, she fought most of her battles alone.

In my vision, mom leaves the stage to join those behind the curtain – the producer, director, stage manager and technical crew who create the play. “Good job, Shirley,” they tell her, and they mean it. She has played the role she was cast in, interpreting her part to the best of her ability. She has served as a foil for others on the stage as they developed their parts, not an easy role but apparently critical to the success of a good play.

I look forward to the day when I can sit down with the real Shirley and we can share the good things in life everlasting. Will we reminisce about the life we lived in front of the dark glass? Who was the audience we couldn’t see? It is written in Psalm 8 that we are made a little lower than the angels. We know that they watch us. I think they surround us – a technical crew offering help and support and season ticket holders, appreciating the mystery God has wrought and the part we play in it.

Life and Death

Last night I watched American Songbook on PBS. I was again deeply touched by Paul Robeson slumped against a dockpost by the Mississipi, summing up a bone weary lament with the refrain, "I'm tired of living, but scared of dying."
We deal so efficiently with the fear of death by focusing our attention elsewhere. When death does manage to get in our face, we may be willing to put our earthly affairs in order for the benefit of our heirs, but we put off any reckoning that may be required of us until another day. It's a handy self-deception with consequences we all complain of daily -- busyness that robs us of joy.
Though I've always sought to account for my soul, more often I have lived the deconstructionist life of a brain ticking in a body with God as the clockmaker who winds us up and leaves us to wind down on a timetable only He knows. Consequently I've tried hard to stay wound up, fearing to remove my hand from the key that locks me in place.
What freedom there is to remove my hand from that key. In the existentialist view, I can do merely that and let whatever will be, be. Or, I can go further. I can yank the key from the keyhole to my being and toss it to God. My ticking ceases and I begin to match my breath with His, my steps with His. This is prayer, and it is a whole body experience, often expressed as a dance with God.
I imagine this dance. Raising a torchlight above my head, I lose the shadow of myself as I illuminate the path ahead and move toward that light. Taking in breath, I test new ways to move, stretch forth my leg, point my toe, place my foot down lightly with purpose, shift my weight over my leg and find balance. I reach out my arms and link my fingers to the strong fingers of One who tugs me into a new positon and whispers in my ear, "See what you can do?"
With a touch, my soul lover helps me find my balance. Like a pas de deux partner, or a yoga master, He closes strong hands around my wrists as if to say, "I've got you now, I'm with you."
When we've worn out our bodies with the business of life, when we finally tire of ticking off the days of earthly existence, is there a dancer inside us to be gotten?
At the end of Paul's song in Show Boat his people, who have gathered around him in sympathy, turn toward the river and wave a greeting to the boat coming that is coming by. And that, perhaps, is the choice.