Exploring A Creed

This is sort of an addendum to The Prodigal's Manifesto post from earlier. Bring the Fire Down mentioned the value of reconnecting with "the old faiths" in his comment to that post. Which set off another memory regarding my recent awakening. I think I will have to break up posts on this topic per his suggestion as well. These posts tend to get extremely long, because it is often difficult for me to express in mortal words the Divine experience. I tend to meander around until I'm saying what I intended to. You poor souls just have to suffer through the wanderings of my brain. :-)

So, the epiphany I had both from reading Campbell's work and going back to Mass came to a head when I really meditated on the meaning of the Nicene Creed, which we say before the preparation for Communion every Sunday. For reference, I have pasted it here:

"We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen."

I had had this sticking point for awhile about the part about believing in the catholic church. The epiphany came when the meaning of the word "catholic" sank in. I knew it from my Catholic School education, but had never truly internalized it. The definition of "catholic" is "universal".

And it truly is. I have my problems with the history of the church, and the atrocities it is guilty of. Unfortunately, that comes along with the imperfection of humanity combined with the gift of free will.

However, I can truly see the will of God coming through in the Church's development, despite the sins of it's leaders. All these traditions the Church assimilated through the conversion of the pagan peoples become part of the universal church.

Because the Church recognized the powerful symbols these traditions represent for people. All the rituals I participate in in Mass have endured because they are powerful archetypal methods of communicating with the Divine. I am choosing to avoid studying the Church's teachings about these rituals for now, because I really want that experience of finding the meaning in them myself, and exploring how my soul responds to them.

So this epiphany of this universality really helps me reconcile many of the differences I had with the Church. It's a matter of separating oneself from the politics and concentrating on the worshipful practices. I am certain those have value because of the peace they give me, and I refuse to let myself be separated from the things that give me peace by the actions of others in the religious community. It's remarkable how easy it is to let the actions of other people separate one from God. And when you look at it that way, it just seems so silly...

Evil Ducks, Beware!

My horoscope for the day from http://www.freewillastrology.com/. this might be the awesomest horoscope ever:

I predict you will have 32 dreams as you sleep in the coming week. In at least five of those adventures, you will be offered a chance to wield a magic hammer like the one that belonged to the Norse god Thor. You're under no obligation to use it, of course. But if you do, it could help you smite dream adversaries, from stupid giants to evil ducks to rash-covered devils. You could also take advantage of it to build things, like a dream house or a dream boat. The proper use of the hammer will be a constant test, since you'll have to be ever-alert and adaptable as you decide whether to employ it for destruction or creation.

Bring it on!

It's Funny Intarwebs Day!

This e-card would be appropriate from the wives of any of my company's management pool...

Sad...But True.

Yet funny at the same time...

Non-Violent Protest...Ur doin it right

From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A protester who wanted his message to stick managed to superglue himself to the British prime minister Tuesday evening.

Dan Glass was at 10 Downing Street to receive a charity's award for his work on transportation issues when he staged the unusual protest.

Just before Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented him with the award, Glass squirted superglue in the palm of his left hand. He shook Brown's right hand and then grabbed the prime minister's sleeve.

"I've just superglued myself to your arm," Glass said he told Brown. "Don't panic. This is a non-violent protest."

Glass is affiliated with the group Plane Stupid, which campaigns against airport expansion and climate change. He said he acted to protest Brown's "hypocrisy" on the issues.

"I just wanted a few more minutes of his time to get the message across, because he's not listening to communities affected by airport expansion," Glass told CNN on Wednesday.

The prime minister managed to free himself in about 30 seconds, Glass said.

"He can shake off my arm, but he cannot shake away climate change," he added.

Glass also claimed that some people in the room actually applauded when they realized what has happening. "I think he [Brown] knew he was outnumbered on this issue," Glass said.

A Brown spokesman called the incident "minor" and "very lighthearted."

Glass said he was allowed to remain at the prime minister's residence for about 40 minutes after the event.

"I think Brown would have been humiliated further if an actual award winner had been ejected from the ceremony," he said.

Police filed no charges.

According to their website, the Plane Stupid group formed in 2005 inspired by the anti-roads protests in Britain during the mid-1990s.

The group -- which describes itself as non-partisan --is funded primarily by donations from individuals and organizations. Members are encouraged to take direct but non-violent action against the aviation industry, a sector they describe as "one of the root causes of climate change."

I absolutely LOVE this. In the U.S., this guy would have been tackled by the Secret Service and had the shit kicked out of him. In the U.K. however, it gets laughed off and the guy is able to um..."stick around" for awhile and get his statements heard. So...which one is the Land of the Free again?

The Prodigal's Manifesto

I've been going back to Mass for a couple of months now, maybe twice a month. I'd actually like to go more often, but it gets hard to give up those lazy mornings on Sundays since I've been working earlier during the week. But hey, it's a start.

My relationship with God has been pretty chaotic the past few years. It took a pretty hard hit when two very good friends lost their baby due to a premature birth. When the situation began to unfold, I turned to God to pray for them. It had been quite a while since I had done so, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I really put their situation out there to family, friends, co-workers, anyone whom I knew were praying folk. I asked them to join in. And the little girl did not make it.

I wrestled with that for a long time, and came to the conclusion that I didn't believe in a Santa Clause god any more. I sneered internally at anyone who prayed for specific things, like more money, to save someone from death, to heal someone that was sick, etc. My view was, and to some extent still is, that God's not going to give you what you ask for. I resolved to stop turning to God for help with my problems and the problems of others. And I stopped going to Mass. Not that I'd been a regular butt in the pew anyway, but I pretty much gave it up completely, except for Christmas and Easter as a family tradition. What's interesting is that my friends became stronger in their faith after their loss.

A couple years later I prayed again when my wife asked for a divorce. It was only really the one night when I was at rock bottom, staying downstairs in my parents house, wracked and writhing with actual physical pain from the broken heart. That was the night I prayed. I started to pray for us to get back together, and then I stopped. Because it didn't feel right. Instead I prayed for the strength to get through it, whatever happened with me and the wife. And I immediately felt at peace . Which didn't last forever, of course. Divorce is a damned difficult thing to get through, especially if you're the one getting left. But I think that's when the healing started.

But then the damnedest things started happening. I started to eat better and exercise, for one. Partly out of spite; one of the ex's complaints was that I didn't take care of myself. And a small part was hoping it would help change her mind. But after those two reasons faded, I found I had the will and determination to keep going because I just felt too bloody good not to. Then a new job opportunity presented itself in a different area of the company. Still in the Atlanta area, I'd still be close to my circle of support. More money. A more successful and self-managed IT department. And when I went to the interview I found the area to be really cool, in a college town atmosphere, and I liked the people I met a lot. So I took the job, moved to an apartment right around the corner from the new office, and continued to heal.

Of course most of this is hindsight in the spiritual sense. I didn't recognize any of this as an answer to that prayer. I guess I started awakening spiritually when I met Wildspark. She was my dream girl: geeky, intelligent, sexy, spiritual, and tattooed (hawt!). I feel like she completes me in ways I didn't even know I needed.

Perhaps I'd finally learned how to pray properly, because it feels like I hit the jackpot. :-)

The first step in awakening was getting me started on yoga (Thanks, honey). I had been working out nearly every day since the separation last January, and my back trouble had lessened a lot, but the sciatica still flared up occasionally and I was having a lot of knee pain. So I came to yoga for the physical benefits and stayed for the spiritual. If you don't know much about it, on the surface it's a combination of deep breathing and stretching exercises. But as a spiritual practice...well, I'm not very educated in the history of it and how it was used religiously, so I can only describe how it makes me feel. After a practice I get that same kind of peaceful, detached, clean feeling that I get now after I go to Mass. So I think the yoga sort of emptied out my spirit of all the garbage that had been building up in it for years.

Wildspark and I come from completely different traditions, but I had always been of the mind that any religion, Christian or no, is just a different path to the same place. That place being a oneness with God, Goddess, Christ, Buddah, Allah, or whatever mask of God resonates with a person. I had allowed myself to stray from that path due to the suffering I saw around me, from lurking on Internet forums watching atheists pat each other on the back and arguing with straw men against the existence of God, complaining about Christianity. I look on a lot of that now as groupthink, but there are admittedly some good arguments out there.

Anywho, Wildspark loaned me this book by Joseph Campbell, who I already respected as a scholar, but hadn't read any of his stuff in quite awhile. The title is "Thou Art That", and it's a collection of lectures, interviews, and essays about Judeo-Christian mythology. What's that you say? "Hellfar and damnation, boy, I'm gone pray fer yew, that there Bible ain't no mythology, it's The Truth! 100% Factyool!" Yeah, well, just hold on there Bubba, I ain't done yet.

Part of what had given me so much trouble about the Bible and Christianity is that both Atheists and Christians get so bent out of shape about whether it's fact or fiction, and I got sucked into that mindset. In reading Campbell's work it suddenly hit me that, ya know what? It doesn't freakin' matter! It's neither. Campbell talks about the concept of religious metaphor, which is something above both fact and fiction.

Any mythology boiled down is a collection of stories. What makes them religious metaphor is that the characters and the lessons their trials, journeys and adventures teach resonate with people. To such an extent that the traditions and rituals that build up around these stories become a means of getting in touch with the Divine spark in all of us. One's religion is a matter of finding the stories and lessons that resonate with one's spirit and internalizing them. Sometimes it's difficult; sacred texts are hard to get through, and I hadn't really done that work before. Often one has to take these stories, images, metaphors and lessons intended for a completely different culture and time and find a way to make them work in one's own space and time.

I used to ask myself, "If you have to work so hard to force these writings to make sense in the modern times, then how can they be the Word of God? Shouldn't these truths be immediately apparent?" Now I realize I didn't want and need to do the work at that time in my life, so I manufactured questions to prevent me from doing it. It SHOULD be work, you aren't rewarded for the things you don't work at. And the reward for this work is enlightenment.

What do I need now? I need that spiritually clean feeling regularly, that enlightenment I feel from the meditation on my own and from the rituals of Mass that I was raised in. I'm seeing new meanings in these symbols because I have divorced myself from the "fact vs. fiction" debate. I find this meaning grounds me, centers me. I feel like I can take on what comes during the week if I make the time to get to that space. I used to feel ashamed of this need I think. Ashamed that it made me less intellectual, less logical, which I always strove to be. But no, not anymore.

By connecting with the Divine in myself, which is how God truly made us in His image, I feel more human than I ever have.

Good night.

My Big Fat Greek Rehearsal

So, ok, maybe Midsummer won't be so bad. There was a notable improvement in lines last night, though Act V is still pretty shaky. We had a full cast of mechanicals (the dumb peasant workmen putting on the play for the Duke) for the first time. While Bottom should be the central focus of that scene, the guy playing Flute (who plays Thisbe in drag) stole the scene from him. Something about his face and voice just cracks me up. He's a tall, almost pretty man, without being effeminate or anything, but he has some quality that just makes the performance hilarious. Can't put my finger on it, really. It just works. Seeing him in drag will cement that scene together completely I think.

The director had two weeks off for a family trip, while the stage manager ran the first off-script rehearsals. So tonight was the first time the director saw us do Act V. I had actually been pretty proud of all of us, because last night was the best we had done Act V, but when I saw the thunder cross the director's face, I thought "Ok, iz not so gud, akshully." But she recognized we'd been working hard on it. For the first time, I think it will be all right to invite people to see.

Still, I'm ready for a new theatre I think. The lack of publicity and financial support from the Arts Center is starting to wear on me. Also, the managing director got a job with the State Department and is gone, so I have a feeling the operations are gonna be in chaos for a while.

I will be glad for the break when this one is done. I had to stay for measurements after rehearsal, then got home and worked out. Finally got to bed around midnight and slept like the dead. Starting to feel kinda old for these long days...

As requested...

You can visit this link for showtimes and ticket info:

http://www.thetheatreproject.com/1shows.htm

Blood and Art

In my intro post, I mentioned that theatre was my calling. My current production is "A Midsummer Night's Dream", playing the part of Demetrius. While I'm ecstatic about doing Shakespeare again, and it's great that I'm playing a romantic lead for once, the rehearsals are getting a bit scary.

We are three weeks out before the show opens, and the actor playing Bottom is calling for lines every other sentence. I'm doing pretty well with my lines, and so is my real-life leading lady Wildspark (playing Titania), but she's suffering in her scenes with this lout with no short-term or long-term memory. I don't have any scenes with him myself, but since his was the role I really wanted, it's painful to watch him stumble, fumble, and stutter his way thru one of the principal comedic roles in the show.

On a positive note, I got to work on fight choreography last night for the first time ever! That was a blast. It feels wonderful not to have to sit on the sidelines for stuff like because of playing fat-guy roles. I get to catch Hermia in mid-air berserker frenzy claw dive at Helena, smack Lysander around a little, and strangle him just a teensy bit. I would have liked to throw more actual punches, but I think the scene's going to work well.

And I bled too! Such a guy thing, but I cut my leg on a rock on the ground and I was so proud! That blood signified the ability to do the physical work that I never was able to do before on stage. I didn't even want to wash it or put a band-aid on it, but Wildspark marched me to the restroom to do so anyway. :-)

Wildspark's got a lot of obstacles with other actors in her scenes, but I have to say I love watching her in this role. She moves with such grace and nobility as the fairy queen, and the power in her voice is a joy to hear. I loves you baby, keep owning it.

Also, I have to give props to the actor in the role of Puck. He was an unusual choice, and when I saw him the first night at rehearsals my jaw hit the floor. He is a great mountain of a man, with this wild streaked blond hair that stands straight up most of the time. I'd estimate him to be close to 400 pounds. But I laugh my ass off constantly whenever he's performing...he's got this huge presence on stage, and this great booming laugh and voice like tobacco and gravel. He spends most of his time as Puck chomping on a nasty Backwoods cigar and chugging from a gallon jug of water, which Im guessing will be some kind of elf-beer for the performance. It's the most unusual performance of Puck I've ever seen, but I think he's gonna rock this performance. Even if the other elements don't quite come together, I'd feel comfortable inviting folks to see it for his performance alone. Well, and me and Wildspark too of course. She's awesome, and I ain't no slouch either.

We are off tonight, no rehearsal. I think we're both looking forward to the chance for some R&R.

Until next time, pip pip, cheerio, and all that rot.

Greetings and Salutations!

So here I am! After much urging on the part of a special lady, I am putting the chaotic issue of my brain and fingers out here in the world for all to see. Several years ago I had a failed attempt at a never-updated MySpace page...and now also because of said lady I am even on Facebook. So as the next baby step, I am now rambling here on Blogspot for all to see. Maybe it will be good for goofy shit, maybe some thoughtful shit, or maybe just plain shit; only time will tell.

A little about myself:

I grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, which with great affection I refer to as the armpit of the South. It was a place marinated in sweat, racism, catfish, and The Blues. The sweat and the racism I do not miss, but lordy do I long for the music and the catfish fries during Lent. I'm in the Atlanta GA area now, a place with it's own claim to sweaty summers, but it's really not quite as bad. Only rarely here can you actually grab a handful of air and fling it against a wall so that it makes a splat sound. And the mosquitoes here are like weak, spindly cousins to the ones back in the Mississippi Delta. Here you generally can't look up at a streetlamp on a summer night and have the glow be blurred by a cloud of ravenous, winged, puppy-sized bloodsuckers. As cliche as it is, I am contractually obligated to say (it's in the city's charter I think) "It ain't the heat; it's the humidity."

This country mouse became a city mouse in 1993, the middle of my junior year of high school, when I moved with my family to a suburb of Atlanta called Snellville. I guess I say city mouse, but the urban sprawl here is so bad that nearly all of Georgia is a suburb of Atlanta. I finished out the school year and spent a summer at Emory University in a Theological program at the Candler School of Theology. This was a big spiritual milestone for me, but I'm sure I'll get into spiritual stuff later. Senior year was when I discovered acting, which I'm still doing today. That's my calling; despite whatever day job I may have to pay the bills.

I went on to the University of Georgia, where I got a degree in English with a minor in drunken nonsense. UGA is actually a leading educator in the field of drunken nonsense globally. The slogan "A drinking school with a football problem" emblazoned on t-shirts for sale all over Athens is quite apt. I had actually started out in the Broadcast Journalism major, until I first confronted the technology involved. Then I bolted and became an English major. Now I work in the Information Technology field. Go figure.

I earned my Masters in IT from American Intercontinental University...which was a very expensive grade factory. I know I didn't deserve the grades I got at that place. But I did learn some valuable skills for Corporate America, such as hiding behind your more skillful teammates, placing blame, and saying "That's not in my job description."

At some point during the Master's Program I married my girlfriend from college. This lasted seven years; but I'm not sure how much I'll go into that relationship here. We separated last January and divorced in May. Since Im not really much for therapy, I spent the time alone working on myself. I lost 80 pounds thanks to the South Beach Diet and a kickass commercial gym in my new apartment complex. About four months later, on OkCupid.com I met the lady I'm supposed to be with, this sexy, geeky, tattooed mystical wise woman with two children. And she's ultimately to blame for these nonsensical ramblings you are reading now. :-)

So that's it then, my first post. Hopefully I'll be back to ramble some more. Until then, cheers.