During the semester I don't have the time to myself to just sit and think. So you know it's got to be dangerous when I do.
I scare myself sometimes.
I just came through a semester where I performed the character of Rachel Corrie, who left her life of privilege to go live with and try to understand the world from the perspective of people without rights, let alone privileges.
She was scared of herself too, you know. Her words are still in my head; I can tell you. She was terrified of the complacency she knew she was capable of.
That I know I'm capable of. That I have.
"I'm scared of people. Particularly people in the greater Olympia area. This is another place where progressive white people escaped a few decades ago." "If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who know where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me. It wouldn't be a metaphor. It would be a reality. And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it. To console myself." "For a long time I've been operating from a certain core assumption that we are all essentially the same inside, and that our differences are by and large situational... I understand there's a good chance that this assumption is actually false. But it's convenient. Because it always leads to questions about the way privilege shelters people from the consequences of their actions. It's also convenient because it leads to some level of forgiveness, whether justified or not. It is my own selfishness and will to optimism that wants to believe that even people with a great deal of privilege don't just sit idly by and watch." "And I won't be afraid to come back, like I've always been afraid before."
I say I want to make a difference.
I say I want to be selfless.
And here I sit, enrolled at a private university I'm not even paying tuition for. Planning to spend twelve weeks in Europe over the summer and hoping to attend graduate school after that. Shopping for shoes and dresses I'm not even paying for, sitting in the mall eating $5 ice cream I shouldn't have bought silently hating myself. Sitting on the couch and binge-watching a TV show about a privileged upper class English family, not even bothering to read about the violence and horror and atrocities that are happening in other parts of the world as I type that we never hear about unless we make the effort to search for it, and certainly not lifting a finger to help. Not even bothering to volunteer in my own community. Walking through the parking lot and noticing a pile of trash someone must have carelessly shoved out of their car and thinking, "I'll pick that stuff up and throw in in a trash can when I come out of the store," then walking straight past it, getting in my car and driving away. Shedding tears for complete strangers as I read reports of what happened at an elementary school hundreds of miles away but hesitant to even turn around and shake handswith the people I've never met sitting behind me in church. Shake hands. My God. Who am I?
My grandmother sent me this Irish blessing today, and it warmed my heart, so I thought I'd share it.
May the blessing of light be upon you. Light on the outside, light on the inside. With God's sunlight shining on you, may your heart glow with warmth like a turf fire that welcomes friends and strangers alike. May the light of the Lord shine from your eyes like a candle in the window, welcoming the weary traveler. May the blessing of God's soft rain be on you, falling gently on your head, refreshing your soul with the sweetness of little flowers newly blooming. May the strength of the winds of heaven bless you, carrying the rain to wash your spirit clean, sparkling after in the sunlight. May the blessing of God's earth be on you. And as you walk the roads, may you always have a kind word for those you meet. May you understand the strength and power of God in a thunderstorm in winter, and the quiet beauty of creation in the calm of a summer sunset. And may you come to realize that, insignificant as you may seem in this great universe, you are an important part of God's plan. May he watch over you, and keep you safe from harm.
It's not fair. That's all I can think about sometimes when I come out of rehearsal.
Rehearsing a show is a long, complicated, tiring, and sometimes tedious process. It's intensive, and it takes a lot out of you. But sometimes I walk out of rehearsals and I can't shake how unfair it is.
Unfair that the audiences who come see the show will, in a sense, see only the tip of the iceberg.
Before you accuse me of not understanding my job, I do know that it IS my job to do all the legwork of rehearsal and do all the intricate, tedious, intensive work to bring the character to life so that the things that are latent in the text come to life and are apparent to the audience--I know that. But that's not exactly what I mean.
I mean the discoveries I make--both in rehearsal and in research. I don't know if there's a way for me to get everything that I'm discovering and understanding across to an audience. Some of it, sure. But there are moments and discoveries and little understandings that no one besides me (and sometimes my director) will ever know.
It's not fair!
I wish I could show people--bring them along with me. But usually that's pretty impossible. And they probably wouldn't be half as excited about it as I am anyway.
And then I start to wonder...
does this make me selfish?
That I want to do this for a living because of moments like that, because of how excited they make me? To want to do something for a living because of how much I love it and how much I get out of it? That's the nature of an acting career, right? Actors don't act for the money, most of the time. They act because they love it, because it makes them come to life. That's certainly true for me.
But is that where my life and my purpose are supposed to stop?
Every once in a while, the doubts creep back. And I reach to justify it again, and I do, and I'm satisfied.
For the moment.
Until I start reveling in those moments again and I wonder,
It's really late, and I should go to bed, but I just read a Noh play for the first time. (Sad that I only just read one my senior year of college.)
I haven't had a whole lot of exposure to Asian theatre. I did a research paper on Kabuki for Advanced Writing my freshman year (had no idea what it was or what I was doing, but it was good to start thinking outside of the box and explore new kinds of theatre all at once--I was in Intro to Theatre at the same time).
So tonight I read Takasago by Zeami, generally considered the greatest Noh playwright. I mean, the man wrote 100 of the 240 plays in the active Noh repertory today.
Noh is one of Japan's forms of classical theatre. It was very much influenced by Zen Buddhism, as well as the strict feudal system that emerged in the late 12th century.
I liked especially the poetic nature of Takasago. A quote that one of the translators included:
The principal Japanese word for 'poem' is uta, which more generally means song. Thus we are told that "each sound of beings feeling and non-feeling, every last one, is a song."
Takasago is referred to as the best-loved god play, and I think I know why. Here's the story line--
Takasago by Zeami is a god or deity play about the paired pines of Takasago and Suminoe (or Sumiyoshi). Two travelers, Sideman and Sideman Second undertake a journey to Miyako, and hope to see sights along the way. They stop at Takasago, or “dune,” and see Doer and Second, an old couple. Second sweeps pine needles from under the pine with a broom while Doer (holding a rake) talks to Sideman and Sideman Second. Sideman asks about the Takasago pine and how its soul is supposedly paired with the Suminoe pine and asks how that can be since they are so far away (in different provinces). Doer and Second also happen to be from those exact same provinces, and we discover that they are actually the spirits of the two pines. Second explains that, “Though ten thousand leagues of hill and streams divide them, for lovers' hearts finely attuned, the way is never long.” They talk awhile longer about the pines, and then Sideman and Sideman Second call over a Fool to tell them more. He tells them they should go on a pilgrimage to the Suminoe pine, but they say they don’t have a way to get there. The Fool lets them borrow his boat, and they make the journey to the Suminoe pine, where they encounter the god of Sumiyoshi.
Like I said, I loved the poetry, and I really liked the romantic symbolism of the pines. I want to visit Japan and see some Noh plays.
Here's an excerpt from the beginning, when Sideman and Sideman Second are traveling:
Travel wear unfolding long Miyako Way cut out for us now waves touch shore and ship lanes lie calm the spring breeze how many days stretch on, ahead behind, all's vague white clouds trail away
And here are a couple of pictures. There's something about that image of the old couple, one with a broom and one with a rake, tending to the pine trees that is time- and culture-transcendent. Which is probably why they call it the "best-loved" one.
So, there you have it. My Theatre History homework. I should probably sleep now.
Unfortunately, while I love working on it and talking about it, I don't want to talk about it all the time, nor do I feel like I can talk about it with everyone. Therefore I'll just vent all my excitement here. So. If you're reading this, yay for you. ILOVETHISPROJECT.
We did a full run-through on Thursday that ran an hour and twenty minutes (EXACTLY my target run-time!), shaving an entire twenty minutes off my previous run-time.
I mean, I'll take it.
In the run-through, I was present with the text--very much in the moment. My energy stayed up, and my director said she could feel it driving the run. I did call for line once, and there were a handful of times when I got stuck because of lines--I still can't get through the whole thing without getting stuck in a couple of places. My stage manager, Honey, and my media-tech designer, Daniel, both saw it for the first time, and perhaps MOST encouraging to me was that they both came out of it saying that I held their attention and kept them engaged the entire time. Which is more than I could have hoped for in an hour-twenty-minute performance of a one-woman show. Maybe there's hope yet.
I'm now in the middle of working on acquiring costume and some final props. Which, when you're budgetless, can be merciless to college student pockets. But I really love this project, and so I don't mind paying for things at all. It's just difficult.
I still need:
An ash try (note to self: check props closet)
Fake stage cigarettes
3 to 4 1990s fashion magazines
A package or two of black ballpoint pens
Khaki cargo pants
Black or charcoal rib-knit tank top
Hiking boots (I'm currently highest bidder for a pair on Ebay--guess we'll see. I've never bid for anything on Ebay before. I'm thinking of it as an adventure.)
I found some of these recently. These first two are from the very first staging of My Name is Rachel Corrie--directed by Alan Rickman and starring Megan Dodds--at the Playhouse Theatre in London, April 2005. I really liked them.
And the rest of these images are from other productions of the show.
Remember that time the little missionary kid became a working professional actor?
Unfortunately, I haven't heard that story yet. I mean, maybe it's happened, but if it has I haven't heard about it yet.
I'm not sure if it's because the first day of my senior year of college starts the day after tomorrow or if I'm just going nuts, but this weekend I suddenly got really scared.
I don't know what comes next.
I don't know how to get work as a professional actor.
I don't know how to get that first gig--that first job where I would get paid to act--that I could put on my resume that would announce to the world, "Look! Someone actually thought I had enough talent and skill and chutzpah to hire me and pay me to do my favorite thing in the entire world!"
Scarier yet: at this moment in time I can't envision myself doing anything else right after I graduate. I think this is what I'm supposed to do.
I'm compiling a list of theatres and auditions to look into this year and trying to keep calm. And I know I still have a year of school to go and that plenty of people (not just theatre majors) don't have a job lined up right after they graduate.
But so far that hasn't stopped me from shaking in my boots.
FREUD: You like music.
LEWIS: Very much so.
FREUD: Sacred music, no doubt?
LEWIS: Actually, I hate hymns.
FREUD: Really?
LEWIS: They're like dipping a chocolate bar in sugar. Unbearably cloying. Hymns drive me out of church early every Sunday. I leave after communion and head across the street for a pint. There, I'm happy to listen to any music playing... My objection to church music is that it trivializes emotions I already feel.
This fun little piece of dialogue between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis is from a play by Mark St. Germain called Freud's Last Session. I haven't seen the play but, shoot, I want to. The play, according to Dramatists Play Service, "centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud who invites the young, rising Oxford Don C.S. Lewis to his home in London. On the day England enters World War Two, Freud and Lewis clash about love, sex, the existence of God, and the meaning of life, just weeks before Freud took his own life."
I especially like this little piece of dialogue from the play because Lewis' words describe exactly the way I feel. Not entirely about hymns, necessarily, but certainly about contemporary Christian music. It's been a while since I could honestly say "I like 'Christian' music." I'm fully aware of the fact that it's probably just me being the reactive, rebellious twenty-something I am. But seriously. If I'm on a road trip and I'm losing the radio station I was on and I start scanning for new ones, most of the time in about three seconds I can tell you if it's a Christian station or not. I listen to some Christian songs and facepalm at the theology and messages in some of them. I sit and genuinely wonder why the blazes Christian artists feel some inner need to "Na Na Na" and "La La La" for half the song. The songs do sometimes seem to "trivialize emotions I already feel." I'm just really usually not a fan.
So you can laugh with me at the irony that, for the last couple of weeks, I've been filling in part time as a temporary DJ for my college radio station, 94.3 FM or The Fortress, home of all your latest, greatest Christian hits.
I know, I know, I'm whining. So I'll quit and tell you about what happened on my road trip a few weeks ago.
I was coming back from Virginia to Indiana after the conclusion of my summer internship at the American Shakespeare Center, and I hadn't been able to find my GPS before I left. (To an utterly directionally challenged individual, this is terrifying.) I was instead trying to use my BlackBerry's Google Maps App, which completely drained the battery before I'd completed three of what ended up being a twelve hour trip. Fortunately I managed to stop and write out some directions, but had no way of anticipating the intense storms and long (barely marked) detours all along my chosen route home. Long story short, I ended up badly lost several times, stressed, frazzled, and exhausted. So when I began losing the radio station I'd been listening to as I drove down some back country road that I only hoped was going to get me somewhere relatively close to home, I flipped the stations hurriedly and frustrated, and landed on something random. It was a somewhat upbeat sound--a mandolin or ukelele maybe. And then I heard the words.
I had no way of knowing Just how hard this journey could be Cause the valleys are deeper And the mountains are steeper than I ever would have dreamed
But I know we're gonna make it And I know we're gonna get there soon And I know sometimes it feels like we're going the wrong way But it's just the long way home
I think I laughed out loud. Here I was, very lost, tired of sitting, with my contacts getting fuzzy, and some guy with a mandolin on the radio was serenading me with the story of my trip. But it was comforting. Mandolin man had taken the time to write a song for me about the long way home. Obviously he was a Christian artist (didn't take me long to figure that out) and was figuratively talking about life while I was thinking about my literally long way home, but that didn't end up mattering. He reminded me that life was going to go on even if it took me all night to finally figure out how to get back to my house, and that my problems (dagnabbit--I missed a turn... again) are not at all as big as they seem when I'm sitting in the middle of them.
It wasn't until the next week or two that I looked up the lyrics and found out that mandolin man was actually Steven Curtis Chapman--go figure. I used to listen to some of Chapman's songs all the time growing up. The Christian music fixture actually came to Quito, Ecuador (of all places) during my growing up days and held a concert for some of us overseas people down there, and I met him in person.
So, for all the complaining I've done about contemporary Christian music, I guess I really shouldn't. Because, I guess, what if--even just that one time--some song really does do some good for a poor lost, frazzled twenty-something or a hurting forty-something or a melancholy tween? Life is a lot bigger than my occasional facepalms.
"Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me, I turn to another class: a small one, so far as I know, but not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as 'Jane Eyre': in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry - that parent of crime - an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.
"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded; appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is - I repeat it - a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.
"The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth - to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate who dares to scrutinize and expose, to raise the gilding and show base metal under it, to penetrate the sepulchre and reveal charnel relics; but hate as it will, it is indebted to him."
Has someone under the age of 10 ever asked you a question that left you staring at the wall? I have a couple of those questions today.
What happens when two people feel utterly convicted in utterly opposite ways?
What happens when I feel that presenting My Name is Rachel Corrie is not wrong (and even that it is the right thing to do), while a local pastor feels that he has been convicted by the Holy Spirit that he should try to prevent me from presenting it?
What happens when I could not in good conscience eat at Chick-Fil-A yesterday while friends and family members could not in good conscience NOT eat at Chick-Fil-A yesterday?
Maybe it shouldn't be "what happens when...?" Maybe my question is "why?"
I did not eat at Chick-Fil-A today. Don't stop reading yet. Let me tell you why.
I could have. Easily. We have a Chick-Fil-A in the Student Center at my university. I just returned to my on-campus library job on Monday, and walking through the Student Center last night, I noted a sign outside the entrance saying that they would open for lunch today, August 1.
I semi-followed the Chick-Fil-A drama and controversy after it erupted. I have Facebook friends and follow people on Twitter from both polar ends of the debate spectrum. I heard all the arguments. I saw all the bitingly sarcastic memes.
More than anything, I saw adult human beings blatantly refusing to take a moment to try to see things from someone else's point of view.
First of all, First Amendment rights are not really at stake, as much as people seem to think they are. This article from CNN, written by First Amendment attorney Marc J. Randazza, points out the fact that a boycott and negative media exposure in response to Mr. Cathy's statement are not a curtailment of his First Amendment rights. Those protesting and boycotting are also exercising their First Amendment rights. "The First Amendment protects you from government action suppressing your
right to free speech. It does not protect you from private individuals'
negative reaction to your speech."
Chick-Fil-A itself does not discriminate against customers or employees based on sexual orientation. The CEO of the company merely shared his personal views in the public arena.
What some people have been reacting to, instead, are the threats of mayors and city leaders to do their best to use zoning and "adverse secondary effects" reasoning to deny permits to Chick-Fil-A to operate in the cities and areas under their jurisdiction. THIS, as the article points out, is where the First Amendment rights come into play. "A city can't deny permits because it disapproves of the owner's exercise
of his First Amendment rights. Both Menino [Mayor of Boston] and Moreno [Mayor of Chicago] were dead wrong
even to claim they would do so. That crosses the line between simply
speaking out and abusing government power." The mayors are allowed to express their opinions about Cathy's opinion, but they cannot legally deny Chick-Fil-A operating permits in their cities based on their dislike of the CEO's stance on marriage equality. Legally and constitutionally, the chances are extremely slim that these mayors will be able to make good on their threats.
What is more disturbing to members of the LGBT community and their supporters is the fact that Chick-Fil-A supports the Family Research Council and the Family Foundation (which, I will point out, it did even before all the craziness erupted). Both foundations conduct and circulate research that opposes equal rights for same-sex couples. Chick-Fil-A financially supports both organizations at least partially with their profits, made when we purchase their delicious chicken nuggets and sandwiches.
And here is the divide--we've transitioned from a Chick-Fil-A debate to the equal rights debate underneath.
I'm not here today with a contribution to the equal rights debate. I'm becoming more and more clear on where I personally stand in that debate every day, but that's not for this post. It doesn't matter where I stand. It doesn't matter where you stand. It doesn't matter where anybody stands because love has nothing to do with where we stand on anything. For the love of all that's holy, can we just please pick up the pieces of this debacle and love each other?
In the words of Rachel Held Evans, "our allegiance is to Jesus Christ, not a restaurant." And in the words of Jen Hatmaker, "when
we turn to politics and power to legislate our brand of morality, we
take the opposite approach of Jesus whose power was activated in the
margins with the outcasts...humbly...peripherally... With every hate Tweet and finger jab and Bible bludgeon, you are telling
my gay friends they are indeed unwelcome, unloved, unvalued, and
uninvited."
I support Dan Cathy's right to free speech, and I do support his right to hold to his views, regardless of who does and doesn't agree with him. Also, the vast majority of Chick-Fil-A supporters that I know are not homophobes. You are not mean, spiteful people, and I'm pretty sure most didn't choose to eat at Chick-Fil-A because you hate LGBT people. In fact, most of the time you say you're loving them (whether or not it comes across).
But I also love and support my LGBT friends, and I hurt for you in the aftermath of this charade.
I came to my individual conclusion today that there are more important things in life than making a stand on either side of this fast food frenzy. Like this, for example. That's why I didn't eat at Chick-Fil-A today. My fast food money went elsewhere.
Dear friends, is there a way we can come together after this? Can we bridge the gap made wider by insensitive comments and well-meaning people on both sides saying things that didn't help? Whether it's possible or not, can we please try anyway?
In closing, to my LGBT friends, I am so sorry about anything that may have been said or done today that made you feel like anything less than a human being with feelings and dignity. You are loved, you are valued, and you are precious.
My friend that I wrote about a couple of posts ago, hereafter named Garrett (one of the ASC actors that befriended me during the six and a half weeks I lived in Staunton), seems to have a knack for rendering my iPod useless.
The night before leaving Staunton, I made sure it was charged and ready for what I presumed would be a nine and a half or ten hour drive back to Indiana. It was one of the only things that had managed to keep me occupied on the drive to Staunton several weeks earlier, and I assumed I would be needing its services again. But the morning before I left, I ran into Garrett in the lobby of the dorm as he was about to head to warm-ups and rehearsals with the high school campers he was responsible for. Over the past couple of weeks, I'd gotten the privilege of spending a little more time with Garrett--just before I drifted off to sleep my phone would go off and it would be Garrett asking if I wanted to join him and a couple of the others at the YMCA gym in the morning. Or he would text me at 11:00 at night and ask if I wanted to go for a late night jog (which we did, in the drizzling rain, and afterwards sat in his car listening to light rock, talking a little, and sipping hot tea he'd so conveniently happened to bring). He asked me to a local theatre group's performance of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, and afterwards we watched Batman Begins a day or so before the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.
On several occasions, especially when it was just the two of us, we had a couple of fascinating conversations about our views of life, spirituality, even some social issues and politics. Despite my fears, I did finally manage to reveal that I came from a very conservative Christian background, and admitted that even if my personal views as an adult no longer aligned perfectly with my upbringing, they were still influenced by it sometimes. And he didn't recoil--of course not. Though he did ask curiously if I still believed in a God. I told him I did, even if I was in a rather currently disillusioned place with the church. He in turn shared with me that he grew up with his mother in a home with ideologies that were so far left there was no further to go, and that his father was Jewish (which made our next discussion about Rachel Corrie that much more poignant), and that he had believed in a God, but no longer did.
It was good to have a real conversation. To be perfectly honest about much-deeper-than-superficial things with someone else I had just met from a completely different walk of life who was also perfectly honest with me. It was good to feel that, without any intentionality from either of us, we had shared what we needed to of our stories. Because, even though some people may not think so, we met on common ground--with no fences, no invisible walls. Exactly what I needed.
On top of it all, Garrett's charm and happy-go-lucky personality are magnetic, and by the time I had to leave--regardless of whether or not he thought the same of me--I thought of him as a friend I was truly going to miss. So when I ran into him in the lobby the morning before I left, though we had talked about going for another jog before I took off, it didn't look like time was going to permit it and I was going to say goodbye to my new friend. But he asked me to meet him for coffee before I left.
I agreed, and met him at the coffee shop a little later. He bought us both iced coffee and we sat in the sunny back garden talking for about an hour. As the conversation drew to a close, he was telling me about a movie, and asked me to come with him back to the dorm so he could at least show me the first five minutes of it. But, when we arrived at his room, he realized he was missing a cable for the TV and instead simply handed me the movie with a wave of his hand and an, "I'm moving into a matchbox apartment in New York City in a couple of weeks. I need to get rid of most of my shit anyway--you're actually doing me a favor." Then, as we kept talking, he somehow decided that I also needed to listen to an audio book that he had. He described some of the opening plot, and told me that I really did have to listen to it because it was so good, so I obviously needed to take that too--some entertainment for my ridiculously long drive. Not able to think of an excuse to say no, I acquiesced and took both the audio book and the DVD.
So, as I pulled out of the dorm parking lot for the last time, with Garrett looking ridiculous just outside the dorm door waving a crinkled white paper napkin in a comic farewell as I pulled away and my iPod tucked, ever useless, into one of my backpack pockets for what ended up being a twelve hour drive, I fumbled with Disc 1 of Horns, a novel by Joe Hill--a writer who has striven to make a name for himself somewhere outside of the enormous shadow of his father, Stephen King.
There are those who have tried to tell me that God and spirituality are becoming more and more absent from the world as we move into some sort of secular age, and that as atheists take over our country--removing the ten commandments from the lawns of our courts of law and striking "In God We Trust" from our one dollar bills and "under God" from our pledge of allegiance--somehow all things spiritual are being slowly erased as we plunge toward certain doom. But let me tell you. I have been convinced over and over again by conversations I've had and things I've seen, heard, and read that God and spirituality are still very much present and part of public conversation and thought in this world, whether or not people recognize it (or like the wrapping it comes in). I was planning to dive in and dissect my thoughts on the book Horns for you today, but I only just finished it and thought it might be good to let my thoughts incubate a while. So consider this the preface.
I can fall asleep and stay asleep basically anywhere, at any time, in pretty much any circumstances if I'm tired enough. As in, I must really be struggling if my head's been on the pillow for longer than ten minutes and I'm still not asleep. Even if the overhead light is on and there's music playing. I've had many a roommate express envy.
Tonight is one of those struggling nights.
I've been thinking about yesterday morning's movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado today, in company, I'm sure, with countless others. And it's still on my mind tonight.
I just finished reading a blog post by a woman who was with her kids in the theater when the shooting happened and escaped. The post is a testament to her faith. She proclaims God's profound mercy in the midst of the tragedy boldly and unfalteringly.
Please, don't mistake me. I am deeply relieved for this woman, her family, and their community that they are still together. Her words are and will be inspiring--in only hours after the tragedy, her proclamation of the grace and mercy of God has gone viral. I am moved by her faith, and my heart is glad for her.
She describes that she and her family feel closer to God because of this. She claims that, in the midst of meaningless horror, God is merciful because he spared them.
Please, don't mistake me. I do not ask these questions with any hint of hostility or cynicism or out of any desire to belittle her, her faith, or her experience, but out of genuine confusion and a desire to understand something that I cannot.
If God is merciful because he spared her life and the lives of her children, where was his mercy when the others died?
If God protected her because she spoke prayers of protection over her and her children as the horror was unfolding, were the people who died not praying? Or not praying hard enough? Is that really the common denominator?
I've been in Sunday School almost all my life. I know the right answers to these questions. Things like, God has a bigger picture orchestrated and it's all part of the plan. Or Job's answer--the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and who are we to question? Or that God has given man free will, and chooses not to intervene because to do so would be to remove that free will, even from a murderer. Or that we are small and should not expect or presume to understand how God works. Or even, God is merciful because he is merciful--the events that unfolded in that theater are not an indicator of his mercy or love any more than plucking petals from a daisy determines another person's affection for you. All the right answers.
But often even these fall flat on ears that are straining for meaning. And in those hours of the night, when you can't fall asleep and lie there, still, not sure whether the room or your mind is darker, you sometimes find yourself thinking that there must be places beyond answers.
After four and a half weeks now of interning at the ASC, I've met quite a few people. I've spent some time working and talking with professional actors, directors, costume designers, stage managers, and production assistants, not to mention administrative and education staff. Over all, apart from my own (occasionaly crippling) self-consciousness and uncertainty, it's been an excellent experience. I'm very glad I did it, and am generally of the opinion that--what do grown-ups say?--it's been good for me.
Watching, spending time with, and talking with the actors has definitely been one of the most valuable experiences I'll take away from the summer. It's made me realize several things. Things like, I'm really no different than any of them. They aren't particularly intimidating, nor do they all get everything perfect. There's no one set formula or path to an acting career. It's helped me adopt more of a "why NOT me?" mentality.
And now I'm going to be painfully honest. One result of my Christian upbringing, I think, is that I always had a tendency to think about anyone else I came into contact with outside of church as an "other"--to start off viewing them from the inside looking out, as it were. As if I peered at everyone else from the other side of a glass wall that I now realize I subconsciously placed there myself. I only became aware of this tendency at some point in my last two years of high school. And, as I transitioned into college, I began to realize that it probably isn't in my best interest to go through life that way. Because if I start off acquaintances with this subconscious elitist mentality, it probably means that I'm not truly seeing them, and not being truly present with them. I'm holding back, and therefore probably hindering what could be great relationships with great people, not allowing them to be all they could be. To this day it's still a conscious effort, but ever since I realized what I was doing, I've tried to tear down those invisible walls. Not just tear them down, but force them out of existence.
So, knowing that about me, and also knowing that I'm just enough of an introvert that meeting new people can be difficult anyway, you may marvel (with me) at the fact that I've been able to make successful and lovely acquaintances while I've been here. And today I want to tell you about one of these acquaintances and how it subverted some of the "otherness" I described above.
I made the acquaintance, a couple weeks ago, of one of the younger-ish actors who just finished a year with the touring troop on the "Almost Blasphemy" tour and who is relatively new to the ASC. For the sake of this post, I'll call him Garrett. I saw Garrett in all three of the tour's shows before they closed--A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. I enjoyed them all, though definitely Midsummer most. Garrett is very personable and outgoing--the kind of person who could make easy conversation with anyone on the planet. After the tour ended, he was a counselor for the three-week high school Shakespeare camp, and therefore living just a couple floors below my two fourth floor next door neighbors and I in the dorm. On a couple of nights, after lights out for the campers, Garrett joined the three of us on the fourth floor and we sat around talking about theatre, movies, art, etc. As I said, he's very outgoing, and very friendly. Very friendly. The description, according to my next door neighbor the costume designer who has known him for a couple of years, was "attracted to anything female that walks on two legs."
The other day, toward the end of the camp, I happened to be washing dishes in the kitchen on the first floor when he came in, rather sweaty and in workout clothes, and asked if I'd like to join him for a run. After thinking through my plans for the day, I agreed. He said he didn't have a lot of time, and offered to finish washing the dishes while I changed. I climbed the stairs to my room with the passing thought that I actually did need the exercise, and returned in a few minutes.
He drove us to the track and, as I might have guessed, initiated a conversation as we started running (something I try to tolerate--but there really is no way to enjoy talking to anyone when you feel like your lungs are going to shrivel into raisins). I did, however, enjoy learning a little more about him, and answering some of his questions about me and my past. Unfortunately, I'm pretty guarded when it comes to talking about my Christian heritage. I know I need to grow out of that--it's probably a form of cowardice. I have a hard time with my irrational fear of being judged and grouped in with abrasively outspoken and unkind people who happen to claim the same faith. I'm afraid that people will automatically assume that I'm out to judge them. So I've often preferred to cling to the words of Saint Francis of Assisi--"...when necessary, use words."
As the conversation continued on our third or fourth lap around the track, he motioned to my (useless) iPod strapped to my arm (I never even put in my headphones because we'd started talking) and asked what I listen to when I run. I told him a little bit of anything that has a beat--Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Usher, Chris Brown--
"Chris Brown?" he cut me off there. "Even after all...?"
"Yeah," I admitted. "I have like one song of his." I knew his surprise stemmed from Brown's incidents of domestic violence and general douchebaggery that have found their way into the media's capable hands.
"Once a music artist gains that much fame, their name is their brand, you know?" he explained to me. "I just made the conscious decision not to listen to any of his music in order not to support his brand."
"Ah," I huffed, as we made our way back up the other side of the track. I didn't really know what to say in response.
After a few more laps and running up and down some stairs a few times, we were both panting pretty hard and dripping sweat in the stifling 95-degree sunshine and decided to call it quits. After walking and stretching a little, we got back in the car and drove a little way to the college dining hall so he could fill up his water bottle. While there, we were discussing theatre and he was asking about roles I've played. When I told him I'd played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet he declared his envy, as well as a desire to play Benedick when I told him I was playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing this fall. As I discussed roles I've played and would like to play I confess that I got a little carried away, and I think my ego showed a little.
When, a few minutes later in the conversation, he made a comment about the fine line between arrogance and confidence as an actor, I faltered again and immediately hung my metaphorical head at some of the things I'd said not five minutes before, wondering if his comment was as pointed as I imagined it was. The words that I hope to see painted on the inside of the Green Room at the Black Box Theatre at IWU seemed to smart in my brain: "Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought."
The conversation with Garrett certainly left me thinking. Here I'm afraid that if I come right out and claim a certain label people will assume I'm on some kind of personal mission to make them feel guilty about their choices, and it turns out I was the one walking away feeling guilty about things. Much of my guilt was most likely manufactured--we actually had a very pleasant conversation, traded phone numbers, and he expressed a wish to see My Name is Rachel Corrie (regardless of the fact that my school is nine and a half hours away). I have to keep in mind that it's also very easy to make me feel guilty. So, I don't pretend to think that he walked away looking down his nose at me. But I wanted to share the experience because, in a backwards sort of way, it served to subvert some of my naive preconceptions.
Not that my book choices have anything to do with being a thespian or an MK. But.
I frequently make references to the stack of books on my nightstand--my "to read" pile. I brought about half the stack with me to Virginia. Currently, in preparation for My Name is Rachel Corrie, I'm doing what I hope will be an adequate amount of background research into Israel, Palestine, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the backdrop for Rachel's story. After reading Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Confict: A Primer by Phyllis Bennis and The Case For Israel by Alan Dershowitz, at the moment I am wading through A Brief History of Israel by Bernard Reich. Though it may not be possible to ask for objectivity, A Brief History of Israel is proving to be the most even-handed of the three I've read so far. But, as is usally the case with nonfiction and research for me, it's work to get through it.
I have always adored novels. I figured out, in encounters in early elementary with The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and Encyclopedia Brown, that I could completely lose myself. Lose track of time, lose track of my own hunger, lose track of any other obligations in a day until I finished the book. I'm not sure what it is about that--you'd think (for someone who feels like I've wasted the day if I sleep past ten in the morning) that it would be somewhat disconcerting. But it's absolutely one of my favorite things.
So you may understand why I typically don't allow myself to start novels during the school year. And why it felt like a breath of fresh air to finally crack one this summer. And why I proceeded to spend every spare moment in the next two days devouring every one of the 619 pages.
What novel was it? It must have been something exceptional in order for me to have devoured it like that. Right? And this is the part where I sheepishly glance at the floor and prepare to be judged. It was Stephenie Meyer's only other published work apart from the Twilight series, her adult novel called The Host.
I read the Twilight series my senior year of high school. As people noticed me reading the books, I received judgmental glances and warnings of all kinds from all sides (further compounded by living in a Christian community). The well-meaning mother of one of my friends even printed off a Focus on the Family-type review found online and wrote a note on the back explaining that I really probably shouldn't read the books, but if I did, I should beware of the traps in this young adult fiction that could pull my impressionable mind into a sinful spiral. I read the note with a little smile on my face, wondering what kind of note she would have written to me back in seventh, eighth, and ninth grade when I was reading Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code (followed by a couple of Dan Brown's other novels), and every Michael Crichton and Nicholas Sparks book I could get my hands on. But, back to Stephenie Meyer.
Twilight? Well, it's extremely easy reading. As in, you tend to forget that you're reading at all. (Not the books I would recommend if you're looking to expand your vocabulary or evaluate literary merit.) I have the standard problems, naturally, with the heroine's helplessness, self-deprecation, and finding her only worth in a significant other (just like pretty much every other critic of the series). Meyer obviously prefers writing in first person, and though the main character (from whose perspective we experience the story) seems to be selfless to a fault, there's an awareness of it that Meyer can never seem to get away from--a self-conscious martyrdom, if you will.
I will give Meyer this, however: somewhere, in all that, her books have managed to get me to feel. Maybe I shouldn't rely so much on my emotions, but I tend to judge stories on their ability to make me feel something. Obviously, if I'm not drawn into a story at all, there's no way for it to make me feel anything. Every novel, if it does its job correctly, has made you feel something by the end. And Meyer's books have, admittedly, done that. My eyes sped up and scanned the pages faster when the characters were in danger. I found my brain conjecturing about the plot mid-novel, wondering what would happen. I may or may not have even teared up.
I wasn't sure what to expect of The Host, naturally. I found some differences from Twilight, but quite a few bothersome similarities also.
What I liked:
-The Trekkie in me finds the sci-fi premise (parasitic alien life forms using human bodies as hosts, initially undetected, taking over the earth until only a very few scattered underground holdout human factions remain) fascinating.
-Again, the characterization managed to draw me in enough to make me feel something by the end of the book.
What I didn't like:
-I can't describe the writing itself as excellent.
-If you thought the Twilight love triangle was a little too much to handle, try the quadrangle in The Host. There are two beings (the main character--Wanderer--one of the alien life forms, and the human--Melanie Stryder) conscious simultaneously inside Melanie's head. Melanie is in love with Jared and accidentally, by forcing her memories on Wanderer, causes Wanderer to fall in love with him too. But, while she is living in the caves with one of the holdout human factions, one of the humans, Ian, falls in love with Wanderer in Melanie's body. And then, as is Meyer's specialty, she attempts to plumb the depths of the complications that arise.
-All the self-conscious martyrdom we experienced in Bella is present again in Wanderer.
-The turnout of the ethical dilemma at the end of the book in order to provide readers with a "happy ending" left me scratching my head. Meyer and her readers wrestle, for the majority of the book, with the ethical implications of depriving a life form of its own body and consciousness in exchange for an existence without conflict, disease, or war. Wanderer discovers she cannot be at peace with herself because she does not want to deprive any human of life or consciousness, and so (Spoiler Alert) requests to be removed from her host and left to die. Instead, however, the humans kidnap another body (which has, for the majority of its life, been inhabited by another parasitic alien life form and therefore has no human consciousness of its own) and remove the other alien life form to give the body to Wanderer in order that Wanderer can continue living with them without feeling like a parasite. But they jettison the other alien creature off to another planet without that creature's consent. In short, I think Captain Picard would have found the ethics sketchy.
-A repeat of Bella: the fragility, utter helplessness, dependence, and self-deprecation of the main character get rather old. I'm starting to worry about Meyer. She seems to create lots of fantasies of muscular men carrying weak, disoriented, or constantly injured women around.
-Again, a mirror of moments in Twilight, I found myself rolling my eyes at numerous points in the plot, going "Really? Really? This is what's going to happen right now?"
The movie adaptation is set to come out in theaters in March 2013. Will I be there? Oh. Probably. Out of curiosity, mainly, which is also why I read the book in the first place.
I'm trying to have enough discipline to get through some more of A Brief History of Israel before rewarding myself with any more novels, but I just recently purchased Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, also the author of Stardust(from which the movie was adapted), and I keep hungrily glancing at it on the top of the pile on my nightstand.
I don't know what I was expecting, but it's hard. And I don't just mean time-consuming, though it certainly is that, too. But it's hard.
I read recently, and I think I might believe, that all memory, on the basest level, is association. We use a "macro" form of association as a memory trick, at times. For example, if you learned to play the piano at any point, you may have learned the phrase "Every Good Boy Does Fine" in order to memorize the treble clef--each letter associates with each word in the phrase.
In the 32-page monologue that is My Name is Rachel Corrie, the association occurs in that her thoughts all have a sequence. Example: she talks about wanting to do right by the town she grew up in, which makes her think of her mother, which then makes her remember to call her mother, which then leads her to talk to the audience about her mother, which then leads her to talk about her father, and you get the picture. These thoughts are all associated with each other, which makes them easier to remember. If there is an order to the words themselves within the different thoughts--if they make sense, being together--then they are easier to remember.
It's when the beats don't seem to have any clear connection that the memorizing gets hard. I'll blank, all of a sudden--have absolutely no idea which line comes next. And, unlike "normal" plays, I will have no one up onstage with me to help bail me out if I get stuck. Not, of course, that any actor should rely on another actor to "bail them out," but you at least have the comfort of knowing that someone else is also responsible for carrying the story along with you.
Memorizing lines in a dialogue is also typically easier because, in a conversation, what you say (usually) triggers a logical response in someone else, which then triggers another logical response in you. There's a pattern and and a logic to it. With an enormous monologue like this, there are no cues but my own to trigger my memory.
So the trick, then, is to create my own associations for the lines where there are none already apparent in my head.
For example, the following lines:
Studying the history of this area roots me. We've certainly waded in the same water and wandered on the same beaches as very brave people. It makes bravery seem more possible. We can look at that history and decide which side we want to be on now, how we are willing to fight. We are not outside.
Over a thousand people are still, as far as I can tell, being held somewhere in the United States, and it's unclear why.
That break in between those lines was difficult for me for a while. I could never remember what came after "We are not outside." Then (and I don't think it was ever really a conscious thing), I started remembering the next few words--"Over a thousand"--because of the "o" in over and the "ou" in thousand. I associated them with the "ou" in outside.
Now, this seems simple, and you wouldn't think this would be such a difficult process. But when you have to intentionally create four or five intentional associations per page of text (and sometimes more), it gets tedious and difficult.
That was a lot of detail about my memorization process.
Right now I'm almost halfway through. I have almost fourteen pages of thirty-two memorized.
In light of the fact that I have to keep a blog specifically for my summer internship, I just wanted to warn everyone that the deeper thoughts and philosophical-theological-aesthetic musings that are the usual fare of Thespian MK may dry up for a while. Not that I'm planning on abandoning Thespian MK for the summer necessarily--I may very well be doing plenty of musing and posting. But most of my blogging attentions will refocus on My Shakespearean Life - just a hop, skip and a jump next door. In fact, it's kind of a themed continuation of Thespian MK, and so I will link to the posts as they come into existence. And, come the end of the summer, I'll be back. Oh. I'll be back.
I'm going back in time a little today--I hadn't written about this and, for some reason, it was on my mind.
One of my very first posts, titled "Umbrella-less," talked about my attempts to get some of my fellow Communication majors excited about CinemaCom, a film colloquium for IWU Comm majors that was held over the course of this past semester. Sadly, my attempts rather failed, and CinemaCom has been discontinued after this one-semester experiment.
But! That's not to say that CinemaCom was a waste of time or effort. It was educating, entertaining, and enlightening for the couple of faithful followers who continued to attend week after week, and also for those of us who weren't there every week but sure tried.
The last film on the schedule was Schindler's List, directed by Steven Spielberg. I'd seen it once before, and it was just as devastating the second time. The typical post-movie discussion was rather more brief than usual, and there were tears all around as we filtered out of Elder Hall at around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m.
A certain individual, who shall remain nameless, walked with me for a bit. I could tell he was distressed--the movie seemed to have impacted him profoundly. He was shaking and crying and had to sit down on a bench after walking only several yards. I sat down next to him, leaking tears myself--the kind you just can't seem to shut off. He tends to be a bit of a rambler; I confess that I will sometimes tune out when he talks to me. He was certainly rambling that night, very emotionally, and seemed just the littlest bit more unhinged than usual. After a few moments, however, he fell silent. He swallowed, turned to me, and, rocking ever so slightly, his voice thick with emotion, he said, "Damn it. Damn it all! Damn it all to hell!"
At first I was taken aback. I don't know that I had heard him swear before, and certainly never with quite that much vehemence. And then, after a nanosecond of surprise, I choked on a single sad, teary laugh. And I answered him, quite literally, "Yeah. Damn it all to hell."
The cruelty, monstrosities, hatred, despair, and evil.
My dad has watched Star Trek since before I can remember. When I was little and I went to his office at work I remember playing with his little model of the starship Enterprise that he kept on his desk. At Christmastime one year (I was probably four or five), I was watching "The Santa Clause" or some other such Christmas movie and pulled my ears up into points with my fingers to try to look like an elf. My mom laughed and told me to go show my dad and say "I am Mr. Spock."
My dad recorded episodes of Star Trek on TV in the early '90s and took a huge barrel of tapes down with us to Ecuador. Meaning that, the summer after my seventh grade year, I was home all summer with next to nothing to do, and somewhat inadvertently got hooked on the original series of Star Trek. I watched every single episode of all three seasons, and despaired when I finished all of them. Mr. Spock was (okay, still is) my hero, and although William Shatner's acting got on my nerves, I sat through it gladly to soak in the stories and watch how the characters responded when in dire straits.
I've not watched all the Next Generation episodes, I've only seen a handful of Voyager and Enterprise episodes, and I don't think I've ever even seen a Deep Space Nine episode, but I get similarly hooked when watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data or Captain Janeway and Tuvok.
Why do I love Star Trek so much? I have no idea. Maybe it's not the science fiction I love (though it's fascinating)--maybe it's just that there has never really been another story that I've experienced in which the characters were written with such grace under pressure, to quote Hemingway.
To watch the captains, while facing almost certain death, ensure the survival of members of their crew with calm and purpose. To watch the crew solve problems that seem utterly unsolvable. To watch members of the crew sacrifice themselves willingly for others or for a cause that they believed in. To watch characters struggle painfully with moral and ethical dilemmas, the likes of which have supposedly never been confronted by anyone from planet earth before. And yet, that was never quite true. Because they were often dilemmas that seemed rather familiar.
OS Episode 70: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
That's when I realized that science fiction and fantasy are what you write when you have a situation or a story to tell, but you don't want to tell it quite the way it is. You want to try to remove your audience from it just a little further, to make sure that they see it without blinders. If you create an entirely new world and context for something, the distance is sometimes enough to see it in a way that brings to light different facets you may not have seen before. Maybe that's why I like science fiction. It's parables.
Anyway. If you have time, I found this blog post a while ago and it made me smile. What Would Picard Do?
Things like this give me hope. Hope that there can be more love and understanding in the world.
It reassures me that I am not the only person in the world struggling with how I should think and act with regards to difficult questions such as this. And it reassures me that I am not the only one who has decided that, since I am human and must err, I would rather err on the side of acceptance than that of judgment.
"Sometimes true faithfulness requires something of a betrayal."
"'The body of Christ, broken for you,' I said anyway."
"Perhaps grace, like the Bible, was never meant to be 'sivilized' anyway."
worship
noun
1.
reverent honor and homage paid to God...
Unfortunately, my faithful friend dictionary.com holds a definition of worship that seems, in that word paid, to rather promote an "economy of exchange" that I so recently railed against. And perhaps it really comes down to a matter of semantics. But the way I understand it, we're in no way forced into worshiping God--he lets us come of our own free will and pay homage to him. And like I've said before, I'm no theology major. But that's what I've come to understand.
Back to the question, though. What is worship? Reverent honor and homage. Focusing adoration on the Creator of my soul. "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God--this is your true and proper worship."
So I really think worship can look crazy different.
Walking the dog and worshiping.
Cleaning my room and worshiping.
Sitting in class and worshiping.
Spending time with friends and worshiping.
Drinking coffee and worshiping.
Acting on stage and worshiping.
Writing a blog post and worshiping.
Singing and worshiping.
This morning I read from the Book of Common Prayer and celebrated Holy Communion at the Episcopal Church in Marion and worshiped.
It wasn't the first time I've been to High Church, but it was one of the first. A professor invited me several weeks ago, and this week I asked if I could go with her.
It was a little hard to keep up--it would take several times before I got accustomed to it. But overall it was a pretty neat experience. Especially after spending some time in Symbols and Imaging class for the last couple weeks--I had a little bit of a semiotic context that made it even more interesting. The symbols, the liturgy and ritual, the language and the words. Worship. Just a little different from what I'm used to. And wonder-full (wonder: "to think or speculate curiously") because of the difference.
This week in Symbols and Imaging, we had a symbolic Jewish Seder meal that kept some Jewish tradition but that also had a decidedly Christian element to it. To have a Passover meal on Thursday and then to have Holy Communion at an Episcopal Church on Sunday has been a memorable juxtaposition.
I went back and looked for my reflection paper on the Seder meal that I had to write the first time took the class, and found this, which I wrote a little over a year ago at this point-
In any good literary work of fiction, themes and motifs crop up throughout the book. In the history of the Jews and now Christians, food and ceremonial feasts and meals are a recurring motif of life.This recurring motif of food says something very specific to me. The fact that we constantly have to eat to keep ourselves healthy reminds us that we are mortal, that we are human. Somehow I think that is one of the most important things we are supposed to remember.
Remembering that I am human while giving reverent honor and homage to God in new places and in new ways has made for a wonder-full and worship-full week.
When I read My Name is Rachel Corrie for the first time as homework for my Script Analysis class, it was very late at night, and not all of it made sense. But the underlying message came through, and that was enough to put me on this track toward making it my senior project.
I have, of course, read it several more times by this point, but not until now, as I am working through it piece by piece, have I really begun to decipher and understand what she meant in certain passages.
She was most definitely a writer. And she thought very abstractly. She created metaphors to understand things (whether or not they make sense to anyone else), and that was how she interpreted the world.
So when she writes things like
The question is always where to start the story. That's the first question. Trying to find a beginning, trying to impose order on the great psychotic fast-forward merry-go-round, and trying to impose order is the first step toward ending up in a park somewhere, painted blue, singing "Row, row, row your boat" to an audience of saggy-lipped junkies and business people munching oat-bran muffins.
it takes reading through it a couple of times before I really start to grasp the depth of what she's talking about.
Or,
I'm building the world myself and putting new hats on everybody one by one, before I go out, so wrinkled, I have to grab the great big flaccid flaps of my eyebrows and lift them off my cheekbones in order to see. Before I go out I'm gonna have people in tutus, cops wearing sombreros, stockbrokers with Viking hats, priests with panties on their heads. In the world I'm building, everybody shouts hello to everybody else from their car windows. People have speakers attached to their chests that pour out music so you can tell from a distance what mood they're in, and they won't be too chicken to get naked when the rain comes. And first ladies carry handcuffs and bull whips and presidents wear metal collars. Big metal collars with tight leashes.
Rachel's description of an ideal world doesn't sound much like I imagine anyone else's would, but her vision of an ideal world fits exactly who she was. When I imagine and try to create in my mind the person who wrote these words, I understand that the same person couldn't be content to do activist work from the sidelines. She needed to go.
Every time I figure out what she's talking about and what she's trying to say, it's like a little victory for me, and I feel like I understand a little bit more who she was. So today, I had a victory. In this section, she's just been invited to go to Gaza to work with the International Solidarity Movement, and she's talking about what led her to this point. She says she never intended to get involved with activism--she's scared of people and her original intent was more along the lines of gathering trivia. But something happened along the way. She creates this metaphor:
Like--when I worked at Mount Rainier we followed a woman into the woods. She had become part owl. Her job was to entice them out. Our job was to carry the live mice. Somehow, after years of doing spotted owl survey, this woman's larynx changed. She croaked in a language that was articulated somewhere deeper than tonsils. Her tongue must have changed shape. We followed her through the woods on the northwest side of the mountain all day and saw no owls. And no owls croaked back at her. I think about how many of us doing any kind of progressive work in this region swim beneath the surface combing for what was here before, taking inventory of what is now. There's the chance that you will be changed by what you're looking for. Your tongue could change shape like the woman at Rainier.
When I first read this paragraph I couldn't figure out where in the world the owls came from. What made Rachel talk about all these different, weird things? Not eight paragraphs later, she starts talking about how salmon talked her into a lifestyle change (still working on deciphering that one completely). But how does this stuff relate at all to anything she's talking about?
Then I started to memorize it, and somehow it dawned on me. And now that I understand it, I'm like, how could I not understand it? Duh.
The woman in the woods was just hired on to do the job, the spotted owl survey. She probably never intended to become so immersed in it. She certainly didn't plan on becoming "part owl." But, along the way, after years of doing the job, it began to change her. It became more than just a job she did. She was changed because of it. And Rachel is saying the same thing about herself. She never intended to be much more than a curious participant, standing off to the side and learning some things about the world and human rights and activism. And then it began to change her, and now she has to go.
The funny thing is, I think the same thing is happening to me that happened to Rachel and to the owl woman at Mount Rainier. Though, perhaps I did choose this project with a little more in mind than curious bystanding. But I'm beginning to get this inescapable feeling that my tongue is changing shape.
Taking Symbols and Imaging a second time has been fun - a chance to re-hear [rehearse?] some things that maybe fell out of my brain after the first time I took the class. I did all the reading for class the first time I took it, and the absence of the threat of a test meant that I really didn't feel like doing any of the reading this time around. But I've enjoyed just sitting in class again, not doing any of the outside work this time, and quite a bit has come back to me throughout the lectures.
After both times I've taken this class, I've started thinking in terms of sign theory. No, seriously. Every little thing starts popping out and reminding me of something we discussed in class. Maybe that's enough to classify me under the "nerd" label. But it's true.The following is something that popped out to me the other day, and I almost couldn't contain my indignation. Well, not 'almost' I guess. Obviously I couldn't, seeing as I'm sitting here writing about it.
gift
noun
1. something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone.
exchange
verb
3. to give and receive reciprocally; interchange: to exchange blows.
How weird is it that in our culture we have paired these two words together?
One of the textbooks we use for class is titled Changing Signs of Truth by Crystal L. Downing, and this is an observation she makes in the book. She extrapolates on "the economy of exchange" from theorist Jacques Derrida. She points out that a gift is something that is given absolutely freely, with no strings attached, and not because it was in any way deserved. If it is truly a gift, it is not given in exchange for anything else. No transaction takes place. Because it's a gift. More often, our gifts are not gifts at all, but exchanges. We come to expect gifts on our birthdays because we deserve them because it's our birthday. We do "gift" exchanges with our family and friends at Christmastime. But these stray from the true definition of "gift." An attitude of exchange cheapens the value of a gift.
As Christians, we absolutely turn salvation into an exchange rather than seeing it for what it truly is: a gift. Grace--the free and unmerited favor of God given to man. She says that "as soon as we perceive strings attached, we no longer see it as a gift," and "rather than accept reconciliation with God as a gift available to any taker, religious people feel the need to do or say something in exchange for God's favor, believing that their extra efforts will earn them grace. Believing so, they undermine the very concept of grace." We don't "owe God good works" in exchange for the gift of salvation.
We don't have to do anything in order for the gift of salvation to be extended to us. Jesus said "follow me." That's all he said. The gift has already been extended to us. So why do we put qualifiers on it?
In the research I've been doing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was given a book with a biblical perspective on some of the prophecy that can be found in scripture regarding Israel in the last days. At the end, apparently the author of the last chapter--"Practical Advice for Perilous Times"--felt the need to include what I will dub an "altar call," which he places in the last subdivision of the chapter, titled "Practical Advice to Those Who May Not Know Jesus Personally." The end of the book is really what you might find in any tract you happened to pick up: a four-step process to salvation. His precise words are, "All you need to do is to follow four simple steps to turn toward God and trust Him... and He will meet you where you are."
Going back to Downing and my Symbols and Imaging class, the questions that immediately came to my mind when I read this were, "Why four steps? Who decided it was four? Why these four? What happens if you don't complete all four exactly the way it's written in this little book?" The way the sentence reads is, if you do [these four steps exactly as I have written them for you here], then God will meet you where you are. An "economy of exchange."
Is it just me or is that contradictory? We have to get somewhere and then God will meet us where we are? I would have to say I disagree. I think God meets us where we are. Invites us to follow him. And that is all.
Printed out underneath the four neat little steps is a version of the "sinner's prayer." You know -
"Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner and need Your forgiveness. I believe that You died for my sins on the cross. I want to turn from my sins. I now invite You into my heart to forgive me and give me eternal life. I want to trust You as my Savior. Amen."
Where do we get that whole "invite You into my heart" bit? Unless I'm much mistaken, that's something we made up. Where does that even come from? Jesus never said, "Pray the sinner's prayer and you will be saved." He never said, "Ask me into your heart and you will be saved." He said "I am the way the truth and the life." He also said "Follow me."
I do realize that the steps are supposed to make it easier for people who have maybe never had a context for anything regarding the salvation of their souls. But I wonder if, sometimes, we give people the wrong idea from the get-go.
The phrase "meet you where you are" reminded me of a story.
After my freshman year, I took the Gen Ed New Testament class over May Term with a professor who is no longer teaching at IWU, Dr. Dave Smith. My class may have been one of his last--I don't remember--he left not too much later. To say that he made an impression on me would be accurate. He challenged me to think about things in ways I hadn't before, and I've grown up with Bible classes all my life. He forced me out of my comfort zone, and shed light on passages that I didn't know I'd never understood. He told life stories that I'll never forget, and upon completion of the class I seriously contemplated taking another religion class just to have him as a professor again. Before I found out he was leaving, that is. (And that's saying something. Call me un-Godly or un-Christian or something, but taking an Inductive Bible Study class just for funsies does not typically sound like a way I'd enjoy spending a semester.) I wish I'd had the chance to get to know him better. But all that to say that one of the stories Dr. Smith told comes to mind now whenever I hear the phrase "meet you where you are."
He said that he was in a church once--I think he was the pastor at the time. One Sunday, a woman who was a prostitute came to the church and sat at the back. She vanished before anyone else got up out of their seats to leave, but a couple Sundays later, he said, she was back again. And one Sunday, she walked up to the front of the church because she wanted to be saved. Dr. Smith said people stared at her all the way up the aisle in her mini-skirt, glittery high heels, loud and colorful low-cut top and heavy makeup. When she got to the altar, he asked if someone would come and pray with her. He said an older lady from the congregation got up and came to pray with her, and when she reached her, the woman knelt down beside her and asked her if she wanted to be saved. The woman who was a prostitute said that yes, she did, and the woman from the congregation said, "Well, let's wipe that makeup off your face." I'm pretty sure I remember Dr. Smith saying that it was all he could do to keep the anger out of his voice, but he immediately knelt down, looked at both of them and said, "She doesn't need to do anything. You can be saved right now--he'll meet you where you are. All you have to do is trust in him. Would you like to pray with me?"
It's not an economy of exchange. We don't need to do anything first before God will meet us where we are. That's the whole point. He's already there.
For a long time I've wondered whether I'm an introvert or an extrovert. Different people who have known me at different times of my life will probably have different answers--there was a time in my life when I and people who knew me would have answered "introvert" without thinking twice. As I've gone through phases of life, I've begun answering "extrovert," but I do have to think twice, because I'm never positive. I've taken numerous personality tests during my college career, and the results all spit out "extrovert," but only just barely. Usually, if I answer just one question differently it would spit out "introvert." They also say that no one can be both an introvert and an extrovert--you have to be one or the other (or one is more default than the other, like being right- or left-handed). I guess I understand that. I guess. But anyway.
All that to say that, while I despise having to talk to strangers, sell things, or participate in mingle meet-and-greets, I do definitely claim one characteristic of extroverts: I process out loud. When I'm thinking or sorting through something in my head, it can't just stay in my head. I need a sounding board; I need to think out loud (which, I could argue, is partially why this blog even exists). I have to talk things over with someone.
And so, a million thanks to my new running partner Adam (don't look so shocked - yes, I've started running) for being willing to listen to my jumbled thoughts through my agonized huffing and puffing every other day. And to my director, Dr. Katie, for letting me ramble my way through the craziest half-baked opinions over tea in her office.
I've started working ferociously on what will be my senior project (even at this point that's still a statement of faith--there are a lot of variables on this one)- a one-woman play called My Name is Rachel Corrie, about which there has already been a little bit of controversy. I'm moving forward on it, however. And along with producing any piece of theatre comes some dramaturgical work and background research, which I'm doing myself as a part of the project.
I was a newcomer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is the backdrop of the play. Up to this point in my life I have not had much exposure to politics, including foreign policy matters. (I'm not sure whether it has anything to do with the fact that I grew up in a South American country or if that only makes it harder to believe.) My introductions to politics have come with 1) merely spending time in the Communication Division and 2) taking an American Civ after 1865 class in which history could not be separated from politics. But not even those introductions began to touch on the subject material I'm swimming in now.
I learned quite a bit about the Holocaust in several classes all through school of course--English, History, even Economics. We even learned a little bit about the modern state of Israel if I remember correctly. And in my junior year World History and senior year AP Government classes we studied some current events, but I was never the kid who got excited about history or current events and so never delved into them. I loved literature--the devastating awe of reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" and Elie Wiesel's "Night." But I was not prepared for the moral, ethical, intellectual, political, spiritual explosion that happened in my head when I started investigating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I feel like a little kid standing on my tiptoes trying to peer through a window into a room where a lot of grown-ups are arguing vehemently about something I'm having trouble understanding and trying to make sense of it all.
And this is where the processing comes in. I am having trouble grasping everything. I'mstruggling with trying to make up my mind and construct my own opinions. I'm struggling to know when I should try to make up my own mind and when I should ask the opinions of people older and wiser than I. I'm struggling with the ethics. I'm struggling with the way my own faith, in some ways, seems to complicate my interpretations and understanding rather than facilitate them. I'm struggling with not having a background in politics to begin with. I'm struggling with what I assume those close to me expect me to think and what I discover. And I'm struggling with the concept that ethics and faith do not always seem to match up.
And then, through it all, I'm also trying to piece together how Rachel Corrie saw it all.
I know two things for sure, though. Firstly, an entire world has been unlocked to me. And while I've decided to leave the actual "processing" for my rehearsals with Dr. Katie and my running sessions with Adam and absent from this post, I can report that I now wonder more than once a day how much other stuff in the world I'm missing. And, secondly, I recognize that I still have a very long way to go, and that I will not remotely resemble an expert on this even by the time of my first performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie in the fall.
Nineteen pages into the script, Rachel has just arrived in Jerusalem in January, 2003. Writing in her journal, she explains,
The scariest thing for non-Jewish Americans in talking about Palestinian self-determination is the fear of being or sounding anti-Semitic. The people of Israel are suffering, and Jewish people have a long history of oppression. We still have some responsibility for that, but I think it's important to draw a firm distinction between the policies of Israel, as a state, and Jewish people... Anyway, this kind of stuff I just think about all the time and my ideas evolve. I'm really new to talking about Israel-Palestine, so I don't always know the political implications of my words.
Believe me when I say that I won't have to try hard to make those words believable. She took the words right out of my mouth. Actually, I guess I'm taking them right out of hers.
