Stopping on the way home

9/10

Kristen Leigh and Russ

Our neighborhood Palestine solidarity group is meeting at West-Park this afternoon.  We used to meet at Advent, but now that Pastor Elise has gone, we’ll need a new place at least for awhile. The Palestine committee at one of our churches is having a difficult time with a new pastor. There is controversy within the congregation. Question as to whether the task force should  keep the name of the church, even though the church is the basis of this group. Concerns about interfaith couples. Jewish neighbors. Need for a balanced view. We’ve been hearing this more and more in the neighborhood as it becomes more and more difficult to have public advocacy for Palestinians within the faith community.

The balanced view was a view I held passionately…around 30 years ago. Over the years things have gotten worse and the occupation has become all but irreversible. Despite our national denomination’s policy statements and actions, especially regarding divestment from three major companies profiting from the occupation: Hewlitt Packard, Caterpillar and Motorola; local churches feel little influence of those policies.  There will be no Tree of Life conference this year nor does it look like we can get Ilan Pappe to the neighborhood.  There is a feeling of losing ground. 

We will proceed with planning our next film series and see where  to go from there.

As the meeting is breaking up, I ask Russ to hang out a little  because our friend Kristen Leigh was stopping through on her way back to North Carolina. She is a musician, artist, theologian, scholar, friend. She has pretty well articulated the myth of New York (northeastern) superiority, The attitude of privilege: social economic and intellectual of northern liberals. She has discovered  well the more nuanced but no less insidious northern brand of racism. From her perspective, southern conversations about race are more grass roots and less theoretical. In a word, more real.

She’s also called out the slow death spreading through our old liberal and mainline churches like a hardening of the arteries.

As an artist, she objects  to any effort of the church to have arts serve as a handmaid to a theological/ecclesiastical project. Likewise, social justice advocates requesting what amounts to agitprop. What is called for is the freedom of the artist to listen for the voice of God and respond accordingly. Always seeking to report the truth.  We're working on planning a meeting to explore these issues. 

Travel well, Kristen Leigh

She says, you don’t know  how important it is for us that you are here, doing what you’re doing. That there’s a place we can always come to and just be, just listen and see what happens. And look what happens!  I will miss her performances here, she’s had several at West-Park.  And I will miss her.

Seeing Antigona again....

8/4

ANTIGONA

It’s been a very hot day and a day long struggle with the steps.  Alcohol is taking its toll. The older Latino man, stripped to the waist, barefoot, sitting and drinking from an open rum bottle, his eyes, liquid, beyond bloodshot to almost bleeding, mournful tears pouring down.  I tell him he can’t sit there drinking.  He points awkwardly to the two sisters sitting further down. Y ellas, alla…porque?  Because they are not drinking, I say.

Later, the main door is occupied by the man who reminds me of the evil twin of the man who used to be featured on the Uncle Ben’s rice box. Also stripped to the waist and drunk. I am relieved  when Dion arrives for his preshow set up work and helps me move people along.

                                                               ****

Tonight will be my last chance to see Antigona before leaving for Ireland tomorrow.  There are fans and iced down water to keep people cool in the heat. Since review after review has been positive, crowds have been building nightly.  Sold out every night.  But sadly, this one week extension will be it. Professional commitments and family concerns of cast members demand that much of the cast will be returning to Spain. Most disappointed is Soledad who is discovering more of Antigona every performance. She more and more is Antigona. She and Martin had wanted an extended run, especially because so many neighbors who want to see the show won’t return to the city until after Labor Day. Saturday the 15^th will be the final performance.

Something magical happens tonight. Even though I have seen the show countless times,  from the scenes at the Joyce theatre to preview performances at the University of Pennsylvania to the showcase performances at the Pearl to now the fully staged production here at West-Park, it continues to grow, evolve, become, not just Soledad, but the entire cast.

And tonight, it’s all there. No more awkward transitions, it’s almost seamless from scene to scene with an organic and emotional logic. No more sense of flawed wonder. The drama and emotion build and build. Every time you think Soledad has reached her peak, she comes back higher and deeper. Until finally, hair hanging sweat soaked, eyes burning with intensity, defiant and vulnerable, she stares down life itself fiercely embracing its beauty and declaring her agency in the face of the abyss. She, not Creon, not fate, is in control of her destiny.

 And it is the small details I notice, the open smile as she and Haemon share one last dance of love.  As if in that moment, this is enough to redeem. And at the performance’s conclusion, she comes to the center of the stage and gently lifts the chastened, broken Creon, sharing  a look of compassion. (My brother the English teacher maintains Creon is the tragic center of the play.) In that one simple gesture, a suggestion of possible redemption.  And tonight at that moment, I am brought to tears. My breath taken away. And speechless. One of those moments where for just a moment, you see truth. Which is the only purpose of art.

I was asked by someone if I could write an essay on the Christian meaning, the Gospel interpretation of  Antigona. I said No. In theology, we deal in the Word. Our scripture is a word. Jesus is a living word. Those words are their own expression. Art exists not to serve those words, not to be a handmaid, as my friend says, not to illustrate like a children’s Bible.  Art is its own word, seeking to reveal truth. This production of Antigona explores  a host of issues, social-political, spiritual, emotional, but ultimately it is life itself, and the truth revealed in the living of that  life that is at stake. And in that process, the word that is artistic expression is in dialogue with not in service to our words.

That is why this production of Antigona with its intelligence, its competence, its passion and transcendence belongs in a sanctuary. Our sanctuary.

I will visit with my friends. Try to say this. And I will visit Soledad and tell her it is dificil para entender que es possible a ir arriba y arriba….impossible as it seems, she has gone higher and higher.

And for this, I am thankful.

                                                            ****

Tomorrow I will visit with Rudy, seeking a way to bring his work back to West-Park. And then off to Ireland.

An afternoon conversation

1/23

Kristen Leigh has driven down to the city from her place in the woods an hour outside of Albany. To take care of some business and to continue our conversation. Living in the woods in  winter has made very elemental concerns…is there enough propane ? how much snow can the front porch hold? How will I  survive if my car gets stuck in the snow? Do I have enough food if I get snowed in? ….the highest priorities. And the fact is, that is where most of the world lives its life…struggling to get by for the next day, the next moment..

Her thesis Finding God in the in –between: A Post Modern Approach to Sacred Music and Art in Contemporary Western Culture tackled a lot of subjects, important for me was her critique of the institutional church for viewing music and art as illustrative or didactic exposition of the word when in reality, artistic expression is a word of its own, its own meaning inherent not derivative. The songs sung in  the Saturday night bar or café just as much to God’s glory as a Sunday morning offering. On this we totally agree. In my own dissertation, I had written that in a post 9-11 world, creation itself was an act of defiance and resistance against the forces of non-being, an act of partnership, co-creation with the creator.

In her post-graduate travel to Bali, she had learned that for much of the world , the distinction between sacred and secular doesn't exist. It's just life. the separation is a particularly western enlightenment late development. Likewise, the concept of art as a separate category is itself also a western concept. All to be taken into consideration as we consider art and the holy.

She also critiques so-called art for art’s sake, looking for a connection between beauty and truth as I look for the intersection between beauty and justice.  She is helping me fill out what I had intuited when I saw this intersection as a vital part of an urban theology. Reading her thesis inspired me to go back and reread my dissertation which left me with ambivalence. On the one hand, ten years ago I had clearly seen what was essential coming down the road. And the plan that I had developed had already started to show success…23 new members in one year. But the intervening landmarks struggle, building struggles and resulting conflicts plus an economic collapse had drained our energy. Is there still time?

I had heard her say that church is needed for when the shit hits the fan, but she pushes me further on that.  Not church, but something deeper, God, Jesus , the source. Ultimately, church has to be not about us, but God.

In the meantime, we share our sense of the demise of the church as we have known it.  Yes, there are congregations with enough resources to keep on living the present reality into the future, but in the bug picture, we are already in the postlude.  In her view, church is there wherever there are two or three gathered…and that can even include a work of art, so there will always be church. But my question is what does that mean for small churches like West-Park who have to find the funds to support a creaky behemoth of a building? Is Sunday morning still as possibility for the community I see coming into being?

She’s also faced the reality of churches concerned with safety in downtown settings behind security systems like I encountered when I first came to West-Park. Our front doors, open to the street, move her. And there is the experience of liberal compassion from position of privilege combined with judgment around drug use, etc. What we’re called to, she agrees, is vulnerability.

We talk about roles. What I learned in Occupy. And the current Black Lives Matter movement and the emerging spiritual communities that are forming themselves. We (well at least me, she’s younger) are not going to be the leaders. (Sorry Union Seminary, not you either…) That day is past. We are viewed with suspicion as if we think we know better and are going to tell them what they should do. Which is frankly what a lot of us still want to do. But if we listen closely, stay present, earn trust, we will be given our opportunity to reflect, advise, exegete, share language and structure and strategy. It is a ministry of radical accompaniment.

The late afternoon sun is shining through the windows at the Gate. I’m looking forward to making music with her tonight.