Tag Archives: God

tunnel

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What would be best is if, when I parked on the street, a tunnel would appear, connecting the driver’s door of my car to the balcony door of my house. A two-way waste chute, really, through which I could rise and fall, unseen by neighbors. Neighbor. The one who, as I was walking up my front steps, pulled me into her tractor beam by shouting “you called CPS” and “I will punch you in the face” and “mind your own business,” though when your business is interrupted by the sounds of a child being beaten and screaming, it’s difficult to mind.

Nevertheless, when my roommate heard it, she shouldn’t have told me, who shouldn’t have called CPS, who shouldn’t have come to their door; the neighborhood commandment of “you should mind your own business” must not be broken. Oblivious to such an argument, or accustomed to it, a child tapped me. “You haven’t been outside,” he said. “Yes, I have,” I replied, almost adding “but I won’t be anymore.”

The morning after the confrontation, I left for a wedding in upstate New York, at an hour similar to the one before God created the universe. It was so early that, in the airport terminal, there was no light through the windows; they were like the fake kind on a big box store, opaque, dark, void.

“The system is just broken,” my fellow traveler, a friend who was abused as a child, said. “When a CPS employee showed up at my house, I just wanted them to leave, I was so scared of being punished. When a teacher asked me if everything was alright at home, I said yes, but I kept thinking, can’t you make it stop? Whether you report it, or you don’t, it’s terrible.”

“My father forced me to fight competitively,” a young man told me at the reception, arranging and rearranging the food on his plate, “and you have to maintain a certain weight, so I’m mindful of calories. I still eat like a fighter.” He was thin and smiling through a wiry beard and lipstick that matched the color scheme of his sister’s bridal party. I wanted to feed him.

“You did the right thing,” a friend with children said over the phone.

Blocks before the neighborhood, my heart pounds like a headache. At the end of the street, I try to see who’s on the porch next door. I park the car in front of my house. I keep my sunglasses on. I don’t look around. I look down. I look at my keys. I open the door.

Hell is Other People

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and I wonder what else you believe,

that I don’t believe,

that I don’t know about yet,

that would scare me to know you believe.

And when will I find out about that.

And then I wonder if someday you’ll convince me of what you believe.

And then I sit here and I think about me,

a version of me, say, two years from now.

And she believes what you believe,

and she believes what I don’t believe, not right now.

I think about that future “me,”

and I think about that future “me” thinking about the “me” I am right now.

That version of me thinks I’m stupid for thinking what I think now,

but also,

I’m here thinking that she’s so wrong,

and I don’t want to think something so different from what I think now…

…because there’s a slipping that happens.

– The Christians, Lucas Hnath

As a young adult I developed a slipping phobia. One of my friends called me a “moral hypochondriac.” I clutched one version of truth, afraid of catching anything else. Something had to be right or wrong, it could never just be something. Of course, there was no love for God in this, only tide after tide of fear, and eventually I was like, “screw it, I can surf on this.” And so I did. Not surf. Slip.

Yes, I spent years slipping into the glove of addiction until I thought the glove was my hand. I was trying to heal a wound by covering it, which works to a certain point, when it begins to fester, to infect. You have to expose it to air, so it can breathe. But then it gets too much air, too much wind, its gets windburn and it wants everyone to burn, burn in the light of its truth.

What is it again?

The wound, yes, the wound that wants everyone to hurt, but for a good cause.

Even when I was in the cycle of sin-sorry-not-sorry-sin, the thought was if I reserved the serious infractions for once or twice a year, I was still superior to others who were racking it up; I was still winning the numbers game. But there was no attempt to stop, to turn around, to start again; just making a paper chain of the days until the next deviation, and then rip, rip, rip.

Repenting has meant setting both sides of my freeway going the same direction, away from the natural disaster. I expect Christian friends to understand, but most seem to think the disaster isn’t nature, it’s nature gone awry. If it was contained within a certain area…

“A quiet resentment can creep in that comes from believing that they’re sacrificing so much for God, while others get off easy,” writes Rob Bell. “Hell can easily become a way to explain all of this: ‘those people out there may be going to parties and appearing to have fun while the rest of us do ‘God’s work,’ but someday we’ll go to heaven, where we won’t have to do anything, and they’ll go to hell, where they’ll get theirs.”

Like Bell, I am actually not a universalist, or a relativist, or any kind of ist. I am an ict. An addict. Someone who doesn’t know when the party ends. So they don’t want anyone to have parties. “Is it weird,” a friend asks, “that every time I see you, I want a beer and I want to go to church?”

I’ve been listening to Lucius’ latest album, Good Grief. The booklet unfolds to form a poster of the lead singer against a black background, embracing a black figure that blends in completely. “I am lost,” she sings, “in my own home.”

Prayer

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Lord,

out of the depths we cry to you

our souls melt for heaviness;

they are weary with sorrow

they are downcast

bowed down to the dust.

Our tears have been our food

day and night.

 

We mourn for the loss of Your children

who came to what they hoped

was a space where they could be safe

and the space was violated.

 

They were teachers and parents

great friends and brand managers

overprotective brothers and army captains,

contagious personalities and pharmacy technicians

good kids and assistant producers

blood brothers and ride operators

the best godmothers and Target employees

beautiful souls and high school graduates

cancer survivors and baristas

dancers and the kindest people you could meet.

 

But first and last and always

they were, and are,

Your children.

We mourn for them.

We are in mourning.

And we will not move on

we will not move on

no matter how undignified it may seem

or how uncomfortable anyone becomes

we will not move on

we will not move forward

we will not move away

we will not move from this spot

until we have flooded our beds with weeping

until we have soaked the dirt with tears

until the roots of injustice are permeated with grief

and while we grieve we wait.

 

We wait for you, oh Lord,

more than watchmen

wait for the morning.

 

And we ask, “who can show us any good?”

 

Let the light of your face shine upon us, oh Lord.

for only You can turn our darkness into light.

Surround us with songs of deliverance.

Cover us with Your feathers,

give us refuge under Your wings,

prepare a table in the presence of our enemies:

for those we have mistaken for our enemies

but are brothers, sisters

whom we are called to love

because we are the Church

even if we don’t understand

even if we don’t agree

if we can live in complete unity

then the world will know

You are Love

and they will know us

by Your Love

the Love only You can do

for You are Love

and Love

is a promise that preserves our lives,

everlasting to everlasting,

unfailing,

full of redemption,

always protecting,

always trusting,

always hoping,

always persevering

always displaying your power

among the people

the people whom

You Love

You Love

You Love

with a

jealous

dangerous

amorous

scandalous

Love

Love

Love

 

One thing we ask

this is what we seek:

for Your children lost,

Your children here,

Your children here who are lost,

let us dwell in Your hiding place

the shelter of Your tabernacle

high upon the rock of our salvation

let us dwell in Your house

Forever and ever

Amen.

Pulse

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“I was looking at their ages…[they] might’ve been out for their first night at a gay bar…” someone says on the radio. “Seeing, you know, what I consider to be children have to face this…”

I consider them to be children, yes. Older than the children at Sandy Hook, at Columbine, but still children. I consider myself to be a child at that age. In my early ‘20s. In 2005. In Orlando. In Pulse.

“We went there,” a friend says on the phone, “we went there all the time.”

I remember going there and pacing around the block for an hour before deciding to go in. Or was that another club? That was another club. It could have been any club. It could have been me, it was not me, it is with me, it is over me, a large black umbrella that was handed to me a long time ago and it was not heavy at first but I’ve been holding it so long that my hand is shaking.

“You seem focused,” a roommate says as I unload groceries.

“I lived in Orlando.” I say. “I was at that club every weekend.” The roommate is holding the refrigerator door handle but I don’t realize and reach for it; I accidentally grab his hand, he instinctively pulls away, I open the refrigerator. I place bags of celery and carrots on cold shelves.

I reread the names, the ages. I look at their pictures again. I feel as though I am attending the ceremony of the dead in Sartre’s The Flies, where the departed souls return, enraged. They are rattling me like a chandelier in an earthquake. I want to sit in a gay bar and drink. I want to go to a gay club and dance. I want to have sex with as many men as possible. But I am in recovery. I am celibate. I am not going to do any of these things. So I get a Judy Garland film from the library. I Could Go On Singing.

Judy plays Jenny, a part written for her, a part that is her. Dirk Bogarde plays her ex, David. “I can’t be spread so thin. I’m just one person,” Jenny says to him, slightly drunk but getting sober. “I don’t want to be rolled out like pastry, so everybody get a nice big bite of me. I’m just me. I belong to myself. I can do whatever I damn well please with myself and nobody can ask any questions.”

On the radio they are interviewing someone who is placing white carnations and notes on the car windshields of family and friends of victims as they meet with the FBI. The note says, “You are loved.”

David starts to say he loves her, but Jenny places a finger on his lips. “Don’t – don’t say it. Because if you said it now, and if you didn’t mean it – I think I’d die – I think I’d die.”

Just Like Me

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Your-own-private-Bose-Idaho headphones are on, canceling the noise you don’t choose for the noise you do; they are connected to your iPhone, which is connected to your hips, which are connecting the bops of Betty Who:

I heard she’s beautiful
A 20 out of 10
That doesn’t keep me from
Wondering how you’ve been

She is in St. Cloud. It sounds like the safest place. It sounds like the name of a TV drama. There was one called that, wasn’t there? In a hospital? No, that was St. Elsewhere. Perhaps that is more accurate. The cop who pulled her over said she did not know who she was. Now she cannot call you. She cannot text you. Her husband calls you. Her husband texts you. You both talk about her like a place card at a table setting; you wonder when the real person will be there.

So if you think you’re falling apart
And I’m the only one you’ll call
If you keep reaching for me in the dark
And can’t stand it anymore

You are doing the dishes, spinning the scrub brush around the outline of the plate, like a tone arm and turntable reversed. At the moment you are happy, because for momentary happiness, Betty Who is your Captain Picard: she makes it so. Especially when you first heard “Somebody Loves You” as the soundtrack of a flash mob marriage proposal between Spencer and Dustin Stout-Reese. It simultaneously went viral on the internet and in you, infecting with false hope. Someday, you think, they will release a study that concludes gay marriages are unnatural and unhealthy. What a terrible thought, you think, and you tell the thought so. It was not you thinking it, you decide, setting a Tupperware container aside to soak. It was a character – a character without an arc, drowning in a flood, because all the other animals have their partner. “At least she is married now,” you told the pastor earlier. “She cannot be alone. I’ve known her for years and I’ve always known that.” “I met her at a performance of your play,” the pastor replied. “she said, ‘it’s so funny that we’re meeting here, because this play is about me.'” In the bead counter of your mind, you try to calculate what is more narcissistic: her imagining your play is about her, or you insisting it is about you.

Then you just call my name
I will do the same
You can look into my eyes and see
If you’ve got a broken heart
Then you’re just like me

At the beginning of the breakdown, she wrote to you in an e-mail, “GOD can play with pretty, fragile, tragic, desecrated, dishonored, shamed and histrionic messes like ‘us’ – and you and I know our heaven was granted because it would not be again the night I feel in love with the band that captured all the songs I shared with you waiting for him…and the songs would have been forgotten if I didn’t know in my heart that you secretly loved me more than you thought I loved you – and I let you in whatever way you wanted because I was always water and I could transcend whenever the world was too much for me to share…This is not good-bye, this is I will find you again when God wants to remind us of his story as he would tell it – but we have to establish what we think our narrative is – so we predict what we don’t want – in the deepest hope that we get everything we need before what we want, because I can only hold the things that are truly cherished in my heart – as you are my darling Ben.”

Just like just like me
Just like just like me
Just like just like me
Just like just like me
Just like just like me
Just like just like me

We Have Always Lived in Hill House

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“No live organism can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

– – –

“I feel very empty, like an eclair with all the creme sucked out of it,” I told the group. “I mean, I know the creme was awful, it was full of high fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients. But I’m so hollow without it. I don’t know why I’m coming here. I did not want to come tonight. But I will keep coming.”

“That was really genuine,” my sponsor Scott said, a few days later. “I know you struggle with performing and it was significant for you to be so real.”

“I don’t feel real,” I said. “I feel like a motel of all vacancies. Just empty. I can see things are better: almost a year sober, not staging a rebellion, not plotting a relapse, truly repented. I can see that, but I don’t feel it.”

“You’ve been making progress,” Scott said, “but ‘it’ keeps changing. Or, like, your perception of ‘it’ keeps changing. You thought it was sex addiction. You were quick to label yourself that. You talked a lot about it at the beginning. Of how bad you were. Not so much now. What you’ve done is not who you are. And you’re not a bad guy.”

– – –

“The writing was large and straggling and ought to have looked, Eleanor thought, as though it had been scribbled by bad boys on a fence. Instead, it was incredibly real, going in broken lines over the thick paneling of the hallway. From one end of the hallway to the other the letters went, almost too large to read, even when she stood back against the opposite wall…the doctor, moving his flashlight, read slowly: HELP ELEANOR COME HOME. ‘No.’ And Eleanor felt the words stop in her throat; she had seen her name standing out there so clearly; it should not be on the walls of the house.”

– – –

Driving home from the gym, there were two men attempting to push a stalled car out of traffic. One looked up at me, his eyes asking a question, his hand raised halfway. I turned onto a side road. By the time I parked and approached, they had slid the car into a legal spot.

“And you’re already done. Sorry I wasn’t more helpful,” I said.

“No, no, thanks for stopping,” the one who had waved smiled, opening his arms. “I’m a hugger,” he said, advancing, and I could not retreat; I could not strategize; I was artless of war and the hug was declared. He turned back to the car and opened the trunk. “I just got this car 2 days ago. I put all this shit in it,” He muttered, motioning to several containers of fluid that appeared to be intended for automobile use. His eyes followed mine to a plastic head with synthetic hair. “I do hair,” he said. I imagined the head rolling around the trunk every time he stopped, or turned, or accelerated; the painted eyes staring into darkness.

“Hey,” he said, “we were going to the club. Could you give us a ride?”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

I moved some things to my trunk. The other one sat in back. The one who waved sat in front.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” He said.

“Sure.”

“Are you gay?”

“That is personal.”

“Then I’ll ask another. Where were you going?”

“Just home.”

“What were you going to do?”

“Just go to bed.”

“How’d you like us to come with you?”

I tried to swallow. It felt like I was swallowing my whole throat.

“Um, no,” I said. “No. I’d like to, actually, but I’m – trying to be good.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Can I ask you another question?”

“Sure.”

“How big is your cock?”

“It’s not. I’m not into size,” I said, insecurity disguised as pretention. Then his hand was on my crotch, a layman taking measurements.

“You’re huge.”

“No, I’m not,” I smiled, trembling, pulling his hand off of me slowly, as though I were removing a band aid. Exactly how many times he touched me and I said “no,” I tried to remember; the other one touched me once and I said “no” too, I remember that; I tried to remember everything as I told Scott:

“I said no. I did. But obviously I didn’t mean it, otherwise he wouldn’t have kept doing it.”

“That is not true,” Scott said.

“I pulled over to help them. To help them.”

“Yes, and this is a victory. You dropped them off at the club. You didn’t take them home. This is a victory.”

“It doesn’t feel like a victory. I feel manipulated. I feel conned. I feel…”

“Yes?”

“I feel like – like – ” I was shaking now, with the hyperventilating sobs of a toddler who has been cheated for the first time and is telling a guardian. “I feel like – God doesn’t have my back.”

– – –

“‘You will recall,’ the doctor began, ‘the houses described in Leviticus as ‘leprous,’ tsaraas, or Homer’s phrase for the underworld: aidao domos, the house of Hades…it might not be [too] fanciful to say that some houses are born bad. Hill House, whatever the cause, has been unfit for human habitation for upwards of twenty years. What it was like before then, whether its personality was molded by the people who lived there, or the things they did, or whether it was evil from its start are all questions I can’t answer…there are popular theories, however, which discount the eerie, the mysterious…people…are always so anxious to get things out in the open where they can put a name to them.'”

– – –

“My first time -” I started. “Well, not my first time. I haven’t had a first time, really. But the best time…I was 20 and he was 42,” I sipped a third glass of champagne, more buzzed than a cicada. The champagne was the most expensive I had tasted; the wedding was the most expensive I had attended. It was the perk of being plus one to my friend Tina. Smiling, she listened to my romantic math: “that’s a 22 year age difference, for those who are counting. Who are not us, Tina. You won’t hear me protesting you and your new old beau.”

“I’m sorry, is this a trigger?” She asked, a little concerned.

“I‘m the trigger. And the gun. And the shooter. And the shot. This is why I’m in recovery. I’m the problem.”

– – –

“You worry too much, Nell. You probably just like thinking it was your fault.”

“It was going to happen sooner or later, in any case,” Eleanor said. “But of course no matter when it happened, it was going to be my fault.”

“If it hadn’t happened you would never have come to Hill House.”

“We go single file along here…Nell, go first.”

Smiling, Eleanor went on ahead, kicking her feet comfortable along the path. Now I know where I am going, she thought…I will not be frightened or alone anymore; I will call myself just Eleanor. “Are you two talking about me?” She asked over her shoulder.

After a minute [he] answered politely, “A struggle between good and evil for the soul of Nell. I suppose I will have to be God.”

BWB

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In our neighborhood, if you are outside, you are open for business – and the children will get in your business. I was sitting on the front stoop like Baby John in West Side Story, trying to be tough but totally harmless. The children, on this day represented by Dreana, came tumbling towards me.

“I’m going to paint your nails,” Dreana announced.

“No you’re not.” I countered.

“It’s boy nail polish.”

“That doesn’t exist.”

And so Dreana began painting my nails with her spit. I was going to ask her to stop, but it didn’t seem important. The next day she was back with the boy nail polish. To her credit, it was blue; a bright blue that has never cried. She also brought a boy, Anthony, as if this might prove persuasive. Again she asked and again I refused, so she started painting the siding.

“Please don’t do that,” I said. She paused for a moment. Then continued.

“What did I just say?” I snapped.

“Yeah!” Anthony matched my tone and made a grab for the nail polish, and Dreana made a fist, and the bottle didn’t want to pick a side, so it fell, spilling the candy blueberry polish all over the porch. With a squeal the kids scattered. I muttered all the way upstairs for a rag and sighed all the way down. As I rubbed repeatedly, the polish gradually transferred from concrete to rag, until the rag appeared as though some blue-blooded cartoon animal had bled on it.

It was the same color I saw at the Ebony fashion exhibit, in a far outfit of swimsuit, coat, scarf and stockings that was not suitable for any occasion. My friend Althea and I wandered through the temple of black goddesses, who were wearing fabulous ensembles and arranged in rows, like ornate columns supporting a vision. “These mannequins must have DNA, they are so lifelike,” I said. “That one looks like Naomi Campbell.” We approached some casual wear that was too coordinated to be casual – every piece similarly patterned in blocks of black and blue and trimmed with white lines – and I pointed at it, declaring, “I could wear that.”

A week later I returned from work and tried to close the distance between the car door and the front door as quickly as possible. Anthony shouted from down the street. “Wait up!”

“I’m waiting,” I said, not slowing or stopping. As I was unlocking the door he limped up the steps, holding something under his arm. “I broke my leg,” he said.

“No you didn’t.”

“This is my crutch.”

“No, that’s a snow shovel handle without the shovel,” I pushed the front door open.

“Hey!” Anthony leaned down, grabbing my pant leg and pulling it up a little. “What shoes are you wearing?” He asked.

“Adidas,” I said.

“Those are for black people.”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.” And with that line, I exited inside, eager to be alone with my backpack, as it contained the love/hate letter Dear White People. It’s “a satire about being a black face in a white place,” but really it’s a chiaroscuro of characters at an Ivier-than-thou University. Among the students are Coco Conners, a black blogger with the nickname “blue eyes” because she prefers white men and helps one of their fraternities throw a blackface party so she can live blog the proceedings. “Tell me,” she mockingly implores the camera, “why are white folks so obsessed with being black? Hell, why are black folks addicted to blonde Barbie doll weaves? It’s a strange symbiosis that we’re here to investigate.”

“Can I destroy this terrible exegesis?” my roommate demanded the following morning, standing in the bathroom doorway, gripping a page torn from a Sunday School coloring book that had been taped on our refrigerator. I put down my toothbrush and examined the picture. The face of God floated in heaven, wearing a beard composed of the surrounding clouds. A child had bore a crayon back and forth across the face, likely Ultramarine, a shade which is based on Lapis lazuli, the semi-precious stone coveted since ancient times for its intensity. “Blue is fascinating,” according to Yale ornithologist Rick Prum, “because the vast majority of animals are incapable of making it with pigments. They have evolved a new kind of optical technology, if you will, to create this color.”

Handing the picture back to my roommate, I said, “let’s keep it,” and together we left for work. Despite a week of rain, the polish on the porch had not faded.

Running with Questions

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Ben,

Acacia Theatre Company has really interested me and impressed me, from what I found online. My name is Aubree Gevara,* I’m a homeschooled 18 years old and my passion is for excellence in Christian theater. I’m contacting you because I believe you exhibit aspiring characteristics and qualities. For my duel credit college final project in my Theater Appreciation Course I’m interviewing people involved with Christian theater. I would be extremely appreciative if you would take some time to answer a few questions below. Feel free to answer whatever you can even a few answers are helpful! God bless!

Aubree,

Thanks for contacting Acacia. You are correct in stating that I exhibit aspiring characteristics and qualities. My characteristics and qualities are wannabes and posers. Also you must invite me the next time your credits duel. Do they just throw their weight around? I can’t imagine them using weapons. How does either win? It all sounds very thrilling.

I am happy to answer your questions, but know that my opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of Acacia Theatre Company. If that statement concerns you, remember it is also displayed before every episode of “The 700 Club.” Except for the “Acacia Theatre Company” part, of course. If Acacia owned “The 700 Club” it would have taken me longer to respond because we would be receiving donations all the time, like Goodwill, if Goodwill got boxes of money. And people would donate other things, too, like an advent calendar keyboard. Beneath each key would be a chocolate. It would have to be like a 3 month advent. And the keys would have to be labeled normally so you could still type. It’s not a good idea but it’s an idea that makes me feel good, probably because I’m typing and hungry and tired and Christmas is a comin’ and the egg is in the nog.**

What plays have you been involved with and in what role did you help? (director, actor, stage) Please state if they were Christian or secular.

Let’s get etymological. The word secular is from Latin – that virile patriarch who seems to have contributed DNA to every word born – specifically, the root saecularis, meaning “of a generation,” which our generation can learn from reading Wikipedia, as I did, although I am not in your generation, Aubree, since I am 30 and therefore dead by most accounts in youth culture.

Regardless, the essential purpose of the word secular is to describe activities removed from organized religion, from eating to bathing to working to playing in a Mariachi band. Yet these activities can still be, and often are, blessed by God. Applying this understanding to our lives makes everything so messy, and in our country, where 99.9% disinfecting hand sanitizer is ubiquitous, that’s upsetting, so I will try to answer as cleanly as possible.

I’ve spent a lot of time in theaters, beginning in 7th grade as Friedrich in The Sound of Music, to writing and producing my own play, Work in Progress, to assistant stage managing a show off-off-Broadway, to costarring in a controversial production of Oleanna. Most of my work has been in Christian schools or theatre companies, with some exceptions.

What is your background and training? Was it Christian or secular? What are your opinions about Christians training in secular theater? 

After giving Wisconsin Lutheran College the old college try for two years, I transferred to a secular film school – although its President was a Christian, just to stuff your noodle – where I graduated with an Associate’s Degree in film production, which basically qualifies you to get coffee for people. I did this for awhile, before being promoted to getting food for people, which I did for awhile, before being promoted to getting the phone for people, which I did for awhile, until I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere. Actually I had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t get up. I had to “get to gettin’,” to quote Nat King Cole, and God only knows how I got here.

As for Christians training in secular theatre, I sense that is a personal choice everyone must make. Personally, the secular theatre is a giant salt block and I am a deer – I can’t hold my licker and I’m still thirsty afterwards. Deers pant for water. I know that the plural for deer is the same as the single, Aubree, but it’s more fun to say deers. Even more fun if you were a jeweler to the animals, because then there is the possibility of one day saying, “I’ve got De Beers for the deers.”

To reference the Bible again, only with proper pluralization and context this time, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” There are so few workers with the requisite faith, talent and skill who will get down on the funny farm of secular theatre and harvest some lost souls!! I’m sorry, Aubree, that was a little Pentecostal. And metaphorical. God is the only one who can harvest souls. But he can use workers.

However one decides to be trained, what is certain to me is that you can’t follow God outside of a community of followers. You need the collective encouragement and discernment and smack upside the head – although maybe the collective shouldn’t administer the smack upside the head as that would be a lot of head trauma. The smacking upside the head should be delegated to an individual from the collective.

Have you personally ever compromised your convictions to participate or glean training in a secular forum? If so how has that affected you as you train your students or others?

To the first question, the answer must be yes, but I can’t think of a situation. Our memory is always protecting our self-image.

What is your advice to Christian college students as they pursue theater? What pitfalls could you warn students to avoid? 

I believe it was David Mamet who said something like, “if you want to do theatre, do theatre.” In my opinion, that’s the best advice. Don’t wait for a director or producer or company to discover you, go out and discover yourself. Write something, produce something, act in something. Do the Mickey Rooney Judy Garland thing and put on a show. It does help to know somebody with a barn.

Did your convictions change about what you felt you were able to participate in the more you advanced in Christian theater? 

No? Yes? It seems strange to classify it as a change in convictions; it’s more like an expanding perception. God is bigger than the Boogieman, or that mass of plastic garbage the size of Texas floating in the Pacific ocean, or politics, or culture. He is this really Big Love – no reference to polygamy intended, although we’re all supposed to be the bride of Christ so maybe the reference is unintentionally intended – that is constantly in pursuit of people. He is the way, the truth and the life. At the center of that is truth. All truth belongs to God. So if you look for truth, I believe you will find Him. From that place you can bear witness.

What is the biggest obstacle you face when coordinating or participating in Christian theater?

Engaging the beliefs of Christians without enraging them. Most of our subscribers are Christians and some were upset when we announced our intention to produce a play about Mother Teresa. One remembered reading an article, which they elevated to an article of faith, that Mother Teresa renounced God before her death. After reading some articles myself, I discovered a private letter from her to a spiritual director, describing a dark night of the soul so dark I suspect St. John of the Cross would refer to it as Mother Teresa’s Night of the Soul, out of respect. When someone is getting that much demonic attention, God must be living in them; such a system of measurement cannot be converted to the prosperity gospel, but it is nevertheless true.

Anyway, we met people’s opposition with our conviction that Mother Teresa was a woman of God – yes, a woman with struggles and faults and doubts – but a woman of God. Some declined to renew their season subscription because of that decision, but they still attended other shows. God has a way of bringing people together, even when they don’t believe the same things.

And I believe this answers all your questions. You’ll never have to ask one again. I hope it’s been helpful, or at the very least, entertaining. Blessings on the project, Aubree!

Ben

*Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t.

**This is from a Bing Crosby Christmas song. Listen to it here. What is with the speech bubble lyrics? Stop putting words in his mouth. Let the man rest in peace.

You Can Do Magic

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A trick has been performed. The tricksters union consisted of a magician, a Great Deceiver; an assistant, the willing accomplice; and volunteers, from the audience. But that was just for The Turn. What is meant by The Turn? Certainly not a rotation in dance, although if you are now compelled to visualize it as such, then a 180 degree rotation. The Turn is the moment when a pet raccoon becomes a wild animal. The Turn is always a wrong turn and it must be subtracted from your travel time. But to begin again, every great trick has The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige.

“The first part is called ‘The Pledge.’ The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal.”*

The Pledge: this boy is a child of God.

This boy was born into a Christian family. He went to Sunday School. He went to Church. He was praised for doing right and punished for doing wrong. His parents loved him and so he believed God loved him.

“The second act is called ‘The Turn.’ The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.”*

The Turn: this boy is a mistake.

This boy was called a girl in elementary school. He was called gay in middle school. He watched the other boys in high school. He watched porn in college. He went to clubs. He went on Craigslist. This boy thought that God had fallen asleep on the assembly line and didn’t give him the right parts. That he should be recalled, like the Easy Bake Oven, for burning other boys who dared to use him, for enabling them to have dessert before dinner. But this boy was not being honest. He did not want to be fixed. He wanted to be excused. To do whatever he wanted. It was a settlement for the injustice committed.

“Making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige.’”*

The Prestige: this boy is a child of God.

This boy was not excused. He was called to the Principal’s office. The Principal was God. God was not angry. This boy was angry. The Principal listened to this boy shout for a long time, until the words ran out and the tears ran down. The Principal did not cry. He walked around the desk, around the chair, and placed his hands on this boy’s shoulders, like a father.

And the voices which St. Augustine had described, the ones plucking at his garment of flesh, whispered, “are you going to dismiss us? From this moment we shall never be with you again, for ever and ever. From this moment on you will never again be allowed to do this thing or that.” The mutterings seemed to reach from behind, trying to make this boy turn his head when he wanted to go forward.**

This boy did not turn his head. He knew The Turn was finished and The Prestige had began. The trick had been performed, and this boy was not turning tricks anymore. Not today.

 

*From The Prestige by Christopher Priest.

**From Confessions by St. Augustine.

Work

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What you don’t know is before we met, I had work done. A plastic surgery of the soul. I was nipping and tucking and augmenting and – reducking. I was way different. I had turned from my ways. What I didn’t know was my ways had turned too. My ways had followed. I turned around and there they were, turning tricks. Am I repetitive? Am I addictive? At the least I’m fucking uncreative.

Sorry about that. No, not for swearing, it had assonance. And not for swearing again, it’s a poetic term. I’m sorry about that. That white knuckleheaded night in which I closed my fist around what I wanted and would not let go. You were what I wanted. Or what the wine wanted. Excuse me for the excuse.

See, you’re 25; it’s fine. But I’m 29, and it’s not fine. Statements like “boys will be boys” or  “the girl can’t help it” or “girls who are boys” are just barely acceptable anymore. Soon I will be 30, the age of accountability – though that age seems to age with me – and I’m supposed to have it together, in labeled bins, where it can be easily located. Actually, I do have it together. In a whitewashed tomb. Yes, and when I saw you, I flipped a lid and out jumped my bones. And then I jumped yours. All right, it wasn’t a long distance jump, so you would say there’s nothing to be guilty about. But it was still a competition, and I will not be winning the crown of righteousness.

Incidentally, Jesus was 30 when he started ministry. But then, he started by saying, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” There’s no confusing me for righteous. Not even the ‘80s slang definition of the word. But I’m working on it.

A few nights after I met you, at Bible Club, I helped an Artist do a set of paintings with the kids. Upon each little square mural, he had sketched, in pencil, a line. “You can paint however you want, you just have to stay below this line,” he said, and the kids tried. They did. But inevitably, lines were crossed, apologies were offered, and a wet rag was applied, until there was a pile of filthy rags. And when the kids had all painted, the Artist laid out all the abstracted squares, refining, repositioning, until, remarkably, resplendently, it was Art. I never thought it would work. But then, it wasn’t because of our work. It was because of the Artist.