January 25, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down Columbia Road just around dusk. All day, it had been cold and bleak. But then right before sunset, the sun had finally gotten free of the clouds, and the rays that broke through were casting a rusty gold light onto the storefronts. Everything looked and felt fresh.
I was passing the Potter’s House, and I could see through the now-uncovered windows that a handful of workers were staying later than usual. One man was near the top of a very tall ladder, stretching his arms overhead to install a new spotlight, which was lit up even as he was working on it, and casting a very bright but wavering light. At the foot of the ladder, another workman was holding the ladder steady: he himself seemed the epitome of steadiness. Off to the left, in the semi-darkness outside the circle of the spotlight, two men were cleaning up from the day’s construction activity, one moving boxes, the other sweeping. To the right, brightly lit, were recently installed bookcases, now covered with paper to keep them undamaged. From time to time, the spotlight pointed out into the street, as if signaling something to folks on the sidewalk on the far side of the street.
The word that came to my mind,then, was “theatrical.” There was something about the lighting, both on the street and in the Potter’s House space; and about the composition of the figures--the ladder in the foreground, and the heroic effort of the man at its summit. I could imagine a theatrical director composing this scene to convey instantly, with no words, that something especially hopeful was about to unfold in that space, and that careful preparations were being made for the time, coming very soon, when it would begin to unfold.
The Potter’s House will be re-opening in just a few short weeks, and it was suggested that this might be a fitting time to share what words might come about my enthusiasm and hope at this point in the evolving Potter’s House story. I want to say up front, though, that I don’t have any standing to bring any particularly privileged vision or authoritative plan for what the Potter’s House should be or will be. Like many of us, I’ve been living my life beyond the Potter’s House for the last year and a half, listening for the latest PH news, and making occasional suggestions or contributions that hopefully have been somewhat helpful.
It’s been quite a long time that the Potter’s House has been closed: I am completely in awe of, and bow in deep gratitude for, all that Tim, Brennan, Emily, and the transition team have been creating. And I know they’ve been joined by any number of dreamers and schemers who have offered their own insights into what the new Potter’s House might be.
Many of us have seen construction plans, or taken part in a circle process to name values we want for the re-opened Potter’s House, maybe have done a recent walk-through. We’re very much looking forward to seeing all the renovation and refurbishing work come together: the new open space; all those new books on shelves all around the front room, instead of mooshed in the corner; how it’s going to be sitting at new tables on new chairs, after sitting at trapezoid tables for the last few decades!; new kitchen with new food offerings.
But more than that, we’re really ready to actually move, feel, and breathe in the thing itself. We want to walk around and experience the new space, and begin to experience the kinds of things that are going to happen inside it, the kind of life and activities it’s going to contain.
We moderns are an impatient people like that, anxious to see the entire picture right away. But I believe that God works a different way, at a different speed. God lets us see things slowly, lets things sort themselves out over time. And God invites us to the practice of a different kind of relationship to time and to change.
‘Fast’ and ‘slow’: that’s how we describe rates of change—from the speed at which a fastball is pitched over home plate in baseball, to the eons it’s taken the Colorado River to carve out the Grand Canyon. But beyond just rates of change, ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ also serve as shorthand for ways of being. Fast is busy, buzzing, hectic, worried, stressed, impatient,pushy, domineering. Slow is the opposite: it’s more careful, receptive, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective. ‘Slow’ has time to make real and meaningful connections, and time to listen to a diversity of opinions, and consider a range of angles of vision. It can allow things to unfold organically. Mostly, our world is getting faster. More than ever, perhaps, our spirits need a slow place to come to be nurtured.
And, despite all that newness, I predict that even after the Potter’s House doors re-open, it will be a “slow” process by which we learn what it is that the new Potter’s House is really going to be about. And, truly, how could it happen any other way? Because what the Potter’s House is most deeply going to be about is something that CANNOT be pre-ordained by anyone; God’s Spirit just doesn’t work that way.
God’s way of working is displayed in a wonderful narrative way for us in today’s Hebrew Testament reading from the book of Jonah. The Jonah story is just one specific amazing moment in the Bible’s telling of what is one continuous story of God’s delight in unfolding a new reality—and then in pointing that new creation out to God’s people. “Behold, I do something new. Even now it springs up among you! Do you not see it?” [Isaiah 43:19]
Jonah’s story begins before today’s portion: it begins one day long ago, when God sends Jonah to Nineveh, the mightiest, and most beautiful city on earth. Jonah is to tell the people of this great city that God denounces the city’s wickedness, and that in 40 days, God will utterly smash it.
Of course, Jonah chose instead to hop on board the first boat going in the exact opposite direction, hoping to hide out from God. God let Jonah and everybody else on the boat know that this wasn’t a game of hide-and-seek, and took extraordinary steps to make sure Jonah got the point. Then God repeats the message clearly, and sends Jonah off in the right direction for Nineveh. Jonah arrives, denounces the people of the city as God has commanded him, and then I imagine him sitting back to begin the 40 day wait until he’ll get to experience the city’s complete destruction.
But God’s creative word has been sent out, and from it, something new is born. The entire people repents of their evil ways. And to witness to their repentance: all the people, rich and poor, leaders and followers, high and low, --and finally, even the King himself, dress themselves in sackcloth, and undertake a citywide fast.
And God does a 180 degree about-face! God has willed a new thing, God’s word has created a new reality to replace what people of Nineveh would otherwise be facing into!
The very next bit of the story, coming right after today’s portion, tells us that Jonah was furious; he lost his temper. He prayed to God in anger, this way: “I KNEW it! I knew this was going to happen! I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God, not easily angered, ready to relent and forgive. Well, if you won’t kill them, kill me! I’d be better off dead!”
God responds, asking Jonah: “What in the world do you have to be angry about?” But Jonah leaves the city, and tents down outside it in an angry sulk.
Which is to say, that God’s creative work, making all things new, and inviting us to taste and see that it is good—that work happens moment by moment. And it also points out how we can get “stuck in a moment”—so committed to our version of what’s happening and what should happen, that we can’t receive the gift of what God is actually doing.
Getting back to the word that came to my mind when I looked through the Potter’s House windows that evening: the word “theatrical”: thinking further along that line, we can imagine the new Potter’s House as not a stage, exactly, but still as a kind of performance space. And from imagining that, it’s not a giant leap to imagine all of us, ALL of us who love the Potter’s House, or come to love it-- as members of a rather large interactive theater troupe. There are the people who have been actively engaged in the renovation, others of us who have been hanging around the Potter’s House and Church of the Saviour for years, and those who we haven’t even met yet—who are neighbors here in Adams Morgan, or friends of friends who will have heard about what whatever great stuff we get up to after the doors re-open.
And, oh, of course, there is God! This God is always hanging around, sometimes the actor, sometimes the audience; sometimes envisioning the New Thing that would be the coolestnext thing that could happen; sometimes sitting back to see how THAT divine inspiration worked out in a performance troupe full of folks who have their individual gifts and limitations.
The Potter’s House will clearly be an amateur theater; but that’s good! The word “amateur” comes from the French, and it literally means “lover”. The word connotes a passionate love for something, just for itself, quite separate from any compensation of money or fame or career that could come from it. It’s come to take on a different connotation, meaning something like a non-specialist, nonprofessional. That meaning fits well enough too—Let’s combine them. We’ll all come to our roles as co-creators of the new Potter’s House as non-specialists who are motivated by love for God, for each other, and for our neighbors. Claiming our status as members of this amateur troupe, we definitely mean that we desire to be more than passive consumers. We want some skin in the game.
The nature of the drama is given: it’s about welcome, hospitality, community, reconciliation. Beyond that, though, this is clearly going to involve a large degree of improvisation. I don’t know a whole lot about theatrical improv, and I don’t want to take the metaphor too far, but there are at least a few things that improv groups can teach us:
First, once the story gets rolling, all the improv partners know that their choices should be in continuity with the previous actions and the current moment in the story; it doesn’t really work to jump suddenly to another narrative, or a different kind of play altogether. If the improv narrative has been about office life in large corporations, for example, it doesn’t usually work to throw in a Martian who’s been living in Prague for 15 years.
There seems to be one particularly essential and widely-known improv rule: it’s known as, “Yes, And.” The “yes” in “yes, and” means that in the performance, each person agrees with their improv partners: you don’t speak or act as if what another partner did or said was the wrong thing. The “and” in “yes, and”means that if you are a player in this performance, it’s your responsibility to contribute. Each contribution is meant toadd something to the unfolding performance—it moves things forward.
It is said that in improv, “There are no mistakes, only opportunities.” You take that last action or word as a lovely given, an opportunity to make creative response. One of the wonderful things about improv is that any awkward moments and shaky moves can eventually be redeemed if the players are creative, committed to each other, and committed to the success of the story.
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So this is one thread that has come to me while pondering what The Potter’s House might be when it reopens. I’ll close with just a really brief consideration of what seeing the Potter’s House re-opening in this way means for our spiritual journeys, if we’re going to take up new roles in the coming performance space, and if we are to make this sacred space.
First, we’ll remember always that God is, ultimately, the Creative Director, so to speak, of this improv company. We’ll want what we choose to do or say to reflect our grateful response to what God’s already done.
Then, it’ll be important to give a lot of attention to learning how to talk to and listen to each other. The ways we’ll want want to speak and listen will be those that are attentive to, not dismissive of, diversity.
It’ll be important to hold loosely to whatever scripts we think there are, because we’re continuously aware that we are not the sole author of this story. The Potter’s House story already has many chapters, with intriguing characters and amazing plot twists: the endeavor survived so long because enough of these saints held their scripts loosely enough for God to do God’s work.
We’ll want to pay attention more to ‘how we do’ than‘what we do’. The most important part isn’t going to be the specific strategies that arechosen, but the process for choosing them.
And finally, we want to undertake this entire endeavor in a way that makes the space and our words and actions in it truly sacred. This includes remembering that the final standard needs to be faithfulness to our calling to be in Christ in community; committed to a life shared with others in a local gathering that is an expression of Christ’s body here, and now.