Old News

Remember when you were a kid, and you got that new toy for Christmas? Remember how you didn’t want to do anything but play with it all day long – and maybe sleep with it, too? Remember the way it seemed like nothing else would ever be as fun or exciting as that new toy?

Then, remember how you’d forgotten it by the middle of January?

Time to confess, friends and neighbors – that’s how I’m feeling about this blog right now. It’s been two months since I started writing it, and things have really changed. In those first few weeks I was on every day for hours at a time, writing posts, tinkering with layout, reading the forums and learning everything I could about what it meant to blog. I learned quite a bit, actually – not bad for someone who came into this with no clear idea of what a blog was.

Then came December, and I was busy preparing for Christmas, so of course I didn’t spend as much time on the site as I had before. But now it’s January. Christmas is long past, but I still don’t have the drive to be on here every day. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not planning to let the blog die. I still have things to say. I expect I’ll say them once or twice a week.

Time for the deep thoughts (you knew they were coming, right?) Remember when you first gave your life to Jesus, and you didn’t want to do anything but sit with Him all day long? Remember how you’d read the Bible for hours at a time, marvelling at everything you learned? Remember how you couldn’t imagine anything ever being more exciting than Him?

Then time went by, and Jesus got old. You got used to Him. Sure, He was good to have around – wouldn’t want to return Him – but He was one of several things in your life, rather than the only thing.

I think to some degree that’s inevitable. We can’t live constantly at a fever-pitch about anything, or our heads would explode. But if there’s anything worth recapturing excitement about, it’s Jesus. Look at Him with fresh eyes. Read a less-familiar Bible passage, and see something new about Him. Remember why it knocked you out when you first met Him.

Don’t let your Christmas present get old by the middle of January.

The “Wow” Factor

In 1984 (the actual year, not the novel) my parents took my brother and me to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Perhaps because we took a day off from our Disney trip to do it, or perhaps because people in 1984 weren’t as keen to grab kids’ attention with the “wow” factor, or perhaps both, I remember it as one of the most boring days of my life. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when my husband and I took our son to Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday.

May I just say – Wow!

They had lots of stuff aimed at grabbing kids’ attention, and Nathan had a blast (pun definitely intended). And it was interesting to see how the astronauts live on the space station without gravity. All of it was fascinating, but what really grabbed me and won’t let go was the Saturn V rocket. This was an actual rocket of the type used to travel to the moon, but it had never been used. Eventually they built a temperature-controlled shed around it to preserve it and left it for tourists to look at.

Have you ever stood beside a rocket? If not, you cannot begin to imagine the size. Even if you’ve seen them on TV and think you understand that they’re big, until you’ve stood beside it, you cannot begin to imagine what “big” means. Our tour guide had said ahead of time, “I guarantee when you step into the shed, your first words will be something along the lines of, ‘Oh my goodness.’” I thought, Well, now that you’ve warned us, that won’t be true. But it was true. I had determined I wouldn’t be shocked, just to prove him wrong, but the words were jerked out of me without my consent.

The size was amazing enough, but even more incredible was the proportionately tiny space allocated for the astronauts. They were squeezed into a triangular cone on top of something like 350 feet of fuel tanks. That cone was the only part of the rocket which would return to earth – the rest was jettisoned after the fuel was burned.

Anyone who knows me knows I think more than is good for me, so naturally I’ve been thinking too much about the symbolism of that rocket. (I swear, this stuff just comes to me; I don’t dig for it!)

I thought I’d been prepared for the size of the rocket, but when I stood next to it, the true, overwhelming size of it blew me away. It was huger than I ever could have imagined. I think when we come one day into the presence of God, that will be our reaction. We may talk, here on earth, of how big He is, and how overwhelming, but we can’t begin to imagine what that means. No amount of knowledge will ever prepare us for that moment when we step into His presence and simply have to say “Wow!” (Or think it, since the wow may be so huge we’re beyond speech.)

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how tiny the astronauts’ space was compared to all the fuel it took to get them where they were going. It wouldn’t have been comfortable. It may have seemed like they could take over more of the space and stretch out a little. Of course, they didn’t do that, because they wouldn’t have reached the moon without all that space for fuel. And that’s how it is for us, too. It’s not too comfortable to make ourselves decrease so God can increase in us, but if we start stretching out, if we try to take space back from Him, we won’t have the fuel to get where we’re going.

I realize it’s a stretch as an analogy, but it shows me again how, when God is first in your life, everything points to Him, whether it’s intended that way or not. That’s a big wow factor.

Pre-Casting is a No-No

When I worked in community theater, nothing made me more mad than the feeling that I didn’t even have a shot at the part I wanted, no matter how great an audition I gave, because I didn’t know the director. I moaned to my husband on several occasions how unfair it was that the same people got the good parts, over and over.

Now I’m seeing things from the other side of the footlights, and I don’t like what I see.

The crux of the matter is that some degree of pre-casting is inevitable, especially in my situation, when I pretty much know who’s going to show up for auditions. Do I have a cast set in stone, despite the fact that auditions are two days away? No – absolutely not. Do I have a fairly strong suspicion of how things will go? I have to say yes.

I had a scary, eye-opening experience last week to show me how careful I have to be in regard to pre-casting. One of my experienced actors called to tell me he would be out of town and miss a week and a half of rehearsals near the beginning of the rehearsal period. Did I still want him to audition? I told him yes, hung up the phone, then began trying to rearrange the rehearsal schedule so that “his character” wouldn’t be scheduled as heavily during that time. I spent about five minutes working on that before I stopped, horror-struck at what I was doing. Auditions were still a week away. I shouldn’t have had any idea which was his character. 

I hate that. I feel like I’ve become every director I ever vilified. But here’s the thing – if I’ve worked with someone on a previous show I know so much more about him than an audition can ever show. I know whether or not he’ll be at rehearsals. I know how easily he memorizes. I know how he takes direction. No matter how talented someone appears in an audition, if I’ve never worked with him, he’s an unknown quantity. Similarly, if I have worked with someone and I know he’s the one who perpetually has rehearsal conflicts following him like a row of ducklings, I’m not going to give him a lead role, no matter how talented he is.

That doesn’t mean I never give the unknown actor a shot. As I’ve detailed elsewhere on this site, I never hold an audition for inclusion on the drama team. Anyone is welcome to come to our training sessions, which act both as teaching times and as an ongoing audition. I’ve also been known to cast someone without any previous experience. In Blackwell Inn  I cast a woman in a major role despite the fact she’d never done theater before. She did a great job. (Though she did make a major change to her hairstyle halfway through the rehearsal period – my fault – I forgot someone without experience wouldn’t realize what a no-no that was.)

I try very hard to remain open to new people, especially because we’re a ministry first and a performance group second. If someone wants to worship the Lord through drama, I want him to have that chance. I firmly believe someone with a desire to act and a willingness to work can learn to perform well. It’s a matter of whether I’m willing to take the extra time to work with him. That’s easier on some shows than others. On this show, which is going to be hard enough for my experienced actors, I’m less likely to cast someone new.

But I’m trying to stay open to the possibility. Really, really trying. There’s a line in the play when one character accuses another of believing only “nice” people can become Christians, that the door is closed to those who don’t fit her image. And I hear God whispering that to me – do I believe only those already in the drama team “in-crowd” deserve a chance to be a part of this worship experience? Can I close the door to someone God leads our way?

 The door is open. I’ve wedged my foot in there to make sure it stays that way. Auditions are Thursday night – we’ll see if anything unexpected happens.

Mystery

I always try to read one of the Gospels around this time of year – generally I’m working on the script for the Passion play, so it’s a necessity. No Passion play this year, so it’s just for myself. I decided this morning to read John, because I tend to neglect that one. I didn’t get very far, though. I had trouble getting past the first few verses.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then, later – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

I’m utterly knocked out by this. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I think we’ve heard those verses so often we just kind of skim them. They’re the intro, just something to get through before we start the story. But listen – the Word was made flesh. Jesus is the Word of God. What does that mean? I can’t answer. I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

I know that God’s Word is living. I know that God spoke and created everything. “Without him (the Word) nothing was made that has been made”. Is Jesus the Word that went out from God in creation? Is Jesus the Word God spoke when He crafted His salvation plan? Even the questions sound nonsensical – Jesus is a person, how can He be a word (or even a Word)? But that’s what it says – the Word became flesh.

It’s a mystery. A great, big, hugemongous God mystery. And when I bring it up to someone, with a tone of wonder and awe, I usually get blank stares in return.

We don’t tend to like mysteries, unless they’re the kind we can solve with the clues in 60 minutes, including commercial breaks. We like “Four steps to being a mature Christian”. We like “Twelve biblical steps to healing your hurts” – as if God can be broken down into easily digestible chunks, studied under a microscope, then fully understood and put to work for us. It’s not comfortable to say, “This is bigger than I am, and I will never, ever understand it”.

Look at Christmas (you can’t help but look at Christmas everywhere you go this time of year). Even forgetting the commercial side, even looking at it from a religious perspective, we try to make it a story we understand. A young mother, no room at the inn, a cute little baby born in a stable, and the angels sang and the shepherds came and the animals must not have smelled too bad.

Here’s what Christmas is about – the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. At Christmas, the Word of God became flesh. The Word who was with God and who was God. What does that mean?

I don’t know. And I’m okay with that. It helps me remember that God is God, and that I am human, and that there are some mysteries I’m not meant to understand.

Dream Come True

Have you ever had the extremely unsettling experience of realizing you’re living something you had dreamed a few days ago? I had that happen to me yesterday. Three days ago I dreamed that when I showed up for church Sunday morning, our interim worship pastor was stuck in an airport and couldn’t get home, so our bass player was leading worship instead. Then I showed up yesterday morning, and that was exactly what was happening. I can’t remember the last time I had such a feeling of unreality wash over me – as if I were going to wake up any minute. It didn’t help that I’m still feeling fairly sick, so everything’s kind of fuzzy, anyway.

The good news is that, though in the dream it went on to be a nightmare kind of service, with our drama sketch completely bombing and the congregation rushing out the doors due to a fire alarm, in real life the service went well. The drama was as close to perfect as possible. I was kind of nervous, because I had a new actor performing yesterday, and you just never know what to expect, but he was great. (Randy, you’re a keeper!) It dovetailed perfectly with the sermon, which is the goal but doesn’t always work.

Actually, my dream about Sunday wasn’t the first bit of weirdness connected to this sketch. I generally write our scripts, but this time we used one I found in a book. I had been trying to think of an idea to write about for this sermon I knew was coming up, and suddenly I remembered this sketch I had read and wondered if it would work. The next time I checked my e-mail, I had a note from our pastor, describing this sketch he had seen done and wondering if I could find it to go with his upcoming sermon. When I checked the time on the e-mail, we’d aparently been thinking about the script at the same time.

So between that and how well it went yesterday (I believe this is the first time we’ve ever done a drama without a single dropped line) I think God must have had plans for this. I don’t know if I’ll ever see the results, but I’m trusting that He used it. That’s why we do it, right? Offering ourselves to Him, trusting Him for the outcome, whether or not it’s something we ever see. I guess that’s why it’s an act of faith.