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.