The week is underway

5/8

Late last night, after I left our night serving at the homeless  shelter, after Dion helped me set up the beds and get all the towels and sheets and everything out and Kate served another full course meal with glassware and real plates and silver, everyone deserves Sunday dinner, she says, and one of our guests gives a full detailed report on the Joan Rivers funeral with a full run down of celebrity sightings, and we cleaned up and did the dishes, I stopped by the church to wait for the 7 bus home.

The only person there was Geoffrey. Bobbing and rocking back and forth like a davening chasid chanting in a language I can’t understand.

I go for coffee with Brian from ReGroup. Reviewing our experiences of his production of the Texas Trilogy. Leanings on both our parts. I appreciate his graciousness for issues that came his way from our direction. Not to mention his dedication to mining an important vein in American theatre history. Brian’s work helps us experience the roots of modern American drama. We talk about  future projects potentially at West-Park.  And my appreciation for what he  and his company brought to us.

Pat K comes in. She’s been busy enjoying being a grandmother, and other family projects. She’s anxious to get back to work, we need to find time to get our beautification committee together.

Pat O and I are going through the latest developments with architects and then Jerry our construction manager comes by for an update and I remind my self this is all about reconstruction.

Jeremy G and Rishika are out on the steps waiting the arrival of other Work Center friends for the weekly Seed Group meeting. We talk some about Sam and Ryan’s Cymbeline and some of the ideas about performance and the sacred that I’ve been talking about with Kristen. Need to get her involved in the next conversation with Mario, Jeremy and all.

Angelo appears out of the blue, as he always does, this time with stacks of his special 9-11 commemorative post-cards.

Two Japanese artists come in with paintings for Berik and Leila’s next show.

The cast members of Frog& Peach’s Titus Andronicus are arriving. I talk with one who I saw the other night in the immersive performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream in Washington Square Park in the Village last week. Their all-white costuming was reminiscent of the Guilty Remnant on HBO’s post-apocalyptic Leftovers series. I say I admire their courage in tackling Shakespeare’s Grand Guignol of a play.

Jamie pulls up in a cab, ready to take me up to 475 for another conversation with the Presbytery Trustees about our future.

Saturday: day of preparation

4/19

Flowers waiting for tomorrow

Saturday.

As I get to the church, there’s a crowd outside the 86^th street door. What’s going on here? It’s the Frog & Peach cast of King John anxiously awaiting the arrival of their director for rehearsal to begin.

Shortly after I open the doors, the flower delivery truck arrives with a load of lilies and tulips from MIm. They will be there to brighten our Easter morning.

Don offers to help clean up and set up but since no one else is there, I decide we can get by. But just as soon as I’m ready to leave, Marsha arrives and we set to work. Clearing out the narthex. Throwing out accumulated unnecessary stuff. Marsha starts to vacuum and I get the broom and dust pan and head to the steps, the sidewalk, to sweep. Amazing what can accumulate just overnight. We place two pair of women or children’s leather shoes/boots on the steps and they are gone within the hour.

I make a run for supplies. Return and finish. The restrooms will wait until tomorrow morning, the King John crew is still here.  It is two hours later. Much has been accomplished. I feel a good kind of tired.

Just after Marsha leaves, Leila arrives, looks around. Looks good, she says. The flowers are there, already to be set on the steps in the morning. To say, we are here. You are welcome. Happy Easter.

Midweek Holy Week: Quick, cheap and good. Pick two.

4/16

Joe and La Toya back to pressing the limits again. I swing open the doors. They say, I know, I know…

It’s a cold day.Geoffrey arrives early and stays late in the sanctuary. Stops in to say thank you sir.

Jeremy is back …briefly…from Switzerland. He has brought me his CD to give to Jean. And is excited to show me his new music video for his song, Let’s waste this year. Unfortunately, I can’t share it until it’s official release. His record company is looking for the right roll out strategy. But I love his shout out to me in the credits. He and Priska are hanging out in Berne, Switzerland while her show continues. To make money while he’s home, Jeremy’s made one  deal with the devil, he says, for a TV show. I’m anxious for him to get back so that we can start working together again.

Cool thing about his video. It was shot immediately after his interview with Zeljko. The same crew from the School for Visual Arts. (Hooked up by Zoran?) He invited them down to his meeting with the Hungarian puppet people. And they went along just for the fun of it. It’s taken 18 months to get the video done. Like my father said, he says. You’ve got quick, cheap and good. Pick two….And then he asks about Zeljko’s shooting and project.

Karen is in and playing the piano until Pat O arrives and we go into the sanctuary to review last Sunday’s congregational meeting and talk about next steps. We talk about the two work groups again and what it will take to move forward. It’s my job to inspire and sustain the will to move forward in spite of the frustration.

A young woman comes in. Asks if Teddy’s still here. If we know where he is. Danielle and I look at each other. He’s dead, I say, died a year ago Christmas. We had a memorial service in February. Like 200 people here . All kinds of people, he was well loved.

Did he die here?

Yes.
How?

Heart attack.

I had a feeling that he was gone…or, not here. I had a feeling.

How did you know him?
I’m a photographer. I was following Occupy Wall Street. I took pictures of him. He came to me this week. I mean, to my mind. I didn’t now where to look. I knew he came here. So I thought I’d start here.

Yes.

I have pictures. I know he had children. A daughter. Daughters. A son?

Yes.

Do you have their addresses? I’d like to send them…

Yes. But there’s someone else. The love of his life. You’ve got to send her, too.

She looks at me puzzled. I give her the link to Zeljko’s film about Teddy.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fH-jMpIvTY)

Watch this, the story’s there. Well, not the story, but, you know? 

She takes down all the information. We exchange contact info.

He got to me, you know?

Yeah, I do. He was well loved here.

And that’s the second time Zeljko came up today.

A Brazilian is in looking for a place to teach capoeira, that hot mix of martial arts and ritual, beautiful movement, movement accompanied by the berimbau. Capoeira.

Marsha and I meet. Talk about doing something. Talk through what should be done first. Decide to make a proposal lot do that. To begin.

Coming home on 86^th after the Yankee game, it felt like fall, like playoff weather. I run into Lynnea and her King John. They open soon. They’ve been in rehearsal in the church. She’s feeling good.

To be. Or not. When italians fight, they serve spaghetti.

9/30

There is no choice but to get down and get to work.

Stephen is in and we review everything that has transpired and all available options. The session will meet later tonight.

Mim drops by. Mainly because she wants to take Danielle and I to see our friends  Ethel at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night. But I have to share with her the shocking news of Presbytery’s chaos creating split decision on Saturday. We go across the street to the Bean and her unflagging care, concern and support helps. On the way back, she gets to meet RL for the first time.

Berik stops in ready to schedule his next art show. But we can’t even give him a clear picture of what will be available when. Ever the creative artist, he is not fazed but begins to contemplate what a show in the gallery might be like. 

The session gathers. With a completely different agenda than originally imagined. It is so hard, after all these years, when the light finally seems to appear, when the way finally appears to be clear, to have it snatched away in a second. By your own people, so to speak. Part of the soul just wants to say, I’m done. But there is no strategic plan that flows from done. We want to fight. The question is how. Stephen reminds me of the difference between wise and right. Which will we be? 

The wrong question from Jamie at the wrong time  sends me for a walk around the block, breathing hard. I come back. Take a deep breath.

Throughout all of this, the cast of Lynnea’s Frog & Peach... Hamlet keeps passing through,one by one. 

When I get to the B, there’s a palm and a plate of bolagnese waiting for me beside her. When Italians fight we serve spaghetti, she says.

Hurricanes, marriages, music

4/20

Up early. 7:45 am in fact. Meeting Thia Reggio of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance at the church to get a load of supplies together to send to Broad Channel for Sandy Relief. Probably our last load.  Stephen helping too, with Jay supplying the muscle.

Then coffee with Jon, the retired bass player from the Philharmonic who’s been working with El Sistema, the music project in Venezuela that produced Gustavo Dudamel and the Bolivarian Youth Orchestra. We talk about the current volatile political  situation in Venezuela and it’s impact on the program. The fact that Chavez had been so supportive made it suspect in a lot of North American eyes. We talk about how it could be brought closer to a true Freirian model and begin to use not only classical music but everything culturally in the air around  the students. Jon’s special program is called Very Young Composers. He’s anxious to schedule an event for the fall at West-Park to begin exploring collaboration with the Center. I have no idea how it would work out, but think immediately of Martin because their approach to art and learning is so similar.

Talk with an American Jewish and Colombian Catholic couple about their upcoming marriage. Late in the day, I’ll marry an Argentine-Chinese couple. This is the world we are living in.

Between these two marriage appointments, I pass back through the church. Danielle is working on bringing more order to  the office to get ready for phase two of our spring cleaning project. Martin’s workshop is in full swing, or should I say full flamenco, and Frog & Peach is on break in their final two days of rehearsal here. I walk up the street with Ted Z who once shared F&P with Lynnea but now has his own unlikely country and western music career going. But what we talk about is real estate.  

A message comes from Thia that the  folks at Christ by the Sea Presbyterian, our worst hit  Presbyterian Church, was the thankful recipient of our supplies. They’re only now getting able to receive and handle  relief supplies four months later. 

After the wedding in breezy, cool but sunny Battery Park, I meet Jeremy at the Firehouse to talk music and watch the Nets take out the Bulls in the first round of NBA playoffs.

After the game, it’s late. F&P is just finishing up. There are noises outside on the steps but I let it go, since I’m working on my sermon. Jay stops by just to check in to see what's going on. Later still, I’m startled by Marc and discover I’d fallen asleep at the computer. Time to finish the sermon and head home. 

How good and pleasant it is

4/18

Marsha and Hope and I meet at the Bean across the street to talk about the congregation. The extended uncertainty weighs on us all.  And has been hard on those who have endured, stayed faithful for years.

i come back across the street to meet with Kimberley. We review and evaluate her last worship service. And the musical review/exploration of Genesis she did at Union. Were hoping to do it here, but most of her cast is heading home as the semester is all too quickly coming to a close. She’s got something well worth doing.

Deacon James stops in, wearing his Korean War vet’s hat. On his way back form the hospital. Wants me to know he’s still alive. breathing’s hard, but he’s hanging in. 

A man comes in. Has a job interview. Needs clothes. Has an appointment at St. John the Divine. I help him get there.

Martin is conducting a workshop. Stephen has been working with him, sharing with him a photographer’s eye on perspective. Thinking again about Elizabeth Herman’s striking portrait gallery from Occupy.(http://www.transtudies.org/Photos_Herman.html ) Especially her shot of me looking off to the side.

Stephen impressed by Martin’s broad ranging interests and insatiable curiosity and how he brings that all to his work. That’s why he’s here, I say. 

Cara is in to sweep and clean and play awhile before Dzieci arrives for the healing circle.

Rachelle has all her things spread out on a bench, going through them piece by piece, item by item. Nothing really of value, but she feels it’s important work. In her mind, she’s still the bright cultured woman professor living on the East Side.

Anna comes in. More than anything, she’s a a woman with a deep compassion for others. And a desire to help, to fix things if she could. In #OWS, she was known as Big Bertha, but for me, she should only be called Anna. There’s someone she cares about deeply. And in two minutes rattles off a dozen or more alternative strategies and resource references to execute them. I say, Do you have any idea how much you have just told me in the last two minutes? I can’t even remember  it or write it down fast enough ...She smiles and says, So I’m doing it again huh? and I smile. Her capacity to retain all this information is nothing short of amazing. 

Frog & Peach deep into rehearsal.

Matt from Dzieci wants to schedule their Cirkus Luna!, a family troupe hailing from East Molvenia....I share with him the reviews of their Passion, those who were upset with their using the communion table as a prop and not having a more recognizable worship experience to frame it and those who wondered if it were not inappropriate appropriation of Jewish symbols for a Christian story. And those who felt moved to tears, as if they had never truly understood the story as their own before. I want to talk more with him about worship, ritual and performance. About where the lines are. And whether the lines are even important. And how this experience can be used to build a community. But we run out of time. 

The healing circle continues to intrigue me. Touches my skepticism and desire. Always new people as well as the Dzieici circle. Totally non-verbal, resonance of ancient tribal chant, medieval church, monastery, coven....Matt completely aware and watching and directing. A circle diverse enough to defy characterization. 

After it’s over, Cara tells me she’ll miss church because she’ll be at a wedding. 

When the others leave, i stay for the Dzieci evaluation of their passion experience. I share the critiques I’ve heard. The problematic histories of passion plays. Matt speaks of the first time he did this was at a convent with nuns. In habit. How the creation emerged from their community. This was different. 

One’s husband felt it conveyed the idea that the Jews killed Christ, but that was a lone experience. 

Many of the cast were from a Jewish background. Including Orthodox. Had wanted to explore what had been for them an alien, forbidden world and found a story that had its roots in their own. Those from a Christian background understood for the first time the origins of bread and wine. The Eucharist rooted in passover. And for all of them, the power of the use of kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning that goes deep into their memories, the mourning prayer that doen’t speak of death but only affirms life.  

And I speak of how ending without resurrection not visible, with a reaffirmed community recessing to hinay ma tov (how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in harmony, psalm 133) underscores my understanding of the victory in being willing to follow faithfully to the end, even the cross. And through the following, find transformation. 

And how the meta level has not only a community reality but that of the individual as well. Inside each of us we are the betrayer and the betrayed, the crucifiers and the crucified, Judas and Jesus. The reality inside each of us.

The discussion ends. Martin’s workshop is continuing. Frog & Peach has finished. Share a few words with Lynnea. Try to explain Dzieci. Namechck Grotowski and Brook. Lynnea’s trying to bring her Measure  for Measure home. My day is over.