Saturday, February 24, 2007

Facing the Giants Nothing good could come of it, but I did it anyway: I finally watched Facing the Giants. If I hated it, I'd have guilt to deal with, because any film this front and center about wanting to bring God glory ought to be something we laud and applaud, right? On the other hand, if I liked it, I'd be faced with the proposition of going up against people I respect that have, by and large, trounced the film. Either way, it was going to be a tough experience. Warning: spoilers ahead Facing the Giants is a $100,000 movie written and produced by Sherwood Pictures, brainchild of Alex and Stephen Kendrick, associate pastors of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. The story (which has grossed over $10M so far) of a down-and-out football team from a southern Christian High School, Facing the Giants is a David-and-Goliath feel-good story in which a coach on the brink of being fired turns to God and receives a series of direct answers to his prayers. Lackluster attitude morphs into gut-busting motivation, a barely-drivable car gets replaced by a Texas sized pick-up truck, a weak-legged kicker "gives his best for God" and comes up with a 50+ yard field goal, and scientifically declared infertility melts in the face of a near-miraculous pregnancy. Maybe that sounds cynical--here's a different way to say it. In this inspirational story, a team of apathetic, high school football players gets challenged by a spiritual coach to give their best for God, and they do. That coach puts his faith in God in that most rare of film moments, the sincere evangelical prayer, and God answers that prayer in ways that frankly, many believers have both witnessed and experienced. Far-fetched? Maybe, but even with the bad acting, the bad writing, and my cynicism perched proudly on my shoulder like a preening cockatoo, there were moments when it was hard not to be moved. All that said, Facing the Giants, and the debate it creates, is fascinating. I have no doubt that Christians of a particular ilk weep when they see this film, not once, but several times. Maybe it's just that they've endured so much filth on screen, that to see their own lifestyle and belief so explicitly--if not completely honestly--represented, is as close as they will come to experiencing the miraculous. And conversely, many other-ilked disciples can barely sit through it, their stomachs churning in dismay at this picture of a God who always comes through. In their experience, that's not how it works at all. On the up side, there are things to like about this film. It looks much better than $100,000, and I am frankly amazed that a church was able to pull it off. There are moments in the film that won legitimate laughs in my living room, and that's not easy for film to do, at least not with me. The story has possibilities; Alex Kendrick has the right idea, and though he mishandles all sorts of things--exposition, structure, reveals and reversals--the bones of what he's getting at are there. I suspect those of us moved by the film aren't being moved by the film at all, but rather we are seeing through to what we wish the film were. And talking about acting--I work with non-actors all the time, and it's not easy to get them to just relax and speak, which Kendrick has done pretty well. That doesn't mean they're acting--in most cases, they're not even close--but they could have been much, much worse. Not much consolation, true, but I'll give them what credit they're due. To get more insight into Alex Kendrick, the man who made it all happen, here's a pretty insightful interview at ProdigalSonMagazine.com. Go read Barbara Nicolosi or Dick Staub (also here and here) or any number of others if you want to read the downside of Facing the Giants, and just know that I agree with most of what's said. But I kept thinking of Barbara as I watched, and about her vehemence about this film. I know she believes God answers prayer, and I know she believes in taking whatever there is in life to Him, so theologically, it's not that she thinks God doesn't work in people's lives, delivering all sorts of blessings that we can choose to attribute to him or not. I guess to state it most simply, Facing the Giants falls far short as a work of filmic art. And because of the power of cinema in culture to create images of reality, the life of God portrayed in film is important. Our vision of God and the life of Christ is largely a function of imagination, and by that, I don't mean fanciful thinking. We image a life of Christ both internally and externally, the latter being somewhat dependent on the former. And how we construct those Kingdom of God images will impact everything we do. Is there a film in which an authentic, modern or post-modern evangelical journey is portrayed? A journey towards faith in God, with the particular trappings of the evangelical environment, with all its calls to faith and piety, yet balanced by the inevitable disappointments and confusions that lead to doubt, distrust, rebellion, and perhaps, repentance and reconciliation, all of it done without a hint of dishonest proselytizing? If you know of one, let me know. ...That's a film I'd like to see... 9:07:30 PM    comment []

Home Sick, Thinking about Women Yesterday--Thursday--the fogged rolled in. I've always been afraid of taking drugs recreationally, fearing I'd like them too much, but days like yesterday convince me that's not the case. Cold medicines, especially the ones with the "p.m." label, invariably make me loopy in some fashion, and I'm too much of a control freak to enjoy it. But yesterday, I took some "p.m." thing, hoping to sleep. The result was brain fog. So I read and watched films, along with pushing forward on a few plans for various meetings coming up. It turned out to be an interesting day. First there was the short story by Katherine Anne Porter called Maria Conception. Porter is an mid 20th Century writer I'd not heard of, but I started doing research on the town of Kyle, Texas, which is going to have some significance in Cyrus Manning's life (of Leaving Ruin fame), and I discovered that Porter, who won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1966, was from Kyle, and that many of her stories were set in the surrounding countryside. So I ordered up The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter and yesterday read the first story in the collection. Maria Conception is the story of an eighteen-year-old Mexican girl whose young husband betrays her. Porter's telling of Maria's story is a glorious ushering into a world far removed from ours: Maria headed to market with half a dozen living fowls slung over her shoulder; her barefoot discovery of her husband with the fifteen-year-old beekeeper (Maria Rosa) among the cactus-bristles; the subtle camaraderie among the villagers when Maria Rosa turns up dead. No moralizing here, just an objective eye piercing the heart of a woman determined to have justice and the life she wants. Then there was the piece from the latest issue of Image. The title of the essay by Jill Patterson intrigued me: When Marriage is a Tomb Where Silence Dwells. Her story is of a marriage gone bad, two English professors whose careers end up with different degrees of success, the woman's outstripping the man's. The woman takes a break from the marriage, retreating to a corner variety store in small town Colorado, and rediscovers the simpler joys of life, and in the end, finds that sometimes, divorce can be the face of grace. Then I watched a film called The Shape of Things. Still more groggy than I wanted to be, I sat down to this film in hopes of helping my daughter with a scene she's working on from the stage play on which the film is based. Another interesting female character drives this film, played fairly by Rachel Weisz. "Evelyn" is a graduate student in art at Mercy College (interesting choice) whose Master's thesis project consists of manipulating an unsuspecting nerd into changing everything about himself. He, of course, thinks its for love, and that Evelyn's subtle suggestions for change have only his good in mind. The reveal at the end of the film is a cruel one, but has strong things to say for how we determine who we are, and the value we place on physical beauty, and more telling yet, the way personalities change when beauty is substantially enhanced, a la the now so common "makeover." And finally, the last viewing of the day: Babel, which I will blog about later, but needless to say, the journeys of the three women that are the anchors of the film are all compelling and heart breaking. At the end of the day, I couldn't help but reflect again on how difficult women have had it over the centuries, in cultures all over the world. Men have been dominant brutes so often, and women have suffered so terribly. Certainly we[base ']ve all suffered under the brutish reality of sin, but I can't help but see my wife and daughter and pray to God that we do what we can to nudge our parts of the world closer to the compassion and concern of Jesus. He dealt with women so counter-culturally. So should we. ...they deserve better... 10:04:26 AM    comment []

Monday, February 12, 2007

Children of Men When my daughter was born--my first child--her entry into my world felt miraculous. Strictly speaking, it wasn't. It was the natural first flowering of human life, but birth up close demands attention, staggering the imagination. From what comes life? We know the science, but not the why of it. When I first held her, awe and worship is all that really came to mind. Worship not of nature or of some primal urge fulfilled, nor of destiny, but of God. When Jesus was born, it was in a backwater place, a forgotten little town like millions of others now around the globe. Women had babies everyday, and life was hard, normal, uneventful except for those personal things human beings treasure. But then, a young girl had a conversation with a man who matter-of-factly said he was from God. She said okay, and the Messiah came. Having recently gone through another advent season, written another Christmas play, sharing another round of gifts under the tree, I have to admit its hard to grasp what Jesus' coming meant at the time. I haven't yet seen The Nativity Story so I'm not sure what its impact will be. Apparently it's received mostly strong reviews. Now I'm sitting in the movie theatre last Saturday with Anjie and Daniel, all of us watching Children of Men. I don't know much about the film, other than having read that for many people, it strikes a chord The Nativity Story was trying to strike, supposedly doing so more effectively. Children of Men is the story of earth some twenty years from now. A mysterious infertility grips the world, procreation non-existent. No babies have been born on earth since 2009. Chaos rules every continent, collapsing societies under constant threat by militant revolutionaries of all stripes. Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is a British government worker thrust into the great adventure of his time: he is entrusted with a woman who has inexplicably become pregnant. He must get her to safety, taking her into the heart of a brutal world of desperate refugees in order to deliver her into the hands of "The Human Project." (Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you don't want to know what happens, don't read.) Two moments in the film stand out. The first is in a barn in which Kee, the Fuji woman who is pregnant, reveals her condition to Theo. The wonder in his eyes as he stands trying to comprehend what by this time is considered to be impossible. Suddenly, the stakes of the film shoot through the roof. The second, and most powerful moment in the film, is the day after the baby is born. A revolution has begun in the refugee camp that has been Theo and Kee's stopping place on the way to "The Human Project." The fighting in the camp is heavy and brutal. Theo and Kee are separated, and after a terrible hunt, Theo finds Kee and child on an upper floor of a building under siege by heavily armed government forces. In the midst of the battle, Theo leads Kee away from her hiding place. Suddenly, cutting through the noise of mortar shells and gunfire comes a loud constant crying announcing to everyone there that this woman carries a newborn child. Theo and Kee continue on, and as soldiers storm up the stairs they are traveling down, the soldiers begin to scream for a cease-fire. The battlefield goes silent, and all stand in awe of what they perceive to be salvation for humanity. Hands fill the edges of the frame as the people reach out to touch the child and the mother. There is quiet, the soldiers in full battle regalia hushed, faces all filled with stunned rapture. Worship. I suddenly saw the shepherds in my mind, the magi, Joseph and Mary all speechless before a child who should not have been born, yet was. The child was, as was the baby girl born to Kee, a world's Word of hope, a testament to the presence of God. Even the worst disasters of our time fall silent when that birth happens all over again in the heart of a man or woman paying attention when God walks by. A beautiful film, I thought. Theo ends up giving his life to see the child to safety. I was disappointed, caught up in the moment, wanting along with everyone else to see Theo reach safety, enjoying the new life he'd helped usher in. But I should have known better. Birth requires death, and what greater love is there than to give up your life for the one who will save us all? Theo, of course, is the Greek word for God. ...He so loved the world... 11:28:52 AM    comment []

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Acedia, Enthusiasm, Cynicism...Super Bowl Sunday This morning's Bible class will use Chapter 17 of Os Guinness' book The Call to address a topic we've visited before: acedia. Linked in the modern world to depression, the popular word for acedia is sloth, and I blogged about it back in September of 2006, so I won't revisit that territory here. Enough to say that sloth is far more than lazing on the couch watching the Colts and the Bears: it is a complex spiritual condition that kills. Os Guinness asserts that having a deep sense of God's calling is the best antidote to acedia, and I tend to agree, but that's not what I want to talk about. In getting ready for class, I kept encountering intersections with both enthusiasm and cynicism. As an INFP (Myers-Briggs), I am a classic idealist, and you know what they say---an idealist is a cynic in training. Confession time: I fit the bill. Anjie and I were talking last night, and I confessed that one of my chief challenges is that I need to recover my "passion" for the things I'm doing. I've always (I say "always"--probably not so much anymore) been known as a passionate sort of guy. As a teacher, many of my student-reviews have included the word "passionate," and there is usually a sense of gratitude that goes with the description. As an actor, I've been described the same way. Unfortunately, life has a way of beating up the idealist, the world being a generally difficult place to live, and the temptation to cave in to cynicism, despair, and acedia can be overwhelming. But as I said, in this morning's study, two things emerged. First of all, in looking at sloth as the fourth of the seven deadly sins, I came across the seven holy virtues that are guards against the sins, and guess what lines up with sloth? Zeal and diligence, both which have associations with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm--now there's an old friend of a word. I remember all the days of Amway rallies, the tapes and books all trumpeting the idea that enthusiasm comes for the Greek meaning, essentially, "God in you." Well, the cynic in me advises me to turn up my nose at such foolishness, reminding me I didn't very well with all that hype business, but the etymology of the word is just what all those motivators said it was. The Greeks had this notion of being inspired or infused by the gods, and that the state of enthusiasm was a state of possession. I confess, possession by God in service of his chosen task for my life, a possession come by not through coercion and fear but by willing yielding...this sounds very much like Jesus' life, the life Paul describes as being the inheritance of the children of God. Paul said, "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." (Romans 12:11) But today of all days is a day of unbridled enthusiasm in American culture, and perhaps this is why so many of us creep to the door of enthusiasm with such misgivings. "Hype" is the bastard child of enthusiasm, trading on the word's good name, but in the end, selling us little of substance. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the Super Bowl, and I'll watch from the kickoff to the final whistle, and I'll even enjoy the commercials. But truth is, it's a football game played in the midst of a big commercial party, and certainly most would agree that the enthusiasm for this event is less than pure, and the amateur's love of sport is not what's being celebrated. Coach Taylor (on Friday Night Lights) tells his wife, "I love football. And I love these kids." His enthusiasm for the game shows, but what it really shows is his enthusiasm for what football does in his own life, how it anchors him, how it gives him a focus and reason for being and giving his best, and how it gives him a means by which to connect with and help his students. For Coach Taylor, football's meaning is certainly something other that the money, the celebrity, and the shared experiential high that sweeps the westernized world each February. Call me a cynic. Fun is not a bad thing--we'll have Super Bowl fun in my house today. But what I really pray is that at the end of the game, I will turn back to my tasks with God's Spirit possessing me, yielding to the call I was given a long time ago. True, organic, child-like enthusiasm points to that which we love ("You should see my children!") and may our love for God and his beauty and presence lift us up off the couches of our cynicism to offer a deeply grounded hope. Was there ever a cynical gardener, a bitter farmer who planted even though he was sure in his heart nothing would grow? ...when the call comes, so does adrenaline... 8:31:33 AM    comment []

Friday, February 2, 2007

Mr. Deity This is a funny bit. I came across Mr. Deity (written and produced by Brian Keith Dalton--he's the guy playing Mr. Deity) in a conversation with a friend of mine, and on a lark, I went home, dialed up YouTube and checked it out. Mr. Deity is a funny little white haired man (which of course he should be) who is running the universe according to a plan he has in mind, and the series (there are five episodes so far) give us a behind the scenes look at his core thinking, or lack of such. His balding assistant Larry has great misgivings about some of Mr. Deity's decisions, but still, he supports and upholds Mr. Deity's right to do what he wants, being as he is the God of the universe. Jesus, a name Mr. Deity has trouble remembering, is a Hollywood hunk who we see weighing whether or not to accept Mr. Deity's offer of complete and equal partnership in this enterprise, knowing that he's going to have to go down and live a sinless life and get crucified for it. (For which of course, there is no insurance--as in no coverage in heaven's corporate insurance plan.) I have a wide range of reactions to this lampooning of God and His process of creation. First of all, this is great production work, very funny writing, and the acting is on the nose. So of course my first reaction is to laugh...laugh hard. I suppose if it didn't make me laugh, I wouldn't pay attention. But Mr. Deity is getting lots of hits on YouTube and iTunes, and the more I think about it, the less happy I am. The creators are hoping to finagle their way into a half-hour television series, and at the rate this is going, it wouldn't surprise me if they got their wish. Creator Brian Keith Dalton is obviously having fun. The FAQ's over at mrdeity.com reveal what I think is a pretty benign desire to have fun at the expense of religion, which of course, comics have been doing forever. Dalton is a former practitioner of something, is not interested in offending people, and has plans in the works to take on the "angry atheists" as well. Of course the problem is that these images of God are very powerful and play into our inability to deal with certain intellectual problems that any faith in God raises. They start with the classical question of theodicy (God and the existence of Evil...why would an all powerful God allow suffering, etc.), and move on to deal with other mind-bending aspects of Christian Theology, some of which they get right, some of which they get wrong. (Apparently Adam and Eve couldn't have sex before they ate the apple.) Of course faith in God raises intellectual problems. So does the atheism/evolution paradigm. (Just why does that fish crawl out onto land?) Actually the real concern has to do with the post from a couple of days ago...the Neil Postman problem. The real question has to do with how the thousands, perhaps millions of people watching Mr. Deity process what they are seeing. Do they actually examine them? Do analysis for the truth of what they're seeing? I think Christians can learn some things from Mr. Diety, and certainly non-Christians can, too. But truthfully, to talk about deep analysis is just to take the fun out of the whole thing. My fear is that people will laugh and be greatly entertained (I certainly am) and walk away saying to their friends, "See I knew God was a stupid idea," and leave it at that. End of story, case closed. And all you have to do is read the YouTube comments and see. I'm sure God has a sense of humor, and can laugh at Himself along with the best of them. But I'm not sure Mr. Deity helps us move to a deeper understanding of the awe and wonder of creation, which for my money, couldn't possibly arise from time plus chance plus nothing. Offended? Not really. Sad...in the end, profoundly. ...of course He is beyond us... 9:58:08 AM    comment []

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The Neil Postman Problem Monday night, Anjie and I went to Hale's Ales in Ballard to Dick Staub's The Kindlings Muse. If you haven't checked it out, you should. Every Monday night, former Chicago radio personality Dick Staub hosts an evening with experts in various fields of creativity, arts, religion, and politics hoping to foster what he calls "hospitable" conversations about Christian faith and current culture. Podcasts of these conversations can be found at The Kindling's Muse web site. Monday night's forum was a discussion of the ongoing relevance of Neil Postman's late 1980's book Amusing Ourselves to Death in which Postman argues that mass media culture--especially the visual culture, namely television--is a detriment to rational discourse, especially discourse on a national level. Staub was joined by Image journal editor Gregory Wolfe, local Seattle artist Scott Erickson, and the producer of The Kindling's Muse, Jennie Spohr. I've been using Postman's book in my classes for the past eight or nine years, which made me curious as to how the conversation would go. Greg Wolfe did his usual brilliant commentary, summarizing Postman's major thesis that everything these days is entertainment, that informed serious discourse is next to impossible in this television age, and that the very medium of television shrinks and distorts no matter how responsibly it is used. For Postman, reading is a higher form of processing information, and even back in those days, he was worried that we were suffering as a culture because we got most of our information from television and celebrity magazines. The idea is that how we process information, and the various technologies that support those processes, impact and change not only what we think, but how we think, how we go about reasoning, and that the sort of reasoning championed by the Enlightment simply cannot be fostered by a mass media barrage of images. Ken Myer argued much the same thing in another great book All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes. What was curious was that I kept expecting to hear the pushback to Postman's arguments, that mass media technologies--especially television and the Internet--are too new to really assess how they might impact the intellectual life long term. Or that the access to so much new information on a global scale changes the possibilities and make potential connections almost infinite in scope. And certainly no one ventured the opinion that the rapid, never ending process of juxtaposition of disparate images and the endless assembling of those images into self-constructed stories is a cognitive process every bit as rich and effective as the abstract reasoning championed by the Greeks and everybody else in Western culture since Socrates and Plato. I look at it like this: let's suppose we conducted a hypothetical case study concerning two children of comparable intelligence and opportunity. From the age of three, let's say that the first child read almost exclusively, hardly ever watching television, and using the Internet for primarily social contact and research. Let's say the other child spends most of his time watching television, reading only when part of an assignment, never for pleasure according to his own choice, and his use of the Internet was not only for social contact and research, but was primarily for entertainment. Now there will no doubt be difference between these two children. What might those differences be? We can hem and haw all day long, but in the end, I think you would be hard pressed to find many parents who would not prefer their children to grow up with the acquired skill sets of the first child rather than the skills sets of the second. To put it another way, a person can do strong analysis of film and television, be it social, theological, or psychological, but if they only watched film and television, they would never learn how to do such analysis. Is it fair to say that for the engagement of pop culture to be effective, the critic must bring a literary mind to their analysis of the film? I may be wrong here, but does it not take deep rationality to grasp the meanings and truths of post-modern juxtapositions? Anyway, the rebuttal to Postman's thesis was pretty non-existent on Monday night's panel. There were some general statements like "we shouldn't elevate the word over the image or the image over the word," which to my ear sounded mostly like, "Can't we just all get along?" What was stunning to me was how the panel's comments gave us a sort of case study of Postman's point. Wolfe, the panel expert raised in, steeped in, and championing the culture of reading and literature made reasoned, cogent, entertaining, and illuminating points regarding Postman's thesis (one which he obviously agrees with in great degree), while Erickson and Spohr, both younger and extremely intelligent in their own right, were unable to clearly articulate anything in rebuttal. Actually, Erickson seemed to support Postman, arguing for a deeper kind of art that demands work on the part of the audience (far more so that pop culture requires). He also observed that the television culture does not allow for the kind of silent meditation and interaction with reality required to penetrate the spiritual world deeply. Jennie Spohr was the closest thing to a champion mass media pop culture had, and in the end, didn't really offer any strong reasons why Postman may have gotten it wrong. While earnest and sincere in her statements about good films impacting our lives for the good (she and Staub had just gotten back from the Sundance Festival, where they say what they considered deeply impactful films), she did not really have an answer to why the loss of the historical primacy of the word over the image isn't a bad thing. No doubt there are good reasons to fight for the place of image at the table, but we didn't hear them Monday night. I tend to agree with Postman that something deep is missing in the national conversation, namely civil reasoning, politics being driven more by sound bytes, spin doctors, and image positioning. On the other hand, I also suspect that those who point us to the relative youth of the technologies of pop culture are right in suggesting that we have no idea what the long term implications might be. I hope they're all good. But truthfully, I'm not sure--at least on the cultural and intellectual level--that it will be good at all. But here's the really sticky question: does rich cultural life necessarily lead to rich spiritual life and experience? Would we be willing to give up cultural sophistication in order to be closer to God? At what point does the desire to be more fully human culturally interfere with the journey to God? It's not a rhetorical question. I honestly don't know. ...heading off to read a book... 6:59:15 PM    comment []

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Why call it "Art?" Anjie at the Alte Pinokothek in Munich. This question came up on the discussion board that is part of the NW Arts Ministry. We're kicking around the definition of art and it struck me that anytime I have this discussion with a class or a group of friends, it centers around the desire to call something "art." Is this collage "art?" Is this movie "art?" Is a piece of bubblegum left on a platter "art" if someone thinks it is? These questions led me to wonder: why do we care if we can call a thing "art" or not? Does its inherent value rise if I can call it art? Does it carry an instant sort of credibility or seriousness if I can call my creative effort art? If I am an "artist", is that a descriptor of a kind of activity I engage in, or am I co-opting a title that says something about my worth before the result of my effort has been evaluated. (My plays may suck, but I'm an "artist.") I'm not sure about this, but what comes to mind is this: "intentional creation." We are makers, icons of God's image, makers of order from chaos in the stream of His making. The word "art" has more connections historically with the idea of work and utility than it does with "beauty" as in "fine art." And to call a thing "art" is to describe a process, a result, and an experience (by an audience, a receiver) of that result. Our desire to call a thing art, perhaps, starts with our encounter with great art that ushers us into the presence of experiences we usually associate with beauty, truth, goodness, and even God. The great paintings in the museums of the world, the astonishing pieces of architecture as Anjie and I just encountered in Germany, the symphonies and rock anthems that define generations--these encounters with art demonstrate to us that "intentional creation" can move and lift and stretch our spirits in ways that are hardly describable. We recognize a deep worth in these experiences, as well as in the objects and events that bring them to us. So do we call all manner of things art in order to connect them to this kind of greatness, hoping that naming it thus will somehow bring a vestige of what has soared in us before back to us again? I don't really know the answer, but for some reason, it's important to me to try and distinguish some parameters for what should be called art and what shouldn't. But really...does it matter? The map is not the territory... 9:33:01 AM    comment []

Monday, October 23, 2006

Doubt Kandiss Chappell and Corey Brill in Seattle Repertory Theatre's Doubt, from the Seattle Weekly's Review This past Saturday night, Anjie and I were fortunate to see Seattle Repertory Theatre's closing night performance of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. Doubt, which was running in New York when Daniel and I were there last year, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama, and no wonder. Shanley, best known in pop culture as the writer of the film Moonstruck, wrote one of my favorite plays, a short romantic piece exploring teenage romance called The Red Coat. I knew Doubt would be good, but it's elegance and power caught me by surprise. Going to Seattle Rep usually gives me a case of the regrets because of my short stint there in 1984. My resignation from an internship in artistic direction there was a turning point in my life, and not necessarily a good one. It was the foolish act of a young man who knew little about the world of professional theatre, and even less about the difficulty of mixing faith and art. As a result, the times I've been to the Rep since have always been laced with notalgia and thoughts of what might have been. Needless to say, this is not helpful when wanting to engage a play. But Shanley's Doubt blew past all of that. When I first sat down, I read his essay-- "Embracing Doubt"--in the front of the program, a piece which apparently he wrote for the LA Times. I'd hoped to find the essay and link to it, but it doesn't appear to be online. For reasons that were clear to me, the essay spoke some healing into me even before the curtain went up. "We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it's because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don't know...anything. But nobody's willing to say that." The way I've put it in conversations is that public discourse these days is all about power and not illumination. Shanley's assessment resonated immediately. The rest of the essay is making a case for the good of doubt. And he is not talking a small dose of it--Shanley's doubt is the soul-rattling kind. "It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man feels unsteady, when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he's on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you've gone the wrong way and you're lost. But this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present." Then finally: "Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite--it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We've got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That's the silence under the chatter of our time." While I can't subscribe to the "no last word" theory, Shanley's belief that doubt is a humanizing force, creating humility and the possiblity for true diverse community, is a welcome idea. I could breathe easier as I settled in for the opening of the play, knowing that perhaps these are days of growth, as hard as they are. Tomorrow, the play... 7:45:10 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 Jeff Berryman .