Creativity is resistance

7/15

Jane and I meet at Starbucks (adjunct office 2 or 3). We like the sense of a growing shared ministry in the neighborhood.  Talk about the service she and I and Jeremy could create for Wednesday nights.

Back at the office, just a short break before heading to talk to a couple about a wedding. Then, back again, way too much to do in way too little time. Press blurbs, contracts, church growth strategy, Sunday service....


Deacon James walks in. How's he doing? Better than yesterday. Another day at the hospital. More chemo. Says he needs a senior legal specialist. Why? After 50 years, a medical DNA test for his son revealed that he is not the father, biologically speaking. 50 years made him the real father. A shock to his sense of reality. Doesn't change love, but there are Social Security implications. Who can help? Tough question. Legal Aid came up short. Maybe WSSFSH can help? See you Sunday, he says, and is gone. 

An issue. Leila has come in. She and Berik filled the walls of Mc Alpin Hall with art from their New York Realists group, to add beauty during our concert series. Hoping for an exrtended run, a real opening, etc. Now Woodshed has converted the space into a work shop. The hall will soon be converted into a Parisian cafe and courtyard.  Lack of communication re. expectations, needs, etc. Not good. Will have to work this out.

I go to look for Stephen. He’s in the backyard. A young woman from the Times is interviewing he and Teddy. Stephen introduces us. She asks me why the church would want a secular theatre group to take over so much space, for so long a time. I talk about how we were closed. The beauty of the counterintuitivity of urban homesteading in your own home, raw urban space in a gentrified neighborhhood. The vision of the Center, reintroducing the space to the community, the city. It’s four sectors of intersecting activity: arts and culture, intergenerational education, social change and spirituality. How the church always worked to live at the intersection of beauty and justice, ethics and esthetics. 

She says she doesn’t see much social content. Teddy speaks of wonder, bringing awe back to a deadened culture. The spirituality of that task. Stephen of the interaction between audience and physical space, what this building is ontologically, a church. And I speak of 9-11, my experience of the power of negation, destruction, death, non-being. And my realization that creativity, participating in the ongoing work of creation, of re-creation is an act of resistance against those powers. 

Back upstairs, Leila has been joined by Hope. We talk about where communications broke down, what we we need to do better. We can work this out.  Enough for today.