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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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Reflections on Leaving Ruin
This past weekend, I performed Leaving Ruin at Taproot Theatre. The three performance run was truly a treat for me, like playing a football game on your home turf for a hometown crowd. There was a level of ease and presence in the work that is sometimes hard to maintain on the road. With all the time I've spent in the Taproot space, the familiarity became an ally as I dropped into the imaginative world of Cyrus Manning. I found Saturday night especially affecting, and the emotional waves that theoretically swamp Cyrus showed up right on cue throughout the evening.
I've been doing this play for seven-and-a-half years now, which I hadn't really considered until this weekend. In that time, the play has seen many types of audiences: some laugh through the first act as if it's a sitcom, others sit quietly as if offended, but in the end, there are always people who come up to me after it's over to say thank you, that their brother or father or friend went through exactly that experience, and that somehow the journey of Cyrus ended up being what they were scared it wouldn't be--healing.
It's hard to express just how thankful I am for Leaving Ruin. As my wife says, it's just something God gave me, and it easy to see His hand working in the ongoing work of the play and the novel. It's one of those Chariots of Fire things, I guess--that when I'm playing Cyrus, I feel God's pleasure.
Let all the applause belong to You...
8:35:50 AM
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Blasting Through the Writing Barriers
Today, I'm going to write.
It's 7:55 a.m., it's a late start day with the kids still in bed. They don't have to be at school until 10:00. I woke up about an hour ago, and have been mouthing off to God for most of the time since. I say mouthing off--I mean complaining. Maybe He heard me, maybe He didn't (I think He did), but either way, I feel better. There seems to be a clarity in this moment, a lifting of the fog, and I am determined to get out some things onto the page or the screen that I'm thinking and working on down in my innards.
Who knows, maybe 5000 words today.
I also have to pay bills, ferry the kids around, communicate with a zillion people about the various projects in my life, hopefully get a few moments with Anjie at some point along the way, and as I go, use certain amounts of leftover energy and attention to make sure I don't eat everything in sight, including the massive amounts of leftover lasagne from Sunday's life group.
But see, it's not all the busyness I complain to God about. I've been busy since the day I was born, it seems. The primary thing is that I used to not realize how corrupt the human heart can be on a simple, personal, everyday level. The lofty mountains of living God's love used to be out of sight, out of mind. But ever since I woke up to the fact that the love of God was a reality, needing to be poured out on the world through His people (that would include me), my lack of doing exactlly that (living out that love) is a pebble (more like a boulder) in my shoe. Being prone to self-absorption and navel-gazing anyway, there are stretches of time when I can see nothing but my inability to live the kind of life Jesus lived, and Paul's Romans 7 lament rolls over me with real force: "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Of course, we know Paul's thrilling answer, but sometimes when I ask the question, there seems to be a huge pause.
All that said, today I'm writing, going on with it. Breaking the silence, hoping to draw someone into a conversation about something that will change the face of the day for someone close to me.
...God bless your thinking and feeling today....
8:12:30 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jeff Berryman .
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