dogwoods

When I returned from the beach I got slammed. I got out of the car on Friday April 10, and didn't get a chance to really come up for air until yesterday. I started a couple of books while I was on vacation and haven't had a chance to finish any of them. In addition I've got 3 magazines that I'm about half way through that were started the same week.


I attended my EFM (Education For Ministry) class this morning for the first time in 3 weeks. I was gone during spring break and then we didn't have class last week. It was a little like trying to get back on a horse again to get back into the class mode. I have 5 weeks left in this fourth and final year of classes to complete the course. The chapter this week was on the theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer. I have always been a fan of his writing and ideas. This chapter tied in the 1960's theology of God is Dead as well. It was an interesting chapter that spoke to me on several levels.


Part of the chapter talked about Bonhoffer and others like him who tried to hang onto their traditional faith in a modern world in which our science and technology makes believing in traditional God a difficult proposition at times. The God I was taught in Sunday School as a child doesn't always work in the complex world that we live in today. EFM along with several other books that I've read over the years have provided me with a more multi-layered understanding of a God that works in the world. In order to develop that multi-layered faith you have to be willing to let some of your earliest ideas about God die in order to discover a bigger God than you knew before. Or to paraphrase scripture- you must be willing to give up your life in order to find it.

Because of our Spring Break trip and opening the show I missed Palm Sunday and Easter this year. However I find myself still thinking about the themes of Easter and Joseph Campbell's the Hero's Journey as I think about faith and life. Every major growth moment in my life has come from accepting the death of one thing to make way for the birth of something greater. With each death and birth we go through the 5 stages of dying identified- anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. This pattern constantly appears again and again never seems to get easier.



As I look at the challenges that I face with the theatre and its future, my own career and its path, my faith and the ideas that animate it, I'm reminded about the lessons of Easter and the Hero's journey. We go along thinking that things will always be the same. Suddenly something happens. A recession, or an accident, or even aging itself. We are called to give up some things we have always depended on move in new directions. We can ignore that call and continue to act as if everything is still fine, pretending that nothing has changed at all. I read in American Theatre magazine all of the long standing theatre companies that either went out of business or are in danger of closing this past year. One theatre in central Kentucky is doing a campaign to "save the theatre". I wonder what will happen next year? Will they do another campaign to save the theatre again. Will people respond again. How many times can you save something. I can't help but think about how we respond to a changed world (the call). Many arts organizations send out desperate appeals for money to help them continue to do what they had always done. Some are able to hold off major changes in the way they operated by having large donors run to the rescue. Others have recognized that they can't keep doing what they have always done- they have accepted the call and have started on a journey that will lead to face some difficult places.

In the Hero's Journey answering the call means setting off in the wilderness alone where you will ultimately face your own demise. Old assumptions are left behind. We have to face the darkest parts of ourselves and our way of living. We have to let some parts of us die. Some people never recover from that death. They stand and mourn over the grave refusing to budge. Others bury the parts that no longer work, understand that in order to continue to grow we have to let go of some things and arise with a new broader understanding of ourselves and our lives. In the final part of the Hero's Journey the traveler returns to the community with the new found knowledge and helps the community grow into something new.


On a personal level I experienced this the past few months on a couple of levels. One area is the fact that my entire life I've run sound for shows. I started out my professional career mixing sound for a huge theme park production with 24 microphones and a full orchestra. I've prided myself on the fact that I was good at it. Recently I discovered that I have a partial hearing loss in the higher ranges. I can't hear when something is feeding back in higher pitches. I often have a ringing in my ears now that causes me to have to listen more carefully. It has been difficult for me to accept these changes. I have to let go of my certainty that what I hear is exactly what the audience hears. I have to put my pride to the side and allow myself to ask for help from others in an area that they had always asked me for help.

Along with many others I've been thinking about the nature of theatre itself and the nature of the church experience. It is important to keep the primary things that give meaning and life to both institutions without getting so focused on preserving all of the extra stuff. As one theatre writer put it- you could do theatre in a field without a building, without sets, costumes or props and it would still be an experience about telling a story to a community of people that matters. You can hold a church service in a field without pews and organ music and stained glass windows and it is still telling a story to a community of people that matters. Sometimes I get blinded by the things I've grown accustomed to and think I need that to survive and refuse to answer the call to go in new directions. As I finish up the current season at the theatre and my final year of EFM classes I am thinking about things that I'm hanging on to refusing to let die and things that are waiting to be born if I will answer the call. What things am I angry about, what is it that I'm in denial about, what depresses me, where am I trying to make bargains, and what have I finally accepted.

Spring and Easter are a time for new life. It is a good image for me to look at my dogwood trees that suffered so much and I almost cut down because I had to cut off so many broken branches. At one point I almost gave up hope on them and cut them down after the ice storm. They don't look perfect and they won't win any prizes, but dogwood blossoms are growing on the trees.