No more set building, session proposals, dress rehearsals and last minute details to attend to...ready or not Friday night was opening night! For the last three nights (and another round this upcoming weekend) we staged a production of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird out in our church field...our field transformed into Maycomb, Alabama. We are taking part in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's great work of American literature. For our congregation, this was an opportunity to celebrate the creative artistic talents of many of our members and to demonstrate to our community that the themes of Lee's novel- that of keeping integrity, teaching our children empathy, and defending people and causes that indeed the world finds hopeless or without worth, endure.
Though many of us have devoted many hours and much energy to this production, and though it is a ministry of the church benefiting the Weld Food Bank...really, this production was about rallying together as a Family of Christ to support the vision and spiritual offering of one of our members.
Meet Atticus Finch
For months (maybe years before we arrived in town...who knows?), this dear man has been passionate about the possibility of doing this production. In some ways, it seems, the themes of the novel are life themes for him. There is something more for him than admiration and connection to a good read. It is even more amazing that the characters of Jem and Scout are played by his own children. Just as much as he plays Atticus trying to pass down teaching moments to little Scout, he is parenting on the set of that play. As I have watched him embody Atticus Finch, I see a father who is trying to share his passion for theater with his children. But the real gift is that by doing so through the theatrical role, Rudy is communicating some of his own hardships and life lessons in a way that I hope sticks with them. I trust that someday his own children will grow up and look back on this experience as a time when they got to know their father better. I hope they can recall this as a moment where their father's true character shone through.
Every moment of this play just aches with love...all around. So I feel greatly gifted and privileged to count these folks my community, my Family of Christ. Such is our little community that has gone out on a limb to devote countless days to support an effort that was growing in the heart of a man that needed expression. Such are we who wear our hearts on our sleeves! Such are we- a community that mirrors the courage Atticus Finch needed when defending an innocent black man back in 1936, as we take on the social and moral issues of our day. Even if we know in our gut that we will lose in the sight of power and public opinion, we go about our ways with humility and clarity. This is the blessing and the burden of trying to stick to our higher consciousness, our Spirit led center. This is what I see on Atticus' face during the play. Blessing and burden, all mixed up...and he just presses on. We just keep pressing on.
And though I am very tired and have many tasks of ministry and people to attend to, I just want to sit on a bale of hay and watch the play all over again. I am so proud.
So exciting! Great pix. I love it.
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