Sunday, March 30, 2008
Youth come to understand Easter message
By the time you get to today's writings and ramblings, my joy for this Easter Sunday will have been made complete by many things.
I hope to have been at the old Salem Oak early this morning for the sunrise service with its singing of hymns, spiritual messages and fellowship shared with a wide cross-section of good Salem folk.
Later this morning I will have spent time at St. John's Episcopal Church. There, the message of Easter will have been beautifully illustrated by joyous hymns, a gay profusion of spring flowers, stained-glass windows and the special scriptural readings and prayers of Eastertide.
Our world is rich with the imagery of the special love story of Easter. We are offered many different venues, signs and symbols to help convey the message of Easter.
Michelangelo's Pieta, the world's most beautiful example of man sculpting marble, breaks our hearts as we behold Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding her dead son in her arms as she gazes tenderly into his face.
Many artists have painted scenes of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Ascension. Many writers and poets and composers have told the story in verse and in music.
Faith is belief in things not seen and experienced first hand. All these words and images help us in our efforts to experience that which we did not see.
Through the skillful use of drama, music and literature, the biblical Gospels were conveyed to an illiterate society of farmers and town folk. The most famous Passion Play still in existence, has been re-enacted yearly since 1634 in the town of Oberammergau, Germany.
Closer to home, I experienced a Passion Play, of sorts, that could not have been portrayed any more movingly or spiritually than if it had been produced by New York's Metropolitan Opera Company.
The musical is set in a 1960's hippie genre, the stage alive with bright Day-Glo color. The cast is dressed in bell-bottoms, fringed vests, bandannas and an array of tie-dye apparel. Their costumes must have come from somewhere in the recesses of their parent's closet.
Jesus wears blue jeans and a Superman T-shirt, while John the Baptist is resplendent in sunglasses and a silver-sequined sports coat.
The teachings and parables of Jesus are portrayed in song and routines using about 35young people. Their sense of animation and character was fantastic. How obvious it was that the kid way in the back put as much effort into his facial and hand gestures as the kid on center stage.
This group played out the roles with so much happy conviction that you alternated between smiles, tears and goose bumps. These Penns Grove kids portrayed the final days of Jesus with as much feeling and sensitivity as your heart could hold. Each young person on that stage was necessary to create the whole. Each one added his own share of humor, pathos, anguish and celebration.
Two scenes I found profoundly moving were the Last Supper, and the scene when the followers of Jesus all come to say goodbye as he readies himself for the death that is to come.
These young people took a wonderful musical and turned it into their own expression, their own creative force. They brought to it a maturity of acting ability that was far beyond their years. They lived each word and each gesture.
Often as I lecture to young people about art, I tend to pause a moment to reflect on the kids seated before me. Regardless of the age, I find that they return my gaze and fill my heart with a deep sense of hope for the future theirs as well as my own.
Watching these great kids from Penns Grove doing this play offered a huge dose of hope and a promise of life to everyone fortunate enough to have seen their production.
To these fantastic young people, I'd just like to offer that everything I saw in you last week the love, the tenderness and the belief can leave the stage with you and be carried out into the world to color all your adventures, excitement and dreams.
On the stage of life there are no casting directors. The role you play is entirely up to you. Through all your weeks of hard work and practice I hope you realize just how much fun life can be if you remember a few basic truths and a code or two to live by.Thanks for allowing me to dream along and keep the faith with all of you on stage.
God loves you all, and so do we.
I hope to have been at the old Salem Oak early this morning for the sunrise service with its singing of hymns, spiritual messages and fellowship shared with a wide cross-section of good Salem folk.
Later this morning I will have spent time at St. John's Episcopal Church. There, the message of Easter will have been beautifully illustrated by joyous hymns, a gay profusion of spring flowers, stained-glass windows and the special scriptural readings and prayers of Eastertide.
Our world is rich with the imagery of the special love story of Easter. We are offered many different venues, signs and symbols to help convey the message of Easter.
Michelangelo's Pieta, the world's most beautiful example of man sculpting marble, breaks our hearts as we behold Mary, the mother of Jesus, holding her dead son in her arms as she gazes tenderly into his face.
Many artists have painted scenes of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Ascension. Many writers and poets and composers have told the story in verse and in music.
Faith is belief in things not seen and experienced first hand. All these words and images help us in our efforts to experience that which we did not see.
Through the skillful use of drama, music and literature, the biblical Gospels were conveyed to an illiterate society of farmers and town folk. The most famous Passion Play still in existence, has been re-enacted yearly since 1634 in the town of Oberammergau, Germany.
Closer to home, I experienced a Passion Play, of sorts, that could not have been portrayed any more movingly or spiritually than if it had been produced by New York's Metropolitan Opera Company.
The musical is set in a 1960's hippie genre, the stage alive with bright Day-Glo color. The cast is dressed in bell-bottoms, fringed vests, bandannas and an array of tie-dye apparel. Their costumes must have come from somewhere in the recesses of their parent's closet.
Jesus wears blue jeans and a Superman T-shirt, while John the Baptist is resplendent in sunglasses and a silver-sequined sports coat.
The teachings and parables of Jesus are portrayed in song and routines using about 35young people. Their sense of animation and character was fantastic. How obvious it was that the kid way in the back put as much effort into his facial and hand gestures as the kid on center stage.
This group played out the roles with so much happy conviction that you alternated between smiles, tears and goose bumps. These Penns Grove kids portrayed the final days of Jesus with as much feeling and sensitivity as your heart could hold. Each young person on that stage was necessary to create the whole. Each one added his own share of humor, pathos, anguish and celebration.
Two scenes I found profoundly moving were the Last Supper, and the scene when the followers of Jesus all come to say goodbye as he readies himself for the death that is to come.
These young people took a wonderful musical and turned it into their own expression, their own creative force. They brought to it a maturity of acting ability that was far beyond their years. They lived each word and each gesture.
Often as I lecture to young people about art, I tend to pause a moment to reflect on the kids seated before me. Regardless of the age, I find that they return my gaze and fill my heart with a deep sense of hope for the future theirs as well as my own.
Watching these great kids from Penns Grove doing this play offered a huge dose of hope and a promise of life to everyone fortunate enough to have seen their production.
To these fantastic young people, I'd just like to offer that everything I saw in you last week the love, the tenderness and the belief can leave the stage with you and be carried out into the world to color all your adventures, excitement and dreams.
On the stage of life there are no casting directors. The role you play is entirely up to you. Through all your weeks of hard work and practice I hope you realize just how much fun life can be if you remember a few basic truths and a code or two to live by.Thanks for allowing me to dream along and keep the faith with all of you on stage.
God loves you all, and so do we.
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