Out of death; life

I have a form of depression called Recurrent Brief Depression. This means that once or twice a month, unrelated to menstruation or anything like that, I lapse into depressive episodes that last a few days. They're pretty much identical to major depressive episodes, except they're really short. I am not seeking therapy or medication for this. Therapy wouldn't be that effective because they're short biological blips, not something that I have to work out, and as for medication, I am extremely paranoid about anything that messes with my brain, particularly because my brain does not operate "normally" - I also have synaesthesia, and I don't want drugs messing with that. Also, the side effects of anti-depressants are nasty, and not worth it, in my mind, for brief episodes. (And I'm not sure if they'd be worse since I wouldn't actually need the medication all the time.)

I have my own methods of dealing with this. Since I know the episodes will be over in a matter of days, I'm not going to do anything drastic. I try to channel the energy into something creative as opposed to destructive. I'm usually strikingly artistic during these periods, to find some kind of outlet. I mentioned in an earlier entry that I'll paint on myself. That is a way for me to convert the destructive energy that used to lead me to self-mutilation, into something creative. (I believe that the way to move on from depression, particularly the major depression I went through in middle and high school, is not to run away and deny the urges, but to find a healthier way to deal with them when they come up. Because they WILL resurface, at least occasionally.)

Yes, I deal with it, and I deal with it pretty well. I keep moving on and rarely does anyone have any idea, then a new day breaks and everything's even again. But still, there are times when it is absolutely agonizing. When I'm not even in a creative flurry, because there's nothing that will accurately express so what's the point of trying at all? It is these times when I've got to hold on fast and just get through.

Last night was one of those times. No particular reason except some biological function of my body. Except yesterday, my mother gave me a car key, so I got off work (relatively early for the evening shift), and drove, listening to a musical I rarely listen to because of the emotional past it holds.

I found myself, unsuprisingly, at Lake Junaluska.

I'll talk more about Lake J later, because I'm going back there today (for a very exciting reason), but Lake J has held me close and nurtured me throughout my life, and sitting there last night I was overcome with how much I love that place.

At Lake Junaluska, I found myself walking the labyrinth.

Labyrinths are spiritual walks that have always resonated with me. I first walked a labyrinth during a particularly difficult part of 6th grade, and ever since it seems like God sends a labyrinth my way when things are difficult. I walked the labyrinth that was relatively recently cut into the grass at Lake J in the dark (I remember when the labyrinth was new and not nearly as trodden as it is now). When I reached the center, I cried out to God, selflishly, imperfectly, humanly.

O God, you who use everything; use my brokenness, and through its use, may I be healed!

God does use everything. There is light in everything. May I find the light even in this.

Today, I'm going over to Lake J to visit RHONDA, who I think I haven't seen since 2007? That is a travesty. One of my pastors (she has long since left Bon Air, but she will always be one of my pastors - as will Christy), Rhonda is an absolutely remarkable woman who I am so glad to call my friend and sister in Christ. Seeing her always does me well.

What's love unless it's unconditional? (title probably only appreciated by two people reading this)

We all use each other and that's what we think of as love, and not being able to use each other is what's hate.
--Tennessee Williams

First of all, I resent that I'm starting an entry with this quote. I wish that I could let things lie and be at peace with them, but no. Never. I first really became aware of this quote in one of my classes last semester. Our job was to grapple with this quote for a good chunk of the semester. I have had so many discussions about this quote. I have seen and created many theatre pieces about this quote. In very many ways, I AM TIRED OF THIS QUOTE. It is like this quote and I have gone through a rocky relationship, and I would like to put it behind me, once and for all. And yet, I find myself running back to fight with it again and again.

In a sense, where I've landed with this quote is that love and hate are all about framing, and I don't tend to choose to frame love and hate in this way. It doesn't sit well for me. I know people who frame love and hate this way who are absolutely miserable; I know people who frame love and hate this way for whom it works perfectly. It seems a bit too capitalist for my liking.

But what this quote leads me to that I've still been wrestling with is selfishness, and its value.

I come from an environment that values selflessness. Now I, like any other person, am plenty selfish, but often I've found myself getting into trouble by sometimes being TOO selfless. This happens to caregivers a lot. These loving people will serve so much that they will forget to care about themselves, which can lead to catastrophic collapse. It is when selflessness turns into self-denial that things become a problem. I can spend a lot of time talking about the dangers of altruism. But still, I put a lot of value on giving of the self to others, on thinking of things beyond me. I find that my selfish desires fall absolutely short of the plans that God has in mind for me. Also, a lot of my own behavior that I really hate comes from selfishness. Self-judgment. Self-pity. Self-harm. It is very easy for me to slip into those absolutely selfish traps, so I find myself saying, "Get over yourself!" I am also careful to look at my work as being service to the world. (I should note that I know people who operate from a completely selfish standpoint, and I can honestly say that I think the world is better because they do. I don't think that would be the case if I did.)

However, there will always be an argument that when we do things for others, it's really because it makes us feel good, and therefore there's no such thing as a selfless act. Indeed, I freely acknowledge that I am a Christian because I choose to be. I believe because I choose to, because, quite frankly, I'm HAPPIER when I choose to believe. I have enough of what I call "proof" to me, but faith isn't about proof, it's about choice. And I absolutely admit that I choose to believe because it makes me feel better. There are uncomfortable consequences of that choice. Loving everyone is not comfortable, but it is a consequence of my choice.

Recently, the idea of "faith as a selfish choice" has come up. There is so much about being selfless, helping others, in the Christian faith, but so much selfishness about entering the faith to begin with. And it has been bugging me for a while now, especially since a lot of my discussions last semester had to do with selfishness as well.

Today, the preacher (who was phenomenal and is, incidentally, the pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in NYC) preached on Mark 5:21-43, focusing on the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garmet. I was excited because I'd read the Matthew version of this text last night, and Matthew is so totally toned down from Mark (which was the first gospel written). Matthew doesn't have the "Who touched me?" discussion afterwards. Also, Jesus chooses to heal the woman in Matthew, whereas in Mark he doesn't. In my reading of the gospels, I'm amazed by how much Jesus heals. When you go through Sunday School, they don't really teach HOW much he healed. They do a few healings, water to wine, walking on water, calming the sea, all of that, but when you actually read the gospels, the man is healing people ALL THE TIME. So clearly I've been pondering Jesus-as-healer and the call to heal the world and how that involves killing postmodernism, and tra-la-la.

As the preacher talked, it was clear - these people who came to Jesus for healing came completely selfishly. Now, it's understandably selfish. That woman had been hemorraging for twelve years. But most of the examples in the Bible are NOT, "I'm coming to you because I want to help others." They're, "I'm coming to you because I'm in horrible agony." In fact, that Luke scripture I'm obsessed with about how you have to hate your life to follow Jesus... it seems to mean that you MUST be in horrible agony, to the point of giving up on everything else, to have that need for God in your life, and to be willing to accept the consequences of having God in your life. Because it is not easy. Truly following God is HARD, and all of us who try fall short. I can say truthfully that the times I have returned to God, or gotten serious about my life being what God wants for it, have been the times I have hated everything. The times I have been in enormous pain, the times I have had my whole self exhausted. The times when I have been beyond wanting comfort, beyond desperation, when I've been so holisticly beaten down that I have said, "Lord, I'm done. I am done with this world and this life. I have no where else I can go. Use me, then, as you wish."

The preacher, Rev. Dr. Johnston, said today that God accepts and uses our selfish, imperfect ways that we reach out to him. He said, "Faith is our faltering attempt to reach out to God even as God reaches out to us." And I realized that, of course, God uses our selfishness. (Which, duh, Colleen, of course. God uses everything.) So hopefully I can let that quote rest for a while.

Why did I do it? What did it get me?

I went to Lake Junaluska yesterday! That was joyous. Saw so many people I hadn't seen in years. I'll probably be making a big post about memory soon, because of all the memories music weeks spark in me, and because I'm reading Proust, but suffice it to say that it was an absolutely lovely trip.

Lately I've found myself being anxious for no good reason. I am scared of time passing. I've been here four and a half weeks. That's not even half of my contract, but I'm still caught in the fear that I'm not "accomplishing" anything. This is a very idiotic fear. I have changed significantly since being here. I've felt it. I've felt myself slowing down, being actively aware that God's calling for my life is the most important part of living it. I've established new, healthy habits, I'm starting on a path that I believe will help me in the fast-paced, high-stress world I live in. I am striving to make my good tendencies into choices, because there is such a power in choice, and to banish my bad habits. I've been reading a LOT, I'm much more grounded, and I'm even tanner (nothing is impossible, indeed!).

And yet, I'm still plagued by the idea that I'm not doing "enough", or I'm not "getting stuff done". Most of all, I am terrified of going back to New York. Not that I do not want to, or that I don't adore everyone there, because I do. I even miss people! But every time I think about going back, I start to feel sick, with this dreadful fear that despite all the ways I have been reordering my life, I will return to New York and all of that will drop away, and I will be in the same sorry state as I was in last semester: exhausted, with no idea how to replenish myself and very little connection to God.

The underlying thread I see in all of this is accomplishment and progress. America is a society that puts these at the highest value possible. We get things done. We work to get the highest test scores so we can get into the "best" college so we can get a degree that gets us a good job that lets us retire early. While this makes us highly efficient, and we grow quickly in wonderful ways because of it, I wonder what it makes us overlook. What do we sacrifice for this progress? I suspect it's something very fundamental about living. I've always hated the idea of retirement, because it seems to me that it pushes actually living your life to a chunk of time at the end of it. One of my favorite novelists, when asked if he was ever going to retire, said, "And do what - write that novel I always wanted to write?" It has always made more sense to me to spend your life in pursuit of doing what you love to do, instead of working mindlessly and pointlessly for 40 or so years until you can finally "take the time" to actually live.

But even with this, I find myself caught in the race of progress and accomplishment. Even looking at it and thinking it's stupid, even repeating "store up not for yourselves treasures on earth," I don't truly understand what it means to live without it. At the end of last semester, I said to myself that I did not want my first third year to be about a product, I wanted it to be about a goal. It's been my experience that in pursuit of a goal, even if you don't "accomplish" the goal, something else happens and it is celebrated by its own value; whereas in pursuit of a product, anything that is not that product is rejected. I worked on a piece last semester that I thought turned out to be a strong, provoking piece, but the creator seemed to not see the value of it because it was not what they originally intended. So much was lost in that blindness. I feel like a goal will help me orient and keep enough of the progress momentum that is needed when you're working on a piece that will eventually be seen by an audience (there is definite need for accomplishment and progress for that), but not box me in and blind me.

Still, this is a trap so easy to fall into. And I find myself so unable to shake myself away from it because it's pretty much all I know. Christianity deals with it by moving that accomplishment out of this world, promising a reward after this life. Yes, yes - but what do we do in this life? Working to bring God's kingdom upon the earth is progress oriented but not accomplishment oriented. Never in my life will I look around and say, "Okay, God's kingdom is here, I'm done now." So what do I do when I'm progressing, but not accomplishing? I think our focus on accomplishment blinds us to something. I suspect it's something about the value of all the things we do and see and experience. But I'm still very blind, myself.

I know that one of the things I need to do, which will help me see what I wouldn't think to look for, is study abroad. I've never even been outside of the US on a trip or anything. The farthest from home I've been is Branson, Missouri. I'm looking to study in either Paris or Florence the first semester of my 4th year. I'm leaning towards Florence because the class selection looks better, but I'm still undecided. Thoughts about that are welcome. But for now, I'll rewatch Candide and Pippin, and pray for the sight to see what I'm missing when I'm busy "getting things done".

I Will Joyfully Sing in the Morning

This post is really just me squealing in internet form.

IT'S WORSHIP AND MUSIC TIME!

Worship and Music conferences were my conferences. I only came to Worship and Music at Montreat for two years, but I went to Music and Liturgical Arts at Lake Junaluska (the Methodist Montreat) for eight years, and also did various week long or weekend things similar to these. These conferences focus around choirs. You come the first day, get your music, and spend the rest of the week primarily in rehearsal for a concert at the end of the week. There's worship in the mornings, and seminars throughout the day, and events in the evening, but the big thing is choir.

For me, this is absolutely thrilling, because I've been singing in choirs my whole life. When both of your parents are church musicians, you don't have much choice in that, but I've loved it. Honestly, I'd say if there was one thing I do WELL, like, quanitfiably, measurably WELL, it would be singing in choirs. It's the world I was raised in and I absolutely thrive in it. I've worked with many, many different choir directors. A lot of my obsessions can be traced back to choirs. (It was actually only this semester that I realized that I've really been a speech dork my entire life - I was always super into pronunciation in choirs, particularly of choral latin.) Of course, it's a world of its own, really, and I haven't sung in a choir regularly since my first semester of college. You can't sing in a choir alone, and often, I miss it.

So, since I wasn't working, I went to Worship and Music's opening worship on Sunday evening, and it was absolutely joyous. Their language is a language I speak - their music is music I know, that has been in my soul my whole life. They sang "Halle, Halle, Halle!", and clearly I went up on the descant. They sang I hymn that I swore we sung on one of the Sundays I was at Bon Air this summer, only with different words. The beauty of singing hymns for a Worship and Music service is that these people are musicians, and most of them are singers. Though not singing in an official choir, we all become a choir as we sing to the Lord. What this does to my voice is phenomenal - it becomes so much more resonant. And joy absolutely erupts from me. One of my teachers wrote and performed in her own one-woman show, and the first line was, "Music was my first language." I felt my heart stir in echos to hers when I saw and heard that.

I'm working the evening shift all week - meaning the afternoon rehearsals/workshops and evening events. For us, there's a lot of downtime, because a lot of it is going to places, making sure things are working, then leaving. Or, setting up mics for a rehearsal and chilling, making sure nothing goes wrong. I'm writing this, actually, from the booth in the auditorium, where a seminar is being held. Earlier, it was a choir rehearsal. I get to sit and be a part of it, in a way. Not a full part, not a conferee, but a very important part.

Undoubtedly, I'll be making a lot of posts about singing and celebration and joy and music in the next two weeks. Right now, I'm just bursting with excitement. After checking a mic in Gaither Chapel, I walked back to Anderson with a huge smile on my face, partially as an experiment. It made everyone who passed me and look at me smile, too. That's not the case in New York, usually, but since everyone here's excited to be here for this conference, it's easy and fun to get them to smile.

Tomorrow's my day off, and it's 99.9% sure that I'll be going over to Lake Junaluska, where my church youth choir is for Music and Liturgical Arts week. My roommate is letting me borrow her car, and I think I'll go over for lunch. Not sure if I can actually eat in the Inn, but I'll go around lunchtime, at least, so I can say hi when they're not in rehearsal. Or I'll possibly go by for dinner. I'll see if I can get in touch with my mother and see what's best. It will be delightful to be around Lake Junaluska again, even if only for a couple hours. That place holds so many memories of mine, and I haven't been there since Music and Liturgical Arts Week 2007, a week which held extraordinary spiritual significance for me. (Perhaps I'll elaborate at some point, but it does seem an experience a bit too personal, still.) I know Lake Junaluska will continue to be a major place in my life, even as a director. God has made that very clear.

Yay Worship and Music. In the service on Sunday, they even used my favorite scripture; John 3:8, which this blog is named after. How could I not be in love with them?

Where does the wind come from? Where does it go?

I have a friend. (Yay, finally, I know you're all so proud of me.) Her name is Lindsay, and she's going to be a 2nd year at PHTS. Lindsay and I once baked cookies in the shape of International Phonetic Alphabet characters. This clearly illustrates that Lindsay and I are awesome. Lindsay has been reading my blog, and I've been reading her blog, and all my spiritual musings made her make her own spiritual musings, which she then blogged about, and they made me think things to blog about back. (Confused yet? Good.)

Lindsay is a life-long Unitarian Universalist, which secretly made me squeal with joy when I found out. Why? Because when I first heard of Unitarian Universalism some time in middle or high school, I became super interested in it, but I didn't know anyone who was UU or know of any UU churches around where I could find out more information. In fact, Lindsay is the first person I've met who's UU (at least, that I'm aware of). Meaning I'm absolutely planning on pouncing on her randomly next year with questions about her faith, because I'm burning with curiosity over how UUs practice their faith.

I find myself drawn to Unitarian Universalism because of its openness. I am not an evangelical, Bible-thumping Christian. I do not believe in exclusivity. I know, John has so much exclusive language ("I am the way and the truth and the light, no one comes to the father but through me," and all that), but I like to believe that it is our readings of the text that make it small, not the actual meaning, and there's so much else that suggests inclusion as opposed to exclusion. I don't believe that people who do not profess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour are going to hell.

Why? Because I believe that God is too big to be contained, limited, to one religion.

What do I believe God is? I have absolutely no idea. None. It would be terribly pompous of me to say that I could possibly fathom God. There are things beyond our human minds, beyond our comprehension. God, anything close to God, must be the farthest. Christianity works within certain mysteries and paradoxes, and it's easy to think about them as being a "definition" for God, but if you look at them, they make no sense. The idea of the Triune God - three entities inside of one? John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That's super abstract. This Word thing. It was in the beginning. And with God. Who must also have been in the beginning. Except, wait, not only was it with God, it WAS God? Christianity makes very little logical sense, and it's because God is not confined to human logic.

One of the things I'm pretty good at is translating between people. I am usually able to get into people's heads easily and understand what they mean. This means that when one person doesn't understand what another is saying, I can get in there and translate so that things are clearer. (This often happens when people don't realize they're actually talking about the same thing.) From this view I have seen many translations of this mystery I call "God". I've seen it in other dieties in other religions. I've seen people call it "the Universe". I've seen it in science.

I believe religion is a language. Early this past school year, I came up with the following beliefs about.. how we work and why we create language:

1. We experience the world through our senses. (That's as far down as I could distill it. Everything I know is spurred on my some sensory input.)

2. We organize these inputs into our perceptions of the world. How things look, smell, taste, sound, feel to us.

3. We create languages so that we can share our perceptions with others. We've decided that one color is red, another blue. Without these languages, we really have no way to communicate. Without language, we establish no common ground.

Religion is a ground to give us a language where we can talk about something so mysterious that we need another language for it. Thus, I see so much validity in different religions and beliefs because they're simply different languages to talk about the same thing.

The problem that happens is people get so caught up in their language that they forget what they're trying to say. I know atheists who love more than some Christians. There are Christians who use Christianity as an excuse to hate, and I don't care even if you believe fully in every bit of exclusive language in the Bible, you have NO Biblical background to hate. The greatest command of Christianity is to love. That's it. It's loving. And a remarkably embarrassing amount of Christians don't follow that commandment. (Of course we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. But there are many Christians who don't even try to love like we are called to.)

It happens all the time. The language strangles us. I have always said that I'd prefer to spend my time with a spiritual person than a religious person. And the draw of the very liberal UUs is very strong for me. Because it encourages my belief in the validity of every person's personal discovery and language. And it's much harder for it to get caught up in its own language, I think, than Christianity. And it's one of the most spiritual religions that I can think of. And I kid you not, that pretty much everything I've ever hear or read about UU sounds absolutely incredible and in line with my beliefs.

So why am I not UU?

Because the language of my religion helps me. But rather than help me to understand, it helps me to NOT understand.

Wait, what?

One of the things you learn in theatre school is that specificity begets creativity. "Go and make up a dance" is too vague to really get someone going. "Go and make up a leprechaun's belly dance" actually gets some kind of creative juices flowing. I'm all for breaking down walls, but the fact is, without some kind of wall to bounce off of, you're just floating aimlessly in space. (So choose your own walls and where to put them that best fits where you want to bounce.) The language of my religion gives me the walls that help me bounce forward.

The kind of voice work primarily studied in second year at PHTS is called Fitzmaurice work. You know when you're lifting something or leaning on your arm a certain way, with a certain amount of pressure, and your arm starts to shake? What's happening is the muscles are confused. They don't know whether to go one way or the other way, and they start to tremor. Fitzmaurice work uses these tremors to help free the breath. Ever since we started Fitzmaurice work, I've been fascinated with tremors. Doing this work, you are focusing on sending a muscle both up and down - lifting something while keeping muscles relaxed, and between that play of two opposites working on each other, this thing, this tremor is created. The voicing that comes out of that tremor is unpatterned, shimmering, vulnerable, and enormously intimate. My first year, we did a week of Fitzmaurice work, and at one point our teachers tremored for us and after tremoring, went into a Shakespeare monologue. Those monologues, those moments, were absolutely indescribable - they were some of the most powerful, moving things I had ever seen because of the vulnerability and intimacy and pure connection that had been established in that room.

But the fact is, I cannot describe them. There is not language for what comes from that tremor. It can only be described as what happens when these opposites interplay on each other.

I cannot say what God is. I cannot even describe the Christian deity of God. I can say that God is the tremor of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I can say that the Word was and was with God. It is language that leads to not understanding in a way that the spirituality of it is released and comes to the forefront.

I like understanding things. I like thinking. A lot. (If you couldn't tell by this blog.) And I'm totally interested in understanding all I can about the language that I've chosen (and other languages, too, but I figure I should start with mine). It's why I'm so fascinated by theology. But ultimately, I do all this so that I can NOT understand, but instead revel in the mystery.

What would I do if I had not met you?

Therefore, having so vast a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, and throwing off everything that hinders us and especially the sin that so easily entangles us, let us keep running with endurance the race set before us.
Hebrews 12:1

Last night, at the communion service (where we ran FOURTEEN mics, which is RIDICULOUS), the focus was on the idea of the cloud of witnesses, of the saints, and everyone being connected in a family of faith. The sermon was basically, "if you follow Jesus, you have to do it with others," and really worked with the brother/sister imagery in the Bible, comparing that with brothers in the Bible (you know, like... Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau) and brother/sister relationships in real life often being rocky, and the reality of, "You don't get to choose these people, but you belong to each other."

The sermon eventually morphed to a kind of naming of saints - some well known, some local - as an illustration of, "these are the kinds of people you are now in a family with." At the end, Tom lit a candle for someone he knew at one of his churches that he told a story about, and he said that he was also lighting it for the person we each were thinking of, the person who had reached out to us, who had shared a spiritual thought, who had encouraged us in some way, who had, basically, shown God's love to us in a way that was written forever on our hearts.

When I tried to think of "that person", my mind started flying, thinking of all these different people, too many to count. People who I talked to yesterday and people who I haven't seen in years. People who have been my best friends and people I've encountered once. People who have been huge active parts of my religious life and those who I've never talked about God with. The person who kept my faith alive when I thought it was dead. The person who has insisted on using me in service whenever I'm back in Virginia. The person who returned my call the day I couldn't stop crying and prays for me whenever he gets my panicked e-mails from New York. The person who'll send me letter after letter after letter. The people who always open their doors to me when I need a place to stay. The people I cried myself silly with over a show, despite the rest of the world thinking us crazy. The person who believes in me so much I almost wouldn't be able to tell because he pushes me so hard, and chooses to actively care about me. The person who asked me, "How can I help you right now?" The person who reaches out to me and offers light from the midst of her own despair. The people I've tremored with. The people who believe in my obscure interests and fight for them. The person who prophesied over me. The person who offered love and understanding when I expected judgment. All of the people who have loved me for no reason. The person who first saw the stirrings of the spirit within me, and bade me dance with the Holy Spirit as both an offering and a transformation. The people who I know I could call at any hour, about anything, and they would be there.

Some of these people want nothing to do with religion, but that does not matter. God's love is in everything, in everyone, and it is for everything, for everyone. And sitting up in the booth, while standing by to unmute wired mics 1, 2, 3, 7 and wireless 3, I swelled with gratitude. How could I think of one person to light a candle for, when I have thousands?

I am so blessed to know you. You are such a vital part of my life, and I am glad.

Be still and know...

One of the things I need to learn this summer is how to be still. Montreat is so stimulating in a way I have not been stimulated in a while. Most people come for one week of conferences. I'm here for 12 weeks - some of them with multiple conferences. I've been feeling myself slipping into my usual fast-paced intense rhythm, not out of necessity or because the environment pulls me towards it, but because that's the rhythm I'm used to operating in. I get excited very easily, I love to think, and my brain starts whirring a mile a minute, and it's wonderful but also exhausting. It also leads to a "I have to figure this out right now!" attitude which adds as much stress as it does excitement. One of my first year acting teachers noted that I tend to identify with my discoveries - that is, I figure out an interest of mine and I say, "Ah! My Life makes sense, I am This!" instead of letting my discoveries absorb into my being as tools I can use that don't need to restrict me. True observation.

I like things to make sense, my brain likes exercise, and I know that how much I love to do this (and honestly how hard I mentally work) is extraordinarily useful to myself and others... but that's only dealing with one kind of thought and observation. There is another that comes from being still, from letting thoughts come and go as they will instead of grabbing onto each one. I feel like if I can learn how to do that this summer, it will help me as I go back into the fast-pace of next school year - being able to find the stillness inside of the speed, and honestly, learning how to let the stress of others roll off of me instead of absorbing it. If I can learn how to be the quiet center, but also use my brain in that very active way that I'm used to using it (which is very helpful in theatre school), it should bring more balance to ground me. And it will also help me in voice work. (Voice work is something that cannot be rushed. At all.)

And it'll help me notice other people. I am remarkably tunnel-visioned. If I've got a task to do, I do the task, and often eschew others for no particular reason. It's true that I'm rather solitary and need my alone time. It's also true that I forget that just spending time with people, not for rehearsals or meetings or class, is a good, helpful, mostly pleasant thing.

Yesterday, I spent a bit of time before worship talking to Jorge, one of the music leaders this week. He's a delightful person, Puerto Rican (with a light, gorgeous accent), and he's very, very happy in the mornings. I first really noticed him one morning when I was working keynote (at 6:45am) and he was so AWAKE (I think the only person in the room who was), joyous, and grateful. He said something to me specifically, and I can't remember what it was, but it was lovely, so I chose that I was not going to be annoyed at his bounciness when I still was basically dead to the world. Today, I ended up sitting next to him on the edge of the stage as we waited to open the doors to the auditorium, and we just chatted about life, and it was a lovely conversation - the kind of conversation I rarely let myself have.

Last night, as I was walking back up to the lodge, I heard some people playing guitar and singing a hymn (a pretty traditional one, in the vein of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness"). I assumed it was one of the youth groups staying in a house close to mine, but as I drew closer I realized that these were people on my porch. Two of my co-workers here, Amanda and Carly, with a guitar and two drums, just singing. They finished the hymn as I walked up, and asked if I wanted to join.

Honestly, normally I would decline, for no particular reason but this speed in my body that rejects things in pursuit of getting something done or accomplished. But I grabbed the other drum instead and spent the next half hour jamming with them on the porch.

There are things I want to get accomplished this summer, yes. I would like to finish the first volume of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. But every time I start to think about progress and getting things done, my heart starts pounding in an unhealthy way that I associate with this last semester, with the stress of "You have to do this now!", and that's not useful to me. And it's because I don't know how to be still. One of my teachers sometimes tells people that they have a fast heartbeat. My heart beats very quickly, but I don't think it does that naturally. I think naturally I'm calmer. Still, I'm one of the calmer people I know externally, but not internally by any means. I think my heartbeat has sped up because I have kept spurring it on, and now I need to learn how to slow it down. Because any interesting piece of music has more than one tempo. And learning how to brake is a vital part of learning how to drive.

I think revitalizing my prayer life has a lot to do with it. There were about three years I considered myself agnostic (a very necessary period of my life that led to my choice to rejoin this faith and this church, and it is because my faith is a choice that it is so strong and virtually unshakable - when I choose, I choose hard), and during that period all the prayer habits I once had were broken. I have not been able to reinstite habitual prayer in my life. This summer, I've successfully started habitual scripture reading (which I honestly never had a habit of before), so I think that establishing prayer rituals will really help me. Taking time out of "accomplishing" to simply commune and connect with God should help slow me down.

I also think humbling myself has a lot to do with it. I mentioned before that I have friends who've started a theater company doing a residency in Nebraska this summer. I've seen a lot of their publicity stuff going up, and it's worked on my stomach in weird ways, because I know that I could very easily have gone. And as honestly glad I am that I'm not, because the thought of doing a show this summer makes me sick no matter how much I love the people, there's a part of me saying, "Why aren't you DOING something like this? Why aren't you getting out there, why aren't you furthering your career, why aren't you flexing your muscles as a working theatre artist?" I got an e-mail about my postmodernism entry that made me think, "Why am I not going and making this happen and making art that is absolutely NOT postmodern right now?" And my response to myself in all of these questions is, "Because I'm not ready."

This answer is generally frowned upon in the circles I travel in. I frown upon it. Because you'll never be ready. Because if you ever think you're ready, it's probably because you aren't being honest with yourself which doesn't make for good art. Because when Jesus called people, he did not allow them to "be ready" to go. It was then or never. There are SO MANY REASONS "I'm not ready," is not an acceptable answer, but honestly, it is the answer for me right now. Intellectually, I'm there, and I always have been. My mind is always raring to go. I'm always ready for some mental sparring. But my heart still needs to rediscover its natural beat. God has work still to be done within me before he sends me out into the world. And that is humbling. And I know that when I am working in the world, God still will be working in me and that is also humbling. It takes a lot in me to admit that I'm not ready. I want to do it all. And that is probably why I feel God's hand holding me back right now. That, and so I can fully physically learn that I will be working in more of this world than the theatre part. That spending my time here is just as, if not more valuable than doing a show or studying theatre abroad. Which I intellectually know and I wouldn't trade this for the world, but my body still hasn't fully gotten the message. I'm still slipping into habits.

So, in the spirit of letting things happen, not overanalyzing everything (however fun and exciting and discovery-filled it may be), and living life instead of always deatching from it and observing it, here are some random things I've done lately that have been fun:

I've had extraordinary amounts of fun working lights this past week. My favorite moments were the impressive light show I did to "MMMBop" before the Talent show, and the TWO MINUTE SLOW MANUAL FADE of the house lights from full to 1/4. People couldn't even see the lights change, it was so slow. Oh yes.

I have the best schedule this week - working worship for week 2 of this Youth conference. Worship happens in the evening. Score. Also, this is one of the best preachers I've heard at a Youth conference. He preached a sermon about humility which guarded against that annoying self-righteousness that often happens to youth when they come back from a conference like this. Basically, he said, "If you're fired up, you have to be humble. You have to take what you're doing seriously," and used the murder of a Lutheran abortion doctor that happened on Pentecost as an example of someone who was fired up without humility.

During the Talent show, I was nicknamed "Art School". It's sticking, too, largely thanks to conversations like this:

Eric (referring to the power points with song lyrics on them, during "Open The Eyes of My Heart"): I like how each song has a different background.
Me: It's an artistic representation of the inner meaning of each song.
Eric: So this one is... blue and black splotchy?
Me: Actually, it's about the feeling of your eyes opening for the first time. See, if you turn your head to the side, it's like blinking.
Jim: Alright, Art School.
Me: Hey, if there's one thing you learn in Art School, its how to justify anything.

I wrote and turned in my three play proposals for next semester at PHTS. (Because I'll be directing a show next semester. Can't believe I'm about to be a third year.) I'm pretty positive I'll get my first choice, or else my acting teacher from last year might go on a rampage, but all three are great plays and I'd be excited about directing any of them.

They're singing Mark Miller's "Welcome" at one of the Youth conference worship services. When I told my mother this, she said, "Oh good! It's getting to the Presbyterians!" I'm tempted to sing the alto part on headset (headsets are how we talk to each other during the service - there are headsets in the green room, at various places in the auditorium, at the follow spots, in the booth - so one of the planning team can sit in the front row of the audience and tell us in the booth what mics to turn on. It's also fun to random comments during services.)

Last night, after the hymn jam session on the porch, I ended up teaching a bit of African Dance. Because African Dance is pretty interesting to people who didn't spend every Thursday of their first year taking an 8:30am African Dance class. (We were all required to take African Dance our first year. It's one of the stranger features of my studio.) It was kind of awesome.

There was an electric violin used last week. I melted a bit.

I love Proust.

This Is Not Over Yet

Last night was a rough night for me. No particular reason. Rough nights happen, and you learn to deal with them. I'm usually remarkably creative during my rough nights, trying to channel that energy into something more positive than most "coping" methods. When it's particularly rough, I paint on myself, as I did last night. (Strange, yes, but more positive than some other things that people do to their skin on rough nights.) This particular night was rough out of loneliness, which is a particularly disconcerting emotion for me because I don't experience it very often. I'm pretty solitary, so when loneliness hits it's particularly strange and I don't really know what to do with it.

This morning, waking up after dreams that multiplied my lonely confusion, I walked down from the lodge and I looked at the mountains and thought about the belief I am nuturing in myself that God is in everything. It is easy to see God in those mountains, rising up gloriously. It is somehow easier to connect to the God in those mountains than to recognize and connect to the God in loneliness.

Some say that there are some places, some events, some tragedies that don't contain God. I don't believe that, based on Christ descending into Hell. Based on the psalmist's proclamation that if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. There is God in every person, in every thing. God is in all life.

And where God is, there a resurrection awaits. One of the theologians here last week said that God having to do with everything means that we stand up and insist that death is not the end of the story. Despair will not win.

It seems foolish. It seems absolutely idiotic to insist on this even though everything we see makes us want to give up. But there is life in hope and power in choice. If we choose hope, no one can take it away from us. In his short play The Municipal Abattoir, Tennessee Williams says, "A choice is something you have invent for yourself." When it seems like there is no choice, we must make the choice anyway. It is always there.

In the second act of the musical In the Heights, the neighborhood is falling apart, and yet they are celebrating. When one of the characters asks why they're partying in the midst of despair, another responds,

"Maybe they're right, Sonny,
Call in the coroners
Maybe we're powerless,
A corner full of foreigners
Maybe this neighborhood's changing forever
Maybe tonight is our last night together,
However--
How do you want to face it?
Do you want to waste it
When the end is so close you can taste it?
You can cry with your head in the sand,
I'mma fly this flag that I've got in my hand."

Shortly after, he challenges the neighborhood to; "In fact, can we sing so loud and raucus they can hear us across the bridge in East Secaucus?"

And they do.

We are the radicals who are dancing and singing when it seems downright profane to do so. We are the revolutionaries who dare to believe that things will get better. We are the fools who refuse to let despair take its hold.

I'm very much about getting up, doing it, making it better, creating your own world. But truth be told, there are times when all I can do is cling to the knowledge that God must be there, even if I cannot see him, listening to "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" on repeat and try not to let despair destroy me, by singing "Hallelujah," even when the word seems forbidden.

When my days grow tedious and my nights grow cold
I will sing "Hallelujah"
I will sing
My mind grows wary and my body grows old
I will sing "Hallelujah"
I will sing.

I will sing, I will sing
Until death has lost its sting
And I will keep on singing
Through the darkness and the gloom
I will sing "Hallelujah"
I will sing.

-"A Little Child Will Lead Them", by Ken Medema

"Truly, I say to you, there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life."
-Luke 18:28-30

Dear God, just do something or I'll have to do it myself!

Most of you know how much I hate driving. HATE. DRIVING. My first time driving alone was... oh, a few weeks ago after I got back from school in May. While I did drive to Swift Creek Mill and back with only my best friend in the car (as navigator... because I cannot navigate in the suburbs), and drove halfway down to Montreat... I'm not exactly jumping to get behind the wheel. (Unless it means I get to blast musicals and belt along loudly.)

Today. Me. Driving the A/V van (which is this really old van with two gas tanks where you can't even shift the seat closer - luckily it's automatic). Pulled into a parallel parking spot with no one behind me. Worked sound in Convocation hall. Came outside after the worship service (which bravely dealt with the blood imagery that many Christians are uncomfortable with) - two cars had pulled in behind me.

So now I'm parallel parked. On a mountain. In an old van I barely know how to drive.

I got out of the parking spot pretty well, actually. Some conferees gave me funny looks for the 4 point turn I had to do to turn around. But no one died, and that is a miracle indeed.

Now I'm off to the bookstore. While I've been getting into the habit of reading the Bible twice a day, I still feel a bit disconnected, because my prayer life is lacking. So I'm working on setting up a ritual of prayers to help keep me engaging that conversation, and I know I want to include some liturgy (because when do I not?), so I think I'm going to pick up a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. It's online, but I'd like to have a physical copy as well.

ETA: The bookstore doesn't have the Book of Common Prayer. How very one-denominational of them. So I picked up a book of Celtic prayer I'm pretty excited about.

Also, last night was the Youth conference's communion service and they sent up communion to us in the booth. Can't say I've ever taken communion with a headset on before. A very Christian gesture, though. Usually the tech people are forgotten. I've been included in the passing of the peace when working in smaller spaces, but communion was absolutely a surprise.

Followup to my last post, about the dangers of becoming "too familiar" with God.

In the book I'm reading, Beyond Smells and Bells: the wonder and power of Christian liturgy by Mark Galli, Galli claims that worship that draws God too near is a worship that is self-gratifying, as opposed to actual worship.

"Like most people, I'm desperate for intimacy with God, so my instinct is to glom onto prayers and songs that make God seem close. But when I begin here, I am tempted to identify God with the warm feelings such prayers and songs generate. I sing a 'worshipful' song, and I get 'worshipful' feelings--and I assume that's God. Do this habitfally, thoughtlessly, prayerlessly, and it's easy to end up with a relationship with a glorified self." (pg 43)

(Mother/anyone my mother sent that article about why people go to church to: compare this with those ideas about who worship is for/about.)

Galli goes onto claim that we cannot really enter into intimacy with someone without acknowledging and loving the "otherness" of them. If we are in a relationship with someone because they are like us, it is really ourselves we are in a relationship with. The liturgy points us back to the God of the prophets - a completely incomprehensible deity. I believe strongly that the nature of God cannot be comprehended by humans, and therefore the Bible is all of our attempts to understand that which we cannot. The idea that we cannot hear the true voice of God because it's too much for us to comprehend is that same idea. Galli points out Ezekiel's paradoxical, random, confused description of God in Ezekiel 1 as proof of this. Clearly, it is the love and mercy of God seeking a relationship that caused him to send his son to earth in human form, a way for us to begin to undertsand. But the liturgy points us to this other. And when we accept a God who is wholly unlike us, we can begin to experience both intimacy and collaboration with God.

And there, my friends, is where I'm going to have to stop for now. I absolutely have a lot of thoughts about collaboration, but it would be too early for them. I'm not yet recovered enough from last semester to be able to talk about collaboration. Later, I promise.

I have started writing again. (Writing things that are not blogs.) I'm considering writing a series of poems based on Bach organ pieces. I want to write a poem that's a Toccata and Fugue. (I LOVE TOCCATAS.) I used to not like Bach and didn't understand why my mother did (well, duh she does, she plays organ), but I think it's because Bach is very intellectual music. I've been hearing some rumors about Sondheim being influenced by Bach, which I could definitely hear. (Ken Medema has a song that has occasional dance breaks to Bach. I love it.)

I had an absolutely lovely night working the concert last night. During sound check, the concert was just going to be one man singing and his guitar. (Well, his two guitars, one plugged in directly to the sound system and one miced.) Somehow, during worship between sound check and the concert, they added another guitar player, a drum player, a sax player, and a harmonica player. We also never sound checked the sax and harmonica player. So it was a slightly improvisatory evening that went very well. Bonded a lot with Rachel, the other female on crew. Estrogen booth!

Ah, the first Youth conference.

Youth conferences make up the majority of the summer here at Montreat, and they're the hardest conferences for A/V Crew. Lots of movie clips and other audio-visual demands, which is us. While being there at 6:45am is significantly less than exciting, I had fun juggling microphones today on headset and at the board. I had the same kind of fun I have calling a show when stage managing, only with less stress. Win! And there is definitely a power you feel when you crank up the volume to blast Relient K's cover of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" in a huge auditorium.

I've always felt slightly out-of-place in Youth conferences and events like this. I used to completely subscribe to them - I remember Richmond District Youth Retreats when I was in middle school, and how moved I was by all the proceedings, but by the time I went to, say, Eagle Eyrie (which was later, in high school, I think), I found myself disconnecting and feeling lost. But, really, it's not my language. There is a style, a very specific musical and worship style that I only know to call "contemporary". There's "contemporary Christian" worship and music that seems to reach the majority of my generation in youth groups. Not me. (Incidentally, this style is also in musical theatre. It's slightly more creative in musical theatre than it is in churches, to be frank, but my generation swoons over music like Spring Awakening and now Next to Normal that this kind of emo/punk combination, and I just don't like it.) I now shudder at the style because of the continued threat of "contemporary Christian" worship and music completely taking over more "traditional" liturgy. I'm sure I will post a lot more about the validity and draw of liturgy throughout the summer, but I can honestly say that I connect more to choirs chanting a psalm than to people strumming guitars. I don't have Christian bands on my iPod - I have Handel and John Rutter. I may be in the minority of that in my age group (PARTICULARLY on the iPod), but still. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say, "Our worship is lacking in spirit, maybe we need a contemporary service." If a church is truly lacking in spirit, adding a contemporary worship service is only going to be a temporary solution. If a church is lacking in spirit, it means it's lacking in what gives the words meaning, be they the King James Version or "The Message". If the wall of your house is crumbling down, painting it green isn't going to help. (slight rant over.)

One thing I do take a bit of an issue with is "Buddy Christ". I use the term used as a marketing scheme in the movie Dogma (see image). Dogma exaggerates it to hilarious proportions, but the idea of "Christ as your BFF" permeates a lot of "contemporary" worship, particularly aimed towards Youth. I saw it a lot today during keynote. While, yes, I do absolutely believe in having a personal relationship with God, and I do believe that the humanity of God through Jesus Christ, God made manifest and human, is a key part of the Christian story, I hesitate to put a lot of "Christ-who-lives-next-door" in the forefront of my beliefs because there's the risk of cheapening God. Of lessening God. Of becoming (Bill will love me) "too familiar" with God.

The balance is key. A distant God is not a Christian God. God came to earth seeking relationship with us. He came and walked with us and wept. For goodness sake, he changed water into wine so that a party could keep going. He translated his story from abstraction to flesh, into a way we could begin to understand his message.

But this is only meaningful and miraculous if you acknowledge the awe and mystery of God. It's not, "Your best friend will be there for you whenever you call." It's, "The Lord of Heaven and Earth will be there for you whenever you call."

I like teacher imagery. That's me. If I could name a group of people who have been the most important to me throughout my life, it wouldn't be my friends, like I think most others my age would say. It would be my teachers, whether they are formally my teachers or not. I am so blessed to have incredible teachers. It's almost ridiculous. People talk about "the teacher that changed their life", and I've at at least 15 that have changed my life in vastly different ways. And these tend to be people that I'm absolutely in awe of. Knowledge, insight, just thinking - these things mean so much to me, and I'm absolutely blown away by the brilliance of people around me. My teachers, my brilliant teachers, are those who share that with me, who let me partake in that, who will have conversations with me that no one else cares about. Who go far beyond what their job description requires of them. Who let me sit in their office during their lunch break and pick their brain about semiotics or Alba emoting. Who will answer late night e-mails. Who will send me random links to things I might be interested in. Who will continue to push me and push me and push me because they know I can do even more than I think I can. Who will read unassigned paper after unassigned paper after unassigned paper. (That particular teacher would get an 8-15 page paper from me at least every month, about some concept I was grappling with at the time. I graduated and still wrote him papers. I once wrote him a 191 page paper about Sweeney Todd. I found out visiting him a few weeks ago that he has a "Colleen" file - solely for my papers.) The fact that these brilliant people take their time and energy to actively care about me means more than I could ever say. Every so often, I look back and think with amazement on my continuing relationships with my teachers, how they continue to influence me and nourish me. It is astounding.

For me, God is the greatest teacher. The most brilliant, radiant presence. I hear the songs that are written for him, in praise of him. The Rutter Gloria. The Allegri Miserere Mei Deus. Expressions of praise that are themselves magnificent and yet only touch at the truth. I see all of this, and then I realize my own place in the heart of that God. THAT is the miracle. Too close, I feel, diminishes the wonder. I like to live my life in wonder and celebration.

That's my current beef with some of the imagery in Youth conferences. I noticed that I also felt more connected with the conference for preachers last week than this youth conference. I think because with the Youth conference, it's for people who are involved in a fellowship group, who are Christians largely out of habit and parental involvement, encouraging them to choose a Christian life. The pastors were coming from already having made that choice, and were coming together into a group for really the first time - while of course pastors live and work in a community of faith, I'd imagine it must be difficult to be constantly asked for spiritual guidance and there are significantly less pastors in any given area to fellowship and commiserate with than there are church-goers. When I heard them joking about theology, I clearly didn't understand their inside jokes, though I could tell there was history there just by the way they said "Schleiermacher" and by the laughter - the relieved kind of laughter of finally being with people who understand your jokes. Coming here for me, I've been able to talk about the very frustrating difference between "trespasses", "sins" and "debts" and it's not weird. (What IS weird is "debts". It messes up the rhythm of the next part of the sentence. Presbyterians, really.)

In other news, the Tonys were Sunday and I chose not to watch them. I'll see them eventually. This is a big deal for me. Compare this to 2006, when Sweeney Todd lost the Best Revival of a Musical Tony and people actually offered to bake me a casserole, I was so devastated. I won't say much about this, but that it has to do with not storing up treasures for yourself on earth, and when I do watch the Tonys again, it'll be when I can watch them as a celebration of the work we do.

I've been reading the Gospels... one Gospel at a time. I started with John because of the rich imagery, and suddenly became very interested in what parts of the story each gospel-writer brought to the forefront. John has a lot of exclusive language, the "You get to God through me. Period," talk. Understanding that John was written later than the other Gospels, I wondered about what kind of persecution these early Christians were facing - what, in the world, was the gospel-writer responding to? We cannot help but be influenced by what's going on in the world around us, and we cannot excape our own point-of-view, so I'm interested in the point-of-view of the gospel-writers. I'm on Luke now, which seems to me to be the most difficult of the Gospels, because of some of Jesus' statements. They're not nice, they're not easy, and they're not the Beatitudes. They aren't "Blessed are you." I jokingly call Jesus in Luke the "angsty Jesus". Cases in point:

Luke 2:41-49. Twelve-year-old Jesus gets left behind after a family trip to Jerusalem. His parents freak out and find him chilling with the teachers in the temple. When his parents, clearly quite anxious, find him, he says, "How is it you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Easy translation: "Aww. He was with his father, God, the whole time. That's cute." But actually, Jesus was also the child of Mary and Joseph and they felt for him like any parent feels for their child. Imagine being Jesus' parents in this situation.)

Luke 8:19-21. "Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him for the crowd. And he was told, 'Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.' But he said to them, 'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.'"
Again, completely blowing off his human family. This is actually classic teenager behavior.

Luke 13:49-52. "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled."
Okay, wait right here. You came to do a job and you wish someone had already done it for you?
"I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? NO, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
So apparently we can forget that whole "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men" thing?

Luke 14:26 (MY FAVORITE) "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
I heard a phenomenal sermon on this text at Grace Episcopal, my church in NYC, early my first year. It was largely that sermon that made me stay at that church. And I've thought a lot about this scripture and can finally make some peace of it. But it's taken a while.
(I put this into a collage text in one of my classes this past semester. Another group had to stage the text, and for this particular bit, it was like someone was trying to get really into religion following a breakup, then heard this and promptly decided, "No way." I laughed loudly and obnoxiously.)

This is tough stuff and I absolutely love chewing on it. I'm so interested in what seperates each Gospel, and the bigger picture we get from all of them together. (I know, Rhonda, I know - seminary!) Last night I was reading my daily chapter of Luke, and I read the parable of the prodigal son, and I laughed and said, "Of course. Of COURSE the Prodigal Son is in Luke." (I've always had issues with that parable because of how the faithful son is treated. I just read a play version of that by Garrison Keeler, actually, while scouting for 3rd Year Directing Projects. It ends with a very bitter faithful son.)

I'm working tech for a concert here tonight. This is slightly nervewracking because I'm the only crew member working and concerts are much more sound heavy, especially on equalization and levels. (Also, if one more guitar player adjusts his cables when the mics or on... ::shakes fist:: It makes a wonderfully loud fireworks noice.) But I'm sure it'll be fine.

And the beauty is...

Today, I bought about $50 worth of groceries for $14. Sometimes, I love not being in New York. (I also just love Amazing Savings in Black Mountain, but anyway.) I also love that if I buy a meal here, it's $3. THREE. DOLLARS.

We got our schedules for next week - the first Youth conference. Youth conferences, I've heard, are the most demanding for A/V Crew because they bring in movie clips and bands and such. (Worship and Music is the most demanding for Aud crew because they bring in a lot of physical stuff.) It's a rough week, to be sure, multiple days that start at 6:45am, but not nearly has demanding as what I'm used to... even what I was used to first year, which wasn't nearly as rough as second year. (Though we all believed it was. Foolishness.) I'm looking forward to Youth conferences starting because I'll have less time, which inevitably means I'll get more done. (Not that I'm complaining about having more time, it's been nice. But I've got some Proust to read. As it stands, I've been watching a lot of movies and trying to name the time period based on the costume and getting a lot of strange looks.)

I bought a book today about the draw of liturgy. I bought it primarily because 400I'm drawn to liturgy and trying to figure out why. The back cover of the book alluded to the fact that liturgy creates an experience with the senses, and that won my heart right there. (One of the easiest ways to get me excited about something is to talk about how it impacts the senses. Do it and I'll swoon. I'll probably go into why at some point.) I'm excited about reading this - partially because of all the previous reasons, and partially because there's a connection between theatre and ritual that is talked about all the time in books, in classes... and I've always found that fasciating but slightly hard to really get into. The people who write about it tend to be very profound, abstract, and it takes reading them many times to start to understand. (The Theatre and Its Double by Artaud - I've had three classes that dealt largely with Artaud and am on my fifth reading of it, and I think I'm beginning to get it.) The thing that still stumps me is why ritual is important, why it draws people - and I KNOW there's reasons and I KNOW them in an abstract, physical way but I'm still unclear and not able to articulate. Coming at this subject from the angle of Christian liturgy, a language I already speak quite well, I think will help me grasp these theories of ritual theatre in a way I can use.

The Tonys are tomorrow. This is my official reminder to my parents to tape them. I most likely will be unable to find a TV that actually gets channels to be able to watch them. It is astounding how much my heart remains unbroken at this. (Another despairing phone conversation with my parents: "The Tony nominations came out today... and I don't CARE!" "Oh... wow.")

And now.... pictures.


The view from a porch where I get internet access.

Lookout Road.

More Lookout Road.

Same spot, different camera setting.

Outside Anderson Auditorium.

Anderson Auditorium, where I usually work. (Well, part of it. It's huge.)

More outside Anderson.

Stairs and path to the lake and shops.

Lake Susan.

Assembly Inn.

Closeup on the bridge.

The dam. This is on the other side of the bridge I was standing on to take the previous few pictures.

Gazebo-y thing that oddly has no seats.

You can kind of get a fuller view of Anderson in the distance.

How I get to work/the booth.

Lookout Lodge - my home.

Molly, our RA's dog, waiting for her to come home.

Our RA washed our staff shirts, folded them, and put them on our beds. She's the cutest.

We can build a beautiful city.

I've heard recently, in multiple places, talk of how we're living in a "postmodern" world, and questions of how to deal with postmodernism. The final straw for me was the postmodern world being a big deal of the speaker I ran sound for yesterday. I loved the speaker. I completely understand why people talk about our postmodern society and how we have to minister to it. I happen to be very opinionated about postmodernism and how to deal with it.

KILL IT.

I don't pretend to be an expert on postmodernism. I really don't. I'm honestly more familiar with the influences of postmodernism than postmodernism itself, and a lot of the movements that are sometimes considered to be part of postmodernism and sometimes not. (Theatre of the Absurd tends to fall in this - but that's much more of a direct growth from the Surrealists.)

And you know what? I absolutely LOVE all of it. I LOVE postmodern art and literature. Some of my favorite authors are considered postmodern (or sometimes postpostmodern). I wear a bowler hat - of COURSE I love the Theatre of the Absurd. I love Surrealism, and DADA, and even earlier influence like Jarry's Pataphysics. I really, really love the stuff. In think that postmodernism has served very important purposes. It's spurred on phenomenal artists, made lasting works, and brought new ideas. It has also made us really look at our existing forms and systems and rigorously re-examine them, which is incredibly necessary.

BUT IT IS DONE.
THE HORSE IS STONE COLD DEAD.
MAKING POSTMODERN ART RIGHT NOW IS LIKE TRYING TO REANIMATE A CORPSE AND THAT RARELY GOES WELL.

Postmodernism permeates downtown New York theatre. Or variations on postmodernism. I train in downtown New York theatre. I've created postmodern works. We all have. Because it's hip and it's fun.

BUT IT'S DEAD.

My knowledge of postmodernism is largely not from any official sources. It's from what I've learned and what I'm still observing:

Postmodernism calls us to challenge our established systems and assumptions.

Great. Awesome. I always love that part.

When postmodernism does this, they usually find that there is no inherent order, the way the world works is absurd, or our systems are completely useless.

I am also totally fine with this. I agree that a lot about our world and systems are very strange and absurd, and sometimes useless.

WHAT THIS CREATES is my problem. It creates a sense of futility, and therefore passivity. That is, now. I'm sure when postmodernism first started up, there were all these artists creating works with passion about this futility, which is a beautiful contradition. But I can tell you that very, very few of the many postmodern works I've seen created in my training program are created to express these ideas. They're created because if everything is random, you as the artist don't have to do as much work. They're created because we're all trying to find new ways of working, and basing things off of completely arbitrary factors often makes a strange kind of sense. They're created because we've spent hours of time and effort working on pieces that crash and burn (or, worse, the audience is indifferent to), and it's less painful and often more successful to do a dance where you all turn into chickens at the end. And there is so much validity to these pieces. And the dance where we all turned into chickens at the end was one of my favorite projects ever. And even though I'm being a bit jaded and bitter about why we do these pieces, there is so much to learn from them.

But to tell you the truth, that's what pretty much every other theatre artist in downtown theatre is doing. Making art about how nothing makes sense, there is no order, it's useless. And a lot of these tend to have this sense of "this is my protest against the uselessness of the world because I'm so disillusioned" attitude about them that makes me want to throw things.

Yes, young artist, you are disillusioned. My entire generation was BORN disillusioned. Disillusionment, unfortunately, seems to be the only thing that we know. So we can wallow in it - or we can change it.

I believe very strongly in the responsibility of artists. There is a hilarious and insightful essay by Oscar Wilde called The Decay of Lying, where he talks about artists defining how we see the world. He makes a lot of seemingly outlandish claims, like "nature copies art," but how he supports them rings true. No one really noticed the fogs in London until the Impressionists painted them. They taught the world how to look at the fogs. There are some who believe that "love" is actually created by artists - because, often, when people think of "love", their thoughts are shaped by what they've seen in the movies. Whether that's true or not, my experience as simply a person has proven that art affects the way I see. It can open up my eyes to a new possibility, or make me see things I never noticed before. It can leave me elated. It can leave me hopeless.

Therefore, I take my responsibility as an artist very seriously. I have people in a theatre with me, and I have an effect on how they feel and think when they leave. While I love, LOVE postmodern hopeless art, I believe in showing people light and life. This does not mean sugary, empty forced "happiness". In fact, as I interpret it, it means going into absolute darkness and finding the light. I realized this year that I'm an optimist. This completely caught me off guard, because I'd always, you know, read Chuck Palahniuk and listened to metal. Optimists, I thought, were the ones who put sprinkles on everything and refused to watch R-rated movies. My favorite musical was Sweeney Todd! How could /I/ be an /optimist/?

I realized that, while I fully acknowledge the darkness of every situation, I cannot help but see the light. My parents would get calls from me last semester, saying, "I just vomited and don't see the point to any of my work anymore, but I feel so much more focused going into next year because this has helped me realize how much I love voice and speech." The reason I love Sweeney Todd so much is because I, inexplicably, see the hope and love within the piece. (Most people don't, but I'm not alone in this.) I'm not afraid to walk into these dark places, because I'm totally interested in them... and somehow I always find the light. I can't get away from it. Which is sometimes horrible because it makes it really difficult to be angry, and never getting that release is frustrating. (Upon realizing my optimism, I talked with two teachers and my best friend of over four years about it, and they all immediately said, "Yeah, you are." I was baffled. Here I thought I was a cynical pessimist. D'oh.)

In a nutshell, I want to make art that helps people see that light. That seems worthwhile to me.

Artists have a huge effect. Artists really started this whole postmodernism thing. Artists and thinkers.

And the only way to get rid of it is to change it.

Here is what I've observed about my generation. We are disillusioned and disconnected. We grew up in a world that was pretty bitter about itself, and in a world of technology. Now, I happen to believe that technology helps far more than it hurts, but it does cause some major, very specific problems. The biggest thing is this false sense of community. Through technology, it is so easy for us to get in contact with each other. This is wonderful. We can stay in touch so much easier. I've friends that I've made primarily through technology, and they are some of the closest people to my heart. The other edge of the sword, though, is so much of this connection is superficial. When most of your conversation happens in 140 characters or less on Twitter... that's a problem. I deleted my facebook for a brief time, and most of my social interaction completely halted. Out of sight, out of mind. And when you talk more through a screen than face-to-face, you start to yearn for a visceral experience.

One day, this year, a whole bunch of people got yelled at for doing dangerous things to themselves in their theatre pieces in class. It's funny, it all happened around the same time and really freaked out the teachers. I don't think anyone was actually hurt ever, but there was some pretty dangerous stuff going on, that you would need a license or something to actually do as a performance. And we all observed was that we are so desperate for a real, visceral experience - because we're so disconnected as a generation - that we sought it in danger and fear, the easiest ways to get a real experience. By playing with life, we could actually finally EXPERIENCE it. This is standard in Performance Art, where people will, you know, roll around naked in honey to represent the female libido (one of my ACADEMIC teachers was famous for this), or actually have people shoot them (truth). (I'll disclaim that none of the stuff my classmates brought it was that serious, but it's the same spirit.) My generation doesn't have a lot of conflict. As the speaker yesterday said, we're "comfortable". Racial conflicts, gender conflicts... really not that big a deal. Our "war" is not like a war that people used to rally around. We laugh at it, because it's ridiculous. It hasn't really affected us that much. Nothing really does.

I am bitter about postmodernism's hold on the world right now because it's so obvious we NEED something different. We are disillustioned with disillusionment and don't know how to get out of that cycle.

I was approached early this year by my dear friend Julia. She has basically started a theatre company which is doing a residency in Nebraska this summer. The company is full of artists who are my classmates and are brilliant and incredible people. Julia wanted me involved, and if I'd not gotten this job, I would have gone with them this summer. We have eeriely similar ideas about what theatre should be, which I won't really go on about right now, but let's just say we could finish each other's sentences. I remember sitting in a cafe in the East Village with her and her saying, very strongly, "Postmodernism is dead."

That is what I think needs to happen. I think we need to stand firmly and say, "Postmodernism is dead." I think all of us in theatre school need to work on the art that will actually reach our generation instead of poking at the tools of the past, because we are the next generation of artists. The next movement in art almost always starts with young artists, getting angry with their teachers and doing something else. We have to start now.

And what the rest of us need to do is stop talking about "oh, the postmodern world," like it's something we're resigned to. We need to start making way for what comes NEXT.

I don't know what that looks like. I have thoughts. I have ideas about what I want it to look like and therefore what art I'll create. I got into a huge debate about postmodernism with Russ, who's also on A/V crew, yesterday, and he talked about a movement with echoes of Romanticism, some kind of return to nature (especially because if we don't return to nature, pretty sure there won't be any nature to return to), and thinks the "going green" movement that's happening has a lot to do with it (which is a great point). But we cannot, absolutely cannot, stay in a postmodern world. We are in a time of great change. Look at history. We can't stay in a time of constriction for so long without the bubble bursting, like it did in the 1920's and clothing, hairstyles, and life changed completely. The world is about to burst and everything is going to change. We must, we MUST be ready for and facilitate that change.

And to all of us still moping around in our postmodern futility, I say:

If you think the world has no order: find the order.
If you think there is no purpose: find your purpose.
If you hate the world you live in: create another world.

We choose what world we live in. We don't always choose what happens to us, but we choose how we react to it. My optimism largely comes out of years of extreme pessimism and depression. I hated the world and didn't want to live in it. When leaving the world no longer seemed an option, I realized I had to make the world into something I want to live in. So I choose the light. I choose to follow a religion whose biggest feast day revolves around resurrection (which is really pure optimism, there. Life conquering death), and whose greatest commandment is to love. I choose to believe that people have good intentions. I could believe otherwise. But I like this one better.

If you think creating another world sounds weird, think about the Lord's Prayer. "Thy kingdom come." So often we look and pray for "the Kingdom of God to come upon the earth". Guess what, friends. It's up to us to start the labor. We must start building the Kingdom. (Unless you want to wait for it to drop from the sky.)

And I'll tell you one thing: the Kingdom of God is NOT postmodern.

Vivo!

I have the best job ever. I come in, set up mics, and sit making sure nothing goes wrong, listening to amazing speakers. Most people pay to be in that room listening to these speakers. I'm BEING PAID to be there.

This morning, I operated for the Proclaiming the Text keynote and plenary. The keynote speaker was incredible - Otis Moss. I won't go into most of it right now, but suffice it to say he was invigorating, inspiring and sparked at least three future blog entries. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak, take it. This conference is for pastors, and Moss focused largely on the preaching aspect, and how we reach different people in a relevant way. What I loved was that he was able to offer a vision of making things relevant and contemporary, but not via "contemporary worship", not through disregarding ritual, but by constantly looking for the reasons for and humanity in the ritual (as I interpreted his speech). I might actually buy the CD of it.

One of the things I noticed with excitement as he spoke that he was speaking with a lot of the same language that we use in the theatre. I could draw so many parallels in what he was saying about preaching to things I use every day in Directing or COW (Creating Original Work) class. I have always championed acting training for preachers, readers (as anyone at Bon Air knows very well), and really anyone who does public speaking. And since coming to PHTS, I've thought that the training in storytelling is especially relevant to preachers. What do directors do? We (generally speaking) look at a text to figure out what it's saying to us today, and figure out how to best present that message to an audience. That sounds like a sermon to me. But today during the keynote, became extremely passionate about the need for this cross-pollination between theatre and the church. I would absolutely LOVE to work with preachers, translating between theatre and theology, to help them learn and apply these ideas. That would be thrilling. The problem is that there's no set order of, "This Is How You Direct A Play" that I can draw structure from, so I have to put these ideas together myself, in a way that makes sense to me. As I'm working to put all these things together into some method of working, I'm going to think about how to put them together in a way that could make sense for preachers (not to give any set way, but to offer some structure as opposed to random hints).

The plenary was also exciting for me, but in a completely different way. It was very much an Academic Theological Discussion. It was mentally exhausting to keep up with, because this was my first real plunge into such theological language. Divine sovereignty, transactive vs. participatory relationships, John Calvin (so much John Calvin), Schleiermacher... lots of people and concepts. Most of the concepts I could grasp, but all of these people have seminary degrees and know those concepts so deeply that they could then talk casually about them. It's like going into any meeting of people in some specialized field and not knowing the jargon. It'd be like someone coming into a group of theatre majors talking about the "alienation effect" or "poor theatre" concepts.

Anyway, I had to work hard to keep up, but for the most part, I did, and found it thrilling. Most of the conversation centered around God's role in suffering, particularly with the belief in Divine sovereignty. Meaning: everything is somehow in God's jurisdiction. Not to say that God micromanages, but that there is nothing that is outside God's power. This means that we can't say, "There are some things that are out of God's control - those great tragedies." And that makes things a lot harder. (Personally, I think the fact that God has given us free will makes that a lot easier to explain. Some people in that audience had trouble with Divine sovreignty + free will and how that works. It makes perfect sense to me. I think they're just having trouble because they're Presbyterian. I hope I'm scheduled for a lecture about predestination at some point, because I don't understand it and how it works with free will).

The crazy thing was that this session was focused around Job. Now, earlier in the week, I started reading Job. Just... for fun. (I wonder what it means when reading Job is your idea of "fun".) But I stopped about 15 chapters in, lost and slightly panicky. I was fine through the first two chapters. But after those, there's about 40 chapters of what's basically theological debate. (And a lot of loathing life, but that's to be expected). I could understand it, but I had no framework to put it in, and it was taking a LOT of effort for me to follow, so I set it down until I could find some kind of help (or a lot more patience). And lo and behold - I teched an over-an-hour session focused on Job.

Yup. God's awesome like that.

I talked with the second speaker afterwards as I was striking and we were leaving. Had a great little conversation, and she's going to be back in July for the Calvin Jubilee. (Calvin's birthday is coming up.)

Things continue to be going well here. We filmed for the A/V - Aud Olympics today. We broke a mic stand while jousting. Oops. (It wasn't a good one, though.) Life in my lodge is great. I made a bowl on the potter's wheel yesterday - and glazed my cup and a few other things. Glazing is fun. I'm quite proud of having actually made a bowl on the wheel. It took a lot of help, but I did it.

I've expanded my blog titles to be more than musical theatre lyrics. Now I'm just doing lyrics in general. Meaning I can do hymns and opera.

Coming soon: a big rant about post-modernism. Preview: IT'S DEAD. Also coming soon: Pictures.