Monthly Archives: September 2007

I have no idea why I go on these Sabbaticals from blogging, but let’s see if I can put some thoughts together.  I’m here in Calgary, Alberta, doing a four-night run of Leaving Ruin at Val Leiske’s Fire Exit Theatre.   It’s always a joy to get to do the play several times in a row just for the sheer fun of seeing the variety of things that come up.  Opening night the first act went beautifully: I had a strong sense of presence and awareness that frankly took me by surprise, and the whole thing was a joy.  The second act was marked by the moment I go offstage for a moment to get the chalice that is the primary prop of the evening, and I smashed my finger in very heavy metal door.  It made for a very interesting few moments as I re-entered.  Focus destroyed, needless to say, except that it demonstrated that strange power the stage has: we soldier on and the audience is none the wiser.

Yesterday, I woke up with my right ear completely clogged.  Yet another new thing:  doing the show while sounding like I’m underwater.  Understandably, Cyrus was a little more irritated at his situation, and the first act didn’t have as much comedy, but the second act seemed to roll by more smoothly than the night before.  Oh, and the technician running cues blew the end of Act One, which really damaged the whole moment.  Arrrgggg…

Today, on top of the music arranging work that I’ve got to do for the church musical, I hope to get out and explore with my camera a bit.  Tomorrow, I have a full day of teaching a directing workshop that should be fun.  Then the final show tomorrow night and back to Seattle Sunday morning.   When will I do Leaving Ruin again?   Who knows?  It’s been a joy to do over the years…nearly ten years now.

…very thankful…

Sitting here in my office watching the rain.  My mind is whirling with thoughts of God.  Racing, is more like it.  As a speaker/teacher, whether I’m dealing with acting or with  scripture, one fault of mine is that I want to tell it all, all of it at once.  I am a macro thinker, looking for long lines of thought and experience that create full structures.   I am convinced that our origin, identity, and destiny lies with God and His reality, His Kingdom, His paradigm.  Scripture is obviously given to us to help us discover those realities, and yet we see a religious world fragmented almost beyond belief, each group defining these realities with both subtle and glaring differences.   Denominations are there because they believe different things about the life of God’s Kingdom on Earth.  Who is right or wrong doesn’t concern as many people as it used to, and yet, these are deeply practical matters.   Yes, grace is everything, we live and move and have our being by grace, and grace alone, but where does this grace lead us today?  Today, I must relate to this God I worship, and to Christ and His Spirit, and to my fellow human beings on the planet, and there are so many questions to ask and debate: what is this God of mine like?  What is His character and will?  Can I know His character and will, and if so, how?  Why isn’t scripture simpler, more plain, more like the “instruction manual for life” people claim?  (It is frankly like no instruction manual I ever saw.  If my new audio interface box had come with an instruction manual like the Bible, I would still be trying to turn it on.)  Why did God make us?  Why did we fall?  Didn’t God know we would?  Why put us (and Himself–not to mention Jesus) through it?  To what end?  Isn’t it wild that life across generations and cultures and continents is so varied and mixed and colorful and outrageous, but we sit in our little cubicles (if we’re part of a group lucky enough to have cubicles) and try to discover just the precise formula for life with God?

Jesus came to announce what he called the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God.  The terms came to mean different things to different people, but I tend to see them as a unified term referring to life with God in the now and the not-yet, along the lines espoused by Willard, Foster, Brueggemann, and Peterson in the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. All the niche Bibles drive me a bit batty, but because I know the work of these editors, it made sense to me that they would put together something like this.  Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy continues to inspire me.  His basic premise is that the Kingdom of the Heavens (Willard’s translation) is for the now, and that we mostly do not experience life in the Kingdom as Christ and the disciples did because we do not live as they did, nor do we preach and teach that we should.  Sort of an outrageous claim, but one that rings true in both my head and my heart.

If you’re a praying type, pray for me this week as I prepare to speak.  I know…I take these things far too seriously, or at least take myself too seriously.  I am often accused of it.  I often accuse myself of it.  But still, to stand in front of several hundred of God’s people, all of them having staggered into church with all manner of need and hunger, and to attempt to allow God to speak through me to them…it seems a holy thing to do.  And as I stare into the light that is God calling to us–His scripture, His treatment of me over the years, thoughts that I ascribe to Him as they travel into my mind, His word to me through actions and words of others–it mostly occurs to me how sinful and incomplete and ridiculous I am.  Moses said, “Who, me?”  Jonah ran for his life.   I understand both responses.

Anyway, going back to the first few lines of this post, I can’t tell it all at once.  God help me just tell what He has given me to tell–His holiness, His love, His power to live, all foundational to our life with Him, His Son, and His Spirit in the Kingdom of the Heavens.

…still raining…

It’s a Sabbath Day, and the air is cool.  I was just watching a spectacular sky, translucent clouds moving in opposite directions against the blue.  I can’t really say why I haven’t been blogging lately.  Blame the workload, I suppose.  It’s big these days, my experiment in scheduling still very much on track.  8 hours a day of writing: a screenplay for Leaving Ruin, a new folk musical for Christmas (called Winterland), an occasional look at another story for a fellow in the midwest, brooding over what to do with Hunting Grace, preparing to preach three sermons at the Northwest Church of Christ/Christian Church in Shoreline.

Preach three sermons?  Yeah, it brings me up short, too.  I’ve been asked on a couple of occasions to preach here and there, and it’s always an adventure.  I spoke once last month, and I did the “let me give you a taste of the Christian artist’s experience” thing, and it was fine, but in the end, I felt like I’d let an opportunity slip by.  About a week after that, I was fortunate enough to get to experience Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit, and as I always do at these things, I sit and consider leadership and how it interacts with artistry.  Bill Hybels always makes me consider the role of the local church in the world, and my role in the work of the local church. Hybels believes “the local church is the hope of the world.”  When he says it, it rings true.   What is more fundamental to living that our relationship to God (or not) and our relationship to the community we’re a part of.  Where else will we learn of love, peace, forgiveness, and grace?  I know the church doesn’t have the market cornered on any of those things…in fact, we are often poor reps of God in all areas of the “fruit of the Spirit.”  But still, if we believe in the story delivered to us in scripture, what other conclusion can we come to than “the local church is the hope of the world?”  Anyway, the message that got me thinking was, “Whatever You Do, Inspire Me.”  Vision is one of the deepest needs any of us have, and one of the things on my mind as I prep for the upcoming time in the pulpit is the need for vision and inspiration.  Not rah-rah stuff (I’ve seen my share of that), but vision that grows of out deep conviction concerning the reality of God and the times in which we live.

So what I am going to preach about?  I always thought I would do art and faith sorts of things, but just now I’m thinking diving into deeper waters.   The word “Holy” has entered my consciousness in the past few weeks, in what I consider to be a fairly direct answer to prayer.  That’s  led to considerations of the relationship of holiness to love and our changing view of God as move through scripture, revealed first by the “I AM” of the OT, then the Christ of the gospels, and finally the Holy Spirit of the early church.   For me, there is a story to be told about the movement of God into the world, a story of power and life drawing every nearer to the heart of the human being, and I think it’s that story I want to tackle in this series of talks.

Anyway, the dates are September 9, 16 and 23.  I’m looking forward to it, but wondering what God has in mind during these early days of fall.

We’ll see…