May 10, 2010

Light, Visual Life, and The Hopper

Yesterday I led worship in A Cappella, then preached both services, and went home and crashed, as wiped out as I’ve been in a long time.  Sick for most of the week, I propped up on the coach and through one lazy eye managed to watch a few more episodes of the first season of Friday Night Lights, and then slept a bit.  Then Anjie and I watched a romantic comedy starring Amy Adams called Leap Year.  A silly little movie with a terribly clunky screenplay, but all I really saw was the lighting.  Shot mostly in Ireland, the lighting was dramatic, perhaps overly so, but shot after shot painted beautiful, romantic images, and in the end, I didn’t care for the movie much, but I loved the shots.

But I know what the deal is: the deal is that I’ve been lugging my camera around with for the past month or so, capturing images and light, and whenever I really focus on what’s in the lens, my sense of visual life changes.

I see compositions everywhere.  I catch myself staring at layers of reflections in windows, the transparency of leaves, the tumbling unfolding of clouds, the yellows that season the landscapes along the roads I travel each day.   I watch the expressions of the people I’m with, wishing I could capture the various nuances.   Textures of dying things intrigue me, the curves of graceful yielding to time and gravity.

It’s all about light.   The age of the digital camera makes it possible to experiment endlessly with apertures and shutter speeds, and I find myself wandering the neighborhood (when I should be writing) looking for possibilities.   And what I capture I like, but what’s the point?  What to do with all these images cluttering up my computer?

I don’t know, but I know enough about the creative life to trust that these little windows of visual flurry add something to what’s going on in my hopper about projects that have yet to be created, written, and performed.

In the meantime, I’ll put a few here, a few on Facebook, a few on Flickr, and maybe someone will catch a glimpse of something that will make them smile.  At least it’s in the Hopper.

Enjoy…

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May 4, 2010

Words at 51

My throat’s a little scratchy.   I refuse to give the sensation a name (like “cold”), seeing as any malady seems completely inappropriate on a birthday.   But on this May 4, Nashville is under water, people mourning everything from the loss of homes to the hit to tourism, but more importantly, mourning several older residents of surrounding communities swept away by the fast rising river.   The US and Iran are battling at the UN, most not nearly as concerned about all the nuclear weapons the US has dismantled as they are the number of nukes that remain intact.   A University of Virginia lacrosse player was found murdered last night, allegedly a victim of a bad spat with a former boyfriend.    Apple sold over a million units of the iPad in 28 days (sounds hopeful, anyway), and I notice as I read the headlines (I always forget that I share the date with this event) that there are ceremonies marking the death of the students at Kent State 40 years ago today.  They got the guy that (allegedly) tried to blow up an SUV in Times Square, and some movie star whose name I forget came clean and said he cheated on his wife with one of the same women Tiger got tangled up in.  The oil spill in the Gulf seems really colossal (how do you plug that hole?), and I guess the ash over Western Europe has calmed down enough to let planes back in the air.   Some poor Phillies fan got tasered last night (shouldn’t have been running on the field, I suppose), and on this May 4th, can anybody count the maladies running wild in the world?

A 50-ish couple approaches the coffee shop laughing, pulled along by their beloved dogs.  Steam is rising from cups in front of the two ladies at the window, and the buzzcut junior high student, sitting alone (his father gave him a big hug before he left), butters his bagel with great concentration.   My iPhone bleeps, and I see that a former student, a big old cowboy kind of guy with a grin as big as the state he’s from, just posted a “Happy Birthday” on my wall.  I didn’t sleep all that well, because those bleeps announcing birthday wishes pulsed steadily all night long, an annoyance I apparently valued and found some comfort in.  My son is sleeping just fine, exhausted from the effort of memorizing IPA and Italian arias and idea-battling with his dad, and my wife’s early morning flight is just beginning its descent into Portland.  Oh yes, and my daughter lifts out of LA about now, heading back east to her friends’ production of “Death and the Maiden” at Williams.  The morning latte was especially fine, hotter than usual, which is just the way I like it.  I look up, and two young high school girls, friends of mine, twins, are running, herky-jerky and laughing, to catch the city bus, and the dogs outside bark lazy songs as the bus pulls away.

The question was asked: “What does the pure life of following the Christ look like?”  I don’t know.  I’ll pray today, and inch my way forward, muttering again that something is better than nothing, and believe (even as 51 years of fatigue and mixed results and undeserved blessing rushing at me like a kingdom river run amok) that we have the agency to change the world.  Can we make it perfect?  Who am I to say that when the Kingdom of God comes (Jesus hoped for it, asked for it…so do I), a substantial perfection will or will not be born?   And yes, it’s all God, and our agency is all grace, all metabolized and given life by God’s Spirit and His Will (go to it, theologians, get it right), and it is up to us to reach up and grasp the life He offers and calls us to.  We must plug the oily holes, stop ourselves from killing the ones who infuriate us (be they lovers or enemies or both), nurture the love that is the source of all hope, and feed, clothe, and shelter the ones who somehow land in a place (who cares how they got there) where they lack all of that.   And along the way, we must tell the story, make the meaning, find the beauty, linking arms and hearts and throwing grace to the wind like the farmer with those proverbial seeds.   Little Christs, all of us.

We all wonder:  why are we born?  Why, 51 years ago, did I come climbing into being only to know wonder, loss, ecstasy, heartbreak, and one day out there, at the end of my own personal Act Five, to experience it all slipping away into a pretty long closing of the eyes?   Why?  For what?

For love, for hope, for faith, for God, for joy, for words, for the making of worlds…

For life…

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May 3, 2010

Inside Brooklyn Boy

I haven’t been blogging much.  The habit of writing feels awkward, two months into my shared life–church half-time, something else the other half.   There’s a play I’m working on, oh so slowly, and I finally finished up grading the material from my class.  Lots has happened the past couple of months.   Amy did her showcases in New York and LA, Daniel is home for a week before heading off to an opera workshop across the sea, and I’m growing a beard.  In July, I’ll open in Man of La Mancha at Taproot playing the guy who has to sing “The Impossible Dream.”  Lots to do.

Taproot Theatre’s production of Brooklyn Boy was fun, but more draining than I’d anticipated, at least on the emotional side.   My character, Eric Weiss, has a rough couple of days in Donald Marguiles’ play about returning home after huge success as a writer.   Eric’s wife divorces him, his father dies (having never given Eric the affirmation he so craves), and his movie deal goes into the tank.   He can’t score with the young girl in the hotel, and his childhood friend has a way better life than he does, a fact that annoys Eric to no end.    As I took the journey each night, I always landed in the same spot, having to confront feelings about my father, my career, and what it means to go home.

My father died in 1988, a decade before I wrote Leaving Ruin.  I realize now that I was probably a bit of a disappointment to him, though I think he’d feel fine about what I’m up to now.  But in 1988, I was still hunting around, trying to find what I was going to do with my life.  This was after the MFA.   I didn’t really have a career, and I think he wondered what in the world I was doing.  I’d come out of the only job I ever had that I performed really poorly in–it was an independent thing that I was just too depressed to pursue with much verve–and though I think he was proud of my spiritual life (or at least thankful I had some kind of faith), I imagine he felt a little like Eric’s father did in the play.

So when we came to the end of the play, and my “father” told me night after night that I wrote a good book, I couldn’t help but think what it would have been like to hear my own father say that to me.  I’ve already blogged about hearing those words as if God said something like to me in reference to my life, but to hear Dad say that would have been priceless.   I suspect there are many of us out here in the big bad world trying to win the approval of a parent or two, and if you’re one of them…well, I hope you find what you’re looking for.   Maybe what we’re looking for isn’t to be found on this side, but still…wouldn’t it be grand?

Maybe an impossible dream?

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May 2, 2010

A Few Photos

I’ve been wandering around a bit with the camera again.  I’m not sure if I’m procrastinating some other things I need to do, or if I’m using the photography to stimulate creativity or brood over ideas still cooking.  Either way, I thought I’d share a few… Someday I’ll think of something to do with all these shots.   I love the structure of things…

These were on the Administrative Assistant’s desk…

Looks like terrain, don’t you think?

A window in New York…

Looks like an old heart…

En garde!

The Big Apple…

Back to work…

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April 20, 2010

Growing Up Into Dreams

Last night, I made a proclamation.

“Tomorrow, I grow up.”

It’s a Facebook Status kind of thing to say.   Is it true?  Will I grow up today?  On the one hand, each day is a growing up into responsibility and freedom.    Demands grow, stakes go up, opportunities present themselves with alarming swiftness and fickle timing.   Our mistakes get bigger, have weightier, longer-playing consequences, and we can cry in our beer or we can stand up and do the heavy lifting being “grown up” seems to require.  We progress like bull and bear markets, inching up, sliding back, making huge gains, crashing on Black Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Growing up has been painful, and will probably remain so.  (Big deal, so was playing football.)  I’ve wept in frustration many times in my life, cursing the brutal frankness of life’s unrelenting demands.  Come hell, death, or high water, life just keeps coming.  Incessant, the water torture, the constancy of that frickin’ obstacle (whatever it happens to be) that daily bars the way to the big pie in the sky.   And the pie is an illusion anyway, right?  So what is all about, and why should I grow up at all?   Is it really the most awful, awful thing?  We see such promise around us in young people, and yet those of us who’ve lived awhile know the depressing commonness of the best and brightest landing somewhere far below the early buzz about their (terrible word) “potential.”

But as I whine about all this, a voice somewhere inside says, “Grow up.”

Maybe someone needs to stand up for “growing up.”  After all, it’s the grown-ups who make not only the darkness of the world (easy to saddle them with that), but the light as well.  It’s the grown-ups who have to protect the children, make the art, fix the injustice, stop the nuts who kill lots of folks in a row, battle over what “good” really means in both culture and law, and generally make all the worlds the children walk in.   And, by the way, it’s a grown-up thing to do to learn to protect the now-proverbial “inner child” (there’s a term to generate a snicker) that still lives inside, still needs the nurture of the adult.   Does growing up by definition mean the death of the child, Peter Pan notwithstanding?   What if the child is the one who does the growing up, and thereby retains the possibility of remaining present, vital, and alive?   “Growing up” does not, by definition, mean the loss of imagination, the loss of play, or the loss of freedom.  In fact, the more heavy-lifting the grown-up does (in terms of shouldering the necessary responsibilities), the stronger she becomes, and the freedom to fully realize the dreams of the child grows.

And dreams are grown-up things.   Giftedness, vision, hope, possibility–these require grown-up words like commitment, accountability, determination, and courage.   Otherwise, all the great stuff of childhood descends into shrinking, crippling fantasy.   A child-like heart fully grown is a very different reality than a grown-up’s self-centered, childish heart.   The latter acts like a two-year-old and makes nothing.   The former works with an intensity that only be described as full-out, full heart play, and makes new worlds every day.

Yesterday, I wrote of creating spaces and experience wherein people could tangibly encounter the invitation to transformation, and gain a bit more faith that it was actually possible.

That’s a grown up thing to do.

Today…

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April 19, 2010

“Transformation is Possible”

My coaching assignment from three weeks ago was to reflect on what I’d like people to say about me when I die.

My report on that reflection is due today, and frankly, though I’ve put a good bit of time into thinking about it, I don’t have it done.  It’s a funny question, more troublesome than I anticipated.

My reflection goes in several directions.  Someone in my family said of my father when he died, “He was the best man I ever knew.”  I’d take that one, if someone wanted to say it, no matter how untrue it might be.  My uncle meant it when he said it, and I think it was true.  My father was a good man, a servant, a simple man.   He was a student of the Bible, a man who wanted to get it right when it came to following God.  These are good things to be said about you when you die.   So yes, I’d take all those.

Last night, I watched This Is It, the film documenting Michael Jackson’s preparation for the tour he never got to do.  I think of all the things people say about him.  A superstar who just wanted to be loved, the things said about him at his death are endless, most likely (I haven’t researched this) trending toward his gifts as a performer and pop artist, as well toward the tragic pain he experienced most of his life.  Wonder and sadness, a strange lost light burning intensely for the enjoyment of us all.

We all die, the common and the famous, the tragic and the greats.  I’ll die, far closer to common, and people will gather and talked in hushed tones, I suppose.  That’s what you do at these moments.  What do I want them to say?

How would you answer it for yourself?

Ultimately, I hope they reflect on themselves, and perhaps a moment of connection between us.   A moment of personal connection, or professional, where we encountered each other in either family, friendship, or art-making and receiving, and as a result of that encounter and connection, whether it was for a moment or a long time, they somehow came to understand something different about themselves, their lives, and the love, presence, and beauty of God.   The title of this post came to me as I pulled up to the coffee shop; I  hope someone will say that Jeff always wondered about what it meant to be transformed at the deepest levels of the heart.   That he asked and answered the question, “Is change really possible?”   Perhaps they’ll reflect on the imperfect progress I made on my own personal journey of heart transformation, but it would be really cool, and of far greater importance, if they observed that in Jeff’s life and work, he created spaces and experiences where possibility, hope, and transformation grew tangible, no longer questions but invitations that stand eternally open.

“From glory to glory” scripture says, and at my core, I know that life is dense with glory and possibility beyond our wildest dreams.   The mystery is how it all happens, and the fits and starts we take as we travel.   And at the end, I hope someone says he traveled in risky faith, constantly leaning against his essential brokenness (shared with the world), and found his way to that elusive grace called the compassion of the Christ, and created in life and art images–incarnations–of possibility, of real change, and of love.   Say that he treasured his family, his friends, and his work, and the God whose grace made every moment possible, and that he worked hard to attune himself to the deep beauty of the world.

But after all that, I have to also confess that I don’t really care what people say when I die.   The only voice that will matter will be that of my Father.   How amazing to perhaps have Him say something like what my character in Brooklyn Boy heard at the end of the play.     My character’s father told him, “It was a good book you wrote, Ricky.”

“It was a good life you lived, Jeff.  I liked it.”

If my Father said something like that, that would be enough…

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April 14, 2010

“Places”

Each night I stand backstage pacing back and forth, running a small ritual that has become important to me as a preparation for a coming night of emotional journeying.  The role of Eric Weiss in Brooklyn Boy is a challenging one, one that I relate to all too well.   And then, inevitably, my friend Carla comes to me and says the word, “Places.”

“Places” is the call to be ready.  It means that an important moment has arrived.  Time to make an entrance in full view of an audience, an audience with expectation, hope, demands, and a low tolerance for boredom and poor work.  Whatever I do, at the end of the night, they’ll applaud, but whether my work impacts or moves their collective heart is another question.  And that depends largely on my own preparation, skill, willingness, and presence.  Admittedly, some nights are better than others, and there are moments in a “Places” call where I wish I was anywhere but where I am.   Maybe its been a bad day, or someone’s critique has gotten into my head, or the general angst that’s been in my DNA since day one is just reminding me that though faith in God is mostly a fine idea, sometimes it seems more ludicrous than sane.

The bad days don’t come nearly as often as they used to, and the other night, after Carla gave her smiling “Places” call, I thought how wonderful it would be if someone would show up just before all the big moments in our lives, the life-changing ones, and say, “Places.”  In effect, they’d be saying, “This is one of the moments when you really need to show up.  All your days up to now have been rehearsals, and in the next five minutes, you are going into the bright lights.  Get your cues, keep the energy, stay alive, be present, and leave it all out there.  Oh, and have fun.”

My daughter Amy just got a places call that was both metaphor and fact, and she nailed it.

After four years of study at the University of Cincinnati College of Conservatory of Music Depart of Drama (that’s a mouthful), she graduates in June with a BFA in Acting.   Monday and Tuesday, her “Places” call was for a two and half minute scene in New York City, a small portion of an actor’s showcase featuring some 44 actors in 90 minutes.   Industry types come to these things–agents, managers, producers, etc.   They’re looking for new talent, and it goes by in a whiz.   And while no one moment is make or break (we talked about that a lot–there are multiple ways into getting work in the long haul), this felt like a big one.  You have to perform under pressure, and I was a bit nervous as I watched her first come on.

No need for nervousness, this girl knows what she’s doing.   In fact, hats off to the training at CCM-Drama.   Their entire class did strong work down the line…real, vital, intimate, and risky.   Kudos to them all. And though I don’t have many details yet, sounds like the industry response was strong, and they all have meetings lined up with various agencies interested in their work.

As a father, I could not be more proud of her work.   But I am far more proud of her response to the “Places” call that is coming into her life.   She is ready, and bold, and brave.  You can imagine my emotion as I type the words.   It’s a father’s love, a father who was there for her first “Places” call, when she first showed up in that spectacular entrance called birth.    The lights are never brighter than when we make entrances into relationship, into the heartbreak of the lives around us, into the spaces where God waits to watch and participate, which I suppose is always and everywhere.   When are we not at “Places”?

My time watching my kids at “Places” makes me think of our Father, and the way He must watch us, nervous, pulling for us, coming alongside however we will let Him, wanting nothing for us but the kind of performance that makes for full, generous, and vital worlds.

Sun’s up.

“Places, please.”

Way to go, girl…

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April 11, 2010

The Camera Comes Out

There is such joy in wandering around with my camera.  Somehow it inspires…florals today, maybe portraits soon…

Enjoy…

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April 2, 2010

Impressions on a Good Friday

Fat Tuesday and Good Friday are both preludes.

You’d think I must have chosen to give up blogging for Lent.  Not one entry after Fat Tuesday.  Nothing of the glorious Ash Wednesday experience, that annual marker of remembering that death is coming for all of us, that we are made of ashes and dust and to ashes and dust we will return.   Nothing of the giving up of bread, the failure to keep the Lenten fast perfectly, and the ongoing tension of how fasting from anything anytime reveals the cracks in our character.   Nothing of this season of acting, the appearance in Taproot Theatre’s Brooklyn Boy, and the ridiculous parallels to my own life my character has to live through.  Nothing of the making of two visual art pieces for this year’s Stations of the Cross exhibit (from which I am writing even now), the quiet loss of time as I glue rose petals and write metallic words on a black frame not meant for that at all.   Nothing of my daughter’s return home after finishing her classes in college–I mean all her classes, as in she is finished, save the showcases in New York and Los Angeles that will provide a gateway to her future, regardless of what happens.   Nothing of my migrating faith, my knowledge and dreams of God, Christ, and the Spirit ever moving, like the tides my friend Jeffrey speaks of.

But no, I didn’t fast from blogging.  But my lack of writing tells me something.  I wish I could say it meant I was quiet inside, that is was about having nothing to say because all was right with the world.

I don’t think that’s it.

Unrest is more like it.

So now, here as the world goes back to it’s 8 a.m. trading, I sit encased in a dark room, surrounded by images of Christ and his death.  Crosses, faces of Christ, thorns, rose petals, candles, photographs of modern people pretending to be ancient,  and the sounds of cars whizzing along in the rain just outside these doors.   The room opened at 7:00 a.m. and except for the person who came to help monitor the room for the first hour, I am alone.   Once around the path already, the stations each spoke to me, made me reflect on the essential drama of the story.   Christ was betrayed and killed.   It’s old news, really.   Familiarity of over 2000 years blunts the shock of it.   I look at images of a man executed, his corpse strung up on a crossbar, muscle and bone exposed by the penetration of heavy, rusty spikes.   Blood everywhere, stink pervasive, dark and rain and filth oozing over the earth.    Barry Moser in the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible does it as well as anyone, and I look at the images, and wonder how in the world to enter in.

How do we enter into death?

There’s a squalling storm blowing through the Puget Sound today.   Cold creeps in, and a few of the candles didn’t want to stay lit, wavering in a draft.   He’s dead, Jesus is.  At least on this day, that’s the way to tell the story.   We want to get to Sunday, but it’s not Sunday yet.  No resurrection, not even a hope of it, if you were the disciples that Friday.  Judas killed himself.  Who can blame him?  A terrible, terrible day.

I get it, but how strange to make a world where blood and death are the deepest–perhaps the only–pathways to beauty.

Sometimes I wonder…

Standing at the foot of the cross, what else is there to do?

Did God just die?

Some say yes…some say no…

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February 16, 2010

Impressions on a Fat Tuesday

Roy Orbison sings “Pretty Woman” as the man by the window, white earplugs delivering his preferred white noise, ruffles the paper, sets it down, and stands up to leave, almost as if he can feel me observing, writing about him.   A buddy and he walk out the door, into the rain, calling back over their shoulders “Have a nice day.”   Iris cranks out the coffee from the grinder, the clicking cracking the quiet of the coffee shop.   Water falls in straight lines through the light, and cars whoosh by, the street busy with early morning souls hurrying toward wherever early morning souls hurry toward.    I am not content, but I’m close.   4:45 the alarm strummed me awake, and the workout was simple, even easy.   Odd thing though, I didn’t drink anything–not a drop–until after the workout, after the shower, after the kiss goodbye to my wife, after the trip to the coffee shop, after the latte was poured, the thick foam carved into the leaf shape hovering for a brief moment on the top of the cup.   Then I drank.   Thankfully, the coffee was hot enough.

I am not content, but I’m close.

I am frightened.   A little, at least, because of a situation in my family that I’m unsure how to insert myself into, or even if I should.   I am thrilled.  I’m acting again, last night being the first rehearsal of the next play at what I think of as my home theatre.   I am hopeful.   Plans for the next ten years are clarifying, and though I know there are no guarantees, the fact that any shape at all is observable I take as a blessing, an arrival of a guide.   (I say arrival…He’s never gone.)  I am proud.   Both good and bad, this one–so I’ve got children I can barely think of, I love them so much.   Then again, the pride thing is my back being up, being offended, thinking I’m something I’m not, having a hard time saying “sorry”, even though I’ve said it a zillion times in my years.  I am grateful.   I won’t even begin to list.   My thanks likes lists, and I haven’t time for the full boggling of the mind that comes with that sort of inventory.   Begin with material, end with the invisible, sandwich them with cosmos large and small, quantum and Newtonian, and wrap it family and whatever bits of love you can wrap your head around.   I am in love.   I blew a kiss to the girl who has my heart as we drove cars in opposite directions in the pre-dawn rain.   She is light that refuses to be extinguished, much like the Lord we both look to.   I am tempted.   It’s Fat Tuesday after all…what’s a little indulgence like the rest of the world?  Lent comes tomorrow, and it’ll be time to bow the head anew, reflect again on the loss and the sacrifice and the regret.   Confession is good for the soul.  Should I do a thing today I’ll have to confess tomorrow, knowing God will forgive?   As Paul said, “Dumb idea.”   (My translation.)

Here comes the light, here comes the day.  How do you plan worship?  How do you plan to be surprised by the greatness of God so much so that you have to sing about it?   Who knows, but that’s my task today.   And we ministers will pray, and I’ll meet with people over more and more coffee, and I’ll memorize lines, and imagine two guys named Grant and a guy named Lee slugging it out over a long ago war.   I’ll grade a couple of papers if I have time, all of it before doing the table work with a director and the other actors of the play that will be part of my Lenten practice for 2010.   I’ll miss things.   I’ll discover something big, a small thought, like I did yesterday (not ready to say what it is.)  I’ll sleep, or I won’t, and I’ll think of whether I built the day on rock or sand.   Did I judge?  Did I let my yes be yes?   Did I lay up a treasure here, or perhaps in a higher place?   (Is Heaven really “up?”) I’ll hurry, I’ll work hard, I’ll slough off at least one thing, and I’ll torture myself over some bit of incompetence I’ll be sure someone will notice.   I’ll do better and worse than yesterday and tomorrow all at the same time.

Here we go.

I have nothing to say, really, but words arrive anyway, appearing ready for service, and I write them down, trusting that something will emerge.

On Sundays, I forgo Lenten practice because always, the Christ rises on Sunday.   I cannot fast as resurrection happens all over again.   As the tradition holds, feasting trumps fasting on the Son’s day.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner…

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