Yuletide

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary soul rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born!
O night, O holy night, O night divine!

Aside from "Old Rugged Cross" and "The Church's One Foundation," "O Holy Night" is probably the most difficult song for me to get through. For I am faced with the culmination of all that I love: Meaningful, nourishing theology; a sense of awe beyond explanation; and a tug at my heart strings that would upend a mastodon.

Contemporary Christian Music is full of commands to raise your hands and dance to the Lord... and many worship leaders will encourage worshippers to do so along with the music. I never feel led to participate. Catching rain and holding up the wall have never been my forte. For my money though...when the swell comes through from a huge organ in a cavernous sanctuary and the saints sing the same line they have sung since the middle of the nineteenth century and the command comes to fall on your knees and hear the angel voices...it is all I can do to not collapse and lift my arms and face skyward...hoping to even catch a glimpse in my minds eye of what those shepherds saw these many centuries ago.

For those of you who meander through here...of which I don't think there are a great deal....my prayer for you is that during this Christmas you do what you love, with whom you love...and that at least once, you cry. I hope you are moved to the depths of your soul by the power, the depth and breadth, and the tenderness of the love of God in Christ...and that you continue to sing the second and third verses through gritted jaw, worshipping in spirit and truth, as tears stream down your face in the light of a disseminated Advent Christ candle.

Merry Christmas...and to all, a very good night.

Puritan Pondering

Mention the word "Puritan" or, if you so dare, the adjective "puritanical." See what reactions you get. Most of them, I imagine, are quite uncomplimentary. Images of prudish people, rotting away in solemnity and pathos are no doubt at the front of everyone's mind. Eternally dogmatic, rigid to a fault and forever ready to burn a witch at any moment.

It is however a misunderstanding, I think, of early Puritans to view them as such. Conservative need not mean all that sometimes is intoned. After all, as C.S. Lewis reminded us, it was bishops, not beer that the Puritans minded.

So ... more so than being Puritans, they were Protestants...huh...I'll drink to that.

Thanks. Give Some.

Time for a Schaub

I have been an Atlanta Falcons fans since before Vick was even playing college ball. I remember Chris Chandler. I remember Jeff George. Heck, I even remember Chris Miller...but just barely. I remember the team before the Cardiac Kid came to down and ran us into the dirt. I remember the swell of hope I had when lil' Jimmy came in to bring us out of the slumps under the considerable nose of Mr. Blank-sent in to sniff out the problem. I thought things were looking up when we got this kid from VT...and then...the hype happened.

People ask me how I can hate Michael Vick. My answer? I'm not a Michael Vick fan. I'm a Falcons fan. And, in a Frostian way, that has made all the difference.

Oh, hello...

I saw someone today who I have not seen or spoken to in two years. He is a missionary in Costa Rica. I surprised him while he was speaking to some people and I came up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder...looked at him for a moment, he looked at me, as a stranger, and then recognition came into his eyes and we embraced, as brothers in Christ, glad to see each other again.

When I was fifteen, I wanted to be a youth minister. One TOD as an DCE in an ARP church cured me of that notion in a quick hurry. Alphabet soup aside, I realized that God had other plans for me, and it plunged me into a period of my life where I began to wonder who this "me" was. What made me "me?" A collection of flesh, blood, and organs to be sure...but "what" was I and how was I to interact with "what" other people where?

Twenty years ago I would never have imagined that I would be who I am today. That I would be influential in other people's lives to any degree....that someone would look at me and tell me that I was a father figure in their life. That people would trust me with their deepest secrets...that people would form their opinion of life based on mine. Luke 6:40 humbles me to the depths of who I am...and simultaneously scares me stiff.

I am never left unamazed at how God Almighty orchestrates "me" to meet "you" and "you" to meet "them." Bringing people from all over, forming them into just the person that someone else needs at just that moment. What would appear to be chance is naught but Providence and I am left wanting. Wanting an explanation. Wanting to know who I am and why I am where I am. Clinging to a sense of being my parents' child, my wife's husband, and my friends' companion - never quite sure who I am when left alone.

I seem to define myself as I relate to others....and while I'm not sure what that means completely.....I am sure that it forever will mean that I am to be "someone" for "somebody." What that means, I leave to the history pages...

Today, I was a long unseen friend to a brother in Christ and it made me happy ... profoundly happy ... more so than I have been in a long while.

I wonder who I will be tomorrow...

Great stuff...when's it over?

I've been going through a valley in my life the past few months. It has been a time of ridiculous work, unearthly dead lines, unfulfilling endeavors, and wrestling with difficulties left and right...never really sure which way is up...and not really sure that I even need to be going up at all. Maybe just to the left a little?

In the midst of my malaise there are others around me going through much worse and my angst, by comparison is silly, but it is real to me and I cling to it and sink into it, because without it, I feel I would feel nothing these days. I also see joy...true, honest, long deserved joy and it makes those who experience it beautiful to all around and my heart weeps as I thank God for it for them...but not for me.

"You seem...distant."

I know...you're not the only one to tell me that...and I'm not entirely sure I even know why. I hate it when people say that they don't know why they feel something, because up until today, I always did. Perhaps I'll have more mercy on them now...

I am ... distant... and I don't know why. Usually when I close a show, I'm sad, remorseful even. This time...nothing. I was completely devoid of emotion: positive or otherwise. I brought the lights down and walked away...anxious only to get home and sleep. It was the most uncomfortable feeling I've had in awhile, only to be followed by more.

Maybe I should have gone to church this morning. I thought I could use the rest. I'm weary...very weary. As broad as they may be, the weight of the world aches my shoulders from time to time and like Atlas, I too, at times, shrug.

Bwana Sungo

"August and Everything After" was released in 1993. It resonated with me, if for no other reason than it perfectly encapsulated my life. Being born in August, my life is indeed August and everything after. Track number six was "The Rain King." As I listened to it, I thought surely something was behind this song and it wasn't until two years later in 1995 that I found out what that something was.

Saul Bellow wrote a book entitled "Henderson The Rain King." The eventual title character is Eugene Henderson, a wealthy, robust man who has come to a crashing hault in mid-life; loud, flushed cheeks, and boisterous. He is larger than life and bad at it...at first. He has spent his life trying to satisfy this voice in his heart that continually chants "I want. I want."

He ends up in Africa, traveling to various indigenous tribes in a effort to silence the voice; to find himself, as it were. Through a painful and long process, mistreating everyone along the way, he comes to the realization that the only way to stop the voice is to heal others and a denouement of sorts is ultimately reached.

Adam Duritz read the book, identifying with Henderson Sungo, or Henderson, The Rain King.

For me, it was Romilayu.

Romilayu was a local bushman, who had been converted to Christianity by Methodist missionaries earlier in his life. A small, unassuming and humble man, weathered by many a safari, he was hired by Henderson to be his guide. He took him to all the different villages, all the while silently enduring all of Henderson's outbursts and derogitory behavior. Henderson treated Romilayu poorly at best, yet Romilayu was ultimately his "boy" not because Henderson was paying him, but because in Romilayu's own words, he felt sorry for him. He wanted him to have piece and stayed with him until he was sure he did...as painful as it was for him.

I understood that. I always have...and I always will.

So for those of you who have ever wondered.... now you know from whence it comes. I spend my life leading others, dispite the way I may be treated. The pay's poor, the hours are long, the work hard... but at the end of the day, I am naught but the boy of my own Bwana, Bwana Yahweh....and I'll stick with it until He is pleased.

Romans 12:3

All that I know, I know through revelation. God has gifted me with a power to reason through that which he has presented and for that I am eternally grateful. Sola Deo Gloria. In all things Christ remains pre-emminent. I would that others see him, through me, rather than me, because of him. I cry when others don't.

Today, I cried.

I'm not a Teacher

I spent Saturday as an adjudicator for a semi-local GHSA regional competition. Aside from seeing a few good shows, enjoying some very good BBQ, and receiving a public school compensation check - I realized something. I'm not a teacher. My fellow adjudicators (who I only wish I could have had at my GISA comeptition) spent the majority of their down time talking about curriculum, the PRAXIS, renewing certification, and so on and so forth.

As I get more exposure here in ATL, I'm slowly realizing that there is a major difference between actors, directors, and theatre educators. I think I fall primarily in the first category, some more in the second, and precious little in the third. I don't care about curriculum development...which would explain why God put Jonah here in charge of it this year for NASOTA...I don't care about what a sheet of paper says I can or can not do. I care about what I know I can do.

I also greive over what Christians are doing to theatre. In talking with one of my fellow adjudicators. she was lamenting the demise of Shorter College's Theatre Program. Apparently when it went Baptist again a few years ago, the theatre director was forced to censor certain things and not allowed to mount certain productions so she quit and went to KSU. This is a very personal struggle for me as well. I wrestle with the idea of bringing good, solid, and meaningful theatre for public consumption while not "offending" my brothers and sisters....but what's so eternally frustrating is that the so called "offended" most assuredly have seen, said, and done worse.

While I know that at some point in my life, I'll jockey a pulpit, right now God is allowing me to play in something I love. Theatre. Perhaps while I'm here, I can make a difference...open some peoples eyes somewhere to the beauty of live performance - and that Christians should do it better. I hope he allows me to continue, but I have a feeling he won't. We have that kind of relationship, Yahweh and I.

After all...you can't play all day...eventually the sun goes down and you have to come in for dinner.

Catharsis concerning "Audience"

"Roses are red. Violets are blue. These are things we have known since infancy. It isn’t until we age a little that we learn about pink roses and white roses and hybrid violets. Our simplistic childhood view of absolute pigmented truth is thrown into upheaval as we are faced with shades of red and blue that often leave us unsatisfied in their lack of nominal definition.

What color is “Sea Foam Green?” You have a vague notion…that it is a “whitish-greenish pastel”…but you can’t nail it down. “Green” however is easily definable as a wavelength of pure light or a primary pigment. It is easy, simple, and honest. It resonates with our souls on a basic level. Green is grass. We get it.

As life continues, ease, simplicity, and honesty fade on the horizon in the rear-view mirror of the vehicle of our lives. For whatever reason, we no longer cherish those simple, easy, and honest truths as we once did. All must be more complex. We use words like “holistic unity,” “deconstruction,” and “anathema” in an attempt to feel “authentic.”

We add layers and layers of pseudo-intellectual complication until we are no longer “red,” but “fuchsia.” We vaguely resemble that which we once were – we even recognize shades of the original hue in the newer development; but can’t seem to place what else there is in it that has changed the entire make-up. We do this, all the while never realizing that, in the end, there was really nothing wrong with red in the first place.

As you watch tonight, see yourself watch yourself. Through the comedy, see the reality. Understand who and why you are. Believe… that, as an audience member, you are represented on stage. Color yourself beautiful. Think not of the play, but of yourself. For ultimately, what you think of the play is irrelevant. I thought it was a musical."

Tonight's show was good. It was really good.

"Damn the Torpedoes"

I have always been one to forge on in the face of adversity. Even if a fight can not be won, I can not but fight it. Somehow that, to me, is honorable. Rather than in the result, it is in the clamour that I see the valour.

Occasionally I'll run across someone older than me who will say, "Well, " with a wry smile, "You're still young." As if to say that the fight will get beaten out of me. That once I get older and not so "young" anymore, I'll let things slide. I hope not. I hope I'm still spitting nails and biting concrete even when I'm eighty...if I make it that long.

These days, I'd settle to politely bow out at 32.