Seeking Pleasures of the Mind

How Do I Order My Life?

2008-10-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

Just got out of my Foundations of Evangelism class. We talked today about the post-modern worldview. I don't have a lot of time to go into detail, but I wanted to post a couple of charts from class that I will discuss later. Really interesting stuff here for everyone in the Christian community to consider.

The Emergence of Postmodernism

	Traditional	Modernist	Post modernist
Representative Figure:	Priest	Scientist	Artist
Source of Truth:	Character of God/ Absolute Truth	Human Reason Natural Law	Personal Preference
Emphasis:	Morality	Reason	Emotion
Authority mediated by:	Revelation / Text / Tradition	Research Data	Visceral response; Personal interpetation of all input
Morality centered in:	Virtue	Ethics	Choice
Highly value:	Obedience	Freedom	Experiences Community
God:	Transcendent, Sovereign Creator	"God" is unknowable. Only agnosticism is rational.	God is part of me and of all other things. God replaced by “spiritualities”.
Spirituality:	Spirituality based on trust in and obedience to the Holy God.	Spirituality considered irrational.	Pursuit of open spirituality based on sacred awareness of life's experiences. Personal and individual.
Communication Mode:	Oral (story and teaching)	Written word	Image
Other characteristics:	1. Strong definition of right and wrong. 2. Preservationist. 3. Identity in heritage and tradition.	1. Truth is only what can be objectively demon-strated (vs. faith). 2. Sufficiency of self; God not a factor. 3. Belief in progress. 4. Optimistic; utopian dreams.	1. Thoroughly relativistic. [Truth is whatever a person wants it to be. No absolutes.] 2. Realistic; pragmatic. 3. Future unknowable. 4. Gnawing pessimism.

Questions for the Postmodern Mind

Rick Richardson

Some Modern Questions

1- Does God exist?

2- Are miracles possible?

3- Is the Bible reliable? What about the contradictions in the Bible?

4- Do faith and science conflict? Hasn’t science disproved the Bible?(This question will still draw some crowds of seekers. It is a question for moderns and post moderns. For post moderns, science is now being scrutinized in ways that religion was in the past).

5- Is there evidence for the truth of the Christian faith?

6- Is there evidence for the Resurrection?

7- If God is good, loving, and all powerful, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? (This question is most compelling for people who are committed to the law of non-contradiction.)

8- How can there only be one way to God? Aren’t all religions different paths to the same goal? (This question is compelling for moderns and post-moderns, though for different reasons- see below.)

Some Postmodern Questions

1- Does Christian faith work? What do old church buildings, stained glass windows, robes, and boring, interminable sermons have to do with my life?

2- Is there evidence that the Christian faith is real? (“Is it real?”, more than “Is it true?”, is the category for postmoderns).

3- Is Christian faith attractive?

4- Why are Christians and the Bible so narrow, dogmatic and judgmental? Aren’t committed Christians intolerant? Doesn’t that kind of intolerance breed killing, war, hatred, divorce, and self-righteousness? I’ve had enough of those in my generation.

5- How can there only be one way to God? In a world so diverse, God couldn’t choose to come to only one group in only one geographical area. That wouldn’t be right or fair. Haven’t most religions had an equally good (and bad) impact on the world?

6- How can God be so vengeful as to kill people in the Old Testament and to send people to Hell in the New? Why can’t God be as forgiving as we are and overlook sin if people want to do right?

7- Why have the church and the Bible been anti-Semitic, racist, sexist and homophobic? Why is the church in the West run mostly by white males? Why is the Bible so male-oriented? If Christian faith is true, how do you explain the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery supported by the church in the South, the exclusion of women from leadership in the church and the present rejection of homosexuals? How do you explain the silence of Catholics in Nazi Germany?

How do you explain the support in the Bible for slavery and sexism?(People don’t care whether or not the Bible is textually reliable if they feel the Bible is morally reprehensible.)

8- How can you say you love somebody but reject who they are?

9- Why do the innocent suffer? Why did I suffer, at the hands of others? Where was God? Why did he let it happen? The question of suffering and evil has become more personal and less philosophical.

10- Why is the Bible against things like pre-marital sex? Christian faith will just make me feel uptight and guilty all the time. I already have enough shame in my life.

For All the Saints

2008-10-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

This Sunday in the liturgical church year is marked as All Saints' Day. In the church we are called to remember those Christians who have lived their faith in Jesus Christ and now are united with him in the Church Triumphant. My grandmother, Virginia Bland Patton (Mema to her grandchildren), entered the heavenly kingdom in March of this year. She lived a life of undying faith, and through her example showed the joyful life that we live as Christians.

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Mema was first a Christian. Her faith in the Presbyterian tradition shaped her entire outlook on her life. The love she knew in Jesus she shared with those around her. I was always told stories of her work as a Sunday school teacher, her hospitality in hosting the Women's Circle Bible Study or the Home Demonstration Club, how she visited those in her church who were sick or shut-in. Mema's faith was not some kind of doctrinal belief but a way of engaging her world.

As a girl Mema memorized a bible verse for each letter of the alphabet. When her Alzheimer's caused her to move to Knoxville into an assisted living home, I asked her to try and recite as many of these as she could remember, and I wrote them down. Her verse for the letter "B" was "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only" (Jame 1:22). Accompany this with one of her own token phrases, "Let us be up and doing," and you begin to get an insight into how her faith shaped her life. I have spoken previously on thinking and speaking incarnationally; Mema lived incarnationally. It was through her deeds that she showed her faith. She took the Bible seriously and sought to show in her work the Good News of Jesus Christ.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
we feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

As her grandson, what I learned most from Mema was how to live out love. There was nothing she loved more than her "dear ones," her four children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. If you had only ever known of us through Mema, you would have thought that our family was made up of the most musically gifted, intelligent, beautiful, sweetest people that ever existed. Mema saw us not as fallen sinful creatures, but as part of God's good creation, people made in God's image. Knowing how Mema thought of us gave us hope and confidence to live into our potential, for nothing "is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:39), and nothing could separate us from the love of God in Mema.

I spent more one-on-one time with Mema once she moved to Knoxville, going to visit her twice a week during my senior year of high school and making sure to stop by during visits home from college. I watched that devil Alzheimer's slowly take away the memories of her home in Watertown, memories of Thanksgivings and Christmases together, memories of raising her children, memories of her own childhood. I experienced that sadness and I watched the power of this disease try the faith of my mother and her sisters.

But it could not take away her faith and the love she had for her family. She continued to sing her faith when we could gather around the piano together, proclaiming loudly the salvation of Jesus through the hymns that had shaped her. She could state the Apostles' Creed and pray the Lord's Prayer with a conviction that would have impressed John Calvin. She tried to take care of the other people in her building, putting their welfare above hers.

And she was prepared to meet death. She knew that we would continue in the faith she instilled in us through her "doing" and through her love. She knew that God has won the victory in Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection, and she lived daily with that knowledge and worked to carry out God's mission in her world. And she knew that her greatest joy would come in the embrace offered by Christ in his eternal victory. And she rests now in a place where there is only joy, where God reigns and no earthly disease can ever claim victory. To God be the glory.

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
and singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thinking, Writing, Speaking Incarnationally

2008-10-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

This is an "in-between" post that sort of fits into the #1 discussion (narrative and theatre, learning through stories) that I was planning on beginning after my last entry. I'd like to wait on the theatre part for another entry and instead point to a couple of examples I've run across recently as knowing/unknowing situations of speaking and thinking incarnationally. By this, I mean allowing our faith to shape our entire worldview, not as simply a way of dealing with exestential questions or philosophical realities. Speaking incarnationally means seeing our faith as the lens through which we view our entire world, which then shapes every decision and action we make. Two examples (and in no way am I implying these incarnational discussions were intentional):

1) I saw incarnational language in John Weeden's post titled A Christmas Memory. John is the director of the Urban Art Commission in Memphis, TN. He wrote this post after being in a local bar called the P&H that was held up at gun point in the middle of the afternoon during a business meeting he was a part of. I always think that the role of our artists, poets, writers, actors, and musicians is to speak truth (much like contemporary prophets) into a world of deception. John does that beautifully in this post, speaking incarnationally of how community forms, in this story, through examples of sharing, respect, and wonder.

2) I particularly enjoyed this insight into the cliches of television posted by Jay Norrell on his blog, www.jayinrome.com. I've posted the applicable portion of the entry below:

The Only Religion Plot There Is: Dude A is a hard nosed rationalist (and is always the smart character). Dude B is religious. Dude A says that religion has no proof. Dude B says he doesn’t need proof because he has faith. Jay gets up to go find something to kick very, very hard. When Jay returns, Dude A experiences some eerie coincidence or somehow narrowly misses fatal injury. He briefly questions his atheism. Also, Dude B experiences some tragedy and questions his faith (which somehow failed to happen before the age of 40). Ultimately, both return to their original positions, decide that everyone has their own beliefs, different strokes for different folks, and so on. This makes me maniacally furious for the following reasons: a) religion is given condescending approval, so long as it is viewed as some kind of coping mechanism, rather than an intellectual position and a coherent worldview, making it something you ‘need’ or ‘don’t need,’ and thereby giving people an ego boost if they ‘don’t need’ religon. B) “faith” is defined as an antirational and contralogical belief in something wacky. C) The implication that Atheism is somehow the most rationally supported understanding of the universe, or even that scientists and smart people in general are dominantly atheist.

Once again this is a great example of looking incarnationally at the world around us. We can take a lot from observances like John's and Jay's and begin to look at the world around us incarnationally, both the beautiful and the ugly. Where is God working and how can we join?

A Story to Tell to the Nations

2008-10-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

In one of the trancepts in St. Paul's Cathedral in London stands this portrait of Jesus, titled "Light of the World" by William Holman Hunt. In it, Christ stands at a door with no outside knob and knocks, asking for entry. This picture is a visualization of Revelation 3:20, "Listen! I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me." I like this image as an introduction to the next series of posts which will deal with Good News translation, discussing our opening the door for Christ and Christ's breaking down the doors we put up.

This post is a follow-up to my September 22nd discussion on how the PC(USA) could be relevant to a middle schooler. When I mentioned this to a fellow classmate at Columbia (himself not a Presbyterian), he said that this question should be expanded to "how do you translate the PC(USA) to someone who doesn't have a college education?" We tend to "intellectualize" a lot about our faith in our denomination, and our emphasis on education is one of our perceived callings as a denomination. This can easily be interpreted, however, as a kind of elitism and create an exclusionist idea about our church.

Pondering these questions, I have continued classwork in the last two weeks and have found several readings that haved helped me wrestle with this question. I have found that our challenge really comes in our translation of the Gospel message, how we translate our message to the world. Having read Brian McLaren's The Story We Find Ourselves In and Darrell Guder's The Continuing Conversion of the Church, I believe the translation of the Gospel is not a matter of teaching denominationalism or particular theological treatises, particularly if you are encountering those who are skeptical or unfamiliar with "church talk" (this can include middle schoolers and children too).

Basically, it comes down to narrative. First, we have God's narrative, which begins in the Hebrew Bible with the creation, moves through the primeval history, to the Exodus and the giving of the law to Moses, to the settling of Canaan with judges and later kings. In the monarchies we encounter prophets' warnings against worshipping false gods and exploiting the poor and the eventual exile of both Israel and Judah. The people return later and rebuild their land under occupation, and then God breaks into the story in human form in Jesus. We then follow the Jesus narrative through his teachings and miracles to the cross and the resurrection and the establishment of the early church.

There are many theological statements in this story, but we must first recognize that the story of God's people Israel parallels our personal and communal stories as well. This is where I feel the Presbyterian Church struggles in our translation of the Good News. Faith in Christ comes when we find how our story fits into the larger story of God and God's creation. We all have memories of betrayals, lies, pride, times when we forgot our responsibilities. We all have experiences of people who came into our lives to help lead us in a new direction (like judges or kings or prophets or what have you). And we all have experiences of grace and mercy. When we begin to see our story in the larger story of God and God's story fulfilled in Jesus, we begin a life of faith and not denominational or biblical knowledge.

Our narrative is part of God's narrative. We must learn, then, to encounter honestly God's story and learn of the God who reveals Godself in the scriptures. We must also learn to examine our stories honestly and begin to see how our stories are really part of God's larger narrative. This means speaking faithfully about our daily life experiences, looking for God in the ordinary dailiness of our lives, and seeing where God works and how we can join in.

More to come...future thoughts on...
1. Narrative and theatre- we learn through stories, not doctrines
2. A church focused on narrative will necessarily become one of relationships (this will address John Stuart a.k.a. stushie's comments about relationships for young people in the church)
3. How do we develop language for relating these narratives?

Blogs I'm Reading

2008-09-29T10:50:00.001-07:00

If you haven't looked, I've been updating blogs that I've begun reading with some frequency. Be sure to check out what others are doing!

A Wee Blether- This is the blog of fellow student Adam Copeland. Thoughts on seminary, church life, etc.

BiteYourTeeth- This is the blog of Dan Price, fellow Rhodes grad and Woolsock. He's now living and working in Memphis. Interesting thoughts on technology, literature, art (particularly photography), and other good quips about life.

Kruse Kronicle- Michael Kruse is the vice-chair of the denominational board of the PC(USA). Good insights into church, particularly the adjustments of the church to a post-modern, post-western world.

Let Your Light Shine- This is the blog of Linda Valentine, the director of the General Assembly Council of Churches in the PC(USA). Good reflections on a life of ministry.

An Exercise to Exorcise

2008-09-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

This post is a culmination of several things I have been pondering lately, including previous posts, books I'm reading for classes, conversations with my peers, etc. What sparked my idea for this post, however, was an article e-mailed to my by my grandmother. It's by Terry Mattingly and it discusses the comment made on the House floor by Steve Cohen (a Memphis democrat representative) that "Barak Obama was a community organizer like Jesus...Pontius Pilate was a governor." (click on the quote to watch video of Cohen making the remark).

Now this statement obviously upset many people, comparing Obama to Jesus and VP candidate Sarah Palin to Pontius Pilate. I recognize that it was insensitive in that issue, but I must say first that when listening to Palin's first speeches, I did not particularly appreciate the belittling of Obama's previous occupation as though it was something that doesn't matter, than we could live without. That's flat out meanness.

Instead of going on about presidential political theatre (you can find PLENTY of blogs that will reiterate what smarter people say each day), however, I wanted to do a little more thinking about Jesus as a "community organizer." I think this is a very appropriate term to describe Jesus. Unlike many community organizers today, however, Jesus didn't go into an impoverished pre-established community to help build it up. Instead, he took various outcasts and low class people from all over his Galilean ministry to form a new kind of community.

The community Jesus organizes doesn't resemble political systems we have, either totalitarianism, democracy, various forms of republics, Democrats or Republicans. This community does not maintain the social norms that our worldly communities do. All are equal at the banquet that Christ sets. Jesus doesn't even recognize our worldly ideas on time, as he breaks into our neatly patterend world to declare that the Kingdom of God has arrived and continues to arrive wherever his communities seek to follow him.

We often call Jesus' organized community the church. We operate in the world but strive to maintain and further that Kingdom that Jesus brought and organized to his own peril. His death shows us that his exercise in community challenges the established order of our world. This is primarily because the church, when it is at its best, exorcises the demon on which almost all human decisions are made, Self-Interest.

In a time when we see the peril of our economy that stems from self-interested homebuyers and self-interested investment banks, when recognize great leaders for their ability to promote themselves and their personal achievements to us, it is important to recongize that the church does not work in this way. Our excerise in the community of Jesus is intended to exorcise our self-interest. This is enacted by seeking out those that the world ignores and helping them. This is done through living joyfully in all circumstances, knowing that all our gifts come from God and that we possess to "right" to anything we own. I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples.

I use the words exercise and exorcise to acknowledge, though, that the church is an ongoing and growing development. We will never fully, no matter how hard we participate in the exercise of a Jesus community exorcise our self-interest. Giving will still hurt, sacrifice will still be hard, saying no to our whims will cause frustration. But we see the cross before us, that symbol of Jesus' love for his broken world; the cross is the response of the broken world to his exercise in community. With that cross before us, Christians seek to exorcise that self-interest/pride/demon/Satan (choose your description) in ourselves through exercising in the community of Christ in the world, striving daily to bring about his kingdom.

New Questions in a New Semester

2008-09-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for disappearing for a month, but it has taken a while to adjust to the whole "semester" thing again after only having one class to deal with in the summer. School has taken off at a break-neck pace with lots of reading and papers (due this week). New classes raise new questions, and some of those I hope to explore here over the next few posts.

My first question deals with a discussion I had with my mother this weekend on a visit home to Knoxville (for the UT vs. Florida game....sad,sad....). She teaches the middle school Sunday school at our church, First Presbyterian, and currently the middle schoolers are not receiving as much pastoral attention as years past. New youth directors with responsibilities for children and adult Christian Education and the like. I'm not interesting in figuring out how the system is broken, or blaming anyone for a lack of attention to this area of church life. Instead, I wish to think about something that has been raised by a student in her class.

One of the middle schoolers in this class is currently struggling with where he fits in the life of our church. This particular student lives in the suburbs, and First Presbyterian is a downtown congregation; it isn't your neighborhood suburban church. In his area, there is a particularly large and influential Southern Baptist congregation where many of his school friends attend. He is reaching an age where her and his friends are beginning to have theological discussions about the nature of salvation and the like.

In addition to this, they have a VERY active youth program that does lots of exciting things like trips and retreats and mission projects and fun games at youth group and lock-ins and all those things. Now we can debate how appropriate ski trips and beach trip vacations are for church life, but that isn't going to convince a 6th or 7th grader that it is better to attend the church where his parents have always taken him instead of going to a church that is "Bible-based," full of friends from school, and is always offering exciting programs.

My question is, then, what is the relevance of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to a thirteen-year-old? I think the answer to this question might also give us insight into the relevance of our church in the broader Christian sphere in general, but I am currently interested in how our denomination- its theology, polity, worship, mission, and education- make us unique or relevant to a 6th or 7th grader. This is in line with the questions the moderator of our church has been requesting Presbyterians ask on blogs, facebook, etc.

Unfortunately, I am not going to offer how it is so, for I have yet to figure out a good way to articulate anything about it since I began pondering the question. I would love any comments or thoughts others who happen on this post might have.

How I Became a Baseball Fan

2008-08-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning, August 4th, I was listening to the local Atlanta sports radio station, when I heard of the death of Skip Caray, the longtime Braves broadcaster and icon of sports in this city. I never met Mr. Caray, and he certainly had never heard of me, but I was deeply saddened by the news of his death, because it was Skip Caray's voice, that made me a baseball fan.

I began following and playing baseball in the spring of 1993, when I was in the first grade. My dad had always been a Braves fan, and the franchise had really turned the corner in 1991, going "from worst to first," and going to consecutive World Series in 1991 and 1992. Because of this, it could be expected that at 7:05 or 7:35 almost every week night, if you drove by our house, you could see the likes of David Justice, Ron Gant, Otis Nixon, Mark Lemke, Jeff Blauser, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine (I could go on and on) on our tv screen, as we watched each game on TBS.

Each night the Braves played the same inspirational opener before going to the broadcasters who would introduce the starting lineups for that night's game. I, as a new baseball and Braves fan, had the opener memorized, and most of it has come back to me in the last two weeks. With the appropriate images on the screen, I would hear "Back goes Nixon up on the wall....and he's got it! Unbelievable catch," (cut to Ron Gant hitting a homerun), "Kiss this one goodbye it's a slam!" And the grand finale, possibly the greatest Braves call in history, a video and audio replay of Sid Bream's ninth inning slide into home plate in 1992 (click on the link to listen to Skip yourself), which won the game for the Braves, making them National League champions.

Now I had a nightly ritual that accompanied this opener which involved our hallway which led into our den, a pink exercise mat, and some new carpet my parents had recently purchased. Each evening I would head to the end of the hallway and listen to Skip Caray's voice narrate the opener. When I heard "one run is in, here comes Bream" I would take off from the end of the hall headed toward the den. When I heard the line, "here's the throw to the plate," I would dive, head first, onto the pink mat and slide across the carpet just as Skip said, "he is....safe!" Then, rolling onto my back, I would kick my arms and legs with each "Braves win!" Skip exclaimed with excitement.

Skip Caray made baseball exciting, and his voice has always made me think of summer, of mosquito bites, of sunscreen, of suicides (the drink) after baseball games, of father/son trips to Turner Field, of vacations to the beach. Thank you Mr. Caray, for helping me understand baseball, for helping to make it exciting. Thank you for being there when I became a Braves fan.

Online Sermon Post

2008-08-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

This week's selection comes from the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Illinois. If you don't take the time to read the entire thing, at least read the final story. If you have RealPlayer you can listen here.

WHEN GOD CHALLENGES US
Sunday, August 3, 2008

John H. Boyle
Parish Associate
Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 34:1–10
Exodus 16:1–8
Matthew 14:13–21

“You give them something to eat.”
Matthew 14:16b (NRSV)

An older man, who was both wealthy and suspicious, invited Jacob to dinner in order to test him. When the dinner was served, Jacob was given an empty plate and cup while his host’s plate overflowed and his cup had wine draining past its brim. Jacob said nothing but sat there and watched the man devour his sumptuous meal. When the man had finished, Jacob stood, said thank you for his dinner, and prepared to leave. Unable to resist Jacob’s silence, the host asked, “Weren’t you angry because I gave you nothing?” “No,” said Jacob, passing through the door.
“You gave me what you had. If I had expected more from you than I received, then I was filled with my expectation and not your offer.”

Noah ben Shea
Jacob the Baker

“Life is a miracle.” So states Wendell Berry, prolific writer on many subjects, including human ecology, in his book with those words as its title. Agreed. When you consider the phenomenon of birth, the complex intricacy of the human body as well as other organisms, the many processes by which life is sustained, the wonder of the whole creation, the resilience of the human spirit in spite of its fragility and our own carelessness, you cannot honestly avoid marveling at the miracle of life.

But for many people the world over, and for anyone at a particular time in one’s life, life is not a miracle to be wondered at and enjoyed. It is a mess to be lived in and endured and perhaps one day to be cleaned up. I don’t have to offer a litany of the woes that befall us as human beings, even the more fortunate among us, for us to realize that in spite of the marvelous and miraculous in life, as the psalmist once put it, “all our days pass away; . . . our years come to an end like a sigh. . . . Even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:9–10).

The husband of a dear friend of mine who died recently told me of how shortly before her death he was standing at her bedside, talking on his cell phone to someone who had called inquiring how things were going and to express his concern. Trying to be as upbeat as possible, the husband kept repeating, “Fine, fine. Everything is fine.” Somehow his wife, known for her honesty and candor, marshaled enough of her ebbing energy to say in a loud voice, “Don’t lie, Bob. Everything is not fine. Everything is in shambles.” It was her “last lecture,” and it said, “Don’t whitewash life or death. Tell the truth!”

The truth is that whether miracle or mess, whatever else life is, it is a challenge, at the least, to survive. And it has its challenges, some innocuous and easily dealt with; others more formidable and daunting. Someone recently observed that a burgeoning industry is emerging in this country centering around dealing with disaster, natural and otherwise. Think of flood, fire, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, oil spill, 9/11, to say nothing of war, widespread hunger and poverty, random shootings, domestic violence, sexual abuse, murder and mayhem. Talk about shambles! Then there are the inevitable challenges wrought by illness, death, sorrow, pain, and loneliness.

There are some who assume that the challenges that life poses are one and the same with those that God sets before us. After all, there has to be someone to blame. Often these challenges are thought of as crosses we must bear. But it seems to me that such thinking trivializes the cross, if the cross referred to is the one Jesus bore, as it often is. The cross was Christ’s deliberate choice, and he bore it for the sake of the welfare of the world. Many, if not most, of the challenges we face in life are either thrust upon us or are the result of our own folly or that of others. They are burdens to be borne, not crosses we bear, unless we do so voluntarily and for the sake of the welfare of others.

We live much of our lives in relationship and response to what might be referred to as “-mand behavior” that takes the form of demand, command, reprimand, and countermand. All comprise some kind of “should” that we are called upon to conform to and act upon. There are those who have become so intimidated by the plethora of “shoulds” that they perceive to be imposed upon them by others, by themselves, and by life itself, that they live life constantly under what one therapist called “the tyranny of the shoulds.”

It was a command Jesus gave his disciples and a demand he laid upon them. Nothing ambiguous about that. He put the challenge squarely before them. In the account of this event in John’s Gospel, Jesus puts the challenge in the form of a question to one of his disciples, Philip. “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip responded that there was not enough money available to buy food for the crowd and that the donation of five loaves of bread and a couple of small fish offered by a young lad would surely not be sufficient among so many people. It was an understandable response based upon a realistic assessment of the situation.

In Matthew’s account, it is clear that the disciples had been around Jesus long enough to know that because of his great compassion he would want to do something to meet the need of a hungry crowd of people who were enthralled by his words and awed by his deeds of healing. So they were quick to come up with what must have seemed to them to be the only logical and pragmatic, though conventional, thing to do, namely, to tell the people to go into town, buy their own lunch, and come back later if they wished. “Send them away.” Let them fend for themselves.

“Make it go away” is sometimes our first reaction, if not response, when we are confronted by a challenge we would rather not have to face, especially one that seems to have God’s mark on it. Life poses enough challenges without God piling on with still another one, especially one as daunting as feeding several thousand hungry people. By extension, think Darfur, think Sudan, think Zimbabwe, think Chicago, think Chicago Lights, think the Elam Davies Social Service Center, think the mission programs of Fourth Church. Until one may want to cry out, “For God’s sake, God, enough already! Get out of my face and off my back! I don’t need another mouth to feed, another challenge to face. I’ve got enough mouths to feed of my own, enough challenges that life has dumped on me. I have barely enough to handle them without you dumping on me too.”

When I consider the people I know, both in this congregation and elsewhere, who have been and are now bombarded by bumper-to-bumper challenges regarding health, finances, relationships, feelings, you name it, and when I remember similar experiences in my own life, I can understand and appreciate how a cry of protest might arise within us when the demands of the gospel and our desire to be faithful become the tipping point that puts us over the edge.

At the same time, it is important to realize that even when our plate is not that full and there is room on it for one or more of God’s challenges, we may find ourselves hurling a challenge or two back at God. The human genius for holding God at a distance, stubbornly daring God to overcome our resistance, is not to be discounted. There is, for example, the challenge of our retreat into nostalgia, into the good old days of Eden and of that spot, not to be forgotten, which for one brief shining moment was known as Camelot. The Old Testament prophets and Jesus himself were constantly running into it. It’s our bondage to the past and how things used to be done, even our preoccupation with the pragmatic (“Send them away”) and the conventional, that sometimes gets between us and the future.

Then there is the challenge of our own goodness that God has to deal with. Our pointing to our piety and parading our virtue, as if to try to convince God that we are doing all we can, as it were, to feed the people. The point is, we are, many of us, even as we spend billions to support a war the purpose of which seems to have gotten lost somewhere in its own fog. Like the boy in the nursery rhyme (remember little Jack Horner who sat in a corner?) we put our thumb into life’s pie, pull out a plum, and say, “What a good boy (or girl) am I!” Perhaps that is the point at which audacity morphs into arrogance, as in such audacious assertions as, “We will change the world!”

If we are not careful, the money we give, the service we render, the kindness we show, and the effort we make to try to overcome intractable personal and world-wide problems we face, can become what we hide behind to keep God from getting into our inner world, into our hearts. Our attention to externals, however necessary, can become the way we avoid the internal world of our attitudes, ideas, and feelings. I can give generously to our tutoring program and still harbor prejudice against people who look different from me, and pride myself that I am not a racist. It’s a bit like some people who enter therapy or counseling convinced that there is no need for them to change because they are doing the right thing by coming to counseling. Christ on the cross was God’s bid for the totality of our beings, not the outside only where we do justly, but the inside, too, where we try to love mercy and to walk humbly.

Then, of course, there is the ultimate challenge we put before God and behind which we may hide, the challenge of our inadequacy. Five loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many, as if it all depended on us. I know this one well, for I am tempted to wonder whether my five loaves and two fish are enough. And that’s the point Jesus was making. It doesn’t all depend upon us, and it doesn’t all depend upon God, either. It depends upon both God and us. We and God working together to get the job done. Today we are all called to be not only disciples of the Lord, but also co-laborers with God and with one another, to care for the creation, the world, and one another.

So Jesus took the bread and blessed it and gave thanks for it, and gave it to the people. And the miracle of multiplication happened with amazing results. You see, it is not about me and my scorecard. It’s about God and God’s grace. To those who are hungry, a little can be a lot.

It is out of the abundance of our poverty that the power of God to do a lot with a little is revealed. That is, if we put our poverty in God’s hands and dedicate it to the task of meeting human need beyond our own. The miracle of multiplication is not to be found in the quantity of resources given to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, educate the untutored, heal the sick, comfort the sorrowing and, as the gospel hymn puts it, “rescue the perishing (and) care for the dying.” The miracle lies in the transformation of the human heart, our hearts and minds, from grabbing and grasping in greed to giving and sharing in love, compassion, and gratitude.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye, walking toward me on that cold day in April, 1945 as I stood before the box-cars piled high with the corpses of the inmates of the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany, shortly after we had liberated it. They had been machine-gunned to death in a last gasp frenzy on the part of the guards when they heard that American forces were coming. I stared in horror and disbelief at the carloads of carnage, the
inhumaneness of it all, confirming beyond the shadow of a doubt the rumors we had heard about such places of detention and death.

Instinctively, I reached for the .45 caliber pistol on my hip as he approached me, just in case. Then I noticed his tear-stained face as in a combination of German and broken English he began to speak. “Danke, danke,” he said. “Thank you, thank you.” He was trying in the only way he could to express his joy and gratitude for what he thought would never happen to him, to be freed, to be spared, to be saved.

Then this Lithuanian Jew, who had been a prisoner at Dachau for over three years, reached into the pocket of his threadbare shirt. Once again, like Pavlov’s dog, I automatically let my hand drift toward the holster on my hip. (The Army had trained me well.) Out of his pocket he slowly brought forth a dirty looking crust of bread and held it out to me. I took it and he told me that on the day before his friend gave it to him as he was being led off to be executed. He had realized that he would no longer need it and that since bread was a coveted item among the prisoners, he wanted his friend to have it. Now this man was giving me what had been given him, so as to show his gratitude.

I thanked him and put the crust of bread in the pocket of my field jacket, where it stayed for several weeks. From time to time I would finger it, as though it were a talisman of some sort. It soon was reduced to crumbs. Then one day, as I sat on a bench before the cathedral in Saltzburg, Austria, the site of our divisional headquarters after the war had ended, I emptied the crumbs into my hand, stared at them for a minute, and then fed them to the pigeons gathered round my feet.

Over the course of nearly sixty years in ministry I have officiated at and participated in and partaken of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper more times than I can remember. What I do remember is that whenever I have done so, I remember that survivor of the Holocaust, that Lithuanian Jewish man, and a dirty looking crust of bread. It was not much, but it was all he had to give, and with which to give thanks. I have been feeding on the twelve baskets full of the leftovers ever since.

It was enough. It was more than enough.

Danke. Danke.

Amen.

Paul's In the Hall

2008-08-11T05:15:00.000-07:00

I received a newspaper article from my grandparents this weekend. The article talks about my grandfather, Paul Whaley, and his induction in the Sevier County High School Hall of Fame for football. I've posted the online article below. It can also be found at the Mountain Press webpage. In the picture below, my grandfather is number 31.

SCHS Hall of Fame Class of 2008: Paul Whaley
By: Cobey Hitchcock

SEVIERVILLE - Sevier County High School 1947 graduate Paul Whaley is an Alabama fan in Tennessee and has been playing catch-up for most of his life, but at least now he's an SCHS Hall of Famer.

As a young child new to Sevier County, Whaley missed out on a couple of elementary school years. "My father didn't send me because he didn't like the teacher," said Whaley, already chuckling in anticipation of his punchline. "I got two years behind, and I've been trying to catch up ever since."

Being a little behind in the classroom didn't end up hurting Whaley's football career, however, and he went on to star for the Smoky Bears at the offensive and defensive tackle positions his junior and senior seasons ... his only two years of football before high school graduation.

"We played both sides of the ball," said Whaley. "There wasn't platoon football at that time."

They were not only iron men in those days. They also still played the violent sport in leather football helmets. "I've watched it evolve through the years, and I'm still interested in football," he said. "I've just watched the changes through the years, and it's a lot different these days."

Whaley played in a high school era that didn't bother naming players to All-District and All-Conference teams, because the important thing to them was the team's outcome. The Bears were a good team with Whaley in the line-up, posting a quality 8-2 record his senior season ... although he isn't quick to brag about his team's success. "We won about 50-50, about half the time," he insists.

Whaley played well enough at SCHS to earn a football scholarship to play for the Carson-Newman College Eagles, where he continued his on-field success. Whaley lettered all four years at C-N, playing tackle and guard on both sides of the ball for coach Sam "Frosty" Holt. He was also named to the All-Conference Team his senior season with the Eagles ... the same year C-N made it to the Tobacco Bowl against Westchester, Pa., in Johnson City. The Eagles lost 20-6, but it is still a fond memory for Whaley.

Although he loved his days at C-N, Whaley would have rather played for his favorite college team Alabama instead, "because coach Paul "Bear" Bryant (who coached the Tide as an assistant in the late 1930s and later as head coach from 1958-82) was an inspiration to me," said Whaley. "But I've heard a lot of stuff from a lot of people around here about my choice of teams."

If he could have went on to play for an NFL franchise, his choice would have been the Green Bay Packers, "because they play tough teams in a tough league, and they play were it's cold. I like the cold, outdoor games." Years later, he would also admire their legendary coach Vince Lombardi, who coached the Pack from 1959-67.

But Whaley's football career came to an end with the Tobacco Bowl loss in late 1950, and he went on to marry his SCHS high school sweetheart Ellouise Ariail in December of 1950 and then enlisted in the Army upon his 1951 graduation from C-N. Whaley was posted to the special services for two years during the Korean Conflict, and although he never went overseas, he coached an Army baseball team during that time.

Following the Army experience, Whaley and his wife moved back close to home in the Karns area for the next 40 years. Whaley worked in the life insurance business for the rest of his career, including his first seven years with Home Beneficial and then as an independent agent with Nationwide Insurance Company for more than 30 years, before retiring in January of 1989.

Whaley was an assistant football coach for Karns High School for two seasons in 1962-63, and he remembers losing the Smoky Bowl to SCHS in 1962.

Whaley, who moved to Sevier County at the age of seven, was born in a farm house were Farragut High School now stands, and now he's really back home after moving from Karns back to Farragut in 2001. "I made a round trip from Farragut to Sevier County to Karns and back to Farragut," he said. "I made a full circle in my life." Although Whaley hasn't been to Sevier County in years, he still has family here ... four of his six brothers, including Roy, Glenn, Alvin Jr. and Cleo. "I'm very excited about coming back home," said Whaley, who plans to attend the August 28 HOF event. "I was surprised about the Hall of Fame induction, and oh, yes, yes, I'm excited and I'm honored by it."

Olympic Reflection

2008-08-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

Today has been a wonderful conclusion to the work/school week. With some rain yesterday, Atlanta has cooled off to highs in the mid-80s with very little humidity. The children at the seminary are all outside riding bikes, pretending, doing science experiments with bugs. On my run this afternoon I saw elementary school teachers unloading cars full of supplies, decorations, books, getting ready for learning to take place on Monday. Tonight Rebecca and I are going over to our neighbors' house for a cookout, a thank you for helping them move apartments last week. And then the opening ceremonies for the Olympics begin at 7:30. These are the kinds of days that give you energy, that remind you how tied your life is to what happens around you, how, despite our best efforts, we are part of creation, not controllers of it.

And this leads me to thoughts on our Olympics this year. There has been a lot of controversy around the Olympics being held in China, and everyone has seen the protests and such as the torch traveled to Beijing. But days like today I hope can focus us on the bigger picture of the Olympic games.

In these anxious days when economies are sliding, we are fretting constantly about security risks, and spending countless hours denouncing or defending wars, we need the Olympics. The Olympics are above the fray of rival governments and call us to recognize how closely tied we are, how capable of cooperation we can be. The Olympics are a celebration of creation. Individuals from different cultural, religious, ideological backgrounds come together. Those of us who marvel at our television sets watch the strongest, fastest, most agile bodies on our planet push the limits of the human body and show us just what amazing creatures we are.

The Olympics allow us to recognize the humanity in all people and see how artificial and man-made boundaries of nation can be. We see "our" people standing next to the "other," and we realize how remarkably similar that "other" looks and behaves like us. We have different worldviews, religions, political allegiances, fears, and hopes. But the Olympics cause us to recognize that we are all parts of a complex and beautiful creation. Days like today give me hope; we need more days like this.

Online Sermons

2008-08-03T18:00:00.001-07:00

I listen to a lot of sermons during the course of the week when I run in the mornings. I find them more engaging than music and give me something to think about other than the pain in my legs or the fact that I am literally blazing a trail through the humidity with a visible imprint of my body lingering in the ear. It is somewhat difficult to find sermons that are in audio format, so my selection is limited, but I have decided to post some particularly good ones that I hear. I plan on doing this once a week. I'll copy and paste the text below and create a link in case you wish to listen to the audio. This week's selection is by Rev. Sarah Segal McCaslin of the First Presbyterian Church of New York City. Listen Here.

THE NARRATIVES OF OUR FAITH: A STORY OF DECEIT
Rev. Sarah Segal McCaslin
July 27, 2008
Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:26-39

Let us pray:
O God, you have brought us here this morning to a time of reflection and rest. Calm our souls
within us, and give us a sense of your peace that will refresh us. Keep us close to Christ that we may be closer to one another because of his wondrous love. In his name we pray. Amen.

For some reason, I am finding lately that faced with a handful of biblical texts to choose from, either for a sermon, a bible study, or my own reading, I tend to gravitate towards the most difficult and obscure in the bunch. Perhaps this was trained in to me as a graduate student in seminary, where we were encouraged to tackle all that is problematic in theology and biblical studies. Or perhaps, and I think this is a more likely explanation, it reveals my kinship for that which is enigmatic, subtle, and complicated in our faith. While I crave an easy answer for a problem, I know better. I know that there are rarely easy answers in life, and any easy answers we receive in the context of our faith ought to be looked at with a critical eye. And so I find both comfort and challenge in discerning God‟s presence in the chewier stories of the Bible.

Over the next few weeks, I will be focusing my sermons on the narratives of our faith. Story-telling in the Bible. Romance, mystery, drama- it‟s all here, bound together inconceivably into a single text that tells who and whose we are, from the very beginning of history through this moment. There are many stories that are already inscribed upon our hearts, so familiar are they to our ears. And there are others, like the one I will tell today, that are less familiar. And each has a truth to tell about God.

It can be frustrating at times to detect knowledge and truth from a story. Like the ancient story of the blind men standing around an elephant- each man offers a unique and equally true description of the elephant, but none can agree that they‟re talking about the same thing. Such is the challenge of our faith- to read the narratives of our faith and attempt to discern a common truth about who God is and how God is present in our lives. I believe the more we read these stories, as many as we can, the broader and deeper our context becomes for understanding our faith. I believe the more we enjoy these stories and become familiar with them, the richer and more meaningful the entire Bible becomes as the Word of God. And I believe that the more we share these stories with one another, in the context of worship, the more clarity is revealed about who we are as a community of faith.

And so we embark, entering the cycle of Jacob stories midway, arriving at an odd juncture that will surely leave us all contemplating how this story of deceit fits into the broader narrative of our faith.

The Jacob cycle- comprising the stories about Jacob and his family, is found in chapters 25-35 of the Book of Genesis. It is quite possible that the Jacob cycle is some of the very oldest material in the Bible. Stories of Jacob may have been circulating orally in parts of Israel before the invention of writing. Really, really old stories. Yet the themes are ageless, and we are still shocked and entertained by the saga of this trickster, this underdog, named Jacob. His name literally means "heel grabber," named thus because he came out second from his mother's womb, holding on tight to his brother‟s heel- already a troublemaker in utero. Before we meet up with him in today‟s story, much has already taken place. We have learned that he is his mother's favorite, just as his brother Esau is his father‟s favorite. We know that Jacob has a plan for his own upward mobility, grabbing his brother‟s birthright in exchange for a bowl of lentil stew and some bread. And finally, following his mother‟s own suggestion, he grabs also his brother‟s blessing, reserved for the firstborn child, by deceiving his blind, elderly father.

Jacob has shown up at his maternal uncle Laban‟s door in flight from his bloodthirsty brother, hoping to find amnesty and a wife from his mother‟s clan. In the text just preceding what we‟ve read today, Jacob encounters Laban‟s younger daughter, Rachel, by her father‟s well, and the sparks of romance fly. Jacob kisses Rachel, presumably a chaste kiss on the hand or cheek, and bursts into tears. Can you hear the music swell? And thus we enter our reading for today:

Having been in his uncle‟s home now for a month, Jacob finally hears the words he‟s been waiting for, “Just because you are a kinsman, should you serve me for nothing? Tell me,” Laban says, “what shall your wages be?” And Jacob, confounded by his good fortune says quickly, “I will labor seven years for you, if you will give me your younger daughter Rachel‟s hand in marriage.” And Laban agrees. So happy is Jacob about the promise of marrying his soul mate that the seven years pass as if only a few days, so deep is his love for Rachel. And at the stroke of midnight of the final night of his seven-year contract, Jacob knocks on Laban‟s door and says, “Give me my wife, for my time is fulfilled.” As the wedding day approaches, Jacob, used to grabbing for all that he has, is giddy at the prospect of receiving the love of his life without the trickery or deception that has characterized his life up until that point.

The night of the wedding, Laban threw a great feast. It is perhaps important to note for the story that the Hebrew word for feast, „mishteh,‟ translates literally as „drinking party.‟ At the appointed hour, Laban‟s daughter enters her new husband‟s abode, her face covered in a traditional veil… The next morning, Jacob rolls over to see his beautiful wife, only to discover that it is Leah lying beside him, not Rachel! The trickster Jacob has been tricked. The deceiver has been deceived. And poor Leah, eldest daughter with the „weak‟ eyes, must look into the disappointed face of her new husband.

Jacob, in a rage, storms up to his father-in-law, demanding an explanation. And Laban, with a wicked grin, points out that custom requires the eldest must marry before the youngest, and how could anyone expect him to marry Rachel off before her elder sister. How bitterly familiar these words sound to Jacob, himself so recently run out of his own home for sabotaging the privilege of the firstborn. In the end, a compromise is struck, allowing Jacob to marry Rachel also, in return for seven more years of work on Laban‟s property. The second wedding feast, just a week after the first, can not have been so joyful. What the narrator says next, just outside today‟s reading, foreshadows the new sibling rivalry that will begin between Rachel and Leah: “And Jacob cohabited with Rachel also; indeed, he loved Rachel more than Leah.”

This is not a feel-good story about the morally upright chosen one of God. This is a story of deceit that plays both ways. The deceivers- Jacob and Laban. The pawns- Rachel and Leah. The noticeably absent figure in the story- God. This is not the most likely cast of characters for the narratives of our faith. But this is what we get. And by now, that should not surprise us in thebook of Genesis. It is of such messy stuff that „beginnings‟ are made.

God has chosen a trickster and a morally ambiguous figure to carry the promise of Israel. We know this because just prior to Jacob‟s first encounter with Rachel at the well, Jacob dreamed a dream of a ladder to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending the ladder. And the Lord stood beside him and said:
“I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

What are we to make of this odd association between Jacob and God? Well, we know that God is partial to marginal people. God is drawn to those on the fringe, those traditionally lacking power and influence. As the second born in a society that privileged the firstborn, Jacob definitely fits into this category of those lacking traditional power and influence. So, on some level, it may be true that God is the God of tricksters- those who must use guile and deceit to overcome the structures of power. It is this earthly man, Jacob, with all his faults, through whom the resilient purposes of God are being worked out. The purpose of God is made operative in the places even
of scandal and deception. Perhaps it is precisely because of Jacob‟s doubtful character that God chooses him to fulfill the promise of God‟s chosen people.

Jacob is not the only chosen one in this story. The women, too, are chosen as the bearers of God‟s promise. Though the story‟s patriarchy is hard to listen to, God is also on the side of Rachel and Leah. Like Jacob, they are marginalized, and like Jacob, they are not without their character flaws. Yet Leah and Rachel, even their maidservants Zilpah and Bilhah, will serve as the creators of transition and transformation for the people of God. Through their wombs the tribes of Israel will be born. Their power is circumscribed, but their influence in the private realm cannot be overstated. God‟s work through these women is hidden in these texts, yet it is there, as the creative blessing of the family of Jacob with children of the promise.

Even though God does not appear as a character in this story, God is most definitely present. God is in the midst of us, even in conflict. Within the dynamics of a dysfunctional family system such as we witness in this story, God is present. Within a story of deceit, God is working in and through the conflict to reveal God‟s greater promises for humanity. God is looking out for Jacob and his family.

The truth to be told is that God is looking out for us, in the same way, in the midst of our own dysfunctional family systems and conflicts. God promised Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go… for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” And God kept that promise. We are the descendants of that promise, and God is still present with us.

Paul‟s letter to the Romans heightens and expands this motif of God‟s presence among us, in light of Christ‟s appearance on earth and the revelation of the Triune God- Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. The promise of God‟s presence remains the same:
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is impossible to be separated from the love and presence of Christ. No outward circumstance,
no inward fault or failing, can push God away. God is a keeper of promises, and God has promised to abide with us. We will not be left alone to our own resources to bear the burdens of this time. Our God will be in our midst, even when God seems absent from the story, or when the story seems too lascivious or violent or deceptive to have a place for God. Even there, especially there, God is present, promising never to leave us, wherever we go.

Let us pray:
God of wonders, you work your will and claim us to serve your purposes as you have revealed
them in Jesus Christ. Take us and all we are and all we do; forgive what is imperfect and flawed
and show us how to make amends, so that our lives may be better witnesses to the presence of
our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Bibliography
Brueggemann, Walter et al. Texts for Preaching, Year A. (Westminster, John Knox Press:
Louisville, KY, 1995).
Fretheim, Terence E. The Pentateuch. (Abingdon Press: Nashville, TN, 1996).
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume I (Abingdon Press: Nashville, TN, 1995).
Newsome, Carol A. and Ringe, Sharon H., editors. Women‟s Bible Commentary with
Apocrypha (Westminster, John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 1998).

Essentials of Worship

2008-07-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

In 1964, Jerzey Grotowski, theatre theorist and stage director, wrote an essay titled, “Theatre’s New Testament,” where he briefly attempts to describe what he believes is “essential” to theatre. First, he outlines the many different interpretations made by various people involved with theatre- academics see it as a written text, common audiences as entertainment, “culture seekers” desire to experience certain emotions to give them self-satisfaction. And then, of course, there are actors who think of theatre as all about them, designers who think it is about them, directors who think they are the most important, and producers who, because they provide the money, believe they are the essential element to theatre.

He then states, “the number of definitions of theatre is practically unlimited. To escape from this vicious circle one must without doubt eliminate, no add. That is, one must ask oneself what is indispensable to theatre.” He then goes on to eliminate those things which are not essential to theatre: costumes and sets, musical accompaniment, lighting effects, even a text (for theatre can be improvised).

Grotowski states, “But can theatre exist without actors? I know of no example of this… Can the theatre exist without an audience? At least one spectator is needed to make it a performance. So we are left with the actor and the spectator. We can thus define the theatre as ‘what takes place between the spectator and actor.’” The only thing required, is some common ground the spectator and actor share, “something they can either dismiss in one gesture or jointly worship.”

Can we do this exercise with Christian worship as well? What is essential to our worship? Scripts of bulletins, prayers, and creeds? No. Hymns and other songs? No. Vestments, beautiful spaces, religious images? No. We can, and Christians have for centuries, worship without any or all of these things. What is essential are worshipers, the performers in our analogy, our three-in-one audience, God, and the common ground being that of a story of salvation in Christ.

Woolsocks

2008-07-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

In a brief break from memorizing irregular Greek verbs, I found these videos on youtube of the Woolsocks, the male acapella group at Rhodes College. I was a part of this group for four years while in college there. These are from our 2008 spring concert. Woolsocks began twenty-two years ago at Rhodes and started in large part because of Dr. Diane Clark's love of barbershop music. Dr. Clark, a music professor, started the group as a double quartet of men, and originally members received credit for the group. Eventually, though, the group decided to go more in the way of collegiate acapella music, converting popular songs into voice-only arrangements and expanded the numbers to twelve.

The Woolsocks primarily perform on campus and for Rhodes events but occasionally sing in the community as well (and the occasional Memphis Redbirds baseball game). The group is entirely student-run and on a volunteer basis. They also receive no direct funding from the college, but raise their own money through cd sales, which in turn go to create new cds. We're always looking to find some of those original members. If any of them happen upon this blog, let me know who you are. I don't know who recorded these videos and put them and put them online, but I thought I'd share them here.

"Artsy"

2008-07-23T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I do not like the word "artsy." While not an actual word to begin with, the connotations of this word are particularly troubling to me. Dictionary.com defines the word (though it admits that it is in face not a real word from a linguistic perspective) as "characterized by a showy, pretentious, and often spurious display of artistic interest, manner or mannerism." Before moving on, let's define these SAT vocabulary words used in the definition.

pretentious: characterized by assumption of dignity or importance
spurious: not genuine, authentic, or true
showy: making an imposing display

This meaning of artsy, therefore, obviously carries some fairly loaded connotations. It seems to say that artsy relates to being a braggart, not being genuine, and resulting in large and ostentatious work. You can hear people using the word in this way already, "That's just the way it is with artsy people; they can't put their ego aside for one minute." Artsy people= loud, highly emotional (bordering on bipolar), impulsive, attention-seekers."

I would argue that "artsy" carries with it other connotations, however, not mentioned by dictionary.com. If anyone watches thirty minutes of HGTV, I bet you'll hear the word "artsy." Usually designers/clients use this word to describe something abstract that symbolically represents something else (or nothing itself). Artsy means confusing, beyond the understanding of the ordinary person. In many ways, these individuals use the word "artsy" in an elitist way. It means they can understand this thing (or at least enjoy trying to understand it), while you have no idea what it means.

(Below: images I found when I googled artsy)I believe that these two connotations of the word "artsy" prevent many people from admitting that they are indeed artistic. We have confused these terms. Artsy (apart from a pure defining of the word) connotes elitism, emotionalism, and confusion. This is different, very different, from being artistic. Artistic people express themselves through various media to share something with their world. They do not do it in order to be recognized (though this is a helpful result) or to appear more elite or to exclude someone. Instead, these folks wish to add something to the conversation about what it means to be human and to live on this place called earth.

Therefore, anyone who feels the need to express and share with their world, who marvels at the life around them, who desires to experience life more fully, is artistic. We can neglect this side of ourselves when we believe that "artsy" is the only way to be artistic. This is a lie. So go out into the world and make art, make life.

Things I like in Decatur (so far)

2008-07-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Rebecca and I have now been officially living in the town of Decatur for over a month and have discovered some pretty neat stuff going on here. For those who don't know, Decatur is an individual town, with its own government, police force, tax structure, etc located six miles directly east of downtown Atlanta on Interstate 20. The story goes that Decatur was actually founded before the city of Atlanta, but the town fathers, when offered the opportunity to have the railroad run through their town, refused because the railroad would bring about vagabonds and crime and such. Atlanta, however, accepted the offer, and you see what has happened as a result. Decatur folks, however, sometimes joke that Atlanta is really a suburb of their town, since they are indeed older.

Now for things I like:

#1 Figo Restaurant. A small Italian restaurant. Had GREAT ravioli here.

#2 Java Monkey Coffee. Java Monkey sells organic coffees and has a great indoor/outdoor atmosphere, located in the heart of downtown Decatur.
#3 Raging Burrito. This Mexican restaurant pushes the envelope with some of their offerings. I had a pineapple jerk burrito there, yummy!
#4 Crescent Moon. This restaurant we found on a request from some friends in Knoxville who lived in Decatur while one of them went through seminary. They got us a gift card, so we took advantage. HUGE breakfasts that mix potatoes, eggs, bacon, and cheese and bring it to you in a skillet.
#5 Sweet Melissa's. Located on the Decatur square, this restaurant serves breakfast and lunch only. We stopped by for a late lunch last weekend. Really neat atmosphere and very eclectic artwork on the walls, plus delicious food!
#6 Decatur Presbyterian Church. We've made three Sunday visits to this church and have enjoyed it each time. We met very friendly members in the congregation, have heard both the senior pastor and interns preach, and I have accepted a position as a staff singer in the choir (which a really good choir, particularly to be a church choir). In addition to being a wonderful place to grow in faith and make and develop new friendships, Decatur Pres is in downtown Decatur, within walking distance of many of the restaurants mentioned above!Decatur REALLY supports local business. Last Saturday Rebecca and I spent the entire afternoon milling through little boutiques and home stores along with restaurants and coffee shops. There are a couple of great local bookstores in the area too, but we have yet to purchase anything from them. While it is exciting to have unique places to shop and great things to eat, locally owned stuff is always more expensive, so we have to be selective about when we choose to support our local businesses. So far it is a wonderful place to live, and if you ever get tired of the "small town" feel of Decatur, you can always head to Atlanta!

Church as Art

2008-07-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

I just received an e-mail about a conference going on in Atlanta this weekend about urban ministry/emergent church ministry. One of the leaders of this is Rev. Troy Brosnink, a graduate of Columbia Seminary and community organizer/songwriter/artist/public educator. He has a blog called Church as Art. It looks to be a fairly new site, with many of the pages linking you back to the homepage, but he has some interesting things to say. There is an article on him on the Creative Loafing website (he's listed as the 6th least influential person in Atlanta). It also provides a very brief introduction on the emergent church movement.

I'm just now becoming more familiar with what exactly the "emergent church" movement is. The new moderator of the PC(USA), Bruce Reyes-Chow, is a member of this movement which is seeking new ways of "doing" church in the postmodern world. There is also another blog that is helpful in finding out more about the emergent church (which is apparently a huge supporter of blogging...) in the PCUSA called presbymergent.

Worship and Theatre #1

2008-07-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

The greatest interest I have in the life of the church is in the worship life of the church. My combined interests in theatre and religion guide me in this journey. Where do rituals originate? What purpose do they serve? Are there rules or guidelines from Christian worship? Is there anything to mandate or anything to forbid? How are ways Christians have worshiped in the past and how do Christians in other cultures worship God? Over the next three years, I will occasionally be citing moments in my theological education when these questions arise, and I plan on reflecting on them here.

I had a small revelation in worship this week at Columbia Seminary. My Greek School small group was in charge of planning and leading worship for the week, and have planned services that utilize the many gifts of our group. On Monday, our musical selections were of a wide variety. The congregation opened with a Call to Worship acapella and in four-part harmony. We sang a contemporary hymn to jazz piano, and we closed with a praise chorus with guitar and drums.

I was in charge of the Call to Worship song, a simple melody with the words, "Come all you people come and praise your maker. Come now and worship the Lord." I learned this song from Rev. John Bell at the Montreat Worship and Music conference several years ago. He taught the congregation four parts to this song by lining out each part, having that section practice, and then he built up the song one voice part at a time. I followed his example when I taught and led this call on Monday, and with a willing congregation and a acoustically live chapel, it was a wonderful means of focusing our attention on worshiping God.

Our hymn was a somewhat complicated tune that was unfamiliar to most of us, but our capable pianist quickly realized this, and on the first verse simply played the melody in octaves, and with each verse he added more of a jazz style as the congregation grew more familiar with the tune.

The praise chorus, however, did not go as well. The piano, guitars, and drum sounded great, and we had the lyrics to the song in our bulletin, but with no microphone to amplify the singers' voices, it was difficult for the worshipers to engage with the music and take part in this form of worship.

Now I will admit my prejudice against praise music, but I think I gained a new understanding of why I have never particularly enjoyed singing it in worship. It is simply because I am uncomfortable with it. I don't know the tune, there is no music in front of me, there are difficult trills and slides in the leader's voice that are difficult to mimic, and I feel "left out" of the service. It is not that I feel the music is inappropriate or the words insufficient, but that it can be exclusive, just as traditional hymnody can exclude people who do not read music or are unfamiliar with the pattern and verses of hymns.

The conclusion and solution seem simple: we need to teach our music for worship outside of singing it in church. A simple lesson before a service begins, or practicing it during another gathering would be sufficient. This way we maximize who participates in worship and how well we perform for God. As Christians, we must always remember that our worship is a performance for God, to which we come prepared and bring our very best.

Performance

2008-07-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

Why do we, as human beings, feel a need to perform? I would honestly say that I believe that most living people, at some point in their lives, feel the need to perform. I mean this in the broadest of terms. Performing can be telling an adventurous story to family around the dinner table at Thanksgiving or it can be teaching in a classroom, performing for your students. Performance is hardly limited to actors and dancers on stages or musicians in concert halls and ampitheatres.

We need to perform. Here are some of my thoughts on why people need to do it:

1. Performance teaches. This one is simple. When we perform we learn both as the performer doing something which therefore helps that knowledge to solidify in our brains, but we also teach something to another person. Performance is a way of teaching people and a means of learning.

2. Performing feeds our ego. How many concerts have you attended where the conductor of a choir or orchestra feels the need to take several bows which often seemingly last as long as the concert? Or how about the high school drama teacher who gets invited on stage at each performance and is given a bouquet of flowers from her students? Or even the staging of a curtain call for a play? Sometimes these things are more elaborate than the rehearsal process. Good or bad, performing has a natural tendency to feed our egos, to make us feel important, special, appreciated. If we didn't care about recognition, we wouldn't bow at the end of concerts or plays.

3. On the other, more idealistic side of the spectrum, performance allows us to express that which is most "us." It is an offering up of ourselves to the world, our voice, our body, our movement, everything. Performing provides a way for us to express our experience as human beings in ways that writing or painting or sculpting or speaking cannot. A performance requires the whole self. It is risky, it is terrifying, but we must do it for we have something we must share with the world.

I know there are many other reasons why human beings perform, but these are three very broad categories that I have observed in my time in theatres, choirs, and churches (not to mention playgrounds, camping grounds, and baseball fields). I believe we all have varying combinations of the "ego-serving desires" of performance and the "offering of our selves to the world" side of performance. I'll admit I strive for the latter and much prefer to witness the latter when I see a production.

So the next time someone tells you, "I'm following my dream. I just have to perform!" Think about their motivations for this choice. Is it to learn something about the world or to teach something to others? Is this need driven more honestly by a desire to be famous, to be part of the in-crowd, to be considered elite, to be envied? Or might you be able to see a need of this person to share themselves with their world, to express fully what they see, feel, touch, taste, smell, and hear. To desire above all else to inspire wonder, fear, love, hate, action, questions, connections for others.

Let this be a our goal in all performance. I need to share this. I need for you to know this. I need to perform.

Marvels at Creation

2008-07-12T09:58:00.001-07:00

Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message and pastor and teacher, opens his book on spiritual theology this way:

We wake up each morning to a world we did not make. how did it get here? How did we get here? We open our eyes and see that 'old bowling ball the sun' careen over the horizon. We wiggle our toes. A mockingbird takes off and improvises on themes set down by robins, vireos, and wrens, and we marvel at the intricacies. The smell of frying bacon works its way into our nostrils and we begin anticipating buttered toast, scrambled eggs, and coffee freshly brewed from our favorite Javanese beans.

There is so much here- around, above, below, inside, outside. Even with the help of poets and scientists we can account for very little of it. We notice this, then that. We start exploring the neighborhood. Before long we are looking out through telescopes and down into microscopes, curious, fascinated by this endless proliferation of sheer Is-ness- color and shape and texture and sound.

After awhile we get used to it and quit noticing. We get narrowed down into something small and constricting. Somewhere along the way this exponential expansion of awareness, this wide-eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself: the world contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine through which we sleepwalk.

But not for long. Something always shows up to jar us awake: a child's question, a fox's sleek beauty, a sharp pain, a pastor's sermon, a fresh metaphor, an artist's vision, a slap in the face, scent from a crushed violet. We are again awake, alert, in wonder: how did this happen? And why this? Why anything at all?"

In addition to being a wonderful reminder of the majesty and wonder of creation, I believe Peterson speaks volumes to those of us who are called to be instruments of that "re-awakening." This can be anyone who is willing to take the time to marvel and wonder, to create and to share. Let us rejoice and be awakened to a world created for us! Let us celebrate those people, animals, words, songs, pieces of art, pieces of nature that awaken us, and let us respond with gratitude, "Thank you God!"

An Attempt to Return to the Blogosphere

2008-07-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

I am going to be making an effort in coming days to resurrect this blog. The previous series of posts on this site began as an assignment for CODA (the Center for Outreach in the Development of the Arts) at Rhodes College. Having graduated from Rhodes in May, my requirement to provide updates on my life in the arts and my witty and insightful remarks into the arts world ended. Since graduating, I have gotten married, moved to Atlanta, Georgia (technically Decatur), and begun at Master of Divinity program at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Recently, though, I have felt inclined to enter this world of online conversation but with a different theme for posts. I still plan on contemplating the arts world as I attempt to remain in touch with it, but I also plan on discussing issues pertaining to my studies at Columbia, the Presbyterian Church, theology in general, and possibly local Decatur/Atlanta issues.

Be looking for post #1 soon!

How About Those Tigers

2008-04-12T13:54:00.000-07:00

Most people know that the University of Memphis lost the national championship basketball game to Kansas last week in overtime. It was a devastating loss for the team, the university, and frankly the entire city. I encourage you to read this description from another Memphian about the game. In response to this post, I'd like to recount the events in my own life that helped me realize the potential good that could have come from a win in this game.

First, I was in Kroger on Poplar Avenue shopping for potatoes. I was picking them up, looking for bad spots and such when the man stocking the shelves looked up at me, and making eye contact said, "How about those Tigers?" His face beamed and he couldn't get rid of the smile on his face. Now I'm a Vol fan, and so I'm usually not a Memphis fan in any sport, but because I live here I had been following the events of Coach Cal, CDR, Joey Dorsey, and the rest. So this Kroger employee and I chatted about basketball for a while and then I went on with my shopping. This man could not wait to share his excitement about his city and his team. Finally something for his town to be proud of.

The second example came from a couple that I attend church with. Jim and Jackie are longtime residents of Memphis, living near Rhodes College, where they are alumni. They were telling me about their daughter, who grew up in Memphis but now lives in another city. Jackie told me that their daughter desparately wanted Memphis to win the championship because it would give people something else to talk to her about when she says she's originally from Memphis. The two questions she currently hears are 1) Have you been to Graceland and 2) Where were you when Dr. King was assassinated? One is a tourist trap the second a constant reminder of racism and violence, two continual struggles for this river town. This woman, who no longer even lives in Memphis, needs something to feel proud about, about her town.

This has been my experience of the city. Folks here have low self-esteem and even lower expectations of their leaders and their city's life. People talk about how they can't wait to "get out of Memphis," or as the clerk at Rite-Aid told me recently, "Memphis is a vortex of karma, once you come here you can never escape." What a negative and hopeless view of a town.

And no one was surprised when the Tigers "blew it" in the end. It was almost as if they'd previewed the script before tip off. So many times this has been the case. So if sports aren't a reliable source of hope for a community and a city, where does it come from? It could come from the arts. It could come through people like John Weeden who has taken over the leadership of the UrbanArt Commission to bring more art into the ragged and worn out downtown.

It's in redeveloping Midtown, as Jackie Nichols continues to do with his new Playhouse on the Square, outdoor music venues in Overton Park, and the redevelopment of abandoned buildings in the area. I applaud those who refuse to accept a defeatist attitude about their city but instead take active roles in reversing stereotypes and healing old wounds.

Lysistrata and the Death of Cupid

2008-04-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

For the past several years, Rhodes alumnus Kyle Hatley has been working on a project of giant proportions, and his dream was realized Friday night when his original work Lysistrata and the Death of Cupid opened at the McCoy Theatre. With a cast of thirty-four, Hatley presented a visually stunning show which mixed humor with poignancy, the vulgar with the humane, and the divine with the worldly. Combining songs from the blues, gospel, spiritual, and folk traditions, his play took the audience through two wars, one between men and another between human beings and the power of the gods.

Hatley's work is unique because it combines the basic plot of Aristophanes' Lysistrata with aspects of other Greek mythological characters, expressly gods like Hera, Apollo, and Cupid. Through these innovations, this is no longer an "anti-war" play but a play about the nature of our humanity. While Lysistrata does lead a female revolution to deny sex to the men of Athens as a means of ending a long war, she also asserts her power to make individual choices. With Athena watching her, Lysistrata seeks to end the "gods' war," denying the power of divine fate to govern all of humanity.

Lysistrata's revolt threatens Aphrodite, whose entire existence relies on the pleasures of the flesh between men and women. In an effort to save his mother, Cupid decides to challenge Lysistrata's ability to reject those fated passions of war and lust. The play, then, centers around the power of fate verses the power of individual choice, a conversation we continue to have to this day.

It is a very interesting choice that Hatley would choose to create a piece around this theme (which ultimately sides with freedom of choice over the power of fate) using a Greek play. Greeks were known for their religious acceptance of fate, and that they could not defeat their own destiny. This work re-interprets a Greek play of this variety to assert the opposite belief.
The play is well-constructed, though it runs a little long toward the end (think the last forty minutes of the third Lord of the Rings film). It is visually stunning in sound, lighting, and spectacle (they have a sand pit in the middle of the stage). Their are great comedic scenes, including a cameo appearance by Hades and a very funny temptation scene between Myrrhine and Cinesias. Hatley effectively combines elements of humor with a serious philosophical question.

Sometimes the language of the play seems contrived, and the over-use of expletives causes even of the more powerful language to gain its full potential. Because of the "shock" value of vulgar, language, the curse word often receives the emphasis of the line and sticks with the audience instead of what the character is actually saying. The theme of fate verses choice is also a little over-emphasized. The audience understands that they are being presented with this question, and they should be trusted to respond in their own way.

And that brings me to my final point. I do not know if we do have that ability to overcome fate, and the assertive "We Are Climbing Our Own Ladder" which closes the show seems to reject any possibility that their is some higher force controlling and governing it all. I would have liked to have been left in a more ambiguous state, one where the earthly war is ended and human beings have shown that they can act on their own decisions, but also one where the gods still are revered and maintain power and respect but in a new relationship. What would this say about fate verses choice?

KRONOS at GPAC

2008-03-18T06:20:00.000-07:00

This Saturday evening I had the opportunity to see the Kronos Quartet perform at the Germantown Performing Arts Center. Kronos began over thirty years ago with a single vision to combine "a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet." And in this they are extremely successful. Their work combines everything from recorded sounds from the Canadian tundra accompanying their string instruments to almost "pop-like" sounds of synthesized drums and keyboards. It is a new and exciting genre of music that takes a classical form of artistic expression and experiments with musical varieties of the technological age.

The audience for this event was varied in age and was overall receptive of the work. The actual concert used lighting effects to highlight the quartet players, and their instruments, equipped with microphones, mixed with the synthesized or recorded effects to play out of large speakers on either side of their seating arrangement. With this set up they could transport the audience wherever they wanted, they could blow out your eardrums or bring the sound down to a whisper. The group is quite innovation and expressive.

What I found myself wondering through the performance, though, was when we use these technical elements in music in this way, do we need live performance? For example, when you go to the opera or a choral concert, you desire to hear these pieces performed live because there is something about their presentation on stage that cannot be re-created on a recording. This is the same with visual art, where seeing the original piece is almost always more powerful than seeing a copy or photograph. And theatre requires live performance or else you can call it film, for theatre is inherently a temporary art (as is dance for that matter).

Kronos, however, while innovation and intriguing to listen to, uses so many electronic elements, I don't know if the sound produced was any different or better than what I could hear on their recordings. While the lighting of the concert added some visual effect, and the performers moved around in the final two numbers, the overall performance was rather static, calling the audience to listen more than watch what was happening on stage.

I have not reached any consensus on whether or not electronic music necessitates live performance, but I can attest that without this live performance I would have never been exposed (knowingly) to the music of the Kronos quartet. So maybe they have something...

CAP Final Text

2008-03-11T06:18:00.000-07:00

You would think that with my final text for my Community Arts Project due on Thursday, I would be filled with artistic insight. Unfortunately, I am not full of that. I have, however, worked on this text, which I hope meets all of the criteria. Since I did not have this layout for my four years (CODA wasn't even in existence my Freshman year), I am playing "catch up" in some ways. The various steps are well laid out. Each student must submit proposals, copies of letters to be sent to partnering institutions, budget proposals, and other things. I hope that this text will provide a template for future students who enter this program.

I suppose this process, more than providing artistic inspiration, has given me the opportunity to reflect on my experience of CODA and my role in it. I will continue to ponder these thoughts for later posts toward the end of the semester. As it stands now, though, it appears like the organization I've helped create, Standing Room Only, will be the lasting part of my experience of Rhodes that will benefit future students. Part of my CAP text requires an outline for sustainability, and in this I feel supremely confident. I know that the members of my team believe in this project and will continue working to make it better. They have been such an amazing addition to this project, that I am hesitant to say that I would even consider it "my" project. It has truly been an experience of teamwork. Knowing that this project will continue to influence the artistic community of Rhodes makes me feel like I have really contributed something to this place.

Community School for the Arts

2008-02-26T06:07:00.000-08:00

It has not been until I started my time in the CODA program that I realized the revolutionary power of a program that had been going on in my Presbyterian church in Knoxville, Tennessee for over ten years. When our former pastor came to Knoxville in the later 1980s, one of his first initiatives was to advocate and organize an arts education program in our church. He had previous experience establishing the Community School for the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina and believed it would work in our downtown church as well.

The mission of the CSA is to provide the highest quality of artistic training to children from all backgrounds. Donors provide scholarships for students who cannot afford their own lessons in instrumental music, voice instruction, visual art (painting, drawing, sculpture), or dance classes. Students then learn from the best professionals in the area, members of the Knoxville symphony, regular singers in the Knoxville Opera company, professional artists in the city. With this level of professionalism, the program goes well beyond "getting kids of the street" and begins to offer genuine opportunity for these children to grow intellectually and creatively.

The CSA is a national organization with schools like the one in Knoxville all over the country. It is not a particularly "faith-based" program but appears to be funded often by people with a religious calling to work for those without many opportunities. Below I have posted one of the success stories of this program, a member of the Knoxville CSA, Shelly Story:

I am so thrilled to announce that Shelly Story, Community School of the Arts graduate of the Class of 1999, will be playing second chair violin tomorrow night in the orchestra for the Grammy Awards!
For those of you who don't know Shelly or the Story family, Shelly, now 27, is the oldest of a family of six children who started at the Community School of the Arts in 1993. All during Shelly's childhood, the family lived in poverty (I remember very distinctly the house on Old Sevierville Hwy. that had only one bathroom), but were able to take weekly lessons, nonetheless, in violin, piano, voice, and visual arts at the Community School of the Arts through full scholarships all through their school years. Shelly, with financial aid from the Community School, attended the North Carolina School of the Arts for her Bachelor of Music degree, went on to continue her studies at Boston Conservatory, and will receive her Masters degree from NCSA next year.
In talking with Shelly's mother, Denise Story, today, she marveled at the fact that this little girl from Lenoir City would not only be playing in the orchestra in Hollywood tomorrow night on live television, but will also "walk the red carpet" and attend the official post-show party with the nominees and winners. "And none of this would have happened," she said, "without the Community School of the Arts and all the people who stand behind it." I hope you all join me as our hearts swell with pride!

With thanks and gracious goodwill,
Jennifer Willard, Executive Director
Community School of the Arts

We got reviewed!

2008-02-22T12:08:00.000-08:00

Some good news on the How I Learned to Drive run. We were reviewed this week in both the Memphis Flyer and the Memphis Commerical Appeal. It is a fairly regular occurance that we are reviewed by the Flyer. Being the "secondary" or "alternative" paper, they tend to pay more attention to the smaller guys like college theatre (plus their reviewer is Rhodes alumnus and director of the Rocky Horror Show, Chris Davis). This week, however, we also have a feature in the Commerical Appeal, which typcially does not review college theatre. I think we must give CODA some credit here for buying us some air time on the local radio station WKNO, to have an interview with our director and leading performer, Shannon King broadcast two weeks ago. This has greatly enhanced our exposure to the larger Memphis community.

Instead of providing links to the reviews, I have copied the text below in my blog with production photos. Enjoy!
Theater review: Dark comedy drives home powerful message

'Lolita'-inspired play deftly examines variety of emotions

By Jon W. Sparks
Special to The Commercial Appeal
Friday, February 22, 2008

The Pulitzer Prize-winning "How I Learned to Drive" won accolades 10 years ago for playwright Paula Vogel, not only for its deft writing but for fearlessly tackling the trickiest subject matter without cliches or prejudice.

Vogel is a fan of Nabokov's "Lolita" and was intrigued with the idea of a woman writer delving into the topic of underage sexual abuse. The dark comedy, jumping back and forth in time, reveals the relationship between fatherless girl Li'l Bit and her Uncle Peck. There are no caricatures here of a pubescent temptress and an ogre -- instead we have fascinating examinations of love, pain, desire, compulsion, doubt, anger and betrayal.

The production directed by Wes Meador at Rhodes College's McCoy Theatre is exceptionally well done with spare set and minimal props, relying primarily on the nuances of performance.

The core metaphor of the tale is how over the years Uncle Peck (Greg Krosnes) teaches his niece (Shannon King) how to drive a car. Like any youngster, she is curious about how to handle this conveyance of freedom and adventure. Her tortured uncle is happy to oblige, although his efforts to stay with the automotive lesson plans are too easily corrupted.

King is amazing as Li'l Bit, portraying the girl-woman from age 11 to adulthood. She slips effortlessly among these incarnations, from tomboy to first-time drunk to college student to reluctant photo model. Narration preceding scenes throughout the play tell us the years of the various events, but King's subtle attention to detail and gifts for comedy and drama make those clues superfluous.

Peck is a similarly demanding role, one that Krosnes carries off well enough but, at last Friday's opening performance, he was shaky in spots. He effectively portrays a man who feels confidence only in the presence of Li'l Bit, but he reveals too little of the tortured soul underneath.

Rounding out the cast as three members of the Greek Chorus are Andrew Whaley, Katie Preston and Mallory Primm, all showing savvy stage presence. Despite the seriousness of the theme, "How I Learned to Drive" is very often funny as it sketches the details of Li'l Bit's family and friends. This trio did much to keep it witty without detracting from the powerful message.

The Breaks

How I Learned To Drive mines comedy from tragedy.

BY CHRIS DAVIS | FEBRUARY 21, 2008
Memphis Flyer
"I love the smell of your hair," says Uncle Peck to Li'l Bit, his niece (by marriage), in the opening moments of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning black comedy How I Learned To Drive.

It's a simple statement of fact, but in Rhodes College's current mounting of Vogel's disturbing and difficult show, community actor Greg Krosnes lecherously imbues the straightforward comment with perverse meaning and laces it with a hint of menace. He not only tells audiences everything they will soon discover about Peck but also how they should feel about it. He might as well have said, "I want to lick your [name the naughty part]."

With that first line, Krosnes can make you feel dirty all over. And not merely dirty but squirmy, anus-clinching, "get me into a shower right now" dirty. It's both a fine testament to his gifts as a performer and a problem from which Vogel's sophisticated, nonjudgmental play almost never fully recovers. Although Peck is unquestionably a pedophile with bad intentions who started molesting his niece when she was only 11, he is — following the model of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert — a molester the audience is allowed to like and with whom they are encouraged to sympathize. To achieve its maximum effectiveness, viewers must be seduced into a kind of complicity with Peck, a tortured WWII vet and recovering alcoholic, whose pure and tragic adoration of his niece mitigates the horror of his transgressions.

How I Learned To Drive is modeled after the dark political comedies of Aristophanes, complete with a Greek chorus. It borrows openly from Lolita. But more than anything else, it is a lyrical, overtly poetic memory play that owes much to the rough-hewn Americana of Sam Shepard and even more to Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.

After all, it's Li'l Bit the adult who checks her side and rearview mirrors before taking the audience on a guided tour of her troubled youth. It's particularly comforting for the audience knowing that there is a witty and reasonably well-adjusted adult sitting in for the little girl whose driving lessons graphically turn into something far less innocent. In this role, junior psychology major Shannon King is often excellent, even if she occasionally (and understandably) has a bit of trouble humanizing Vogel's more overtly lyrical passages.

Li'l Bit's history is complicated. She was raised in rural Maryland — "before the malls came" — by a single mother and grandparents who couldn't understand why a girl with such big boobies would ever want, let alone need, a college education. Big Papa (an East Coast descendant of Williams' perverse Big Daddy) is explicit in his declaration that the most important work she'll ever do will be accomplished on her back and in the dark. Peck — whose own problems make him particularly sympathetic to the idea of being an outsider inside this closely knit family — understands that his niece is special and gives her the encouragement and self-confidence she can't find elsewhere.

Though far too young for the role, Andrew Whaley is appropriately gaseous as Big Papa, but many of the play's best moments belong to Katie Preston, who fills a variety of adult and teenage roles. Her "Mother's Guide to Drinking" is, by turns, hysterical, heartbreaking, and reasonably useful.

How I Learned To Drive is far from condoning child sexual abuse, but neither is it a finger-wagging movie-of-the-week. It's a necessary and refreshing corrective reminding us, uncomfortably at times, that even our most strongly held moral convictions are riddled with nuance and ambiguity. While Krosnes' naked lechery hinders this from time to time, his gentleness makes amends. And Vogel's script is strong enough to survive the storm, mostly intact.

Director Wes Meador, who captured all the eerie moods and textures in his 2006 staging of Ellen McLaughlin's Tongue of a Bird, has not fared quite as well this go-round. His use of music and projection seems random, and his racy, Vargas-esque slides of a mature-looking King are more tasteful than exploitative. Still, it's thought-provoking work thoughtfully staged.

Opening Weekend

2008-02-19T05:56:00.000-08:00

How I Learned to Drive had a successful opening this last weekend. I must commend all the people who helped with our publicity through wearing shirts, helping lay down the triangle, hanging posters, and simply telling people about the show. I will admit that it certainly wasn't the excitement of Rocky Horror, but that was to be expected being a play of more serious subject matter and with a smaller cast. I have heard from those who came to see the show that they really enjoyed it (for what that's worth...who tells you to your your show was horrible?).

On opening night we were close to sold out. The theatre professors, alumni, and other Memphis-area people joined the Rhodes student body for a great opening night. Openings are always fun but provide little insight into the success the run will actually have. Saturday night was much smaller, as was expected. I would say we had about 25 to 30 people in attendance.

One of the things I have learned from being in CODA and studying audience development is that you always have a somewhat limited number of patrons for your arts project. You can try hard to get people to come to your event but if there isn't some kind of initial impetus on their part, you probably won't succeed. In our case Saturday night we were competing with two other high-profile events that affected our campus. Joshua Bell had a concert at Germantown Performing Arts Center, and CODA sold tickets to students for $5 (and they went fast!). Then for V-Week, students were also in the final performance of The Vagina Monologues on the other side of campus. Both of these events detracted from our numbers. Hopefully those who attended this weekend will spread the word around for next week. The words "You have to see this show" are the most important for a successful run.

Even with our small crowd on Saturday night we had an engaged post-play talk, or fireside chat. Aramark provided goodies, and we had a small fire in the fireplace. Luke Branim facilitated, and it went well. It was originally my intent not to have the cast and crew present so that the audience who stayed felt more at ease to speak their minds about the production, but fearing that no one would stay, I invited the cast to stick around. We had 8 audience members hang around (and from an audience of 25, that's almost a third of the people!). They were a mix of Rhodes students, older members of the community, and students from another college. It was a great discussion with many different opinions about the play. We filmed the session, and I hope to get the footage online so that you can see how things went.

Overall it was a good opening weekend, and we can only hope for an even more successful second week!

How I Learned to Drive

2008-02-11T15:48:00.000-08:00

The McCoy Theatre's production of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive opens this weekend at Rhodes College. The show begins at 7:30 p.m. and runs for an hour and a half. The shows run lasts from Friday, February 15th to Saturday, February 16th, and again from Thursday, February 21st to Sunday, February 24th. Anyone near Memphis should come!

My work on my CAP project has really picked up in the last two weeks. We are currently distributing t-shirts for promotion. We are going to re-build the McCoy triangle on the lawn outside of Palmer again and have giant posters to place in the three corners. Our promotional video will be running the Refectory on campus beginning tomorrow at lunch, and it should be posted on the Rhodes website tomorrow as well. You can watch it for yourself by clicking HERE
(you will need quicktime in order to watch this). I must give huge thanks to Katie Bryant who shot the footage, Dr. Dave Mason for helping with the editing, and to the cast for taking time outside of rehearsal to put this together. We felt that a video preview would give students the opportunity to see what they will be coming to see. I think it will be a success.

I have also been in contact with the Women's Center and they will be sending two first responders to each of our Saturday performances. These women will take part in our post-play discussion following the show and will also be there if anything audience members see makes them feel like they need to speak to someone.

It has been a busy and productive week on the CODA front. I'll update next week about how opening weekend went!

Gershwin Revisted

2008-02-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

I must be on a kick for Hurricane-Katrina-inspired theatre, but I discovered today another production worth looking into. Opening last weekend was Porgy and Bess at the Zach Scott Theater in Austin, Texas. Dave Steakley, the artistic director for the theatre, applied for a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to provide funding for this project, and in the first weekend of the production, they made $100,000 in ticket sales!

This project, as with the production of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, began with someone seeing the plight of those victims of Hurricane Katrina and feeling the need to respond. Unlike Paul Chan's concept, however, this production of Porgy and Bess desired to celebrate those resilient survivors of that tragedy instead of dwelling on governmental incompetence.

Dave Steakley says in a recent article in the New York Times that his inspiration for this production began with the recordings of songs from Porgy and Bess done by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Ray Charles. Listening to these singers perform in more in the genre of blues and jazz instead of opera, led to a re-orchestration of the score to bring out musical themes to remind the audience of the music of New Orleans.

The staging, furthermore, highlights the plight of those victims, setting the singers on rooftops, surrounded by "water." While the city of New Orleans is never officially mentioned in the production, it is certainly obvious what sense the directors desired to bring out. With an all-star cast of performers, this theatre has shown us again the ability of the arts to celebrate the resilience of people.

This kind of theatre is exciting to read about, and it brings the arts to the center of our society. Visual art, music, theatre, dance, these should all reflect what is going on in our world now. The arts don't exist as museum pieces to be examined in the context of their original time only. They are to be revisited, reshaped, made into new creations that force us to examine our own lives, our place in society, and those around us.

SRO Update

2008-01-29T14:52:00.000-08:00

I haven't written about my senior project recently, and we have certainly been busy. The second project of Standing Room Only is work on the McCoy Theatre's production of How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel. This is a difficult play to promote because the content deals with sensitive issues of sexual molestation between a girl and her uncle (by marriage). It is a memory play that does not follow sequential order but instead reveals critical parts of her story at particular moments. We have devised a strategy, however, that we think will encourage a conversation about this production.

First, Luke Branim is helping us by moderating some "fireside chats" that we will hold on both Saturdays of the show in the lobby of the McCoy Theatre. We decided this conversation should take place without the cast and director to encourage students to speak about their reaction to the production instead of asking questions about how the performers put the play together. We're having both of these evenings catered.

Second, we have giant posters that will go on the corners of our McCoy triangle to promote the show. Kevin Collier was able to get the Communications department at Rhodes to print these for us for free, and we will pay to mount them and then attach them to our yard signs. This should really compliment our McCoy triangle on the grass.

Third, we have bought 60 t-shirts that we are distributing to students to wear only on show days. These t-shirts have the words "Show Tonight" on the back below the McCoy Theatre symbol and the name "McCoy Theatre Rhodes College." This should provide further publicity of the show.

Finally, we are trying to partner with the V-Week ladies at Rhodes to perform a scene or two at their art opening. Performing for ladies who are concerned with women's issues, this presentation could certainly reach a target audience.

I must applaud my team for their hard work. In addition to these tangible steps, Jessica Batey and I have worked on writing a "Constitution" so that we will be an official student organization that can request funds for future years and projects, allowing this organization to continue on!

a broken city. a tree. evening.

2008-01-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

Last week I was the first CODA student to present in a semester-long process of student presentations, providing us each with the opportunity to improve in our public speaking abilities and also present something about the arts that we find interesting. I spoke about the production of Waiting for Godot in New Orleans from November of 2007. It is a wonderful story of an idea taking root and coming to completion.

This particular production was produced by the Classical Theater of Harlem in the ninth ward of New Orleans, evoking those themes of people who have been waiting for over a year for their particular "Godots" to show up. The performance took place in two locations, a former busy intersection of two roads that now lies empty and in front of a house that had been destroyed by the flooding. The show ran for five performances and thousands of people came in support of the project.

This entire endeavor was the brainchild of Paul Chan. Chan is an artist (educated at the Art Institute of Chicago and Bard College) and political activist. He found this project as particularly intriguing because it combined his two interests. Chan visited Tulane University in 2006 to give a talk about his art, and while he was there he decided to go and see the Hurricane Katrina destruction. What he saw moved him deeply and also caused him great unrest, an unrest that required action.

Chan says that this experience reminded him of Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy, Waiting for Godot.

"The sense of waiting is legion here," Chan said. "People are waiting to come home. Waiting for the levee board to OK them to rebuild. Waiting for Road Home money. Waiting for honest construction crews that won't rip them off. Waiting for phone and electric companies."

This caused Chan to contact the arts-funder and programming institution, CREATIVETIME. This New York based organization is designed to support public arts projects, and they jumped at the chance to support Chan. With the funding coming from CREATIVETIME, Chan contacted Christopher McElroen, the artistic director of the Classical Theater of Harlem, who had previously directed Godot in New York, staged on a rooftop surrounded by water.

With the organization in place they went to New Orleans to meet with the civic leaders, but these leaders were wary of the work of these individuals, seeing them as privileged artists coming in to make a statement, soak up the glory, and live. Chan and CREATIVETIME worked to reverse this assumption. Chan volunteered to teach art in the public schools in the area for several months before and after the production, and CREATIVETIME created a fund that would encourage private donors to match the $200,000 production costs.

The event once again reminded us of the work that is still necessary in New Orleans. It reminded us that we are all waiting for something, that we are all bonded together and that often that is all we have to rely on. As one blogger put it who went to see the production, "we came in the hundreds last Saturday night, over a thousand; turning our back on the well-lit streets of the sliver by the river, forgoing the restaurants of Magazine and the lively nightclubs of Frenchman to go to the edge of the empty zone to try, at least, to sit through this difficult work, a comedy as black as the streets were for months in this part of town, as dark as the windows remain in so many of the empty brick boxes that line the streets. We came because all of us are so like these characters, lost in a landscape from which familiar references have been erased, clinging to the one thing that keeps us all from dropping over the brink: each other."

This production shows us the power that the arts can still create in the world, in a broken and devastated situation, to provide uncommon hope, hope in each other. This is the work we are called to create.

A Lesson Before Dying

2008-01-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

There is a real challenge in adapting great works of literature into plays. As with film, when deciding to compact a book into a two-hour production many choices must be made. In the theatre, however, even more must be sacrificed because you are limited in stage size, technical abilities, cast sizes, etc. Circuit Playhouse’s recent production of A Lesson Before Dying was a poor attempt of adapting Ernest J. Gaines’s book by the same title.

First let me highlight some of the positives on this production. I must applaud Playhouse on the Square’s staff for selecting a play that should be regionally applicable. The story of A Lesson Before Dying deals with a young African-American man who is accused of a murder that he did not commit, and because of his inability to adequately express himself or follow the proceedings of the courtroom, he is sentenced to death. His aunt convinces the boy’s former school teacher to come and meet with him. What makes this story unique is that there is never an attempt to overturn the verdict. Instead it is the story of a man who gains his dignity through education, through understanding what it means to be a man and to die with the knowledge that you are as good as anyone else.

This southern story is a great fit for Memphis, a town of decades of racial strife, and it presents a message that is applicable to all people. This play should spark discussion among those who see it, but the adaptation gets in the way of the message. Romulus Linney, the play’s adapter, chops the story into many short scenes which breaks up the general flow of the play. The audience is never taken into the world of the play. You feel like you are watching a lyric soprano trying to get through a Mozart aria while suffering from the hiccups.

The performances were also not fluid, and this also seems to relate to the “choppy” nature of the production. Characters operated often on two levels, either intense anger or intense sadness. There was very little in the middle. Jefferson, the convicted man, often verged on melodrama, making his performance at times almost comical. There were obvious line fumbles and other mistakes that also took the audience out of the play. The best performance was given by Keith Patrick McCoy, a resident artist at Playhouse on the Square right now, who had a clearer view of the role he was playing. There were strong moments in his performance that really drew in the audience.

A Lesson Before Dying runs from February 10^th, and I would recommend it if you were able to use a CODA $5 ticket, but if you have to by the normal $20 student rate that the Circuit Playhouse requires, I would advise you to skip this one and wait for a future production.

Back from Break/ Chicago Madness

2008-01-14T07:25:00.000-08:00

After almost six weeks of no new posts, I have returned to the world wide web with new posts full of insights, humor, and honest searching. Breaks are always a wonderful way to refuel and help to rekindle the passion for what is everyday work of college life. My break had very little formal arts participation until the CODA crew went to Chicago to learn about the cultural innovation taking place in that city.Chicago is an amazing town. Even though we were there in a fairly "dead" time for arts happenings and in the coldest time of the year, the energy of the city is one of creativity and innovation. Instead of trying to present a daily play-by-play of our events, I will outline the events we participated in and offer some comments on those I found most meaningful.

Our events were well-planned and free time was organized well with our scheduled events. We met with Rhodes alumni living in the arts world, sharing conversation and dinners together. We went on tours of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Harris Theatre, and all of Millennium Park. We met with some of the leaders in the Department of Cultural Affairs and with the retired CEO of the Sara Lee Corporation, Rhodes Alumni, and arts advocate John Bryan. In my free time I went to see a play at the Steppenwolf Theatre, visited the Museum of Contemporary arts, and as a finale to our trip, the group went to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, a show of improv/sketch comedy/poignant social commentary smashed into 30 plays presented in 60 minutes.

For this entry, though, I wish to highlight two of these events, our tour of Millennium Park and our visit with John Bryan, to events that are very closely linked. Mr. Bryan was the chief fundraiser for the Millennium Park project, helping to raise $250 million dollars in private donations for the creation of a public park that was make classical music and visual arts available to all Chicagoans for free.

Millennium Park is an amazing piece of innovation. Located off of Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, this beautiful park used to a rail yard. It actually still is a train station and a parking garage, but these are now locate underground, with the park positioned above them. With the depth of soil in the park, trees, grass, and other plants can grow and thrive not only provide aesthetic beauty but also an environmentally conscious "green roof" above the transportation station below.

The park consists of the the Harris Theatre, which is an underground theatre used for dance and music performances, as well as the Pritzker Pavilion, an outdoor playing space for concerts. Speakers are strategically placed on a lawn that will accommodate up to 7000 people. In the summer, the Chicago symphony plays here regularly, and the events are free to the public. Designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, the park is not only practical but also the cutting edge in modern architecture.
Around the performance spaces are other visual arts creations such as the Crown Fountain and the new symbol of Chicago, Anish Kapoor's "Could Gate," lovingly called "the Bean" by locals. The park is free to the public and provides all ages, genders, racial backgrounds to gather around the visual, interactive arts, musical presentations, and active recreation. This park is an amazingly innovative way of engaging people with the arts, taking them off of an elitist pedestal and giving to the people.

As part of this experience, we had the opportunity to meet with Mr. John Bryan, the chief fundraiser for this massive project. Going to the home of the Bryan's was an artistic experience in itself, but I'll let others speak of his collection. Instead, I want to share some of his insights into how to create this communal sense of responsibility for bringing about artistic creation to communities.

Mr. Bryan first gives credit to his friend, Mayor Daley of Chicago. Civic leaders are invaluable to artistic creation, and Mr. Bryan was given the permission of the mayor to take on this project without much bureaucratic interference. With that permission, Mr. Bryan decided to play to the ego of potential contributors, creating a "exclusive" club of donors required to give at least $1 million dollars. By subtly mentioning what he, Mr. Bryan, was contributing he could call on his business acquaintances to contribute as well. By having a wide base of potential donors, he could play to the personality quirks of each person, offering some the "immortality" of having something named for them while others would be more inclined for the social impact of the park.

What I learned from viewing this park and meeting the chief fundraiser is the impact one person really can make on his community and the necessary elements that create that kind of influence. First, civic leaders are important to any artistic endeavor. Without the support of the local government, artistic creation is going to be difficult. Connections with people with money is also important. The more influential people you know, the more influence you have. Finally, and most importantly, is if the project you propose is one that can bring people together, can enrich the lives of the people of your city, and provide both a more joyous lifestyle and economic revitalization for the community, it is a project that must be completed.

The Convergence

2007-11-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

What in the world is a person thinking to double major in Theatre and Religious Studies while participating in a scholarship program like CODA? I hope what I post below will help bring some light to this issue. I am applying to attend seminary in the fall of 2008. As I have told people this during my college time, they reply with one of two responses:

1) Having that theatre background will certainly help you as a preacher.
2) Those are certainly two very different subjects.

I like to believe, though, that neither of these responses is correct. I see a great parallel between the goals of theatre and the purposes of religious ritual. Below I have posted my scholarship essay for Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. The question I have answered is: What are your convictions about one significant issue facing the church and/or society? How might the church make a faithful response to that issue?

Worship: Community Theatre

American churches have throughout their history been faced with the reality that in order for their communities to flourish, they must “compete” for followers. Religion must be attractive, more attractive than alternative activities in which people could engage. This “free market” religious culture, however, has led to a crisis in the Christian community. Seeking to lure people into our churches, we have sacrificed the language of our faith, devaluing the power and majesty of God and supporting the commercial, consumer culture that surrounds us. I believe that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) can respond with creativity to reinvigorate the language of faith, and in doing this can reinforce the responsibility and commitment required to be a member of Christ’s church.

The language of the church is vitally important in our practice of Christian worship. How we speak of God and celebrate our relationship with Jesus Christ provide a foundation for our faith. Our culture continues to bombard us with images on television and the internet. We desire enjoyments that come at a click of a button or by dialing the telephone. We continually grow impatient and lackadaisical in our pursuits. If what we need cannot be easily attained, we seek something else. Seeking to meet these ever-changing desires, churches sacrifice theological depth and active worship engagement for a “consumer service” that relies on elements of popular entertainment to keep the attention of the congregation. I believe the reformed heritage of the Presbyterian Church (USA) uniquely prepares us to consider new ways of engaging our congregations in worship and maintaining the language of our faith.

Worship in the Presbyterian tradition has always been central to the life of the church body. Even amidst our modern culture and our technology, I believe that the Presbyterian Church possesses the creativity and the knowledge to maintain the majestic language of worship. There are several ways we can reinvigorate our worship so that the people who enter our churches see a vibrant body, seeking to commune with each other and with God. In his book John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait, William Bouwsma examines Calvin’s views on worship, and I believe his words speak to our worship today. Calvin believes that worship should involve the whole person. He particularly celebrates King David’s dance before the Ark of the Covenant as an example of the whole person engaging in worship. He states that we should, like David, “exercise ourselves and employ all our senses, and our feet, and our hands, and our arms, and all the rest, so that everything is put in the service of God and magnifies him” (Bouwsma 225).

The worship of our tradition, however, has moved away from Calvin’s original thoughts on the active participation of all people. Our worship tends to be rather stoic compared to Calvin’s view. Call and response prayers, reciting creeds, and hymn-singing are the primary ways in which the whole body of believers engages together. Now Calvin recognized that not all people worship most fully when dancing like David. Not being in the culture of the Hebrew people, we must discover new ways to engage the senses in our worship. When we find ways to utilize touch, taste, and smell as well as seeing and hearing, we can create a community actively engaged throughout the worship process, recognizing their relationships with each other and their need to respond to God’s call.

A more sensory practice of worship participation speaks to the Reformed belief about worship, that God is the audience and we are the performers. Soren Kierkegaard wrote in depth on this subject, talking about God as the “critical theatre-goer who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to.” In this case “the listener ... is the actor, who in all truth acts before God” (Kierkegaard 181). Kierkegaard is correct in his theatrical imagery of worship. He defines the theatrical role of the congregation as active listening before God. In our modern culture, however, many people feel connected when they “do” something. Understanding that God is the audience is not enough for a people of “doers.” We desire ways to express our love, our repentance, our response to God’s word actively in worship.

As a theatre major, I relate well to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the theatre of worship. I believe the metaphor speaks even more deeply. Anyone who studies theatre or participates in it seriously understands how much an actor must prepare before picking up a script. He must have the training and the vocal and physical technique required to engage the text. Once given the text, he breaks it down, discovers his character, and then begins to rehearse with others, always allowing for his role to change and grow. The actor prepares for weeks before presenting his work for an audience. If we believe that worship is a drama presented to God by the congregation and the worship leaders, we must recognize the necessity to prepare the community for the performance.

Recognizing that the bulletin is the “script” for the service, we must take the time outside of worship to study our “text.” We must examine the prayers and the creeds used in the service. We must familiarize ourselves with the hymns and practice them before our performance for God. This can occur through a variety of study classes on worship participation. Active participation of members, though, also requires their aid in crafting the service. We must call on our participants, young and old, to join with our pastors and music leaders to write prayers that come from the people and are read by the people. We must look for ways to engage the biblical text actively in worship that involves more than a “lay reader.” Making worship the responsibility of the community requires that we study the language of our faith and look for new ways to express what we believe about God.

When we engage the body of believers in our worship, everyone sees that he or she has something “at stake” in the worship process. Active engagement also helps us to understand the importance of worship for our daily life of faith. Joining in community to experience the sacred is a rare occasion in our modern culture that celebrates individualism. We need this time of community, and we long to participate actively in it. When we do this, we educate our people in the language of our faith, we place God at the center of our worship and our lives, and we reinforce that we can only be Christians in community, worshiping and serving God together.

Rhodes Radio

2007-11-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

Rhodes has a radio station! This initiative started almost two years ago, and was originally going to be a major CODA project. After having run into some very difficult barriers, we had to drop the project from the large agenda the program attempts to carry out. Some dedicated students, however, and the Rhodes Activities Board picked up the pieces and have assembled an online radio station for the college. I've listened to it briefly, and some of the material is pretty good. My belief is that as it gains in popularity, the quality of programming will also continue to improve. Either way, it is certainly exciting that a tiny college like Rhodes can now broadcast things to the world.

The live audio stream is kind of hard to access, so I will try to explain how to do it. Go to www.rhodesradio.org. At the bottom of the screen are posted several different audio players. Click on the play you use most often. Make sure you save the file to your desktop. To access the radio, then, right-click on the file on your desktop and drag your mouse over the "open with" option. Then select your player. When you do this one time, it should save it in your library so that you can continue the stream whenever you wish. Hopefully they can make this process a little easier soon.

Rocky Horror Success

2007-11-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

So Rocky Horror is over. A successful run to say the least. We sold out every performance, bringing in more than 1000 people into the McCoy Theatre. Half of those numbers were students, 504. This data was collected from the ticket stubs from the show, so there is some margin of error in the calculation, but we have a fairly good reason to believe that these are pretty accurate.

So what is it about this show that made it a success? Was Rhodes College yearning to see men in high heels and fishnet hosiery strutting around on stage singing rock n roll music? We discussed this in two meetings I've had over the past three days and have come up with some fairly interesting ideas. Several people mentioned Dylan Hunter's (Frank 'n Furter) legs. While fun, this isn't something we can continually try to utilize in the future as Dylan is a senior this year and can't flash a leg from behind a curtain at every show from now until eternity.

More seriously we discussed the attraction of a large cast, the show being a musical, and the large amount of movement and high energy in the production. I had several people tell me they thought the show was "awesome" but had absolutely no idea what the plot was. From a Rocky Horror standpoint, that's perfection. People coming and having a good time; that's the entire purpose of this kind of show.

A more universal aspect, however, is the pre-show hype that Rocky was blessed with. You could hear people on campus two weeks before opening saying anything from, "Why would they want to do that show?" to "I'm so excited about Rocky Horror this year; I LOVE the movie!" This resulted in people being turned away at the door on opening night and coming back over and over until they could get in. This pre-show buzz, if it can be replicated, provides a vital element to creating a theatre of "Standing Room Only."

The second, obviously, is that the actual production lives up to the hype. If the show flops, everyone leaves disappointed and tells their friends to stay away. Instead, people told their friends that they "had to see it." There's nothing that a team like ours can do to ensure that the quality of a production will live up to the hype.

But we do have a say about hype. We can find new and creative ways to try to raise awareness of upcoming productions that aren't as "doomed for success" as Rocky was. We must find ways to pique the interest of the campus community so that every show is being discussed days before the first curtain speech is offered. This is our mission, and the success of Rocky Horror has given us reason to be hopeful.

CODA Symposium Evaluation

2007-10-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

The CODA New Directions conference was hosted at Rhodes last Thursday and it was a very successful day. The CODA scholars gathered at 7:00 a.m. to prepare for the event that began at 9:00. I had the privilege of hearing several presentations as well as serving on a panel about the value of creative campuses. It was very nerve-racking to be placed in front of an audience of people desiring to learn how to cultivate creativity in and around Memphis. I certainly consider myself no authority on this topic, as were the other panelists, including the chairperson of the Arts Memphis organization, executive directors of the Memphis Symphony and Opera Memphis, and a professor from the Memphis College of Art. But I was willing to give it a chance.

Lauren Kennedy, the other senior CODA scholar, was also supposed to serve on this panel, but due to a family emergency she had to drive to Dallas that morning, leaving me as the only current college student for a panel discussion on "creative campuses." The discussion was facilitated by Dr. Steven Tepper, the assistant director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. His current work centers on the role creativity plays in the importance of the college experience, and how the creativity fostered by a college or university can impact the city of which it is a part.

Dr. Tepper had sent us a series of questions about this topic, the first of which dealt with "signs of cultural vitality" in your city and how colleges and universities can contribute to creating this vitality. The other members of the panels spoke eloquently, but seemed to speak from a more "political" approach than I was expecting. By "political" I mean they reacted like politicians in a debate, re-working the question posed to speak on what they wish to articulate. Many of the talks centered on how their organization is working to creative more cultural vitality in Memphis, but very rarely did they mention how an institution like Rhodes could help to create that. Nor did they provide much insight into Dr. Tepper's question about what they would like the cultural landscape of Memphis to look like in ten years.

Using what we've discussed in CODA and what I've witnessed in our trips to New York and San Francisco, I tried to articulate what I understand to be cultural vitality. In order for a city to have a thriving cultural landscape there must be a sense of "communal ownership." This must be "our" city. While Memphis has many bohemian districts that cultivate new arts and many established arts like the symphony and opera, what it lacks is this communal ownership of the city. The suburban sprawl has people living 40 miles from each other and calling themselves Memphians. Some Memphians avoid going "downtown" at all costs. A driving mentality of many citizens deals with three private questions: Am I safe? Are my children in a good school? and do I have a good job? If the answers to these three questions are "yes," then many people are satisfied.

So what can a college do to create a communal ownership of a city like Memphis? Through partnerships like those that the McCoy cultivates with Playhouse on the Square, through partnerships of the Rhodes Singers and the Memphis symphony, Idlewild Presbyterian Church, and other organizations. It's through CODA initiatives that bring artists to campus for talks and master classes. When you introduce passionate, intelligent, driven students into the world of cultural policy, they can bring about change. They will introduce new ideas that come from a college experience that encourages taking risks.

I believe that the symposium was a success, and I hope everyone learned as much about new methods of creating a culturally thriving city as I did.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

2007-10-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

So last week was the first experiment of the newly-formed Standing Room Only. We showed the film Curse of the Demon as a promotion and educational opportunity for students to gain some cultural knowledge into what exactly they're coming to see when they come to the Rocky Horror Show at Rhodes. Overall, we were pleased with the event.

Our first setback, however, came from the weather. There is always a danger of trying to host something outside, which we wished to do. We had reserved the Rhodes ampitheatre for the film, but right at 7:20, a giant deluge of rain soaked the campus. Luckily, we had decided literally minutes before this to move the event into our backup location, one of the lecture halls of the Biology building. I must praise the members of Standing Room Only for their amazing flexibility in this time. I've seen genuine freak-outs when events don't operate according to plan. This team, however, moved quickly, swiftly, and created a successful event out of probable chaos.

Thanks to Robert Shreve, the president of the Alpha Tao Omega Fraternity and various word-of-mouth advertising (and facebook invites and posters), we had an audience of around 40 people. About 15 of these individuals were somehow connected to the Rocky Horror Show, and the other 25 were outside guests. With the terrible weather and the fact that it was the Thursday after Fall Break, we were very pleased with this. In the future, however, it would be better when organizing these events to pick a different day. Two days after a student holiday makes it difficult to drum up an audience.

Chris Davis, the director of Rocky, gave a 10 to 15 minute presentation about the "mind candy" that is the Rocky Horror Show and how its inspiration came partly from the B-Movies of Hollywood, particularly those of the horror and science fiction varieties. You can watch a short part of his talk by clicking on the Youtube link.He made clear the reference to different elements of these films that can be seen in Curse of the Demon that Rocky tends to mock in various ways.

Overall the first event went well. My only concern was the result of an oversight on my part. When telling the cast about this movie night, I never expressly mentioned the overall purpose of these kind of events. The whole purpose of this experiment is to make the theatre at Rhodes more accessible to new potential audience members. And we succeeded in attracting these kinds of members. In order for an event like this be work correctly, though, those in attendance must feel comfortable, they must relax, they must be able to receive what the cast/artist/musician has prepared.

The "theatre kids" were certainly comfortable among their peers, but their rather boisterous laughter and the sharing of inside jokes or the reciting of lines from the show at various moments in the movie made the "non theatre kids" uncomfortable. And I fault myself for this. I never made it clear to those of the inner circle of theatre supporters that we must intentionally create a comfortable environment for these kinds of endeavors.

This being said, the evening was a huge success, and I am very pleased with how everything turned out. Now for the final promotions before opening night on Halloween!!

Homemade Theatre Podcast

2007-10-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

For anyone interested, professor Dave Mason of the Theatre Department at Rhodes has, with the help of students, created a podcast that you can listen to. The content is made up of radio sketch comedy pieces interspersed with music from garageband.com (it is legal). In future "episodes," weekly arts updates, interviews with artists and directors, and other interest things will be posted. If you use itunes, do a search for "homemade podcast" and look for the image featured in this article. Otherwise go to the website: http://yavanika.org/homemadetheatre and you can access the episodes from there. More interest and input is welcome, so contact me if you are a Rhodes-affiliated person and wish to participate in this.

Science Fiction Night

2007-10-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

Standing Room Only is the name of the new organization that I have created to help the McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College promote and educate students in theatre at Rhodes. The first show of this season is the Rocky Horror Show, which most likely will not be difficult to promote. You cannot, however, take this for granted. Most students my age have not attended the midnight showings of the film nor know every single call line. They didn't live through the early science fiction and horror movies that Rocky Horror pokes fun of. This was the starting place for our team with this show.

To educate and promote, therefore, we're hosting a movie night in the ampitheatre of the college on Thursday, October 18 at 7:30. The director of our production, Chris Davis, will speak about our production and its relation to these early horror and science fiction films, and then we're going to show "Curse of the Demon," one of the songs referenced in the opening number of Rocky Horror, "Science Fiction/Double Feature" (Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes and passing them used lots of skill).

We're having free popcorn and inviting all of campus to attend. This event functions to educate our audience on the context in which the original production was created and to help them better understand what the Rhodes production is doing when referencing the terrible horror films of our generation.

Working with Rhodes Activities Board, we will be promoting the evening through e-mail, posters, and facebook fliers. We have also scheduled meetings with the presidents of the various Greek organizations on campus to gain their support. As I was told at a recent CODA meeting, if you can make members of your target audience feel like they have something at stake in the project, you are more likely to create something that will be more widely supported. By requesting the support of these organizations, we have the opportunity to bring students into the theatre who previously have been uninvolved.

Bodega

2007-09-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

Whether you're into "traditional" Scottish music or not, if you have the chance to see the group Bodega group perform, you really should go. I had the privilege of seeing them perform at Evergreen Presbyterian Church as part of their annual Clanjamfry festival. This five-member group and teenagers uses traditional Celtic instruments, but put their unique flare and rock style into it. The instruments include fiddles, a harp, an accordian, guitars, electric bass, flute, and bagpipe.

The group has been touring most of the summer in Italy and America and will return to University soon. If you're in Scotland, check them out, or if you hear they're coming anywhere near you, be sure and go!

It's About Your Essence

2007-09-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

Last week at Rhodes was the August Wilson celebration, and I had the privilege of seeing Charles S. Dutton perform. Wilson was African-American playwright raised in Pittsburgh wrote a ten play cycle, with each play set in his hometown (appropriately named the Pittsburgh Cycle). Each one of these works describes the lives of African Americans in that decade, and Dutton has interpreted many of Wilson's characters in cities throughout the world.

Dutton's one-man show Goodnight Mr. Wilson, is a testament to the work of Wilson, as he works through the characters in five of the ten play cycle. I don't particularly want to talk about his stage performance, however; I would rather discuss what I observed of him around the theatre and in the conversations he had with the audience.

I was in the theatre the first night he was in Memphis and sort of poked my head around the door and watched him doing his warm ups. He was marking the show, putting on the different hats and delivering some of the lines. With no one in the theatre, his intensity and his attention to detail were incredible. And he preached this kind of dedication. In his after-show talk with the audience he described that the "great" actors, those who thrive in their work, put this attention into all parts of their performance. You must always be operating at the highest level from the very first performance; you must possess the technique to help you to get through those nights when you aren't "feeling it," and you have to be rehearsed well enough and live in the character enough that you give the same performance regardless of the time of day or the crowd.

His best explanation of this was after he had completed his monologues during his performance and took a break to talk with the audience about the various characters. He talked about the business of acting, how it isn't to be treated as some means of fame and glory; "if you want that, get in line," he said. Instead, it's about presenting a message, it's about filling a need in your life to perform, to give yourself to an audience. "Every time you step off stage," Dutton said, "you have to leave some of your essence out there in the character." That's what the great actors do, and that is what is required for the works of playwrights such as August Wilson.

Interdisciplinary Study

2007-09-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

Today I had the opportunity to have lunch with Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music. He is on a book tour across the country and stopped in Memphis, and I was invited by Dr. Sharp, the Dean of the Fine Arts at Rhodes, to come to a lunch with him.

Before the lunch I had the opportunity to read some of Dr. Levitin's book, and it is a fascinating read. He discusses various neurological discoveries related to music and perception by the brain. Which cortex is influenced by different pitches, rhythms, and alterations? How can people with no professional training still be expert listeners in music? Levitin discusses these and various other questions.

In a chapter dedicated to "expertise" in the musical field, Levitin discusses what makes people experts in their musical field. Is it the countless hours of practice? He confirms that this is necessary. Is it training? Yes says that this is true as well. But, Levitin admits, many people have these parts of the puzzle solved. How is it then, that certain people have that "star quality" that others do not? His answer is in the expressiveness of their performance, where they emphasize certain notes, make phrases, work with silence. It is these elements, not included in the score, that separate the great players from the rest.

What I feel Levitin left me, however, is a renewed hope of the arts, generally speaking, being considered a valid field of study in other departments. Before becoming a leading scholar in music and the brain, Levitin was in a rock band, a common guy. Today at lunch I was able to participate in a discussion with professors of art history, theatre, philosophy, music, and neuroscience. I was able to learn from people in disciplines I normally would have nothing to do with in a discussion of the arts. When we can make the arts part of the study of other fields of research and education, we can validate its worth in an academic way. Daniel Levitin does this in This is Your Brain on Music.

You Have to Keep your Ears Open

2007-09-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our first meeting for the Rocky Horror Show to be produced at Rhodes College, opening on Halloween night. Read thrus are always fairly boring (and I often find them rather unhelpful), but it is often at this opening meeting that the director shares some insight into his or her goals with this particular production. If our education and promotion team decides this evening to begin our work for Rocky Horror, I already have some insight into where to begin.

Now, you're probably thinking, "what in the world do I need to know for the Rocky Horror Show other than to wear my tightest leather pants and facepaint?" Well there actually is something. The original production of this musical incorporates many references to pop culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From the references in Science Fiction/Double Feature to particular songs and characters, the play is meant to speak to these "trends" of the time. In many ways it mocks them.

This is an important understanding for an audience member to have. Chris Davis, the director of this production, does not wish simply to reproduce a satiric understanding of bad science fiction and horror movies from the 1970s, there have been plenty of bad movies and television shows since then that we might reference. However, these references will be subtle, and it will take an audience member prepared to look for these if he or she wishes to have the full experience of the production.

So where do you begin? Let's start with the characters, particularly Brad and Janet. This entire play is intentionally full of "bad" acting (which can be more of a challenge than you think). It utilizes the emotions of a soap opera mixed with Star Trek, the 12th generation. Yesterday Davis mentioned a particular artist who visually represents the emotional scale of Rocky Horror, Roy Lichtenstein. Deeply influenced by soap opera and comic books, Lichtenstein's work takes seemingly ordinary situations and intensifies them to "high drama." It is this way that the characters live in this play. Could these kinds of images help in the visual promotion of this play?

Another example comes in the song "I Can Make You a Man." In this song, Frank describes to Brad and Janet how in just a week's time he can make a man with the "Charles Atlas seal of approval." Who is Charles Atlas? A valid question an audience member might consider. Now comic book fans might understand this reference, but the common audience member probably won't. O'Brien (the play's author) is referencing a particular advertisement from comic books of the 70s.

Charles Atlas workouts can help make a wimpy kind into the hunk of the beach. Useful to know if you want to get the joke and understand the satire here. How can we teach Rhodes students (most of whom I would presume don't read comic books) to get these references? More on that later.

Team-Building

2007-09-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

For the first time, team yet-to-be-named met in the classroom of the McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College to discuss the best implementation of the project I have designed to lead during my senior year. I will briefly describe our mission below, but first I must provide some background information.

The McCoy Theatre is the campus-run theatre at Rhodes. During its twenty-seven year history, the theatre has produced some challenging and controversial material. And this has been intentional. It comes from a faculty and student understanding that the theatre exists not only as a means of entertainment or as a distraction from everyday life. Instead, it is provides new perspectives for looking at everyday life. Theatre challenges our prejudices, disrupts comfort, raises questions about personal and societal identity. To put it more bluntly, theatre provides a means of seeking truth.

Why would a college theatre opt to pursue this more challenging route of producing theatre? Part of the reason comes from being a part of a liberal arts campus. The contemporary philosopher William Nord describes two kinds of liberal arts education; Rhodes College fits into the second category, a tradition that "takes as its patron saint Socrates, and it is moved by the continuing search for truth. It values free, reasoned inquiry and tolerance; its is skeptical." A campus community designed around these principles inherently requires a theatre that aids its larger purpose of seeking truth.

Unfortunately, students don't necessarily see attendance at plays or theatrical discussion groups as an extention of the liberal arts system of which they are a part. The production of plays is outside the academic realm; it is extracurricular, separating it from the larger curricular goals of the college. My senior project is an effort to change that attitude.

I have asked a team of five- Lindsay Johnson, Jessica Batey, Katharine Gentsch, Luke Branim, and Kevin Collier- to help me in this endeavor. This capable, hopeful, and insightful team will work on methods to help educate students at Rhodes to envision theatre as an extension of their education, as something in which they must participate in order to fully experience their time at Rhodes. Our goals, therefore, are two-fold: Education and Promotion.

In our first meeting, ideas for promotion were plentiful, including visual reminders on campus, casts wearing their costumes on opening day, scenes from the show being performed on campus, etc. The educational side, however, was met with some ambivalence. It was my feeling that some of the team members are skeptical as to how possible it is that we can expand the understanding of theatre of the average Rhodes student. I plan on convincing them of this, though; we can make it work!

My inspiration for this education process comes from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, California. For each of their productions they provide a series of essays, lectures, and discussions to give their audience insight into the meaning and message of the production. If we can provide this information for the mainstage shows at the McCoy each year as well as potential discussion groups and talks with cast, directors, and designers, Rhodes students will graduate with a new understanding of theatre, a passion for the challenges it raises, and they will seek this in whatever community they enter.

The challenge I posed at the end of the meeting was for us to ponder where exactly to begin. How will we promote these educational opportunities, making them appealing to students already bogged down in schoolwork? How will we organize a play promotion system that can be codified into a series of steps for future students (and other theatres) to utilize? That comes next week (as does a name for our team).

A Post-Modern Play

2007-08-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

Word to any future theatre-goers: if you see the name "Edward Albee" on a poster for an upcoming play, you probably aren't going to experience some sappy romantic comedy, journey through a super-human epic, or even find a particularly tangible plot line. Albee helps define a post-modern look at the theatre, where the action on the stage becomes secondary to the meaning conveyed by the text and by the actors.

While abroad last semester, I saw Albee's play The Lady from Dubuque in London. The play takes place in a living room and deals with the subject of death and the meaning of life. These themes are discussed through heated party language and the cries of pain from a cancer-ridden woman and her care-taking husband. It's powerful. At the intermission an elderly American couple stood up in front of me. The wife stretched her arms over her head and commented to her husband, "We should have gone to a musical."

Last weekend in Memphis, I went to see Albee's classic, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Circuit Playhouse. Much along the lines of Lady, the general action of this play comes secondary to the almost philosophical musings of the characters throughout the journey, as we deal with reality verses illusion, the dangers of lust for power, and the secrets hidden in every relationship. I thought the production was craftily done. The quiet intensity of some moments and the bawdy truthfulness of others aided in shortening what could have felt like a marathon of an evening (as the play is almost three hours in length).

My opinion differs greatly from that of Christopher Blank of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. I encourage you to read his review of this production. Maybe it is simply because this was my first experience seeing this play performed that Mr. Blank and I differ in our opinions. I can compliment him, however, on understanding Albee's overall message, helping to alert potential audiences of the thematic elements of the play so that they enter the space in an appropriate mindset to receive what the cast, directors, and crew have prepared to share with them. To put it more simply, the play is Who's Afraid of Viriginia Woolf, not The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf.

Is it possible for the average audience member to attend a play like Albee's unawares of what they are about to participate in and leave feeling anything other than annoyance at how late it is? Are the emotions of the play enough to sustain the playgoer so that he reminds in the moment with the actors and not looking at his watch? This is possible even when the play is done well. And it is because of this that we must continue to educate our potential and current audiences, to promote questioning and yearning, to foster an attitude of seekership when coming to the theatre.

America the Theatrical

2007-08-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

"There is no literary enjoyment more within the reach of the crowd than those one experiences in sight of the stage. Neither preparation nor study is necessary to feel them. They seize you in the midst of your preoccupations and your ignorance. When love of the pleasures of the mind, still half coarse, begins to penetrate a class of citizens, it immediately drives them toward the theater."
-Alexis de Tocqueville

In his defining work Democracy in America, there hardly appears to be any subject of American life that Alexis de Tocqueville does not address. After spending ample time on the subjects of government, the separation of powers, the capitalist economy, and American freedom and equality, Tocqueville addresses the arts in America. While he finds pleasure in all the forms of art- visual, musical, and theatrical- it is the realm of theatre that he finds most fitting for democratic peoples.

The quote to open this entry helps to explain this. Theatre in democratic nations is not so much an intellectual as an emotional endeavor. Because of this, it speaks more universally, from the most educated noble to the poor peasant. It is also the most democratic art form in that the playwright, actor, and directors cannot produce a play simply for one person, as can be done with particular musical and visual arts expressions. Plays must satisfy a large audience; theatre necessitates that audience or else it cannot exist. In this way, the people dictate what is performed for them.

Tocqueville later ponders, however, that despite an increase in the theatrical spectacles of American culture over the forty or so years since the ratification of the Constitution (Tocqueville was writing in 1830), "the population still indulges in this genre of amusement only with extreme restraint." He goes on to offer possible reasons for this including the Puritan heritage of early America, the lack of political catastrophes that inspire great theatrical rebellion, the working spirit of Americans whose only rest is on a day they spend worshiping God.

Let me jump to the present. I am a student at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and part of a program called the Center for Outreach in Development of the Arts. As a senior this year, I have been charged with creating a new program for the college or community that fits into the mission of CODA - to prepare undergraduate students in the principles of aesthetics, cultural policy and professional practice with which the arts invigorate culture and enlighten lives. CODA works creatively with Rhodes College faculty, staff, and its network of arts leaders throughout the region and beyond to translate the ideals embodied in the fine arts into an integral part of student learning and living.

Having read Tocqueville in the last five months, I felt as though his words on the theatre still resonate, at least on my small liberal arts campus, a place that prides itself on cultivating the "pleasures of the mind." We, of all places, should have a student body that is theatrically literate and supportive of our plays. It is my mission this year, therefore, to discover how we can broaden the theatrical perspective of our student body and create a campus climate where we seek "mind pleasures" as well as the "heart emotions." As this blog continues, I will chart my path through this journey, along with several detours about particular arts events and seminars in which I participate.

Join me, and together we'll seek those pleasures of the mind together.