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Feminist theologians have taught us much about circular community. Leaders certainly must exist in an ecclesial structure, as in any social structure, but leadership can be fluid and intercommunicative. Those that are officially called out by community to lead can do so by empowering others; their leadership can function as a focal point rather than a hierarchical point. Mary Collins writes, "In feminist liturgies dualisms regularly are transformed to circles and spirals and spheres and squares, symbols that embrace multiple energies in tension."33 Using James Joyce's evocative phrase, "In the beginning...was the sounddance," announces a movement away from dichotomies such as mind/body that have led to our progressive disembodiment, or the audible/visible split found in the theology of God's presence vs. God's word in the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g. Isaiah vs. Deuteronomy) that has, to some extent, been used to fuel the polemical Catholic/Protestant divide. Another way to think about this is, as the theater artist Robert Wilson reminds us, that the visual book need not be subservient to what you hear (Fig. 3 [Imago]).34 The "Word" that in the beginning was with God and was God (John's prologue) is not the Greek abstract notion of logos. The Incarnation tells us otherwise, for the Word becomes embodied—the mode necessary for our salvation from disembodiment. Thus I began our story by assigning the text from the Fourth Gospel's account of Mary Magdalene, "Now Mary was at the tomb, weeping..." as a "sounddance" to be spoken by all; each member takes some part of the words, and thus it takes the entire body to make the "sounddance" that reintroduces Mary/Peyton into the Easter story. The process of seeking out images for this liturgy was something akin to using homemade bread rather than thin wafer crackers for the Eucharist. The images chosen were meant to resonate, to be real and full, not thin and irrelevant symbols—hand chosen, hand crafted, as a gift to the storyteller and to the assembly. Individual members of the assembly may not be able to articulate explicitly how the texture and detail of symbols affect them, but on some level they intuit and experienced as it a deep and authentic source of mediation. Susan Ross, drawing on Paul Ricoeur's famous dictum, "The symbol gives rise to thought," suggests that symbols provoke reflection, kindle the imagination.35 This is indeed what happened in my study of the medieval Easter play, Visitatio Sepulchri. The use of symbol was thrilling. The use of the linen to bury the cross on Good Friday, and its subsequent showing as a sign of the resurrection, caught my sense of adventure and discovery. When Mary Magdalene held up the cloth at the climactic moment of the play, and then placed it on the altar as the place where the assembly would now find Christ in the Mass, my imagination was kindled. A white cloth marking the playing area in figure 1, Primitive Mysteries, spoke to me of Mary Magdalene, the linen in the Visitatio Sepulchri, women and the priesthood, and sacramental theology in general. ConclusionMy liturgy was intended to function as the "liturgy of the word" portion of a service that would include gathering, collects, readings from the texts included in the drama, and, following the drama, the liturgy of the table and sending. I look forward to working this out in a real context so that I may see what changes need to be implemented to balance the power of the technological enhancements. The technology of media is one the most powerful tools for post-modern storytelling. Speaking of electronically produced images, James White cautions:
This clearly became a consideration in my project. Once the images were juxtaposed with the stories, it became clear that the actors would have to sit schola style and refer to the screen—the images were simply too powerful. Robert Webber believes that churches that are renewing themselves are paying more attention to the arts in recognition that worship itself is an art, and that they are also integrating the arts in worship. "The churches most sensitive to the arts are churches that give the arts a servant role in worship." He continues, "While it is possible to worship without the arts, modern worshippers are acutely aware of how important the arts are to worship."37 It is to this end that I created this project in conversation with both historical and contemporary voices. In this project I have looked at the use of drama in the Seeker Service at Willow Creek and the medieval use of drama at tenth-century Winchester. In the process I have criticized the Willow Creek model as off-loading tradition and historical references, while I also offered a critique of my own tradition, which is resistant to contemporary paradigms and at times engages in exercises of historical romanticism. To the seeker movement at Willow Creek, T. S. Eliot's concluding section of Little Gidding seems fitting:
And to my tradition, with its tendency to historical romanticism and to favoring golden ages, an aphorism of Cyprian of Carthage in his Epistle to Pompey is instructive: "Custom without truth is just old error." ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Primitive Mysteries by Martha Graham, 1935 (photographer: Barbara Morgan) in Barbara Morgan, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgan & Morgan, 1980), 45. 2. Cross Fade by Alwin Nikolais, 1974 (photographer: Nikolais Dance Theatre, uncredited) in Highwater, Dance, 184. 3. Imago by Alwin Nikolais, 1963 (photographer: uncredited) in Francesca Pedroni, Alwin Nikolais (Palermo: L'EPOS, 2000), vi. |
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