One month down. Already

1/31

My first visitor of the day is Anna., bringing me status reports on various people and the latest news from the neighborhood  streets. Puppy of course is there for backup. 

Nancy stops by to pick up my keys and for some real estate conversation.

And then my friend David.(http://www.davidmichalek.net/index.php ) His Fourteen Stations which were first hung in West-Park, are headed to Yale this Lent. We’d never really talked in detail about the process that created them before. That he didn’t know when he began what the result would be. It started just by getting to know the Speakers’ Bureau members of the Interfaith Assembly. Meeting several times a week for several months before the specific idea began to take shape. He’d actually begun thinking about Job. Needed people who were homeless (or formerly) and capable of making and keeping a commitment to go through a process. And after five months, Fourteen Stations was the result. All helpful to our project with Dzieci to create a Passion Play.( http://dziecitheatre.org/)

His Slow Dancing video installation and his newest project Figure Studies are on their way to Europe, ultimately Berlin by August. He speaks of his super slow videos as being occasions for contemplation and we talk about the difference between meditation and contemplation. As understoidd in the process of lectio divina, spiritual reading of scripture. ..The one focused, directed, mantralike. A form of ritual/ The other, no image, no metaphor, no ritual, just being. Finally just being.  His super slow filming opens up spaces to wander into explore, just be in. And we talk of the ontology of slowness, as in slow food. And how the root meaning of lent is slow, to slow down....

The questions about ritual and space go back to our very first event with Bill the architect  from Portland and continue to our exploration with Dzieci.  ( see An hour of ritual space) http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=335914640400880074#editor/target=post;postID=707662201799146266

I’m anxious for him to have this conversation with my Dzieci friends who are arriving for rehearsal soon. But first, Jamie has arrived with some serious questions of her own. Dream, vision, reality questions. 

First to arrive is Golan whose family came from Israel when it was still Palestine. His name a remembrance  of the mountainous border region with Syria.  Matt and Isis arrive and I want to  get them introduced to David who’s still talking with Jamie. 

The Prophet has been sitting quietly in the back of the sanctuary all afternoon. Rachelle is distraught because the  SRO where she lives has thrown out all the things she was sorting out in the hallway leaving her without winter clothes. Jamie immediately begins to help her find warm things. All this is happening at once when Cara calls from the hospital here she is with questions I can’t answer.

Jamie sees the look on my face. Figures I need to debrief. The B awaits. Dzieci will have to wait until the end of their rehearsal to work with me in what  will happen with them in worship Sunday. 

The Prophet will still be there, listening.