Warrior in the Sky

Warrior in the Sky

02-17-12

“It’s been a long day,” I think to myself as I finally head back to my apartment. The warm glow of light which pours from the window to the girl’s dorm door does nothing to displace the chill of the mid-February night. I wrap my scarf around my head as well as my neck, in effort to keep warm on my “long” trek down the hill and up another. Having my scarf wrapped so, I begin my walk in solitude, chuckling to myself at the thought that I might look French!

The crunch of gravel, the soft squeaking of my left shoe, the squashing of mud caused by the thaw the lovely sun had brought us earlier, are the only sounds I hear at first. I feel the cold breeze lift the hair that has fallen out of the scarf and I cannot help but look up into the clear night sky.

“There you are, my love!” I say to the cluster of fireballs dubbed, “Orion,” by the Greeks. He is a figure who has been with me since the age of eleven or twelve, when I first became aware of him. He was so near then, I felt I could touch him. Mountains are beautiful things! Somehow they make me feel closer to God. Orion has become my reminder of hope, love and comfort. Christ is my love, my protector, my hope…

At the age of eleven, I lived for seven short months in the third-world country of Honduras. My family, missionaries with an organization that provided housing and education for those who had been orphaned or whose parents could no longer care for them due to Hurricane Mitch. The childrens’ center was housed in the capital city or Teguc and had a ranch up in the mountains about 45 minutes outside the city.

Rancho Ebenezer was my home for about 3 months. We moved into a log cabin near the top of the mountain shortly after my twelfth birthday. On a clear night in the winter, the air was chilly, but not the freezing chill an Iowa winter brings. I was walking up the steep road that lead from the Mission House to our cabin and I looked up. There he was, my warrior. He was just a cool constellation then, but I will never forget how near he seemed. Up there on those mountains, I felt my savior’s presence, though I was too young to fully understand.

The next time I really contemplated my Orion was a time of huge emotional and spiritual growth. Each evening, I walked from the bus stop “Banlieu” to la maison de mes parents d’acceuil (my host parents’). It was early in the year of 2009, and frequently the light, cool breeze would waft through my hair and though I was walking by myself, I there were times when I didn’t feel alone.

I will forever equate those walks as time spent with a lover…time that neither wants to end. Often times, I would reach the door of my house and have to keep walking, because I just wasn’t ready for the time to be over. I wasn’t ready to say, “Goodnight.” These nights, I would talk with Jesus in a strange combination of English and French, or I would walk in silence, drinking in his presence. The soft breeze was my love’s hand brushing the hair from my face, a cool fresh breath on my neck, soft kisses…An invisible love.

Then, if the night was clear—a rare occurrence in Bretagne—I’d see the symbol of that love…My warrior, poet in the sky. My reminder of Jesus love and sacrifice and the hope for the day I would share these lover’s walks with someone else.

Here at Cono, an overcast sky seems rare…I hope that means my warrior poet isn’t far away.

I have a Dream...

03-25-12

I have a dream…that one day I will be a woman to be looked up to, a woman young girls can aspire to be like. Not because I am beautiful and successful, but because I am those because of a higher purpose. The idea of being an actress of good moral character came to me as a high school senior, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life…

Imitation and imagination and emotion. Those were the things that drove me from the time I was a little girl. I quoted Disney movies from the beginning to the end. I played in endless reaches of fancy in the magical country which doubled as the family farm. Emotion has always ruled. Imagination doesn’t work without it!

“Mawwage. Mawwage is wha bwings us togebbah today…” I stood in front of 200 or so guests at my sister Tanya’s wedding, using the gift of imitation that seemed so natural for me.

Now as I look at grad school’s I am scared, but I think about this aspiration…I remember that it’s not about my success but about the purpose that God has for me to fulfill. If I have to face rejection, criticism, and ridicule, I can do that. “For when I am weak, I am strong.” And this is the dream.

I will pursue this field, though it terrifies me. I do it not to glorify me, but to show young girls there is more than beauty and fame. There is true fulfillment if the dream is built on the right foundation. Not personal glory, but a higher calling, a deeper purpose.

This is what will keep me going, those nights I want to cry myself to sleep because of rejection. This is what will keep me going when the money runs low and I am scrambling for that next audition. And this is what will keep me going when I don’t know where to turn after a mucked-up performance. It will be my hope…because it is a dream worth pursuing.

Worthy of Life

03-20-10

Bleak.

That is the word that best describes the mood the weather pressed upon me as I exited the bus. The frigid air felt as though it blew right through my body, freezing each cell, turning my limbs to ice. The snow, which pelted my face, attached itself to the patches of white already on the ground, gradually expanding until it connected the whole world in hues of white and grey. Clumps of brown, dead grass peeked through the snow, a reminder of the death that had made this place famous. The tears that formed in my eyes solidified as they leaked down my frozen cheeks. Somehow I felt that if it had been a bright, sunshine-filled day, green grass below my feet and blue sky above me, the truth of this world I had found myself in would have been lost to me. The pain that emanated in this place, the pain that seemed so recent, though it happened decades ago, would have just slipped by me unnoticed had it not been an icy winter day. It would have been just another historical place, another fact in my mind placed there by various history teachers over the years. Instead, my emotional intuition had been activated and the place became more than the legend I had considered it before: real, but distant like a story. It was more than just words and statistics, but it was real, an undeniable atrocity, one of the grossest eras in all human history.

Here I was in Poland. March, 2010. Auschwitz. Decades after World War II, the lives of the innocent, brutally subjected to Hell on earth, still cried out. Their plight became real to me in the most minimal sense, just by the effects the weather had on my flesh. The stage had been set, the mood achieved, and here I stood, bundled in layers of fabric, a luxury denied the victims of the Auschwitz camps.

 I walked through camp, through the gate, past dozens of barracks, each of which held about a thousand people, cramped together, in beds that resembled cattle stalls. Yet these were people considered worth less than cattle. I walked through buildings that were storehouses the uncountable amount of belongings which prisoners had brought with them. Hair brushes. Shaving utensils. Bowls. Dolls. Shoes. Human hair. I had already been fighting sickness, but at the sight of the human hair, which was used to make blankets for soldiers, it was all I could do to stay on my feet. All the items were piled high, each a mountainous category, only a portion of total confiscated during the days of the camps. Among the numerous suitcases, I saw a name I recognized. Meyer.

The knot in my stomach became more tangled as I thought about how I had had family on both sides of the war. I had had family who had fought to support the man who had deemed these innocent people to be worth less than livestock, unworthy to live. These people who had lives like we do, had jobs, families, struggles, talents. Felt happiness, sadness, fear, love, like we do. But they were thrown into the fiery furnace and they were consumed.

 Those deemed unfit for physical work were sent immediately to the gas chambers. Later, other prisoners would carry their corpses to the crematoriums which produced ash, layering the ground in a constant snow, not composed of frozen water molecules. Others were shot in front of cement slabs. Others died in starvation cells. Others died from lack of nutrients or of the cold or of over work or of having lost the desire to live.

What made them unworthy to live in the eyes of Nazi-Germany, I cannot understand. My anger at the evil the human race is capable of, my sadness of the beautiful lives destroyed, the hope that few found…all these combine in me to create a stoicism. I am overwhelmed with emotion, but which I cannot tell. All I can think of is my guilt at standing here, making a spectacle of the pain which engulfed millions.

And yet, in that pain of the few that survived the camps, some had a joy that overcame all the darkness they had been through. If their joy can survive hell like that, the pain that I am engulfed in is also surmountable. I feel guilty when I think about how my own pain has consumed me, when I went through nothing compared to these people. How could anyone do something as gross as this to any living-being. How could any human being believe that another is so different from them that they are not worthy of even the most simple things? What is it that qualifies humans worthy or unworthy of life?

In my anger I would say that those who had decided who was unworthy of life were the only ones worthy of the sentence appointed to others. But thankfully, I am not the one who makes the decision of who is worthy of life and who is worthy of living hell.

Blindness

The dust from the carpet fills my nostrils as I gasp a breath, a brief respite from the hopelessness that I am feeling. I don’t know how I got here, lying on the floor, creating a soggy puddle on the carpet beneath my cheek. But here I am, begging God to take this away from me. Whatever it is. Wishing to understand myself. I cry out to God in hurt, anger, fear, and despair but I get no response, no word of comfort, no understanding. I continue to lie on the floor, unable to do anything but cry. Unable to push myself up or move on. I am consumed.

            I have discovered, though I don’t really remember the moment of discovery, that I am, what many would call, a complex, high-maintenance person. If I feel something, I want, I need that feeling to be seen. As an actress, this is a quality desired. As a person…it makes for a very emotionally fraught life. If I am happy everyone can see it. If I am sad, people can tell something is not quite right, though sometimes I just play it off as tiredness. That is a common excuse, not at all original. If I am angry with someone, I will either ignore them or become distant, stand offish, cynical, sarcastic…mean. In general I am not a mean person, but I do get frustrated and I want people to understand just by observing, without me having to tell them. Having to tell them destroys the point. Unfortunately, people aren’t quite as observant as I expect they should be.

            The fall of my junior year at Northwestern, I struggled needing people to observe. I was hurting, so confused by my emotional ups and downs. I could be found crying several times a day, not little tear-shedding cries, but body wracking sobs, which dragged me down to the floor of my tiny little dorm room, where I lay without the energy or motivation to pick myself up again. And what made it worse…I didn’t know why. I wanted people to know. I wanted people to understand. I wanted comfort. I didn’t want to have to say anything because that seemed very attention seeking and I was afraid that people would look at me and…think I was completely off my rocker. And maybe I was. I wanted people to understand, but how could they when I didn’t myself. I wanted people to see my pain. Not everyone. A few specific people…each for reasons of their own.

            A knock sounded on my door. I said, as I always say, “Come in.” I say this because people are welcome in my room. The girls on my floor know that they can come and vent to me and that I will listen and do my best to encourage them. My roommate and I have what we call a crying chair, which is really just a cushy arm chair, where I have done my fair share of crying over this past year, while relating to her some frustration or struggle I was currently facing. We also have a praying bed, my bed which we use as a couch during the day, where we would pray for the many friends who were struggling with each other...the enmity between so many different groups of our friends. And there we were. The ones that everyone else came to and we were in the middle. We would pray for the restoration of friendships.

            The door opened and in came the person I least wanted to see in the whole world. He considered me the best friend he had and I just wanted to be left out.

Written: 4-02-10

What theatre is...

The theatre, the theatre, what’s happened to the theatre?

A question I would like an answer to.

We go to movies to see a fling, to hear course words, to be mystified

But do we really know what it’s about?

We go to make ourselves happy, or sad, or even miserable. Why?

Let me tell you what theatre is really about.

It’s about a story being passed from one person to another

It’s about sharing experiences, giving joy to each other,

It’s about hope.

We forget that there are others besides ourselves

Needs to met besides our own. We take care of ourselves,

and that’s enough. Yet even in that, we are left alone.

We compare ourselves to actors and actresses,

smooth skin, bright eyes, shiny silks and satins,

but we forget what’s inside. All the pain and the hurt they are trying to hide in perfection.

They are human, yet we raise them above, giving them glory and honor and love

And they only way they can go is down.

Instead of idolizing those who can only fall, we should be trying to share, trying to call those who can make a difference.

That’s what theatre is about.

It’s not about stardom, perfection, sans flaws.

It’s about mistakes being transformed into cause for learning.

It’s not about flying, but rejecting the fear of falling.

It’s about trying, finding out our calling and more.

Sometimes the only way to accept reality, is to see it through the eyes of imagination. I am not saying we should not go see movies or plays, but that going, we open our eyes to see, our ears to hear the message begging to be shared.

A story is meant to be shared. It is meant to teach, it is meant to inspire,

And in hearing a story we can look a little higher

To see the hope that is there, if we look around us.

This world isn’t to glorify me, but for me to show I care.

It’s place to share ideas, sound the call, be the voice for those too weak to speak

a whisper in their own defense. Go there to find those too weak to say what’s on their mind and help them to stand up and be heard. Actions are the necessary response to words of the weary, those whose eyes are tired and bleary and help them find hope.

Through another person’s eyes, another person’s life…

Another person’s trials and cries for help. It’s not about me. It’s about telling the story of what could be. If  we’ll only listen to the sounds of pain and rise up to defend them in action and word, again and again.

This is the purpose of the theatre. This is why we tell stories.