Sunday afternoon. Harlem. Spring.

4/22

Global women leaders mural

Sunday afternoon. Spring. Harlem.

It's the first day that really feels like spring. Like it actually might finally be here. Walking up my street towards the Boulevard, the neighborhood craps game is up and running again. Fists filled with dollar bills. White basketball shoes. A whiff of weed. The sound of dice as they rattle and bounce off the corner where the stoop meets the wall. Sure sign of spring.

The store front apostolic holiness church on the corner is in full tilt rockin mode the with rising vamps of organ and drums and an almost Tina Turneresque gospel singer, the sounds spilling  out into the street.I look inside to see the women in their white hats and dresses bouncing in a dance of joy. A woman in a wheel chair sits outside and is occasionally graced with plates of food. Two deacons/bouncers, meticulous in 3 piece suits and medals,  are stationed outside, just in case....They're talking about the passing airplanes above. And drones. "See that shiny light there? That's a drone. Keep them away from me. Don't want no drones looking down on me." 

The outdoor tables of the cafes are filled with the brunch crowd. Prices clearly set for black professionals and Harlem's new white emigres. 

The African men in their long flowing robes are out strolling the street.

At the Harlem Tavern, anticipation is rising for LeBron's game later tonight and on the side wall, a new street mural is being painted to honor global women, and of course, prominently featuring Michelle Obama.

A salt and pepper matched set of Mormon missionaries walk down the boulevard, confidence in their step and earnest purpose in their faces. 

It's Sunday afternoon. Spring. Harlem.

Bread & Puppet's 50th Anniversary

4/23

To read about Bread & Puppets's 50th anniversary residency at West Park, read here:


http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanks-for-all-who-came.html

http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/11/reign-of-christ-sunday-communities-of.html

http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/11/paper-mache-religion.html

http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/11/and-then-they-were-gone.html

Bread & Puppet Theatre Company: Puppets of Resistance

4/22

Bread & Puppet "Cheap Art"

When Bread and Puppet Theatre Company began in 1963, it was a visionary amalgam of medieval street theatre, European avant garde and nascent hippie esthetic.  To this founder Peter  Schumann added his own love of bread and baking with the quasi liturgical sharing of bread that takes place at every B&P performance.

Over the  last 55 years B&P has gone  from cutting edge to dated and stuck in the sixties to being all but forgotten to now being seen as a unique artistic expression of theatre, all without ever changing their esthetic or ethos. Which, as one observer said, was probably Peter's vision all the time. 

Over the years, other troupes with their roots in street performance have taken other paths. (Viz. Cirque du Soleil) One can chuckle imagining a B&P show in Vegas. Peter Schumann has managed to somehow survive this half century without changing his rigorous artistic ethic. You can call it persistence, stubbornness or just commitment but he has remained true to that vision.

Bread & Puppet eschews corporate patronage or traditional grants. They survive on voluntary contributions ...no one is ever turned away from a performance...and the sale of their "cheap art."  They live as a community in Vermont and travel in the same way, cooking, eating, celebrating forever with an ever changing cast of characters. Their summer interns come literally from all over the world. It is an experience one lives through and then then moves on in an ever expanding community of support. Every performance is made possible by local cadres of volunteers where they visit. 

In the end, it is the performance that keeps drawing people back. From the start, B&P has always been about analysis and critique of the present moment. They were a constant presence in the anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear protests which helped bring them global visibility.  Much like Grotowski, there is a deep understanding and use of ritual along with their own archetypal lampoon. The voice of protest shifts between almost didactic declamation to deeply moving inference. There are always complicated Rube Goldbergesque instruments and devices. And as much as Schumann is a committed humanist, his music always goes deep into traditional hymns and church music. Their 50th anniversary production, for example, wove the 1599 German "Es ist ein Ros entsprungen" throughout. The current production, The Basic Bye Byes Show, uses the late 16th century Tallis Canon, first with a song written shortly after Trump's election, but in many other ways as well. 

The Basic Bye Byes, now on tour, is classic B&P. The topic is all that we are called to bid "Bye Bye" to if we are to survive.  In their own words, "The Basic Bye-bye Show – a manifesto on transformation, inspired by Albrecht Dürer's apocalyptic woodcuts, Brahms 4 Serious Songs, and the daily news. BREAD & PUPPET PRESENTS: THE BASIC BYEBYE SHOW." The various scenarios reference the climate crisis, the international capital system, the newly heightened anxiety over nuclear apocalypse and in a final devastating scene, gun violence.

A giant James Madison impregnates a "Holy Cow" (read Sacred Cow) which gives birth to the Second Amendment. At one point, small school chairs are turned over, one by one. The effect is emotionally devastating. At the final conclusion, the cardboard guns are gathered and tossed in the trash. I write this only to give a slight impression  of what you see. 



Having Bread & Puppet live at West Park for a month or so in 2013 celebrating their 50th anniversary was a true experience of community. They have continued to return West Park as one of their New York City homes, the other being the East Village's Theatre for a New City, in a nod to their Village roots. They are yet another expression of what the Center at West Park seeks to be. (And already is.)

If they come your way, join in. And break some bread with them.

Erich Kastner's "Going to the Dogs"

4/7/18

I always thought that if lived before, it was in Weimar Berlin. Or maybe I was a New Yorker hanging out there Isherwood style. It feels so familiar and at home to me. I also have always felt that if we could somehow come to understand late Weimar, we could understand how it happened, that is the hijacking of  one the world's most cultured societies and its descent into genocidal madness. I may have finally given up on that thought.

However, I have just finished Erich Kastner's Going to the Dogs: the story of a moralist. Like a 1936 instagram from Weimar Berlin right before the Nazis took over. (Not translated until 1990 as Fabian.) . Although covering much the same territory as Isherwood (and the musical incarnation Cabaret,)  Kastner's postcard arrives to us from an insider, one whose own culture is being transformed. In it's own day damned as "improper," Kastner's book brings us an objective description of a  culture "going to the dogs." Kastner objectively describes long journeys into Berlin nights through a world of the 30's version of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. It's interesting that even as Kastner's Fabian describes himself as a moralist, his participation in this world is basically described without judgment. In the early scenes, it comes off more as amoral than immoral.

That is until Fabian becomes emotionally involved with an aspiring actress who has her own Weinstein moment and chooses to enter into a relationship with a manipulative and predatory filmmaker. Their love cannot withstand this corruption. There is a clear economic base to late Weimar capitalism as a fatally flawed economic system destined to dehumanize and debase  its participants. Looking deeper, however, we see Kastner is clearly pointing to a spiritual failure, a spiritually empty society with no redemptive resilience in the face of a dehumanizing system.  It is that spiritual failure that may come as close as we can to understanding not only what happened but why it happened. 

As we look at our own late neo-liberal society, we can find the connections with Weimar. A veneer of moralism  covers over a spiritually deadly culture. Anger against perceived cultural liberal elites rages within marginalized white working people and sustains the President's base even as his own behavior runs counter to all professed values. 

In the end, without spoilers, the fate of our Fabian may be a metaphor for the society. If we are going to resist a slow but inevitable slide into an American form of fascism, we will need to be always alert as to what is going on around us.  And this much is clear...we have to be creating a sustainable spiritual core to keep us alive in the struggle. This short but powerful novel is yet another resource in that ongoing project.

Easter 2018: Rising

4/1

Happy Easter

As I leave my apartment, people are lined up around the block waiting for the early Easter service at First Corinthian Baptist. At the Jay street station, I see women in fancy "bonnets" heading to the 5th Avenue Parade. I'm on my way to Beverley. It's Easter. 

Here's what's on my mind this Easter Sunday:


All the years I lived  in Pittsburgh, my neighbor Greek Orthodox priest, throughout the fifty days of Easter, would greet me with Alleuia! Christ is risen! and I would  respond  with Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!....and so today, we begin Easter...
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!  

Easter....so many memories...for twenty years Easter began for me in Central Park, at the foundation stones of All Angels Church in Seneca Village, the buried, forgotten community of African-Americans and Irish and later German immigrants whose story is rising again....because it represented a multi cultural church, because if you try to silence people the  very stones will cry out and because you cannot bury the truth forever...sooner or later it will come out...that's how my Easter began...

Memories of Easter go deeper...later this afternoon, my boys and I will go to Trenton to have Easter with my sister and my mother...they..and their cousins...are all adults now....but how can I forget the many years my sister took over for my mom and created the magical backyard wide  Easter egg hunt to find all the hidden plastic Easter eggs filled with treats....from Berlin my son calls me and says, tell your grandson his chocolate eggs are for dessert...

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

I believe Mark is my favorite version of the Easter story...it ends with the words... they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.....in fact, in the Greek, its a dangling preposition...they were afraid for...for what?  and why? Man, there is so much space to explore there....

#Emptytomb
#Hesnothere
#Whatnow

and right now there is so much fear...as I was  quoted  last week's West Side Spirit and Our Town about fear:
Yes, there are, and the Rev. Robert Brashear, pastor of the West-Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street since 1995, ticked off a few of them, citing, “Fear of the other, fear of people who are different, fear of people who look different, fear of people who come from different places.” (http://www.westsidespirit.com/local-news/20180327/a-season-of-faith/2)

Yes a lot of us are afraid...and we need to speak to that...but EASTER....
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Let's get something straight...this holiday is not nor never has been about trying to prove that something extraordinary happened 2000 years or so ago. Can't be done.  No cell phone shots, instagram posts, snapchat posts or tweets. No external verifications. None.

#wheredhego
#whereshenow

Even the earliest gospel just leaves us with an empty tomb and questions. 

The earliest biblical witness is in Paul,1 Corinthians 15: 1-11....and the bottom line here is that we're right there with Paul, ok? We encounter Jesus just as Paul did no more...and get this ....NO LESS....

at the  end of the day, if you  want proof that Jesus is risen, look around you... it's you and me ...we're here...Christ is in us...and Christ is risen....

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Except wait a minute.  Back to fear.  As long as there is fear, the  risenness is not yet complete.  Jesus is still in the state of rising....and we need to be rising with him ......

And there are signs...

Central Park West

I give you just one...last week over 100 presbyterians gathered at Rutgers Presbyterian Church and we marched together to join with the march for our lives....

Leaving Rutgers

.by the time we reached Central Park West there were100s of thousands...j

oining in with the young people to say #neveragain to say #enough....

Students demand

They don't accept that they are too young, that it's too hard, that there's nothing to be done...they're telling us they're disappointed in us and that something can be done...they give us hope....

With Steve Phelps

Look...I get why the gospel ends with "Afraid"....resurrection is scary...
the easy part is to say, ok, it's over we lost, get over it...the disciples returned to their old jobs as fishers, John says...the scary part is to say no, the tomb is empty...the struggle continues...we are in the process of rising...that's what it is my friends, the process of rising...let us continue to rise together....

And we shared communion together. More friends and family than usual gathered. Even a baby, which always brings smiles and hope. And Geraldine shared her music. And then the traditional community meal in the fellowship hall.

And then, to the train. To meet my boys. Family. Easter.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!










Second Reading 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

1Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them — though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.


MARK
 the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were