tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-304228412024-03-13T10:33:58.167-06:00Gotthammer: Mike Perschon's Online AsylumMike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.comBlogger275125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-43687486202124472332019-08-25T13:01:00.000-06:002019-08-25T13:01:11.680-06:00Roleplaying Revisited<i>This article was originally published on the </i>Youth Specialties<i> website back in December of 2005, but has long since been lost to the ever changing landscape of the Internet. I've decided to park it here, since I've been told a few times how helpful it was for practicing Christians trying to defend the hobby of tabletop roleplaying.<br /></i><br />
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Roleplaying Revisited<o:p></o:p></div>
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by Mike Perschon<o:p></o:p></div>
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A pair of feet step into my peripheral vision. I look up to
see a male counselor, beach towel and book in hand.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"You ever play fantasy role-playing games?" he
asks me after some small talk and counselor-to-camp-speaker banter. The nearly
inaudible and conspiratorial way he asks this question is normally reserved for confessions of deep dark secrets, inquiries into "how far is
too far" in a dating relationship, or confusion over the erotic imagery of <i>Song of Songs</i>.</div>
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When I say yes, he becomes animated. Once
a fellow tabletop role-player has been identified, the proper geek etiquette
involves a series of "secret handshakes" and esoteric lingo involving
the mechanics of gaming, the idiosyncrasies of gamers, and inevitably the
question of whether or not I <i>really</i> think it's okay for Christians to play
role-playing games.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This isn't an isolated event; I know
Christians of every warp and hue who are also avid gamers—a math professor who
worked as a missionary in the Cameroon plays an Elven healer who sings his
spells of mending, a youth pastor of an evangelical church moonlights as a
warhammer-wielding Dwarven fighter. I myself don a "+20 shirt of smiting"
once a month to act as "Game Master" or moderator to an ongoing
campaign (two years and running) based in Tolkien's Middle-Earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In addition to being avid, most Christians who are into
role-playing games are "in the closet" because of a number of
misconceptions and urban myths which vilified the hobby back in the 1980s. In a
faith that's redeemed the alternative cultures of skateboarding and championed
the once controversial tool of rock and roll, fantasy role-playing and its
adherents remain outcast, forced to carry out their actions covertly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After gaming for over 20 years and living as a Christian for
nearly as long, it is my belief and experience that Roleplaying Games (RPGs) could serve youth
ministry but continue to be largely overlooked for reasons which have not been
properly evaluated or critiqued, despite the large number of students who are
involved in this hobby.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In this article, I will attempt to address the main concerns
with RPGs, then demonstrate that contrary to being harmful, fantasy
role-playing has potential to assist youth ministry in the areas of
socialization and education. This article will not concern itself with defining
the history or mechanics of role-playing games as these topics have been
extensively dealt with and are readily available through Internet searches.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Mythunderstandings about RPGs</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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There are two common objections within the Christian
community to RPGs. The first is that fantasy role-playing allegedly leads
players to become involved in the occult or opens them to demonic influence due
to the magical element present in the majority of RPGs. The second is that they
are said to contribute to suicide and/or violent crime.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first reason, regarding magic, comes down to the reality
that "if you believe that magic is both real and evil, then there can be
no reasonable argument for accepting the game." (1) More relevant to our
discussion, if one believes that the magic within role-playing games is real,
then this statement is doubly true. This issue depends on whether the Christian
gamer accepts fantasy worlds as secondary worlds not subject to the same laws
of nature our own primary world is governed by. If one believes the magic of
Narnia or Middle-Earth different from the magic prohibited in Scripture, then
playing an RPG involving magic would not be an issue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, if the concept of imaginary magic is as abhorrent
as real magic, then there are other options within the RPG community. A number
of very popular role-playing games involve no magic, such as <i>Star Wars, Star
Trek</i>, or games based in modern settings such as the modern d20 system. I.C.E.'s
<i>Rolemaster</i> provides the possibility of gaming in any era, with or without the
inclusion of magic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The second concern, that RPGs lead to suicide and violent
crime, is largely the result of media hype in the 1980s. One of the most
notorious examples of this media-misinformation was in the case of Dallas
Eggbert, a teen genius who went missing during his first year at college, and a
year after the investigation into his disappearance, committed suicide. (2)
Despite the fact that the investigation located no gaming paraphernalia other
than a gaming magazine in Eggbert's dorm room, that no one could be found who
had ever played <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> with him, the disappearance and suicide
were linked by the media to fantasy role-playing.(3) <i>Mazes and Monsters</i>, a
best-selling novel inspired by Eggbert's story was made into a TV movie,
further obscuring other relevant information from the investigation which
stated that Eggbert was a user of hallucinogenic drugs, a homosexual in an era
of homophobia, socially challenged and under severe pressure from his mother to
achieve academically. (4)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Eggbert's story became the template for the media's
treatment of such cases. When Bink Pulling, another teen genius, shot himself,
the fact that he admired Adolf Hitler, had killed his own pets and neighborhood
animals, and was socially isolated were ignored in favor of the more
sensational element that he played <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> with other gifted
students at his school. (5) His mother formed an anti-FRP coalition, which
would be responsible for much of the misinformation surrounding fantasy gaming.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ironically, the evidence pooled by the critics of RPGs
served to weaken the conclusions at which they arrived. If game designer
Michael Stackpole's estimate of 10 million gamers in North America is correct,
then the estimated "125 people killed from these games…should actually be
higher."(6) Providing that each of these alleged cases were actually the
result of involvement in RPGs, it means that less than 0.000001% of gamers
commit suicide, a number far below the national average.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Statistical psychological studies have shown the opposite of
what the critics claim; that involvement in a role-playing group "is not
positively correlated with emotional instability." (7) Instead of studies
into the therapeutic effects of role-playing games on socially challenged and
neurotic individuals reveals that gaming groups provide a healthy community.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Shared Fantasy—A Gateway to Healthy Community</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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In his article "Therapy is Fantasy," John Hughes
determined four positive psychological dimensions to fantasy role-playing (8),
two of which are especially relevant to the potential use of RPGs as a tool of
youth ministry.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hughes identified that role-playing enabled players to gain
greater social skills. In youth ministry, we're often faced with the challenge
of the student who lacks the skills necessary for social interaction. My own
experiences using an RPG in youth ministry demonstrated how gaming creates a
safe environment for socially challenged students to try communicating in ways
they would be afraid of in real life situations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I purposely chose several players for our gaming group who
were outgoing and gregarious to play alongside those who were awkward and
withdrawn. The behavior manifested by the socially challenged students ranged
from compulsive chewing (pencils, pop cans, whatever could be fit into the
mouth) to extreme personal space issues. Initially, the group had little
contact beyond the gaming table.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As the boys interacted with each other as their
"characters," their relationship outside the game began to transform
as well. The outgoing students began phoning the withdrawn ones and inviting
them out, while the withdrawn students began socializing at youth group, not
only with the gaming friends, but with students their gaming friends were
connected with as well. Within a year, the student with personal space issues
put his hand on my shoulder and asked me what it was like to be married, a
question and action that stood in stark contrast to my first experience of him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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RPGs also provide an opportunity for a discerning game
master or moderator to observe aspects of the players' personalities that
manifest within the fantasy framework in bolder ways than they would in real
life. I was often able to talk to the students after a gaming session about
choices they'd made within the game, and draw connections with real life
situations. RPGs have been used in psychotherapeutic treatments as an aid to
"extended character analysis" and were reported to "bypass some
of the risks of fantasy-based therapies such as Guided Affective Imagery while
allowing emotions to emerge within the therapy in a non-threatening
manner." (9)<o:p></o:p></div>
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I've witnessed this in the life of one of the characters
involved in the campaign I'm currently running. By observing a recurring
pattern that emerged over the two years in the player's gaming choices, we were
able to identify an area of personal struggle that he was working out within
the safety of the gaming environment.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The value of this beneficial attribute of RPGs cannot be
understated, given the fringe group that are stereotypically most attracted to
gaming. Young men who find frustration in the transition from childhood through
adolescence into adulthood can work out a lot of their inner fears and
apprehensions within the role-playing environment, simultaneously forging a
small community of like-minded friends with whom they share a favorite activity
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The other benefit identified by Hughes is that role-playing
is educational. All youth leaders interested in communicating the gospel to
their students find frustration at one time or another in generating student
interest in Scripture. Christian gaming RPGs such as <i>DragonRaid</i> incorporate
Scripture memorization as an integral part of the rules.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Players of RPGs are voracious about learning everything they
can about their gaming world. The possibilities are nearly endless, ranging
from Biblical Eras (as Green Ronin's excellent d20 supplement <i>Testament</i> now
enables gamers to do) to monastic communities in Europe. If a gamer has to play
an Israelite priest, it is likely in short order they'll know more about Mosaic
Law than you do. Or imagine a student playing a missionary during the age of
Imperialism. In addition to having to know how to communicate the gospel,
they'll have opportunity to wrestle through some tough and controversial
aspects of church history.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is where the youth leader comes into the picture. I
remember reading an encouragement to teachers, pastors, and parents to take on
the role of Dungeon Master or referee, to help guide the direction of
role-playing games. Because of misinformation and media manipulation, I think
many youth leaders have missed out on the possibility of using RPGs in a
positive way. I know there are many youth workers who are closet gamers; its
time to come out of the closet and into the light, and begin to use this area
of personal play as a tool of the gospel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some will respond to this article by saying, "Well of
course you think this is a good idea…you're a gamer…you're biased."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course I'm biased. No one is objective when it comes to
such issues. But if I was writing an article about many other fringe elements
of youth culture, my 20 year immersion in that culture would lend me
credibility. Instead, I'm viewed with suspicion—my judgement must be clouded,
I'm confused, deluded, or completely lost. Christianity has redeemed many other
fringe youth cultures—we're prepared to become all things to all people to the
students with piercings, tattoos, and loud music. But how many of us will be
brave enough to enter the world of the geek, the world of 20-sided dice,
miniature dragons, and all night gaming sessions involving 2 a.m. pizza runs?<o:p></o:p></div>
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And will we be brave enough to really, truly enter it,
rather than simply wagging a finger and condemning it? To walk without fear
into the supposed den of dragons with the words of Hebrews 2:8 ringing in our
ears: "God has put everything under our power and has not left anything
out of our power." (CEV)<o:p></o:p></div>
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1 Carolyn Caywood. "Rescuing the Innocent: The Lure of
Dungeons and Dragons." School Library Journal Mar. 1991: 138.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2 Kurt Lancaster, "Do Roleplaying Games Promote Crime,
Satanism and Suicide among Players as Critics Claim?" Journal of Popular
Culture, 28 (2), Fall, 71.<o:p></o:p></div>
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3 Paul Cardwell, Jr. "The Attacks on Roleplaying
Games," Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18, No. 2, Winter 1994, 158.<o:p></o:p></div>
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4 Ibid., 158.<o:p></o:p></div>
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5 Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
<i></i>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-76975149290087772932018-05-22T10:26:00.003-06:002018-05-22T10:26:49.020-06:00Did You Lose Your Faith?In the last ten years, if I get into a deep theological conversation with people who have known me a long time, some version of the question "did you lose your faith?" comes up. It takes on many forms, like "do you still believe in the Resurrection?" or "do you even believe God exists?" or "do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?" Even people who don't know me well, upon learning I used to be a pastor, ask some version of these questions.<br />
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Sadly, because it's rare anyone asks that question directly, I never get to give my answer: "no, I did <i>not</i> lose my faith. I know exactly where it is." A question like, "do you still believe in the Resurrection?" isn't really asking if I've lost my faith. It's asking if I no longer subscribe to a particular faith as expressed in a particular time and place. It's asking if I'm still an Evangelical Christian, and the answer is, "No, I'm not." But if I'm not an Evangelical Christian, then in many Evangelical Christians' eyes I'm no Christian at all. I've lost <i>the </i>Faith. But again, I'd respond that I haven't lost <i>my </i>faith. I just lost theirs. <br />
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An old friend sent me an email asking if I still believed in God. When I responded that I didn't know for sure, that I probably best identify as an agnostic, he replied that I might be an atheist, but wasn't yet comfortable with that idea. That was a few years ago, and I'm no more comfortable identifying as an atheist than I was then. I might not believe that Jesus is God, but I can't go to the point of saying there is no God at all. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't know who God is, but I feel confident in the idea of a design behind the Universe. And in the end, I think it's the certainty of atheism, mirroring the certainty of Belief, that puts me off.<br />
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But I can't go on saying, "I'm a Christian" without some qualification. One of the churches I ministered at still calls me up to come speak occasionally, to fill in for the current pastor while he's on vacation. I've started saying no, because, inasmuch as I love to talk and teach about faith, Christianity, the Bible, I'm no longer doing so from a position of Belief. It's one thing entirely to have a difference of opinion over whether Christians should drink alcohol or be pacifists, and another to have a difference of belief over whether Jesus rose from the dead. I've known I was exiting the Christian faith for years now, since the Easter Sunday morning over a decade ago when I walked up to the pulpit to give a sermon and found myself with the same problem as Mary Magdalene: "they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him."<br />
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It's taken a lot longer than ten years for me to arrive at this moment of "coming out" about my loss of faith, or as I have come to think of it, erosion. I did not "lose my faith" overnight. I did not have a single moment of dark doubt to mirror the bright illumination of conversion. But then again, I didn't really have a Pauline conversion experience, where one moment I was a terrible, terrible person, and the next, I was someone else.<br />
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My "conversion" experience mirrors my journey to agnosticism. While I told people I became a Christian on July 5, 1985 at summer camp, that was just one of many micro-conversions I'd had over a life growing up in the church. I remember one very significant moment when I was eight, also at summer camp, sitting in the chapel and listening to one woman tell a story from scripture while another illustrated that moment on a canvas with pastels. I was enchanted by how swiftly the artist worked. I was also quite taken by the bible of the man I sat beside, one of the camp staff: it was filled with notes and highlighting, and would inform my ideas of what a good bible looked like years later when I had that teenage micro-conversion. I had many moments in Sunday School and youth group where I affirmed an affinity with my parents' faith, making it my own over time. Consequently, in a decade that demanded dynamic conversion stories, mine was terribly boring: unlike the Christian celebrities of the 1980s, I did not turn away from Satanism or drugs (the best conversion stories of the '80s went something like "I was a high priest of the Satanic church, and was doing coke off a naked acolyte when an angel descended..."). I got good grades, (mostly) followed the rules, was a good kid. I didn't drink before I was 18 (unless the liqueur my best friend and I put on ice cream that one time when his parents were out counts), didn't really smoke, and was (as I would learn in later years), by comparison to many of my peers a pretty pure guy when it came to sexual hi-jinks. So when I made a commitment to Jesus in 1985 at summer camp, I was just reaffirming the life I'd been raised to. I grew up in a Christian home, and as I grew older, adopted Christianity as my own.<br />
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And up until another conversion moment at a Christian rock concert in 1987, it really was mine. It was interwoven with other mythic tales such as Superman, <i>Star Wars, </i>and fantasy novels. I was as interested in being like Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Conan the Barbarian as I was in being like Jesus. I had yet to discover that those things were incompatible: it's hard to "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you" when the best things in life are ostensibly to "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." But somehow, it worked for me: I think it was likely that, up until that rock concert, my faith was more of the Old Testament kind, which was more compatible with the hypermasculine heroism of Conan and acted as inspiration for, at the very least, the origin story of Superman. But after that concert, I struggled to maintain <i>my</i> faith while trying to fit into the homogeneity of North American Evangelicalism. It would be a struggle my faith would ultimately win.<br />
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See, when many Christians ask me if I've lost my faith, they want to know if I still believe in Jesus as my personal saviour. And the answer is, "No." I haven't believed in that for many years. I'm not sure how many, because, like my journey toward Evangelical Christianity, my journey away from it took place over years, maybe decades. I looked up possible antonyms for "conversion," and found "enlargement." I like that, because that's certainly what happened to me. Evangelical Christianity shrunk my belief, demanded that it look just like whatever James Dobson of <i>Focus on the Family</i> or some other Christian celebrity with a platform said it should be. I resisted that regularly, and was labeled a "loose cannon," because I kept trying to make my Christian practice my own.<br />
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Working for the Mennonites at the end of my professional career as a minister gave me the space to get outside the Evangelical bubble. I found myself in conversation with people who regularly attended church and identified as Christians, but didn't believe in the total inerrancy of Scripture, who debated the nature of the Second Coming, and in some cases, only held the Beatitudes to be worthy of governing one's life. At the same time, I was involved in a church community called The Gathering, which was "church for people who don't like church." It was a good place to rest a while and rediscover what I really believed.<br />
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But faith isn't just what you believe. It's a matter of what you don't believe. And the etymological root of faith is the Latin word <i>fides</i>, as in "fidelity." Being faithful <i>to</i> something. I have known, nay have even <i>been</i>, the Christian who believed the right things as concepts, but was unfaithful to them in practice. Could say that Jesus was love, but act in narrow, unloving ways. One of the many erosion points for me was the issue of homosexuality. I could not square the command to love the least of these with the institutional homophobia of North American Evangelical Christianity. Increasingly, as my faith eroded, I had to ask, what am I being faithful to? What should my fidelity be towards?<br />
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Erosion isn't just destruction, though. It's transformation. River erosion also involves transport and deposition of the material which has been eroded. Things get moved around. The landscape changes, but the pieces remain. You can't grow up in a Christian home, live as a believing, practicing Christian, and then just turn it off like a light or a faucet. It's all still there, part of what made you. Parts of what made me.<br />
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I looked at how Jesus transformed the Hebrew <i>shema</i>, which in the <i>Tanakh</i> says to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. But the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all add <i>mind</i>. According to Jesus's words in those Gospels, you need to love God with your mind too. And my mind was telling me that the way the church was treating LGBTQ individuals was <i>wrong</i>. And I also understood that, no matter how many good arguments I came up with for what the Bible <i>really</i> said about homosexuals, modern Christianity still had a major problem with them, and that, at some level of reality, that <i>is</i> what Christianity is in the world today. So I made a decision to disagree with that particular God. I made a decision to de-convert. It was a moment of micro-enlargement, one of many on the opposite side of the journey of micro-conversions.<br />
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I've made many micro-enlargements since then, and cannot say with integrity that I am still a Christian. It would be disingenuous to say so. It leads to too many moments of correction and clarification in conversation. It's easier to just say, "I'm an agnostic." But, as Terry Pratchett wrote in <i>Feet of Clay</i>, atheism is a religious position, and so therefore, agnosticism must be as well. So when people ask if I've lost my faith, I'm at a bit of a loss to reply. No, I haven't. I know exactly where it is, and what it is. I still think about matters of faith a great deal. But I am not a Christian by North American Evangelical standards. At this point, I don't always really fit inside the label of liberal Christian. But that doesn't mean I've lost <i>my </i>faith. I know what I'm faithful to--I'm faithful to many of the things I learned from the Christian scriptures and Tanakh: I believe in the importance of grace and compassion, as well as covenant and community. But I am also faithful to the stories of my childhood, of heroism as exemplified by Superman and Luke Skywalker, as well as the existentialism of Conan and Han Solo. I didn't lose my faith - I found it again, the faith of my teenage years, transformed through years of erosion into something new. The faith you might say I lost? That one was never truly mine.<br />
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<i>This is the final post of my Gotthammer blog. It is likely going to also be the first of a brand new space for me to wrestle out my faith through a series of memoir meditations</i>. <i>I wondered about keeping this blog active, but in the end, decided it represented a different phase of my life. I want to write these memoirs in their own online space, as a new "book" you might say. I'll link to that space as soon as I have it active. Perhaps, in the hubbub of life, that will never happen. But I wanted to close the book here, at the very least, and do so with a post that is the most honest thing about my faith that I've said or written publicly in a very long time. </i><br />
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<br />Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-70074538750510609972015-05-05T10:26:00.003-06:002015-05-05T10:38:49.725-06:00Eulogy for George Hardy: 1950-2015<i>The following is the eulogy I gave for George Hardy, a close friend, mentor, and fellow gamer of 20 years. He died on February 11, 2015 after several years battling cancer. </i><br />
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If I say<i> wizard</i>, some of you think of magic. Others think of Gandalf or Obi Wan Kenobi. Others think of the man behind the curtain in <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>. When I think of wizards, I almost always think of George. The history of the word wizard is an interesting one in light of our friend George Eugene Hardy, for the first part, <i>wys</i>, meant wise in Old English, while the second part, <i>ard</i>, is a relative of George’s surname - Hardy. The root word, hard, has always meant what it means today – strength, extreme, difficult to do. So a wizard is simply someone whose wisdom is hard, extreme—greater than normal, someone who can answer the questions others find too difficult. I think in that respect, we can all agree that George was a wizard—an extremely wise man.<br />
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When I speak of George as a wise man, I picture him with his hands folded across his stomach, quietly contemplating the best thing to say in response to a difficult question. And apparently, it was always so. Born in October of 1950 to Marjorie and Mitchell Hardy here in Edmonton, George did not start talking until he was 4. Ironically, given who he would become, there was some concern that he might have had what we now call a learning disability, but when he finally spoke, it was with complete sentences. Those first words would be echoed in many social gatherings to come, when George would stand off to the side, the silent introvert waiting for a conversation worth having to share his wisdom, underestimated by the extroverts in the room who would find themselves surprised when he finally joined in the conversation, able to hold forth on a wide number of topics.<br />
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By high school however, his wizardry was unmistakable; he was either top of the class or hot on the heels of the student who was at the top, or competing in annual school science fairs and winning numerous prizes with his friend Bill Klaus. His passion for science was attested to by his well-used chemistry set, and his father’s workbench was constantly covered with George’s electronic works in progress: a modern alchemist.<br />
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We often think of wisdom coming with age, and George apparently always gave off a sort of august presence. His Grade Twelve physics teacher, when stumped by a Physics problem and needed his young student’s help, referred to him as “Uncle George”: unsurprising when you learn George won an Alberta wide Physics competition that year. He hoped to be a world class Physics researcher, and accordingly studied that discipline for his first three years of university. In his third year of Physics, George took a Math course and solved a “bonus Math” question from his professor. However, being a wizard, George solved it in a brand new way and was published with his professor—a very rare occurrence for an undergrad student—and was then hired as a research assistant. While he never lost his love of Physics, he also never regretted his choice for Mathematics.<br />
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George’s exceptional ability, demonstrated by achieving top honors in undergraduate math, enabled our wizard to skip a Master’s degree and go directly into a Mathematics Doctoral Program at the University of Alberta. His research and thesis took three years to write and, given that it was before the invention of computer math editing software, drove the typist “crazy.” George published research articles during this period, signing his papers “G. E. Hardy” to distinguish himself from renowned number theorist G. H. Hardy.<br />
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Upon completion of his Doctorate, George accepted a teaching position at Sackville New Brunswick University, where he taught for two academic years. It was his first time living away from home, though it was by no means the end of his wanderings, neither geographically or intellectually. George traveled far and wide: regular visits to family in friends in Lloydminster and Kelowna, less common excursions as far as England and New Zealand, or as George called it, Middle Earth.<br />
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For many, mastery of chemistry, physics, and math would constitute knowledge of the building blocks of our universe. And though he would often quip that “math is life and life is math,” it was not enough for our wizard: he sought what C.S. Lewis called “The Deeper Magic,” the truth by which all things, not just atoms or complex formulae, are held together. In 1977, George was influenced by another George, George Lucas, the creator of <i>Star Wars</i>, to start thinking about faith, prompting him to take up and read. The idea of <i>Star Wars</i>’ fictional Force got him wondering about the possibility of a real Force, and he began reading the Children’s Bible given to him when he’d attended Rupert Street Presbyterian Church with his mother and brother as a child. George made his first public confession of faith a few years later, in the summer of 1979, on a camping trip with his brother Walter and some of Walter’s friends during a sharing time around the fire.<br />
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George continued to grow in his Christian faith and decided to move to Jacksonville Florida where he attended Luther Rice Theological Seminary, completing a three-year Master of Divinity program in 1984. He served in a Fellowship Baptist Church and was ordained with that fellowship. His intention was to be a missionary to Portugal but he was unable to raise enough financial support. Years later, during a one-year academic sabbatical, he served as a short term missionary in Cameroon, Africa. That trip not only made good on his missionary calling, but also on the meaning of his last name, Hardy, which means “bold, daring, and fearless.” While his humility would have prevented him from seeing his adventures abroad that way, anyone who has ever tried spicy Cameroonian cuisine will know the risks George braved. Despite many outings for Mexican food, I was never able to find a dish that was too spicy for him.
I like to think that George simply had a mission calling closer to home. Famed mathematician Paul Erdӧs, who was the external advisor for George’s doctoral thesis, had a concept of a book in which God had written down the best and most elegant proofs for mathematical theorems; he consequently referred to math lectures as “preaching.” While I cannot say if George thought of his lectures as such, George was a teacher and preacher to the end of his days, whether he spoke on the certainty of mathematics or the mystery of theology.<br />
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At the Gathering, a church plant he helped start and sustain, he was playfully referred to as “the Reverend Doctor,” a title meant in jest that held great truth: he was both academic and believer, a rare combination. As an academic at the University of Alberta and then, for many, many years, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, George’s first love was always the imparting of knowledge, not the hoarding of it behind ivory towers. When asked what was on his “bucket list” following his diagnosis of terminal cancer, he replied that he wanted to continue to teach and serve as Chair of the Mathematics Department as long as possible. And he did end up teaching nearly to the end of his days. As a fervent follower of Christ, George had a unique gift for mentoring and encouraging others in their spiritual journey. He devoted himself faithfully to a number of church congregations, alternately as youth sponsor, tech-of-all-trades, pinch-hitting preacher, and generous giver.<br />
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Despite his trademark response to the greeting, “How are you?”— “grouchy as ever,” and the occasional invitation to “turn to the Grouch side,” or his own take on the F-word, “fun,” George was no Oscar, no Emperor Palpatine, no Grinch. Consider his love of games, which he sometimes described as puzzles with a random element. Rules were read as mathematical formulae and matters of probability, which meant that inevitably, once George understood a game, he was a formidable opponent.<br />
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Anyone who beat George at a game that involved strategy could attest to having really accomplished something – they beat the wizard. From duplicate bridge to fantasy roleplaying, games were a space where his math-mind met with his desire for community and found an outlet for both. <br />
His unique combination of intellectual brilliance and personal humility, together with a playful, pun-filled sense of humor, endeared him to many. As a child, the person who understood him best was his mother, who he was particularly close to. Leave it to a mother to be the first to see the qualities it would take the rest of us years or months to recognize, and draw close to George. He remained a bachelor his entire life, but like that physics teacher so long ago, many of us could have easily called him “Uncle George,” given how much he felt like family for so many. His legacy is the memories held fondly in hearts of the many he has touched with his life. Both in the past month at his bedside, and here today, many have gathered to pay respect to that legacy. Near the end of the stage musical of <i>Big Fish</i>, one character states “A man is as rich as his friends. I am a tycoon.” So it was with George.<br />
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And so, even in death, our wizard guides us towards wisdom. Certainly, in certain knowledge, for he had much, and put great stock in it. Ostensibly, in theological mystery and musing, for he plumbed those depths and scaled those heights daily. But collectively, as with any good math problem, wherein we must show our work as well as give an answer, George’s bonus question, the difficult and hard problem he had an excellent answer for, was community: his students, his Padawan learners; his coworkers, his Rebel alliance; his friends, his Fellowship of the Ring; and his family, brother Walter, sister-in-law Nora, nephew Thomas, and niece Amanda, his very own Shire. Though our wise man has departed for the Undying Lands, his knowledge, his faith, and his wisdom remain like seeds planted in our hearts and lives.<br />
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Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-32140200097570212152013-10-08T22:52:00.000-06:002013-10-08T22:52:00.742-06:00Sing me to SleepAs I write these words, my cousin is dying. Earlier today, she underwent surgery meant to save her life, one of many she has endured in a life that has always been threatened by fragile health. The surgery could not save her; my uncle is at her bedside for one final vigil.<br />
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Last year, I learned that a high-school friend lost her husband. This past week, she lost one of her ties to him: her mother-in-law passed away.<br />
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Two weeks ago, my wife's grandmother died, after years of dementia.<br />
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I mourned each of these in different ways. My cousin's has been the hardest, for she is not yet gone, and I weep mostly for the father at her bedside, for I refuse to explore the corridors of the pain he is feeling. They overwhelm me. I can imagine my own death...but to imagine my child's?<br />
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I used to have answers for moments like these, and then I learned that there are no answers for grief. I no longer have the confidence of the faith I had in my twenties and thirties. Somewhere along the way, I went from an expectation of life beyond the grave to satisfaction in the life I lead today. I no longer anticipate an afterlife. I wouldn't say I don't believe in one, but I am no longer living for it. I am living for, as I once sang in lyric, "this breath I now steal."<br />
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I suppose I'm an agnostic when it comes to the afterlife. If there is one, then that will be lovely. If there isn't...<br />
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When I confess these things to my friends in hushed tones they ask if I'm scared about that. I probably will be, but I stumbled upon a perspective the other day, and it's given me peace.<br />
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If there is no afterlife, then when I die, I will cease to be. My consciousness will fade to black, and that will be the end. For many, this is terrifying.<br />
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And yet I do it every night. Some times, it comes upon me without warning. My eyes close, and I cease to have conscious thought. I rest. I dream. But the <i>me</i> that speaks and thinks and acts is asleep. Between dreams, there is nothing. When I first go to sleep, I welcome that falling sensation into darkness.<br />
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And this is why I mourned differently for my wife's grandmother than I do for my cousin. Jenica's grandmother wanted to rest. After 90 years, she decided it was time to sleep. She refused to eat, and waited for the end to come. And when it came, she was listening to her daughter play piano.<br />
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But the other deaths cause me pain. They are what terrifies me. The life cut off. To use the language of Ecclesiastes, the golden cord torn. The bowl shattered. It is on nights like this that I am most challenged to see a pattern in a senseless world, where the rain falls on everyone, good and bad.<br />
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Since I received the news about my cousin, the lyrics to "Asleep" by the Smiths, as sung by Emily Browning have been running through my head.<br />
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<i>Sing me to sleep
<br />Sing me to sleep
<br />I'm tired and I
<br />I want to go to bed
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<br />Sing me to sleep
<br />Sing me to sleep
<br />And then leave me alone
<br />Don't try to wake me in the morning
<br />'Cause I will be gone
<br />Don't feel bad for me
<br />I want you to know
<br />Deep in the cell of my heart
<br />I will feel so glad to go </i>
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I do not think these are the words my cousin had in her mind earlier today, before she closed her eyes, waiting to go into surgery. I am certain she wanted many more years. I hope, as the lyrics go, that "There is another world
/ There is a better world / Well, there must be." But that is only a hope, and not something I have any confidence in anymore. And while those lyrics might have had a darker meaning in the minds of Steven Morrisey and Johnny Marr, I hope they'll be the words in my head when I go into that good night. That I will have lived long enough that I will be ready to close my eyes and go to sleep.<br />
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<i>For Andrea. </i><br />
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<br />Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-22694148805778789112013-05-10T14:29:00.000-06:002013-05-10T14:54:45.081-06:00Why I'm Looking for a Church AgainMy wife and I are back in the market for a church. We were attending a big Pentecostal church for about a year and a half, but then I made the mistake of wanting to get involved as a leader of a Bible study. This was a mistake for several reasons.<br />
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First, because this church, which kept saying it was about the "things all Christians can agree on," was just as Pentecostal as any PAOC affiliated group I'd experienced previously. I hoped they might be different, because they kept saying they were different. I was dubious about the idea that there is anything all Christians can agree on, but decided to keep my mouth shut, since I really wanted to have a church to attend with my family. But once I indicated I wanted to teach the Bible, something I trained six years of my life for, and then spent another ten actually <i>doing</i>, I was told that I needed to pass through seven fiery hoops which represented the seven-fold Spirit of God in Revelation (okay, that's not really true, but it might as well have been). I would have to become a member, take membership classes, sign a contract, and agree to everything this church believed. Initially, I didn't see that as a problem, until suddenly we went from "things all Christians can agree on" to "things only conservative Charismatics believe." We came to a compromise by which I would co-lead with someone else who was already a member in good standing.<br />
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The first study night proved to be the next pitfall, because apparently no one studies the Bible in big churches; you get a
leader's guidebook that gives you a bunch of lame discussion starters
but never requires that you or your group do anything more than read the
passage briefly. You can then talk about whatever the hell you want,
just so long as it doesn't involve exegesis or historical context. Too
heady. Too weighty. And to top it all off, you get a shiny DVD with some guy you've never met sharing his story of conversion. This wouldn't be so bad, if our study was about <i>conversion</i>, but it wasn't. It was about <i>waiting on God</i>. The Bible passage was (drum roll...it's a Pentecostal church...drum crescendo...) the second chapter of Acts, as the apostles <i>wait on God</i> on the day of Pentecost. This would be infuriating all on its own, given that it's typical of most churches to have a screaming bias to one or two favorite passages, and Pentecostals are exceedingly fond of Acts 2. But I really couldn't be too mad about that, since we really weren't studying the passage anyhow. <br />
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So I'm watching the shiny guy from the shiny DVD tell us his conversion story in a study about waiting on God, when he says the following words: "And then something happened, which I can only describe as demonic oppression."<br />
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He did not follow up that statement with a lurid tale of fiery pentagrams, bastardized Latin phrases in a Cookie-monster voice, or floating even five inches above his bed. It made me pine for the days of Mike Warnke. In the 1980s, when conversion stories involved demons, they were at least colorful and entertaining. All I could think was, "that was the <i>only way you could describe it</i>?" How about depression, or drugs, or bad gas? How about a deep mood swing, or a shit day? And more to the point, what the hell does any of this have to do with waiting on God?<br />
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I waited for him to roll that demonic oppression around to the topic of waiting, but it remained the first speed-bump in the evening's discussion.<br />
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The second came when one of the attendees claimed that modern Christians have it harder than the early Christians did, because we have so much awful stuff to deal with. You know, the usual grocery list of things conservative Christians think are destroying the fabric of space and time: porn, gays, gay porn. I wanted to say something about living in a society where stage plays involved massive dildos, or one where women were second-class citizens, or one where you could own slaves, or, say turn Christians into light fixtures using pitch and FIRE, or something about being eaten by lions...but I was simply too stunned to speak. <br />
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So I vented to Jenica on the way home about these speed-bumps. When we got home, I took a look at the book we were supposed to read as an accompaniment to our so-called discussion of the Book of Acts. The first chapter was about the writer meeting the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and arguing against same-sex marriage. While this was to be expected, given the source, the way the author talked about countries that allowed for same-sex marriage resulted in the third speed-bump, which was more of a giant-sized pot-hole, like the one that the Alien Tripod rises out of in Spielberg's <i>War of the Worlds</i>. The author said that he didn't want his country to "fall into darkness, as other countries had."<br />
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Darkness.<br />
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Admittedly, it was the start of Edmonton's descent into darkness, our annual shift into the long night (we live close to Winterfell), when eventually, the sun sets at 5:30 p.m. and rises at something like 7:30 a.m. Physical darkness, yes. Spiritual darkness?<br />
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Sorry. No. I love Canada. I love Edmonton. I love that conservative, red-neck Alberta has passed permissive same-sex marriage laws. Even before my paradigm shift towards openly supporting same-sex marriage, I was in favor of the law, because it was just. It was fair. If two hetero people "live in sin," they have civic rights related to common-law marriage, even thought they aren't married. If two same-sex people just live together, they have none of these rights, fornicatin' be damned. What's the sense in that? <br />
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At any rate, a line had been crossed. I came out of the closet and admitted that, not only was I not opposed to gay marriage, I supported it. If the church would prefer I desist in being a teacher's helper because of my views, I was cool to step away. I'm not interested in being a shit-disturber anymore. At least, not to the faith community I belong to. It's disruptive and often hurtful. I prefer to live my life and hope others see it as an example.<br />
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So we left. Sadly, that was last fall, and we still haven't found what we're looking for, which will be the subject of some upcoming posts, including "What I'm Looking For in a Church and WTF doesn't it exist?" and "OMG! Hip Churches, Hip Pastors, Lame Exegesis of the Third Commandment."Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-69262784422077731242012-10-08T10:01:00.000-06:002012-10-15T12:32:17.676-06:00Between God and Geek<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You can see the year I started my Ph.D. by the number of posts here at Gotthammer. The yearly posts drop from 50, then 94, then 26. Before Gotthammer was a blog, it was a regularly updated personal website (remember those?). But when I started my research, I decided to keep my steampunk work separate from Gotthammer, because this was my personal blog, and I needed to affect a different persona as "The Steampunk Scholar."<br />
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That work is done now, and I've learned a <i>lot </i>about blogging and branding from running <i>Steampunk Scholar</i> over the past four years. I've learned that focusing on a particular theme is one of the keys to a successful blog: find a niche, claim it, and build an audience around that niche. <i>Gotthammer</i> has never had a focus other than "stuff I'm interested in." <br />
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That changes today. From today forward, the sole focus of <i>Gotthammer</i> will be as a space where I'll dialogue about the intersection between God and Geek. I've been pondering writing a memoir of growing up Geek in a Baptist church, about being Geek at a Baptist Bible college, about being Geek as a pastor. Now that I'm no longer a paid minister, I feel like I have the freedom to say what I really think, to talk about the struggles I had growing up loving <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i> but keeping it secret, keeping it safe. My original idea was to make a new blog called <i>The View From the Balcony</i>, which was where I sat in church through my teen years, but I own the domain name for <i>Gotthammer</i> and I think it's still a part of my journey.<br />
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I know the world doesn't really need another blog, but I feel like it could use one where someone like me, a Baptist-turned-ecumenical-left-leaning-Christian-who-is-also-a-geek writes about faith and fantasy, about spirituality and SF, the holy and horror. But this isn't going to be one of those sites where I blog about how the <i>Matrix</i> has spiritual themes. This is going to be me telling my stories, the ones I've told as a youth speaker, and the ones I never did because I'd never be asked back. I'll tell you why I hate Zombie Jesus, but like Cthulhu-mas. I'll tell you about the time my friends and I LARPed back before there was LARPing, and ended up in the South Saskatchewan river in Canadian Tire rafts, dressed in fatigues. I'll tell you about dating an atheist and seeing <i>Jurassic Park </i>for the first time. I'll tell you about how my views on homosexuality changed. I'll tell you about the time I nearly got fired for playing <i>D&D</i> with students in my first job as a minister. Then I'll tell you about how I actually got fired. We'll talk about the Bible, but also about the <i>I Ching</i> and the <i>Ramayana</i>. I will not be debating doctrine, but simply telling my story. Tony Campolo says that "theology is biography," and in my case that's very, very true. <br />
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My current bias remains Protestant Christian, but <i>very</i> ecumenical, and not terribly orthodox. I'm as informed in my views by mythopoesis as I am by theology. There's an actual word for this - theopoetics. I've read the material on it, and while I don't hold any hard metaphysical theories nor subscribe to any one person's ideas about it, I am convinced that literature tells us much about who God is. After all, the Bible is literature. As a child, I was as persuaded by Superman as I was by Sunday School to follow the Way. I think of both as foundational stories that have shaped who I am, and am no longer concerned with whether or not the story of Jesus is historical. I don't believe Superman is real, but in a very real sense, I <i>believe</i> in what his stories are about. Likewise, while I have a hope that the Gospels are true in a historical sense, I no longer feel a burning need for them to be proven so. I know this means that for many Christians I'm no longer in the club, but frankly my dears, I don't give a damn. I weep when Ian McKellen as Gandalf speaks of heaven in Peter Jackson's <i>Return of the King. </i>Just because that eschatology belongs to Middle Earth doesn't mean it can't speak to my desire for something <i>more</i>, as C.S. Lewis put it. But that <i>more</i> isn't restricted to hoping for heaven. Reading <i>Gilgamesh</i>, or the <i>Tanakh</i> from a Jewish perspective has helped me see the beauty in a world that ends. And <i>Journey into the West</i> has helped me look outside my Western frame to tread the balance between life and illusion. I no longer operate as the man of one book, but as a man of many texts, who synthesizes them. But I grew up in a very particular vein of Canadian Christianity, and one can never stray too far from one's roots, even if it's only to curse or hack at them. I embrace my roots, but my branches have stretched far from Evangelical thinking. <br />
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So I'll be migrating my science fiction and fantasy reviews over to <i>Triple Bladed Sword</i>. I'll be adjusting the labels, and editing old posts to update my perspective on things (not changing the original text, but amending it with afterwords about where I've grown, so the site is never misleading). <br />
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I don't plan on updating more than once a month, to ensure the posts are worth reading. I had plans to do this as a book, and maybe it will be that someday. But for now, it's just a blog, at the address I've had since I started writing on the web in 2002. But here we are, over a decade later, and so much has changed. I'll be here, telling my story. Feel free to come and listen, and join in the conversation.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-42152070775758674322012-01-13T16:18:00.000-07:002013-05-10T14:09:43.814-06:00Seven Sacred Seasons: Carnival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well, the year of the Rabbit is coming to a close, and the year of the Dragon is just around the corner. This will be the last of my posts in the year of the Rabbit, and I wanted to ensure I got the final Sacred Seasons post in before the Rabbit descends and the Dragon rises. Carnival was the Gathering's answer to how depressing January can be in our hemisphere. It's dark: some days, depending on where you work, you don't see the sun at all. It's cold, as in the-ninth-level-of-Dantean-hell cold. It's Suicide Awareness month. And finally, it is the time between Christmas (yay!) and Lent (boo). That is to say, it's the time between a celebration of light and the observation of wandering the desert. Knowing Lent was going to be about giving things up, we decided that the season between Christmas and Lent should be opposed in some way to the dreariness of the weather and the doldrums following the common emotional mountaintop of Christmas.<br />
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Our solution was a season of festival, mardis gras, carnival. Rather than a single Shrove Tuesday, we wanted to eat pancakes spiritually for several weeks. So Carnival season at the Gathering was about holy parties: the kind of parties Tony Compolo encouraged us to throw in <i>The Kingdom of Heaven </i>is a party.<br />
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Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-45294296283537458412011-12-30T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-30T06:00:06.257-07:00Rough Creatures - A Play for Advent, Scene 7<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 26pt;">Act 3</span></div>
<h3>
Scene 5</h3>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>LIGHTS UP on SIMEON and ESTHER playing chess; ABBESS is holding the child in her arms, cooing and rocking her. RACHEL looks at the child over ABBESS’ shoulder. FEN sits at the table, playing with the nativity figures</i>.) </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Can I hold her now?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You’ll have plenty of time for holding this baby when Anno gets you to the city. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: You’re sure you won’t come?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: We’ve been through this too many times already. Just let it be Rachel.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Well, it is kind of you and Anno to help us to get there.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: It’s not too much trouble. Most of your luggage went with your fiancés (<i>she raises her eyebrows suggestively at this word</i>) so taking what you have left with the dogs isn’t too much work. Besides, a blind man could find his way to the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">new city</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> with the trail all those people left behind.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Checkmate.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: You’ve been practicing! You were never this good when I was teaching you. Who have you been playing against? (He looks accusingly at RACHEL who shrugs her shoulders. FEN giggles and sort of hides in her Christmas book. SIMEON pulls down the cover.) I should’ve known! A conspiracy! (He stands up and walks over to ABBESS and the child.) Aren’t you beautiful. You are the hope of all the people who have gone onto the city. You are the one they are talking about—the first new child of the City of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: But she wasn’t born in the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">New City</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. She was born here, in my inn.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: That’s true, but who wants to believe the first child born after the plague was born in an inn?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Just like baby Jesus.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: What?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Jesus--the baby in the story. He wasn’t even born in an inn, just a shelter, where the animals were kept. And <i>he</i> was the Messiah.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I’ve told you already Fen, that story is not from the Torah—</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: <i>I</i> think it’s true all the same.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: The Messiah is a king, not the son of a peasant girl.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Moses was really the son of a slave—and he rescued the people from being slaves.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Yes but that’s different.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: How?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Because it’s different. I don’t know how.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, someone once told me that sometimes life isn’t what we see, it’s what we believe. Well, sometimes life is just what we see. And today I saw hope born here in this </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. Not in your magical City. And isn’t that what the Messiah was to bring? Hope? Light in the darkness?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: “From the lips of children—you have ordained praise.” Let me not be too set in my ways oh Lord. (<i>He looks at FEN</i>.) You are right Fen. All these years you have listened to me, and in the end saw what I could not. And what is good enough for Messiah is good enough for this little one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: She needs a name. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Hope.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Not the name I’d have expected coming from you Abbess. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well I’m full of surprises today.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ANNO enters with several packs and lugs them toward the stairs</i>.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Where are you off to?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ANNO looks at SIMEON, confused. Then he looks to ABBESS for an explanation</i>.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I hadn’t told them yet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Told us what?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: We’re going to the City with you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ESTHER and RACHEL give excited squeals and hug ABBESS. SIMEON smiles</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: So you were lying!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Not entirely—Anno is holding me to going, like I asked him. But I still have one foot stuck in the door here.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: What made you change your mind?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Hope.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Abbess, I told you I’d take good care…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Not the baby. I started hoping for…something else, anything else, more than just surviving. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: And if you all knew how difficult it was for her to say that…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Get on with your packing! We’ve got a fair bit more to load on the sled.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Come give me a hand, Fen?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
FEN: Sure.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ANNO heads up the stairs while FEN gets up from the table and heads for the landing. ANNO opens the door to the outside from offstage, and a bright light shines down on FEN. She screams</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Fen! Are you all right?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (shielding her eyes) What is it?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I don’t know. Anno! Anno!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: (offstage) I’m all right! (Footsteps on the stairs, Anno reenters onto the landing) You’ll never believe it…the clouds have broken.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: My God…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: What does that mean mama?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: It means that light…it’s the sun. (She looks down at the baby cradled in her arms.) You really did make it to see the dawn.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: It’s sitting in the sky over top of the line of tracks the people left going to the City. You can see them all, but it’s so bright…the snow, it’s all so bright. It’s like the whole world’s turned pure white.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: The sun is in the direction of the city?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Yes, to the West.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bethlehem</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. We’re going to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bethlehem</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(LIGHTS DOWN.) </span></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-23545221171952014232011-12-29T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-29T06:00:01.704-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent, Scene 6<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in 0in 1pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 26pt;">Act 3</span></div>
<h3>
Scene 5</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
(<i>LIGHTS UP. The room is empty. The chessboard is abandoned, the game not complete. SIMEON and RACHEL must have given up on the game. ABBESS enters from the kitchen, holding the baby in her arms, singing a lullaby. ANNO enters from the landing, takes off his jacket and pours himself some coffee. He sits down at the table</i>.) </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: How is she?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: A healthy baby girl from what I’ve seen so far. I think she’s going to make it.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br />
ANNO: Last night you didn’t seem so sure.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: Last night I didn’t have any hope. (She is looking at ANNO, her eyes smiling. ANNO realizes the change, and that he was part of it.)</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: I’m sorry I was so harsh.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: No, I needed it. You know it takes a sharp pick to cut through hard ice. </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: You were pretty hard.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: I was pretty icy. </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: Nothing like a new baby to bring a thaw.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: Especially this one. She’s going to be fine, (looks at sleeping child) aren’t you?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: And what if she isn’t?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: Then we’ll have to hope the next one is.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: Are you just saying that?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: Yes…and no. I’m not too good at this hope thing Anno, we’ll have to take it all one step at a time. But I sure want her to live. Only now I understand that I don’t have to die a little bit every time one of these little ones doesn’t make it.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: I forgot to ask—the father, will he be taking care of her?</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: That boy who came with the girl? Not her husband. He lived in the same settlement as her. She got left behind because she was a whore. I guess Southtown got self-righteous when they headed for the new city.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: The new city’ll have whores. All places do.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: You and I know that, but you know people. Especially when they’re moving to the ‘city of God.’ </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ANNO: So she’s got no family at all.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<br />
ABBESS: She has us. Rachel mentioned last night she wouldn’t mind taking her as her own, seeing as she’s been unable to have a baby herself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Rachel’s going to the city with that young man she met.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: She is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: That baby won’t be ready to go for at least a month or two.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ABBESS: Suits me fine. I wouldn’t want to help set everything up anyhow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I’m not sure that would bother Rachel much; she’s never been afraid of hard work, all I’m saying is—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I’m not talking about Rachel. I’m talking about me.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: But you said we weren’t going—</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I know what I <i>said.</i> Now you listen to what I’m saying. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I’ll never understand you, ‘Bess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You don’t have to understand me Anno. Just love me. And help me do this. I’ll need your help, your strength.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I always thought you were the strong one.</span></div>
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ABBESS: No, I’m just the loud one. It’s you I lean on for support.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I don’t know what you want me to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Hold me to this decision. Help me make the journey. And just love me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: That I can do…has that child been fed?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: She has. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Then let’s lay her down for a rest, and I’ll thaw you out some more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ABBESS smiles as ANNO places his arm around her and they walk to the kitchen exit. LIGHTS DOWN</i>.) </span></div>
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<br /></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-89067653109163509472011-12-28T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-28T06:00:13.122-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent, Part 5<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 26pt;">Act 3</span></div>
<h3>
Scene 3</h3>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(The music begins to fade out, and the Lights Fade Up. ANNO stands at the bar, putting things away. ABBESS enters, looking tired and sweaty. The </span></i><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span></i><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is quiet, and there are a few PATRONS lying about on the floor, sleeping. ABBESS steps over them. )</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ANNO: How is she?</span></h2>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (<i>shaking her head</i>) She wasn’t strong enough to bear the baby and live.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: And the baby?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Alive…for now. But we’ll see. If the child sees the dawn…why the hell do we keep calling it dawn? No one’s seen the Sun for over a hundred years. Might as well call everything night. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Hope, ‘Bess. Hope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: My hope died with that girl Anno. This whole lunacy of going to Tinker’s City of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">…all these people are doing is trading real estate. Two generations and we’ll all be dead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Maybe they’re healthy babies being born somewhere else in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Yeah, same place Simeon’s Messiah is living no doubt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: (After a silence) What if the baby lives?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Hm? What do you mean?<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, if the baby lives, will you have hope?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What the hell are you talking about Anno?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I’m talking about you. About us. About everything. Hope isn’t something someone gives you Abbess. It’s something you grab for yourself. If you get everything given to you, then that’s not hope anymore. It’s just life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You’re trying to talk about things over your head Anno. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: No I’m not! I’m talking about what I see, and what I know. Look, if you say you’ll only have hope when the sun shows it’s face, then you will never really hope. Because once the sun’s there, you can’t hope for it to be there. It already is.</span></div>
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ABBESS: You’re confusing me. I’m too tired to talk about this.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Dammit Abbess, this is important! I’m saying if you don’t have hope now, you never will! You’ll always be hoping for something else! If the baby lives today, you’ll say you won’t have hope until she grows up! And when she grows up, you’ll say you won’t have hope until she finds a husband! And then it’ll be children! And so on! You have to hope today!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Why Anno, what good does it do? Will that baby live just because I hope she will? Will it bring the sun out if I just hope it does? What will it change? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You. It’ll change you, ‘Bess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ANNO walks out. ABBESS stands, stunned that her husband has spoken with such thoughtfulness and passion. SIMEON enters from the kitchen area.)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">SIMEON: I heard shouting. Is everything all right?</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ABBESS: Anno was bringing my attention to some things I’ve been overlooking around the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Inn</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">SIMEON: Strange timing. What was so urgent?</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ABBESS: Hope. </span></h2>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Simeon looks perplexed. He is uncertain of what to say. ABBESS goes to the bar, gets down a bottle of whiskey and pours herself a shot</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. <i>FEN enters, bleary eyed.</i>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What are you doing out of bed?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Papa came to say goodnight to me and woke me up when he kissed me—gave me whisker burn. So I came down to find out how the lady and her baby are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (<i>Pouring another shot.)</i> The baby is doing pretty good so far sweetheart. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Is it a girl?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: It is. What do you have against boys?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Nothing. I just would rather have a girl to play with. I’ve seen how the boys play with Rachel and Esther…yuck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, it won’t always seem ‘yuck’ to you, but I’ll thank God for everyday it does.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: How is the baby’s mama?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: She died, Fen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Just like my mama.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Just like your mama.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>There is a silence</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Where do they go?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Who?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: The people—when they die?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, we bury the body out in the ice…you know that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Where’s the rest of them--the part that talks and laughs?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, my mama used to say that part—our spirit, flew up above the clouds to where the sun is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Is that true? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, I sure hope—(<i>realizing what she’s said, and what it means</i>)—I sure hope so Fen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I wonder what the sun looks like. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Well, my father told me the sun is a star, so it would look like the star in the book Tinker brought you I would guess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Really? If that’s where we go, then why don’t we all just go to sleep and die so we can go there too?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (<i>thinks for a moment</i>) Well, if we all went off and died, who’d be around to change diapers on all the new babies? Or teach little girls to read?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: That’s true. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Enough questions. Back to bed with you. I have to go relieve Rachel. She’s been watching the baby. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Simeon can watch me—</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I said to bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: All right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (<i>Gives FEN a kiss on the cheek</i>.) Goodnight sweetheart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Goodnight. (<i>She turns to SIMEON</i>) Good night, Simeon. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>SIMEON blows her a kiss. FEN catches it and puts it in her pocket, then exits up the stairs</i>.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Thank you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: For what?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: For not correcting me when I told Fen where we go when we die.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Didn’t seem to need correcting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: That’s not what you believe, is it Simeon?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I didn’t believe in a lot of things before Tinker told us about the city. I talked to you about hope a lot Abbess. I didn’t realize how little I had until tonight, when got what I’d been hoping for. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: The girls?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>SIMEON nods</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: If I’d really had hope for them, I’d have had faith in them, in their decisions. That God was watching out for them when I wasn’t. And now—how do I become part of their lives again?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: That’s what Anno was saying to me. That I say I’ll have hope when something happens, that I really don’t have hope at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Wise man. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I need to go spell Rachel off from watching the baby. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Do you think she’ll live?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I hope so. (<i>She smiles</i>.) I guess it does change you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: What was that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Nothing. Get some sleep Simeon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Soon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>She waves as she goes. SIMEON gives her a half-hearted response, and goes to the table. He stares at the chess board</i>. <i>RACHEL enters, looking very tired.</i>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Rachel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Simeon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: How is the child?</span></div>
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RACHEL: Sleeping. Just like I’ll be doing soon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(RACHEL heads for the stairs. SIMEON is obviously in some turmoil. As she reaches the stairs, he speaks up.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Do you want to play some chess?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: (Turns to face SIMEON, a look of slight shock on her face.) So now I’m good enough to play chess with? Now that I have a man who wants to marry me? Is that it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: No—no…that’s not it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well if that’s not what it is, then what is it? What’s changed? Two weeks ago I was just a whore, not worth talking to. Now I’m your daughter again. What’s different Simeon?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Do you remember the story of Hosea?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Of course. Didn’t you know? It’s every whore’s favorite book of the Tanakh. (she smirks.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: On my lips I always called you Rachel. But in my heart I called you Lo-Ruhamah…not my loved one. But tonight, when I saw that woman dying while she was giving birth, I looked away and saw you standing beside her, being so strong, so confident, helping Abbess. And I didn’t see a—a whore. I just saw my little girl. And I wanted to tell you that, but I didn’t know how I could after everything I’ve said, and the way I’ve treated you since your mother died. I’ve not been a good father.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: You’ve been a terrible father.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I just said that! This isn’t easy you know. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: I read that story over and over--Hosea. And I pray to God to bring a man who would be like Hosea, and marry me, even if he knew all the choices I made. But I always said, “It’s impossible. Not even my own father loves me—how could any other man?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: You father was a foolish man. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: And that’s different now?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (<i>quoting</i>) I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.' " Please, Rachel, give me a chance to be your father again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: (<i>thinking a while</i>) No. Not yet. You can work up to that. Let’s just start with that game of chess.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Yes. That would be a good start.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: I’ll need some coffee though. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>SIMEON sits down at the table, turns the board to RACHEL. She is pouring coffee for the two of them as the lights FADE DOWN. Music plays again</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-9086715073660075992011-12-27T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-27T06:00:10.350-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent, Part 4<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 26pt;">Act 3</span></div>
<h3>
Scene 1</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>It has been a month since Tinker left to lead the renovation crew to the fabulous underground city</i>. The </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is ‘filled’ with customers. The sounds of a sizeable crowd, eating, drinking and enjoying themselves can be heard. ABBESS is at the bar, pouring a tray of drinks for ESTHER.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: How did you manage to have enough food and drink for all these people?<br />
<br />
ABBESS: It helps that most of them are eating part of what they paid. A lot of people are slaughtering most of their chickens and goats, rather than transporting all of them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: It’s so exciting! Tomorrow is the beginning of a new life for me!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: So it would seem. I saw you talking to that tall dark haired boy from the Southtown group.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: (Playing stupid.) So?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Come on now Esther, I’ve seen you soliciting customers a thousand times. I’ve never seen you laughing like you were a new bride to be, just courting. Tell me what he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Well, it was his mother took a shine to me first, said I was the healthiest looking thing she’d seen in years, and told her son he should ask me to dance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: So why aren’t you dancing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I told him I couldn’t, since I was working, and he said I was far too fine to be serving drinks. He told me I ought to have someone serving me drinks. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: A real smooth talker.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: He seems very nice. And he doesn’t even know what I do…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: And he never needs to. You’re leaving for a new life. You can be whoever you want. And that includes deciding to dance with a young man when he asks. Now don’t be stupid. Go on and dance with him. I’ll get Anno to serve the drinks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Thank you Abbess.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You thank me when he asks you to marry him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ESTHER takes off her apron and runs out into the crowd. ANNO strides over, wiping his brow, and putting down an empty tray</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Heat! We’re full to bursting! Where are we going to put everyone?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Who cares? They’ll sleep on the floor before they’ll try building a shelter! So long as they pay! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Oh, they’re paying! I had a man give me a rifle for a meal and the night! Says he won’t need it at the city.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
ABBESS: The damn fools. If anything, he’ll have greater need for that gun where they’re headed. More people always leads to more fighting. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Have you ever seen so many smiles? Heard so much laughter? And both my girls are dancing with fine, young men headed for the City! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I saw that. Handsome ones too.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: It is truly Jubilee! Have you two decided what you are going to do yet?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: We’re undecided—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: We’re staying. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(SIMEON shakes his head. TINKER strides over, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He is obviously drunk.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: A fine party Abbess! One last hurrah before we’re all off to the city!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Not all of us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Still got your heels dug in, hey Abbess? Well, that’s fine. You don’t need to worry about me. I won’t bother you or Fen anymore. I think I’ll be too busy in my new role as Advisor to the Headmen to really be a very good father anyhow.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (Cold.) Well, that’s one more reason not to move to the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">new City</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: What’s that?<br />
<br />
ABBESS: Congratulations. You have all the makings of a fine politician.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: How very kind Abbess! (He nods to Anno.) I must go and continue lifting the spirits of the pilgrims! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Pilgrims. You’d think <i>he</i> was the bloody Messiah.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: He <i>has</i> brought hope.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Don’t get her started.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(FEN comes running down the stairs.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Mama! Come quick! There are people at the door! A man and a lady! And the lady-- </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Tell them we’re full! They’ll have to build a shelter! We’ve got no more room!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: But mama! The lady’s gonna have a baby!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Heat! Of all the bad timing in the world—how ready is she Fen?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
FEN: <i>Really</i> ready.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well, bring them down. Take them to my room. Anno, start heating water. Simeon, go get your girls. I’ll need their help likely.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ABBESS moves offstage in the direction of the kitchen. SIMEON walks towards his daughters, while FEN runs up the stairs to let the visitors in. Lights Fade Down. Music plays, a bittersweet melody.)</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-18926660039955573742011-12-26T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-26T06:00:09.196-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent - Part 3<div class="MsoBodyText2">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
<br />
TINKER: I could see Gamin Sanctuary's beacon from the top of MacIntyre’s Rise, right before the storm blew in on me. It was so fierce! I stumbled through the whiteout, but knew I’d be dead if I didn’t try for shelter. So I started digging myself a shelter into a shelf of ice. And as I chipped away with my shovel, I dislodged an ice sheet which was over a grating. I pried the grating loose with my shovel, and then crawled through the tunnel behind it. It was completely dark. I couldn’t see a thing. Finally, I came to another grating. I didn’t have room to light a torch and see where I was heading, so I knocked the grating off with my shovel and slid through. Since I couldn’t turn around, I eased myself head-first out of the metal tunnel until I could reach my fire kit. I lit a match, and saw that there was floor about seven feet beneath me. I could feel that I was in a big room, just from the air. So I jumped down, lit a torch, and began exploring. It was obviously all man made. At first, I thought it was just another underground place, like the Sanctuary. But as I explored further, through halls that made my footsteps echo, I came upon a door, which lead out into the most marvelous place I have ever seen, or even heard described. It was a city, but not open to the sky, like all the rest must have been. This one had a huge roof over it, with spots where huge windows had been built to let in the light. At points, I could see holes in the ice that had formed over the windows, and that’s how I knew it wasn’t underground. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: It’s really a city? How big is it?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: It’s so big, that there are hundreds of merchant’s shops, and inns. All the people living in Gamin Sanctuary could move there and would hardly take up any space. I walked several miles in one direction, starting at one end and going to the other. And that only makes up for maybe one third of the city—there’s little streets leading off the main one, and there are several levels to the city—just like the Sanctuary, only not just open stone. All the shops, the Inns…I’d never seen anything like it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: And there were no people?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: I came across a few remains, but whenever the Ice came, it came at a time when the people weren’t in the city. The bodies I found were carrying pistols like this one (he brandishes a revolver) so I assume they were watchmen, left to guard the city while the people were away.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ANNO: Why the hell would an entire city just up and leave?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: It’s possible that they were away celebrating a festival of some sort. My people used to go to the City of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> leaving their towns and villages once a year to worship God in His temple.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: That could be it. The whole city was decorated with shiny rope and huge sparkling shapes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: A star.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: What’s a star?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: It’s in this book. Were the shapes like this one? (She holds up the book and points to the star of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Bethlehem</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Yes! That’s what they looked like.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Perhaps Fen’s book is about the festival. What does it say?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I don’t understand a lot of the words. Like this one; ‘messiah.’ What’s that Simeon?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (excited.) The book talks about the Messiah?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Then you know what the word is?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Do I know what the word is? It’s the heart of my people’s faith Anno. It’s the hope we cling to. The hope for the coming of the Messiah.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You sound like you’re running for headman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Who knows? Not a bad aspiration for the man who discovered the City of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">—</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: The what?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Well, I was just thinking, since they were obviously worshipful people—what with having so many of those books and the dolls, all relating to the Messiah.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: We can’t be sure that book is true—</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: But a gift such as this city—it could only come from God, am I not right Simeon?<br />
<br />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I suppose—</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: And, most miraculous of all, there are trees everywhere, underground!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Trees can’t grow underground!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: So we’ve been told! But they’re there, fully grown, decorated with stars, and shiny things. I brought one to show you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(He pulls a Christmas ornament from one of the pouches on his vest, and hands it to ABBESS, who looks it over.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (sarcastic) It’s beautiful. (She places the ornament on the bar. RACHEL scoops it up.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: It <i>is</i> beautiful.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: What about the air. Was it breathable?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: It was pretty bad. I had to wear my mask. But I crawled in through a tunnel that seemed to be made for letting air into the city. If there’s one, there’s probably more. We’d just have to make sure they didn’t ice over. Keep them clear of snow. And besides, with all those trees, the air should clean up once we get all the dead bodies moved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: So I guess you’ll be needing a place to stay while you’re here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: A warm bed would be nice.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (SIMEON puts his arm around TINKER.) Surely this man is messiah to me! He brings this news of the Promised Land! There is a giant to conquer with the air, yes, but (he takes the ornament from RACHEL.) there are also grapes the size of a man’s fist.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Everyone else looks perplexed. SIMEON places the ornament on the table. FEN picks it up, and inspects it while the others continue talking.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Well Anno, what do you say?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: It sounds fantastic. Almost too good to be true.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Which probably means it is.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: ‘Bess—don’t be so hard. It’s someplace to go to! The place I’ve been hoping for. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: <i>You’ve</i> been hoping for it, not me. I like this inn just fine. I expect if everyone in Gamin Sanctuary and Southtown just up and moved, we’d have no room in Tinker’s fabulous city.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: You don’t sound enthused Abbess. Does this mean you won’t be coming with us?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You don’t even know if anyone will go with you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Of course they will! That’s what they—we all want—a place to start over!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I’ve already started over. This </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> was where I did it. I have a family, and we’re happy here.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: That’s something else I was meaning to speak to you about, Abbess. When I go to the city, I’m taking Fen with me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(FEN looks up from the ornament. She missed the comment, but recognized her name.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (Stunned.) What did you say?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: I said, when I return to the City, I’m taking Fen with me. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (Not comprehending at all.) I’d like to see the city Mama. We could all go visit! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: No Fen, I mean I’m taking you there to live with me.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (Confused.) But why? This is where I live. Here, with Mama and Papa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: They’re not your real Mama and Papa Fen. I’m you’re real Papa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You son of a bitch. (She lunges at him, but ANNO holds her back.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You’d better leave now Tinker.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: Not until I’m finished.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You’re finished now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: I have a right to tell her.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: No you don’t. You gave that up ten years ago. Now get the hell out of here. You’re not welcome. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Go, talk to the headman. I’m sure he’ll be interested to hear your story. But I’m not so easily given to your honey tongue, Tinker. What happens when the work gets hard? Will you be the one helping with the removal of the dead? Or will you just tuck tail and run when the going gets hard—like you did before.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: I don’t have to listen to this.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: No, you’re right. You can always just walk away and do as you please, and come and go as you please.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">TINKER: What do you want from me? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I wanted you to stay the hell away from her! You can’t just show up here now and tell her you’re her real father! That’s not fair! You don’t have the right!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Get going.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(TINKER turns, grabs his pack, looks at FEN for a moment, and then heads up the stairs. SIMEON, RACHEL AND ESTHER all exit in the awkward silence. ANNO lets ABBESS go.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Fen—</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Are you my real parents?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (After a lengthy pause.) No.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: So Tinker wasn’t lying?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: No, for once he was telling the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: How come—you never told me?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I didn’t think you needed to know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Oh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Do you want to go with Tinker?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: You don’t want me anymore?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: No, no that’s not what I meant. I just—I don’t know Fen. I feel all mixed up, and I don’t know what to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Me too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: So what are we gonna do?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I don’t want to leave you and Pa—Anno.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You stop that right now. Anno is still your Papa—and I am still your Mama. If you don’t want to leave, then that doesn’t change. Do you understand?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I don’t know Ma—mama, I don’t know. I just want to go lie down. I want to lie down and read. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(FEN slides out of her chair and exits. ABBESS slumps into a chair, ANNO comes up behind her and places his hands on her shoulders.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I’m sorry ‘Bess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ABBESS: I should’ve shot that bastard the minute he set foot in my </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">! Who the hell does he think he is? Fen’s so filled up with fairy tales and Simeon’s old stories—babies left by their parents, taken in by kings and queens—will she think it’s all wonderful, like one of those stories?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I don’t know. She’s just a little girl. She doesn’t see the world the way we do. All hard and cold.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What if she wants to go with him?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: She doesn’t. She’s confused, but she won’t leave you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You mean she won’t leave <i>you.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: She won’t leave either of us. Stop hurting yourself. You’re the one who’s always saying we shouldn’t make pain up where there isn’t any. Fen loves you very much. No more than me, just different. The only reason she’d want to go would be to see the City, not to live with Tinker.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: That’s what I’m afraid of. That she’ll go for that reason. Or that you’ll both go for that reason.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Why are you so afraid of going? What if it’s as wonderful as Tinker says?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You trust that man?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Tinker may be honey tongue, but he’s not stupid. He’s not going to lead two settlements across the ice waste to a place that doesn’t exist. He’d be torn apart when the lie was found out.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Maybe he’s just planning to lead everyone out there so he can steal from them.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You know as well as I do that Tinker isn’t that kind of person. He’s selfish, but he’s not a murderer.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Anno, we’ve both seen what this world does to people. The ice wastes are just a beast, with great, sharp teeth, and it eats people. Some it eats slowly, and others faster, but it eats them all, just the same! I will not fill that child’s head with hope that doesn’t exist!</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You don’t know it doesn’t exist.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: And I’m not risking the lives of my family just to see if Tinker’s city is really as grand as he says! My father took that risk on some wanderer’s say so, and we never made it!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: But Tinker knows where the city is. And he’s willing to lead us there.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Oh yes, for his glory. He’s equipped to travel the wastes. He’s been doing it ever since Fen’s mother died! Fen’s just a little girl! You really think she’ll make the journey</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I think the risk is worth it. So we stay here, while everyone in the Sanctuary leaves—who will we trade with? Who will stay at the inn? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: People on their way to the ‘City of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.’</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You know as well as I do that’s a lot of heat. When the settlements hear about this place, they’ll all be coming here—one last time. There’ll be a few stragglers, sure, maybe even some who would take the journey farther than Southtown, but then that’s it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-82561262386629429262011-12-25T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-25T06:00:05.892-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent - Part 2<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough
Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember
the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and
then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties.
Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think
the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least,
intelligible.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 26pt;">ACT 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Scene 2</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Lights up on the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">’s residents seated around the table. ABBESS is clearing away some of the dishes. ANNO is still eating heartily. SIMEON has pushed back from the table, obviously content.)</span></div>
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SIMEON: A fine supper Abbess. Better than we’ve had in a long time.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Oh I didn’t do much. Rachel and Esther did most of the cooking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (haltingly) Well, it was very good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Thank you papa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(RACHEL says nothing. There is an uncomfortable silence.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: That must have been one hell of a cat, Anno, to produce so much meat.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Uh, yes...yes it was. Very old, very fat.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Seemed lean enough to me.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, large is what I meant to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Was it bigger than one of our dogs?</span></div>
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ANNO: No, about the same size. (ANNO finishes eating and pushes back from the table as well. He wants to change the topic.) Hell of a storm moving in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Oh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: From the west. Could see it coming, so I put the dogs in their shelter. Still might lose one to the storm, hard to say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: We should just bring them down here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: We have enough cleaning to do around this </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> without bringing dog shit into the picture. And speaking of cleaning Fen, why don’t you take these dishes and get started on them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Well that’s hardly fair, considering Fen was out hunting for food all afternoon. I’ll handle the dishes Abbess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Thank you Simeon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(SIMEON starts gathering plates.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You’ll spoil her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: We should all be so lucky, in this day and age, to be spoiled. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: My grandmother told me that before the ice, there were several times a year where children were spoiled – presents, candies, all sorts of things. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Harder to do now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: We still make candy on Grey Day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I got the impression nobody had to make the candy. You’d go to a market and get some. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Where’s the fun in that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Who knows? It’s just what she told me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>SIMEON takes the dishes out of the room, to the kitchen</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Any excuse to get him out of the room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Don’t start. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Esther, Simeon</span></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-80901859050833443972011-12-24T06:00:00.000-07:002011-12-24T06:00:05.067-07:00Rough Creatures: A Play for Advent - Part 1<div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in 0in 1pt;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Rough Creatures" was written between 2002 and 2005 - I don't really remember the exact date. I just recall trying to get it ready for rehearsals, and then being unable to launch the production due to casting difficulties. Feel free to use it however you can - it's in fragments, but I think the pieces add up to something usable, or at the very least, intelligible.</span><br />
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<i>Another time, another place. It is a land ravaged by perpetual winter;
no one can recall how the winter began, if it was by the weapons of
power which the world’s leaders had forged, or if it were an act of God,
a meteor striking the earth and forcing everything underground. With
time, small settlements have grown up under the ice and snow as Life
finds a way through the grey death. Gamin Sanctuary is one such
settlement, built within the basement levels of some once-great
building. Nestled at the edge of the settlement, in all that remains
above ground is the Inn, a place for travelers’ mad enough to traverse
the ice wastes to stop, and for denizens of Gamin Sanctuary to come for a
drink, a game of cards or stones, or more intimate pursuits. </i><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">CAST</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Abbess – a strong, mature middle-aged woman who runs the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tinker – a man of unknown age (older than mid-20’s) who roams the ice wasteland looking for items of value to trade </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Simeon – a older Jewish man who lives at the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, hoping for the coming of the Messiah. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rachel – Simeon’s eldest daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah – Simeon’s younger daughter – a whore</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fen, the Matchstick Girl – the Abbess’ ‘daughter’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Anno – The Abess’ husband</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman – a traveler who comes upon the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in labor</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Man – a traveler, the Woman’s companion</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 26pt;">ACT 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Scene 1</span></div>
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(As the lights go up, we see the interior of the Inn. It is an assortment of obviously salvaged odds and ends, with the end result being something that vaguely resembles the common room of a frontier saloon. A series of shelves with a motley assortment of drinking vessels stands behind a poorly constructed counter. Bottles of a clear alcohol line the remaining shelves. There are stools lined up against the counter, and a table off to the side. A deck of cards sits on the table, as does a chess set. A fluorescent light fixture hangs over a potter of plants. The bulbs are presently off. Light comes from oil lamps on the bar and the shelves. There are ‘Christmas’ cacti around the room. FEN, a girl of about 10 years is sitting at the table, reading a book with SIMEON, an old man.)</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (<i>reading</i>) “Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Nile</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.” (<i>She stops reading, a look of horror on her face.</i>) Oh no! Does that mean that after all that trouble, this baby will die too?</span></div>
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SIMEON: That would be giving it away. That’s the joy of stories you know. Wondering what happens next. (He takes the book from her hands.) I guess that’s where we’ll end for today.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (Pleadingly) Nooo…I want to know what happens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Good incentive for coming to your lesson tomorrow. (<i>She makes an exaggerated pout, and SIMEON just smiles.</i>) Oh, all right. Read some more. (He returns the book.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: <i> </i> Yes! (<i>SIMEON raises an eyebrow.)</i> Thank you Simeon. (She finds her spot on the page and continues reading.) She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?" "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water." (she looks up.) What’s a Pharaoh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: A Pharaoh…would be like the Headman of the Sanctuary, only he had many more people to rule over. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Like a king!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Yes, like a king! Where did you learn about kings?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: From one of the books in Mama’s boxes. It’s called “Fairy Tales,” and it’s filled with stories just like the Torah!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: No, not just like the Torah! The Torah is filled with true stories, things that really happened. Fairy tales are stories that did not really happen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: You mean there aren’t any real kings?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Oh, yes, there are real kings. There are kings in the Torah…like David, the greatest king who ever lived, and his son Solomon…</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I want to read about them!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I thought you wanted to find out what happened to the little baby.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I do…I just like stories about kings, and princesses.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Well, I told you, Pharaoh is like a king, so his daughter would be like a princess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (Her eyes lighting up.) A princess! Can we read some more?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: No, I think that is enough for now. You found out that the baby did not die, so we can leave the story alone until your next lesson. Time for chess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: (Putting away the book and helping Simeon set up the board.) Do Rachel and Esther know how to play chess too?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Yes, I taught them both when they were little girls. Rachel was better at it than Esther, but they were both very good. Just like you are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Then how come you never play chess with them?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: (Speechless for a moment.) Well, Fen…you see…(he notices she has the bishops and rooks mixed up.) Now look here, this is the rook – and this one is the bishop. (He switches where they go.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: You still haven’t answered my question.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: What question?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: About Rachel and Esther.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>Suddenly the loud voices of ABBESS and ANNO interrupt them. </i> <i>SIMEON gives FEN a knowing glance. They smile conspiratorially. This obviously happens a fair amount, and is nothing serious</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (<i>offstage</i>) I don’t give a damn how important those dogs are Anno, they don’t make us any money, and we’re running low on food. If you don’t have the balls to shoot one of them and skin it, then I will. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>ABBESS enters, a middle aged woman with a bundle in her arms</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: (<i>offstage</i>) Don’t talk to me about having balls woman; it’s not that I haven’t the stomach for it, it’s just that every time we kill off one of those dogs, we kill off any hope we’ve got for making it out of this place.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(ANNO enters. He is wearing clothing that is obviously intended for cold weather</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (incredulous) Make it out of this place? Anno, when the hell are you going to stop dreaming about getting out of this place. This </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is our home. Your father fixed it up, gave it to you, and all you can think about is leaving! Heat!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You’ve just given up hope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: I haven’t given it up. I’ve just stopped hoping in foolishness, is all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Hoping for a better place to live isn’t foolishness.</span></div>
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(SIMEON stands up and stretches. ANNO and ABBESS look at him, seeing him for the first time since they entered.)</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I used to complain about living in the Sanctuary. My grandfather would always say to me, “Simeon, if you can’t be content where you are, you’ll never be content anywhere else.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: What’s there around here to be content with?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (Throwing herself across his lap.) </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Me.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> (ANNO laughs and kisses her on the cheek. FEN jumps up from her chair and joins them.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: And me! (ABBESS hugs FEN close.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: We are more than content to have you, Fen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Children are a blessing from the hand of God. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(FEN looks up at ABBESS.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: Mama, I don’t want one of the dogs to die.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: All things die Fen. If we don’t have food, it will be us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: What if I go catch a cat or two?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: If you can find a live cat in the Sanctuary, I’d be more than happy to cook it for you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Rat?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: If I eat another rat…</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: All right, all right… (He goes to exit.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: I’ll help you catch a cat, Papa!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You think we can find one together Fen?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">FEN: If it means we don’t have to eat one of the dogs, I’ll catch two! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(ANNO looks to ABBESS, who shrugs her shoulders, smiles, and waves him off.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, then mighty hunter, let’s go see what we can find!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: He’s too soft for this world, Simeon. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: We could use softness around here. Don’t be too hard on Anno. His grandfather brought those dogs down from the far wastes. They’re loyal animals. He used to talk about how they’d keep a polar bear occupied long enough for the master to shoot it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You need polar bear around for that to happen Simeon. The only animals around here are the few rats that escape the snares. And those will be gone soon, at the rate things are going.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: My mother said rats were once considered pests; people killed them just to get rid of them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: They didn’t eat them?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: That’s just what she told me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What a strange world it must have been before the sun disappeared. Killing animals just to kill them…my mother said they used to cut down trees to bring them in the house for some sort of festival. And now you’d kill someone to have a live tree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: We must always keep going. Keep striving. When I was a little boy, my mother told me tales of her great grandfather…or was it her great, great, grandfather…(ABBESS is staring at him with a look of irritation, as if to say “get on with it.”)—one of my ancestors. He was taken as a little boy by an invading army and put to work in awful camps where my people were killed by the thousands, only because we were Jews. When he was in the camp, he was certain it would be the end of him, and likely his people as well. But somehow he survived, and life went on. The Jewish people did not die out…even today, here I am, and two daughters…such as they are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Yes, but with the resurgence of the plague—no live babies born in Gamin Sanctuary now for four years. That’s not a good sign. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: The Lord will not abandon us. He has promised to send his Messiah!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What happens if your Messiah gets born somewhere else?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: It won’t matter where he’s born—he is going to bring my people back to greatness, just as Moses once did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Who’s Moses? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: One of my ancestors. He was sent by God to free the Jewish people when they were enslaved in a foreign land. Come to think of it, perhaps it was Moses who freed my mother’s great, great grandfather…</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Is that another one of those stories from that old book of yours. (She picks it up and opens it.)</span></div>
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SIMEON: The Torah. Yes, it is from there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: By the way, thank you for teaching Fen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: It’s no trouble. It’s easier to help raise your daughter—</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: She’s not my daughter…we just take care of her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: She seems to think she is your daughter. Sometimes life isn’t what we see, it’s what we believe. Anyhow, it is still easier getting along with Fen than it is talking with those two Jezebels the Lord left me with. (he gets into a ‘preaching’ voice) "The leech has two daughters. 'Give! Give!' they cry. There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, 'Enough!': the grave, the barren womb…”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ABBESS: Enough! I say ‘enough!’ I’ve told you before Simeon, I’ll not abide that sort of talk about the girls. They made the only choice they had – if they could get married off, you know they would. But there’s a shortage of healthy men down in the Sanctuary. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: So it’s better to sell your body to all the traveling riff-raff that come through here?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: One of those riff-raff might give you a grandchild.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
SIMEON: No grandchild of mine.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: That’s enough of your poison. Any living child born in this world is a child nearly all of us would want to claim as our own. Don’t you go thinking so much hurt. There’s enough real hurt without you cooking it up in yourself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Footsteps can be heard on the staircase. RACHEL and ESTHER enter, laughing about something.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Such a skinny little thing he was. Must have been for his coming of age.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Have you no shame?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: None, father. I traded all my shame to stay alive. No, no shame left. But I do have eggs. (She holds a basket out to ABBESS.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Eggs! Good lord you girls charge enough! If I’d known we would have eggs, I wouldn’t have sent Anno and Fen off hunting cats! Oh well, the meat will keep. (<i>She walks off to the ‘kitchen’ with the eggs. The girls are left alone in the room with their father. ESTHER, hoping for some time with her father, sits down at the table with SIMEON.</i>)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Would you like to play chess, Papa?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: If your mother could see you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, she can’t. She’s dead. And we’re alive, and doing the only thing we can to stay that way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: Living outside the law of God is not living.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, if God wants me to live under His law, He’d damn well better bring back the sun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: God didn’t take the sun! We did! Your great grandfather said—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: And others say it wasn’t us! They say it was God, that a great stone fell from the sky and made the earth the way it is!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: God wouldn’t do that…he wouldn’t allow…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Allow what? What he allows everyday? Wouldn’t allow the entire world to be covered in ice, wouldn’t allow the clouds to never part? Wouldn’t allow any new babies to be born? What wouldn’t God allow?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">SIMEON: I’m not listening to this. (He exits, angry.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Why do you do that? He might have played…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: He started it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I know, but you could just ignore him. It’s not the life any of us hoped for. Mama wanted us to find husbands, have babies…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, that’s what I’m trying to do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: What?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Sit down, let’s play some cards.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I <i>wanted</i> to play chess.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: You were never very good at chess Esther. Stick to games you’re good at. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(ESTHER shoots her sister a look, but RACHEL is oblivious. They sit down at the table, and RACHEL starts dealing cards for a game. ABBESS enters, wiping her hands on her apron.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Game of cards! Mind if I join you?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(RACHEL pulls out a chair and deals ABBESS her cards. The girls’ conversation takes place during the game.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Simeon and you have another argument? Is that why he left?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: You need to ask?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Just being conversational.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Speaking of conversational, Rachel, you were just about to tell me what you meant by saying you <i>are</i> doing what Mama wanted you to?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, that’s not why I started whoring, but I was thinking about that story Papa used to tell us about that man, from the Torah, the one who God told to marry a whore.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: There’s no such story!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: There is so. And so the man does, and she keeps on whoring, but God tells him to stay with her anyhow. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: So?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, I was talking with Bridget, the lady who makes dresses down in the Sanctuary, and I got to feeling sorry for myself and started crying, and she asked me what was wrong, and when I told her, she told me not to give up hope. (The women stare at her, waiting for the revelation.) She told me she had been a whore down in Southtown, and that her husband and her moved to Gamin Sanctuary so people wouldn’t talk too much. Made me swear I wouldn’t tell anybody.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Being the tight-lipped confidant you are and all. (ANNO reenters, his gloves bloody.) Back so soon?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I told Fen we could hunt better if we split up. (He looks at his hands.) I assume she won’t know the difference between dog and cat—don’t tell her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: (Stands and crosses to him.) You are a good man. (She kisses him on the cheek. There is an awkward silence. ABBESS attempts to break the mood.) You and Rachel should get together and talk hope Anno. You hoping for a place to move to, Rachel hoping for a husband to walk in and sweep her off her feet…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: What this?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Nothing. I wasn’t saying nothing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Rachel here thinks whoring’s a good way to find a husband.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: (grinning) Beats bringing him home at gunpoint.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: You hush now.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: No, there’s a story there, or I’ve never heard one. Come on Anno, ‘fess. Did Abbess make you marry her at gunpoint?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Not quite. I was taking some potatoes down to Southtown by dogsled, and saw a fire out on the wastes. So I went to investigate. And there was Abbess, cradling a shotgun in her lap, half-starved, half-dead, burning what appeared to be a sledge. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: My family was from the flatlands to the east, where there’s <i>no</i> shelter from the winds and the cold. We thought we might find something better if we came west, toward the mountains. By the time I reached here, most everyone had died off.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I’m sorry…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: People die. It’s the way the world is. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: I’d like to hear the rest of the story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(ANNO looks at ABBESS for consent to continue. She nods.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, that was how I found her. I guess that’s where she got her taste for sled dog, because there was a spit of meat roasting on that fire. I hadn’t had meat in a good while, so I tried sneaking over to steal me some of it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Anno!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: I wasn’t gonna take all of it! And besides, I had every intention of taking her with me to Southtown.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Only I didn’t know it. And the sound of his boots on the ice woke me up. I aimed that shotgun at him and said…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: That’s my damn dog. Go get your own.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(This is apparently very funny to the couple. RACHEL and ESTHER try to laugh at the joke, but it is obviously something shared between ABBESS and ANNO.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: (Still laughing.) So she points the shotgun at me and asks me where the nearest settlement is. I wasn’t all that far from the Sanctuary at that point, but I told her I was headed for Southtown. And she just waves the shotgun and tells me to bring her back here. And that’s how we met.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Romantic, eh?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, that’s not the whole story. The whole story is that she started helping out around the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Inn</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, and when my father saw how good she was with the customers, he started her as a working girl. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Abbess?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What? You two thought you were the first girls to try making a living on their back in this establishment? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: You make it sound like you know what these girls have had to go through. Tell them the rest. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Anno couldn’t stand the thought of me being with another woman, he was so smitten by my beauty, so he proposed to me about an hour after his father hired me on as a working girl.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ANNO: Well, my father wasn’t too pleased, but my mother was, and they both agreed that having grandchildren would be a good thing. (This kills the conversation as surely as anything.) Damn. I’m sorry. (He exits, embarrassed, gone back to finish his work.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Anno! It’s all right! (<i>He’s gone</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: At least there’s Fen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Yes. But Anno thinks it’s his fault, and I think it’s why he’s so—careful with me. I can’t have a proper argument with the man, because sooner or later it occurs to him that he never gave his mother—or me—a little boy or girl.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: But no one’s had a live birth for nearly ten years!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Fen was the last.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: But she was sick as a child, wasn’t she?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Oh yes. And her mother caught it, and died, and then her father couldn’t bear the grief and went off into the wastes. Left Fen all by herself, the selfish bastard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: It’s been a piece since we’ve seen Tinker.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Nearly a year. It’s probably the longest he’s been gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Well, for all his past sins, I miss him. He makes me laugh.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: He makes us all laugh. And I guess I should be thankful. If he hadn’t gone off, I’d never known what it would like to raise a child.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Have you told her?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: What would the point be? Besides, she thinks the world of Tinker. It would kill her to think he’d gone off and left her as a child.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: But when she’s older, don’t you think she’ll understand?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Maybe. But there’s enough hurt in this world without us looking for ways to bring more in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: That’s true enough. Still, if Simeon wasn’t my real father, I think I’d want to know that.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
RACHEL: If Simeon wasn’t my real father, I’d throw a party.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: That’s no way to talk about papa.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: He doesn’t speak kindly of me, I’m just returning the favor. Eye for an eye, isn’t that what his Torah says?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Don’t necessarily make it right. Simeon’s just having a hard time watching the world fall apart around him. He’s older than anyone I know girls; he remembers when things were a little better. A time when kids were still getting born, when there were still cats to hunt…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: The plague didn’t spare the cats or rats neither, did it?<br />
<br />
ABBESS: Some think it was the rats who carried the plague, passed it on to the cats, and then onto us. It’s like the world just wants us all dead. Dead and gone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ESTHER: This is certainly a cheerful conversation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">RACHEL: Things aren’t cheerful, Esther.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I am. I’m cheerful. I’m happy to be living here with Abbess and her family, and I’m happy for all the men that come to visit, ‘cause if they didn’t, we’d have all starved by now. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: That’s true enough Esther. I’m sorry, but it’s just not in my nature to see the happy side of things. It seems easier to see things just the way they are.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: I don’t see things any other way than they are as far as I’m concerned. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Well then, you’re charmed. Feel blessed, and maybe just point out all the good things you see.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(<i>They sit playing cards a moment</i>.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Playing cards.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ABBESS: Pardon me?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">ESTHER: Playing cards. It’s a good thing. You told me to point the good things out to you.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br />
ABBESS: I’m not sure I was asking you to tell me <i>every</i> good thing you see. But I have to admit, I certainly do love a good game of cards.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
RACHEL: (laying all the cards in her hand down in a pattern.) As do I. I’m out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(LIGHTS DOWN.)</span></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-74212806893062487802011-12-23T22:01:00.000-07:002011-12-23T11:17:58.351-07:00Seven Sacred Seasons: Incarnation Season<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxO2wMqh9A8/TvTCUt551WI/AAAAAAAABpc/HF4w9YOgiQ8/s1600/slides_0-9_07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxO2wMqh9A8/TvTCUt551WI/AAAAAAAABpc/HF4w9YOgiQ8/s400/slides_0-9_07.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Despite our modern impression that Christmas starts as soon as Halloween (Canada) or Thanksgiving (United States) is over, traditionally, Christmas doesn't start until Christmas day. Everything leading up to December 25 is the celebration of Advent. I think Advent is a wonderful approach to Christmas, for both secular and spiritual adherents of the holiday. While the rituals for a Christian advent are readily available, with some tweaking, people who don't subscribe to any religion or who are of another faith living in a country where Christmas is celebrated, could find a way to light those four candles in the four weeks leading up to the holiday. </div>
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We always celebrated Advent at the Gathering, and encouraged our community to spend Christmas eve and Christmas day at home with family. We held no services from the last Sunday of Advent until the closest Sunday to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, when we would re-gather. In later years, when we switched to the liturgical rhythms of the Sacred Seasons, we encompassed Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany under the heading of Incarnation Season.</div>
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Just as my band was often tapped for All Saints because of our suitability to Halloween, Incarnation Season was almost always handled by a talented musical couple, Craig and Deborah Brososky, whose inspirations included Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, and Loreena McKennitt. Though the other musicians they included switched from year to year, the sounds they created were always well-suited to Christmas hymns and carols. They always practiced a surprise song, which ranged from obvious choices like "Linus and Lucy" from <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas</i>, to less obvious ones (but no less dear in our community!), such as "May it Be" from the <i>Lord of the Rings </i>films as part of their Christmas offerings. </div>
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I've included some slides I created for Incarnation Season at the Gathering. Feel free to use them in your seasonal worship. As a gift to make up for my lax posting over Advent, I'll be posting a script I was preparing for a Christmas production at the Gathering. Due to casting difficulties, I never finished it, but I was proud of it, and want to share it with my <i>Gotthammer</i> readers as a seasonal reflection of sorts.</div>
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The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973</div>
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There is no time for a child to be born</div>
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With the earth betrayed by war and hate</div>
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And a comet slashing the sky to warn</div>
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That time runs out and the sun burns late</div>
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That was no time for a child to be born</div>
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In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;</div>
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Honour and truth were trampled by scorn --</div>
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Yet here did the Saviour make his home.</div>
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When is the time for love to be born?<br />
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The inn is full on the planet earth,</div>
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And by a comet the sky is torn--</div>
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Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.</div>
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- Madeleine L'Engle</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sy3UEYGx4HI/TUzac3STt8I/AAAAAAAABME/OCWdfmIsBAc/s1600/liturgy06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sy3UEYGx4HI/TUzac3STt8I/AAAAAAAABME/OCWdfmIsBAc/s320/liturgy06.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-89674649571632637962011-11-13T21:57:00.000-07:002011-12-23T11:10:20.000-07:00Seven Sacred Seasons: All Saints<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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While Seven Devil Fix was most often given the All-Saints duties for music, there were exceptions. Most notably in my mind was the year Craig Brososky lead a motley crew of our musicians in Supahband. It was hip in those days to riff off the Trainspotting poster, and given the photo session I had with the group, it was an easy riff to use.<br />
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</div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-44318105558057250402011-11-01T16:21:00.001-06:002011-11-01T19:07:44.055-06:00Seven Sacred Seasons: All Saints<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NLexKGZgzhI/TrBvjyog6AI/AAAAAAAABlo/3t3DeEQzENs/s1600/GLOGO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NLexKGZgzhI/TrBvjyog6AI/AAAAAAAABlo/3t3DeEQzENs/s400/GLOGO.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Here we are, balanced between All Hallows' Eve and All Saints Day. Unlike the loud advocates of Jesusween, we celebrated Halloween early in the Gathering's history, without the usual Evangelical whitewashing (come as your favorite Bible character!). We were of the opinion that there are many scary moments in the Bible (a number occur in the Christmas stories!), and wanted to celebrate a season where we recognized how the days were growing shorter in our hemisphere, and the darkness was increasing. We knew we couldn't make the whole season about Halloween or darkness without creeping out prospective attendees (more than we already were, at any rate), so we tried some other options.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bnault.com/">Brad Nault</a> originally drew this Leviathan and all the monsters on the other slides: I hope he's okay with me using this image here. I wanting to make the opening slideshow with "Monsters of the Bible" including their stats like they were D&D monsters, but ran out of time, and only did the Leviathan that way.</td></tr>
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Originally, we celebrated this season as Michaelmas, which focuses primarily on spiritual conflict, but that seemed too narrow to make a yearly event, despite its clear resonances with Halloween. Instead, we went with something broader: All Saints. The theme was simple - we would look at the lives of the "saints" throughout history - those in scripture, those in history, and potentially even those in our midst. It was a time for telling our own stories or celebrating the lives of great spiritual leaders.<br />
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Sadly, I don't think this season ever cohered to its intended thematic content. What was repeated year, after year, was that my band, Seven Devil Fix, was often the music for the whole season, or just for our Halloween service. I remember the Halloween services particularly, but I don't recall much else about the season.<br />
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Seven Devil Fix always got the gig because we wrote songs intentionally about dark spiritual themes: "Ghostwood" was a song about longing for paradise using <i>Twin Peaks</i> allusions, <i>Skeleton Army</i> was about Christian martyrdom in the semi-legendary tale of the Salvation Army's initial opposition, <i>The Burden</i> was about communion told through the eyes of a vampire, and <i>Tremendum</i> was about relating to God as an expression of the literary sublime. Our name was a reference to the seven devils cast from Mary Magdalene, and one year we even wore horns just to underscore the idea.<br />
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I miss those Halloween services. They were the closest I ever got to creating worship experiences that mirrored the purpose of the Jack 'O Lantern. That is to say, our music could virtually ward off evil spirits by virtue of being more terrifying than they were. It was brazen, to be sure, but it never felt wrong. I've always detested the mincing around evil that some expressions of Christianity engages in. On the one hand, we were taught to be spiritually bold; on the other, we acted like there was a devil under every rock that could kick our spiritual ass. There was a lot of don't taste and don't touch in my hometown church. At the Gathering, we were somewhat fearless, and I loved the community for it.<br />
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Thankfully, I can share those songs with you now, thanks to former Seven Devil Fix drummer Taylor Reese uploading our<a href="http://grooveshark.com/#/artist/Seven+Devil+Fix/1606216"> <span id="goog_1930733755"></span>entire discography to Grooveshark for your listening pleasure<span id="goog_1930733756"></span>.</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rx6mM7LVq68/TrBv7Z0-7sI/AAAAAAAABmU/EWF9zQE8tNE/s1600/monster04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rx6mM7LVq68/TrBv7Z0-7sI/AAAAAAAABmU/EWF9zQE8tNE/s400/monster04.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LZ6cGjNZpfk/TrBv8P04qtI/AAAAAAAABmc/ATLiHzNf0Vo/s1600/monster05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LZ6cGjNZpfk/TrBv8P04qtI/AAAAAAAABmc/ATLiHzNf0Vo/s400/monster05.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-51108084821482294702011-09-17T20:32:00.004-06:002011-09-18T09:46:19.263-06:00Seven Sacred Seasons: Gathering Season<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-umo7IItSacE/ThvRm51VybI/AAAAAAAABe0/fendrC6X9-g/s1600/Gallery-Gathering-1024x768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-umo7IItSacE/ThvRm51VybI/AAAAAAAABe0/fendrC6X9-g/s400/Gallery-Gathering-1024x768.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
When the Gathering started up, we didn't have sacred seasons at all. They were the byproduct of switching from one paid speaking pastor to utilizing a pool of speaking/teaching/worship leading volunteers in our third year. Initially, we just had a pool of people who rotated through the various roles. The problem was, we never achieved any unity to the speaking or themes of our worship. So in response, I designed a liturgical year which was honed and developed by our worship teams and leadership over the next seven years. The Gathering Season underwent the greatest change, initially acting as a bookend to Creation Season, our equivalent to Ordinary Time in other liturgical circles. <br />
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The first Gathering Season was held in June, right before what was Creation Season at the time, to commemorate the start of the Gathering in early June of 1998. Three years in, I began producing annual videos, short film montages to celebrate what had happened in the year prior. They became a favorite tradition of the Gathering. Sadly, they were produced in the years before massive hard drives, so they were always dumped to hard copy high-end tapes. I haven't digitally captured them again, but when I do, they'll get uploaded to the Net.<br />
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In the last four or five years of the Gathering, we stopped having two Gathering seasons. It seemed better to just celebrate Gathering Season in the fall, since the word had two meanings: our own fellowship, but also the Gathering of harvest. So Gathering Season came to be a sort of "harvest" season for us in an evangelistic sense. It was the only time of the year we gave a really hard push to see new people come, since September always felt like a new beginning anyhow. Further, we could commemorate our first public service in September 1998. <br />
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Unlike the other Sacred Seasons, Gathering Season never had a strong thematic core. It was up to the volunteer worship team, decor team, media crew, and speaker to decide on an appropriate theme. Some years, we had a number of speakers and musicians, to help new people get a fuller flavor for the Gathering.<br />
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I loved Gathering Season for its newness in those years. We become trained to the rhythm of the school year, and never really forget that sense of reboot that fall and a new school year brings. There was always a sense of excitement as we literally gathered together again after having been separated during the Sabbatical of Creation Season. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dMTOO0A0lbM/ThvR3ZBrZzI/AAAAAAAABfA/ggCA6VUzOvY/s1600/wallpaper.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dMTOO0A0lbM/ThvR3ZBrZzI/AAAAAAAABfA/ggCA6VUzOvY/s400/wallpaper.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This last wallpaper was from the final Gathering Season, which had a double meaning. It was not only the reset of the church year for us, but also a last ditch effort to reset the Gathering. We had gone through some tough decisions in 2007, the worst being the decision to abandon our strip mall location due to rising real estate prices in Edmonton. We ended up renting from a Mennonite church that year, which caused an effective split in the church. After ten years of striving together, the Gathering became fragmented by the question of where we would gather. A handful of us pushed on for one last year. Every time I look at that wallpaper, I feel a bittersweetness. It was good that we took that last year. I don't think I could have let go the following fall if I hadn't tried my hardest, and gave my last energy to those final ten months. We hit reset in the hope that things would continue, but they didn't.<br />
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And yet, every year when the seasons change and school begins again, I feel the newness of Gathering season. May you also, wherever you gather today.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-439695425876930202011-07-12T13:38:00.000-06:002011-07-12T13:38:01.625-06:00Seven Sacred Seasons: Creation Season<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BEiaXVxTVxg/ThvO-76RdtI/AAAAAAAABeI/E92LCP221T8/s1600/creationseason.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BEiaXVxTVxg/ThvO-76RdtI/AAAAAAAABeI/E92LCP221T8/s400/creationseason.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This wallpaper was done by Jeff Nelson, not me, but it was too brilliant not to include here.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZfFjfyirf4/ThvMW9lippI/AAAAAAAABds/JUywJ2k4jqQ/s1600/01pencils.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
Summer was always Creation Season for the Gathering, but the nature of it changed over the years. There was a period where we celebrated the Gathering's birthday after Pentecost season, and called that "Gathering Season." However, we also did "Gathering Season" in the fall, and since that really always felt like the startup of the church year for us, it remained so. To have two Gathering Seasons was confusing, and in later years, we took off both July and August for a sabbatical, given that we were a totally volunteer-lead organization. So to have any services in Creation Season, we moved the services to June. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H2zrnH2yygo/ThvQTdWjpdI/AAAAAAAABek/jeVSvLVN5_A/s1600/VampireNomadPrayer.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H2zrnH2yygo/ThvQTdWjpdI/AAAAAAAABek/jeVSvLVN5_A/s400/VampireNomadPrayer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This prayer has been placed over a photo of one of the Gathering's community, so we could pray for her while she was abroad, living in New Zealand. The photo was taken by Nathan Waddell, and is one of my favorite prayer slides.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The worship was evocative of Celtic Christianity and Spirituality, which has a strong element of eco-justice and awareness to it. We did prayer walks at the Parliament Grounds, labyrinths, picnics, outdoor/backyard services, and in general tried to spend time in Creation. The most memorable of these outdoor services for me was held in my backyard when the Gathering was between venues. There was rain in the forecast, so my industrious father-in-law brought over several king-sized tarps, and strung those from the roof of my house to the three massive trees that bordered my fence. It was like being under a massive tent. It was fortuitous that he'd done so, as the forecasted rain was a gross understatement. It was like a monsoon -- we were sloughing water off the tarps with broom handles, and the Djembe skin was too damp from the air alone to play properly. Nevertheless, I remember attendees dancing outside the tarp-zone, splashing joyfully in the fast-puddling water. We have no record of that event, as the heavy moisture in the air damaged the Gathering's digital camera, and we lost the photos. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-txT3Tw33TAU/ThvPRa_QSOI/AAAAAAAABeQ/AjyZxzMphAE/s1600/borderwall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-txT3Tw33TAU/ThvPRa_QSOI/AAAAAAAABeQ/AjyZxzMphAE/s400/borderwall.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The wallpaper for the last Creation Season we celebrated at the Gathering. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>Sometimes we did services devoted to personal creativity rather than Creation itself. Here is a series of slides I made for one of our Creation Season services, all centered on that theme.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlC9QLwI5rU/ThvdfG-p15I/AAAAAAAABhc/8KQ2aO-EWVU/s1600/creativity-slides06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlC9QLwI5rU/ThvdfG-p15I/AAAAAAAABhc/8KQ2aO-EWVU/s400/creativity-slides06.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cab5zAh0Lj0/ThvdgB90-gI/AAAAAAAABhk/BBgpiIwom88/s1600/creativity-slides02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cab5zAh0Lj0/ThvdgB90-gI/AAAAAAAABhk/BBgpiIwom88/s400/creativity-slides02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZkC07LgHa4/ThvdgqiZV7I/AAAAAAAABho/YJJW16oeJn0/s1600/creativity-slides03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZkC07LgHa4/ThvdgqiZV7I/AAAAAAAABho/YJJW16oeJn0/s400/creativity-slides03.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cvwxxsGoweY/ThvdhPjIz6I/AAAAAAAABhs/OWQfOxBghI4/s1600/creativity-slides04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cvwxxsGoweY/ThvdhPjIz6I/AAAAAAAABhs/OWQfOxBghI4/s400/creativity-slides04.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHcCI_kkpNw/ThvdhhTnghI/AAAAAAAABhw/KPu9GOiRD9s/s1600/creativity-slides05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nHcCI_kkpNw/ThvdhhTnghI/AAAAAAAABhw/KPu9GOiRD9s/s400/creativity-slides05.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The G-Arts Festival was one of the core celebrations during Creation Season: it was held in August, and it simultaneously ended our time of sabbath and kicked off our fall season, without causing anyone an undue amount of planning duties. Everyone at the Gathering was encouraged to participate, and we stressed how creativity was more than just art or music. People brought their collections to display, art to present, music to perform, poetry to read. Children contributed. We saw belly dancing and dramatic improv, slideshows of home renovations, and one year Jenica and I performed a salsa dance. One of my Creation Season offerings was a work of art I'd collaborated on with Nathan Thomas, who went on to do many cool things in animation, such as working on cartoons such as <i>League of Super Evil</i>. We only had about a month to do the comic, and this in our spare time while working at a summer camp. Every night, we took an hour and drew furiously: Nathan did the pencils, and I did the inks. The idea for the strip was to make the book of Ezekiel a modern work, inspired by <i>Maus</i>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o4PnScNwYiY/ThvM0vhWJTI/AAAAAAAABeA/dHsMyyToBc4/s1600/01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o4PnScNwYiY/ThvM0vhWJTI/AAAAAAAABeA/dHsMyyToBc4/s400/01.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>Here's the first image, of Ezekiel looking down onto the River Chebar, and seeing the devastation there. I've had plans to colour the whole strip and put in text, but as I've proven yet again this year with Josh and Caleb still awaiting completion, these things are easier said than done. Nevertheless, I did a test panel for Creation Season to demonstrate the process of drawing a comic.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZfFjfyirf4/ThvMW9lippI/AAAAAAAABds/JUywJ2k4jqQ/s1600/01pencils.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZfFjfyirf4/ThvMW9lippI/AAAAAAAABds/JUywJ2k4jqQ/s400/01pencils.jpg" width="326" /> </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div>Here is a frame of Ezekiel speaking prophecy. The first image shows Nathan's pencils. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f_VAr0PQ_o4/ThvMcQ5DYrI/AAAAAAAABd0/2NOKtW72rKE/s1600/02inks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f_VAr0PQ_o4/ThvMcQ5DYrI/AAAAAAAABd0/2NOKtW72rKE/s400/02inks.jpg" width="315" /></a></div><br />
The above image shows Nathan's pencils, now with my inks. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6neIYAEUgSI/ThvMf21r5PI/AAAAAAAABd4/NNEDFYte-xU/s1600/03cleanup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6neIYAEUgSI/ThvMf21r5PI/AAAAAAAABd4/NNEDFYte-xU/s400/03cleanup.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>Next, I erase the pencils by a process of raising the contrast and brightness. I left them in very faintly, because I want there to be concrete record of Nathan's involvement, and I like that dirty approach.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_DjP3j9S88Y/ThvMiP3srBI/AAAAAAAABd8/5bgKRteZDzQ/s1600/04flats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_DjP3j9S88Y/ThvMiP3srBI/AAAAAAAABd8/5bgKRteZDzQ/s400/04flats.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>Now for the colors, done first in flats. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nSX830Yo8is/ThvMY1xZUtI/AAAAAAAABdw/jYydvak4cH4/s1600/05finished.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nSX830Yo8is/ThvMY1xZUtI/AAAAAAAABdw/jYydvak4cH4/s400/05finished.jpg" width="315" /></a></div><br />
And finally, the finished version, with shadows and desaturated colors. I tried to strip all the bright colors out, as my use of color and dodge and burn effects in <i>Josh and Caleb</i> drove Nathan a little nuts. I really like how this turned out, and look forward to getting the opportunity to present the whole strip here at Gotthammer in the future. <br />
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This last wallpaper was done by Taylor Reese, my brother-in-law, and features the brilliant humor of Gary Kurtz of <i>PvP </i>fame:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A5WYUKmOZZ0/ThvPVqvY4bI/AAAAAAAABeU/Dew2VdiNGbA/s1600/Creation-Season.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A5WYUKmOZZ0/ThvPVqvY4bI/AAAAAAAABeU/Dew2VdiNGbA/s400/Creation-Season.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This last wallpaper was one of my first cracks at using a program that built digital landscapes. I no longer remember the name of the program, but I remember being in awe of the way it combined a simulation of creation, and encouraged the creative process.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/---nmOL5dWFY/ThvRKmAS20I/AAAAAAAABeo/Za3p1yUtPLs/s1600/Gallery-Creation-season-1024x768.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/---nmOL5dWFY/ThvRKmAS20I/AAAAAAAABeo/Za3p1yUtPLs/s400/Gallery-Creation-season-1024x768.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-69217478890713898742011-06-29T06:00:00.001-06:002011-07-11T22:18:26.604-06:00Josh and Caleb Chapter 6: Judgment Episode 02<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_gUV6PvC_AY/TXm1T2hSyrI/AAAAAAAABSE/CG7MLTZScQ8/s1600/03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_gUV6PvC_AY/TXm1T2hSyrI/AAAAAAAABSE/CG7MLTZScQ8/s400/03.jpg" width="400" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-moyKAAwHwQI/ThvJgDtAeGI/AAAAAAAABdc/ORMr5_A-fV0/s1600/04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-moyKAAwHwQI/ThvJgDtAeGI/AAAAAAAABdc/ORMr5_A-fV0/s400/04.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://gotthammer.blogspot.com/2011/05/josh-and-caleb-chapter-6-judgment.html"><b>Previous Episode</b></a><br />
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<b>Director's Commentary: </b>As art, I love these pages. The layout looks good to me, and I'm very happy with the colour job. This is grim stuff, though. I based the way these guys die on something involving the original Hebrew in this passage - basically, the smiting here was of the worst kind, and I wanted that reflected. The Hebrew here is <span class="lexHbSm">מַגֵּפָה</span> (<em>maggephah</em>), which means either slaughter or plague. I was clearly in a much darker mental space, as I now find it rather disturbing. I must have at the time as well, or Josh wouldn't have been questioning it. Here's the original warning that acted as a link to the page where Igal and crew have their guts being turned inside out. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sJMYsBjZhtE/TXm1eMGwDhI/AAAAAAAABSM/3fQYjX-1u4g/s1600/04warning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sJMYsBjZhtE/TXm1eMGwDhI/AAAAAAAABSM/3fQYjX-1u4g/s400/04warning.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-51720734180893361642011-06-26T21:29:00.003-06:002011-09-17T20:34:59.531-06:00Seven Sacred Seasons: Pentecost<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s5lWa24tRos/TgfvQdCeD_I/AAAAAAAABbo/0CUshpUAuhc/s1600/penecost2003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s5lWa24tRos/TgfvQdCeD_I/AAAAAAAABbo/0CUshpUAuhc/s400/penecost2003.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Immediately following Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday), the Gathering celebrated <i>Pentecost Season</i>. Officially, this is the Easter season, but people get confused when you say that, since in North America, it seems every high holiday is over the day you actually celebrate it (like Christmas, which is the <i>end</i> of Advent and the <i>start</i> of Christmas proper).<br />
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This was a time for reflecting on the Body of Christ: the Church. The Gathering had a strong belief in the Priesthood of Believers, and this was one of the times we celebrated it. Worship themes centered on the work of the church, how to <i>be</i> the Body of Christ, what is the Church supposed to be doing. I wish I had an audio option here on Blogger, as I have a few decent sermons from this season I'd love to share. We often did Spiritual Gift inventories in this season, and in later years, to give our speakers a break, we tried out videos of speakers, which was met with mixed success (Rob Bell was a hit, Eugene Peterson was not). As the years wore on, we moved from test-style inventories to discussions of the gifts, and actively recognizing them in others. I've included my Spiritual Gift inventory slides as a gift to those still engaging in these discussions. Neither the text nor original photos belong to me - I just mixed them up and Photoshopped a bit.<br />
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What's of interest to me is how we ever needed an inventory for this sort of thing. We should have just looked at each other and said, "Hey, you're good at this." I think this is especially true of the less flashy gifts. I'm also not convinced any gift list was meant to be exhaustive.<br />
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Once upon a time, I scored highly in faith, leadership, prophecy, and teaching. Those were my top gifts, year after year. At some point, I stopped scoring highly in faith: where once I had believed that God would always be there to catch my fall, I began experiencing great disappointments that I have never quite recovered from. I am still a hopeful person, but not in the way I once was. I stand with the father of the demoniac boy who asked Jesus to help his poor faith. I'd be lucky if my faith were weighed and measured and it came anywhere close to a mustard seed's mass. Where I once was a leader, I now prefer to be in the background: I am content to sit in the pew in Church, and to serve under another person's leadership in the workplace. I do not want to be in charge of anything. I believe I experienced what is called Caregiver Burnout at some point, and no longer enjoy being responsible for other people other than my family. In staff meetings I sit as silent as I can, trying to avoid asserting myself for fear that "natural leader" who plagued me since grade one will rear his head. As for prophecy, I continue to exercise what appears to be a prophetic voice to some, but is likely only my critical eye and cynicism leveled at the excesses of the North American Church. But teaching I retain in full, though I am dubious as to the whole idea of the Holy Spirit gifting anyone beyond the skills and talents they were born with or developed with age. I have always been good at communicating, and continue to do so. It was my identification of teaching being the only part of the pastoral work I still loved towards the end that spurred me on to finally leave paid ministry entirely, and become an academic.<br />
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For those who retain those other gifts, feel free to use these slides as they are helpful. My apologies that they are not larger: they were made eight years ago, and I've lost the original images. These were saved from power point presentation backgrounds. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fk_bDWk5PtA/Tgf1JdpmpdI/AAAAAAAABdE/7Lt-zwfzXfE/s1600/Gifts21-Tongues.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fk_bDWk5PtA/Tgf1JdpmpdI/AAAAAAAABdE/7Lt-zwfzXfE/s320/Gifts21-Tongues.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-abhHbsq6t5I/Tgf031JQJtI/AAAAAAAABbs/8b8W8xfqPZY/s1600/Gifts22-Wisdom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-abhHbsq6t5I/Tgf031JQJtI/AAAAAAAABbs/8b8W8xfqPZY/s320/Gifts22-Wisdom.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-7458755015121548902011-05-16T14:50:00.001-06:002011-07-11T22:20:02.389-06:00Josh and Caleb Chapter 6: Judgment Episode 01<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JlZruC2sOk8/TXm03SN81cI/AAAAAAAABR8/mcJ4t2bzVA4/s1600/01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JlZruC2sOk8/TXm03SN81cI/AAAAAAAABR8/mcJ4t2bzVA4/s400/01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9wC5EPpN5eI/TXm0_CXzWVI/AAAAAAAABSA/EzTDOfJHjHw/s1600/02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="342" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9wC5EPpN5eI/TXm0_CXzWVI/AAAAAAAABSA/EzTDOfJHjHw/s400/02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-9wC5EPpN5eI/TXm0_CXzWVI/AAAAAAAABSA/EzTDOfJHjHw/s1600/02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><a href="http://gotthammer.blogspot.com/2011/05/josh-and-caleb-chapter-5-azrail-episode_13.html"><b>Previous Episode</b></a><br />
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<b>Director's Commentary:</b> Love the colouring across the board here, but I hate the line art in the first image. Much happier with the second strip. By this point, I'd settled on a design for Moses, just in time to never draw him again. I really like the clean approach I took here. Again, much of the dialogue is taken from Eugene Peterson's <i>The Message</i>.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-56978836866439763962011-05-13T11:39:00.002-06:002011-05-16T14:51:31.741-06:00Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 07<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1GtIMiK9zU0/TXmzj1Y6rMI/AAAAAAAABR0/jdf0i54f2KQ/s1600/chap05-07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1GtIMiK9zU0/TXmzj1Y6rMI/AAAAAAAABR0/jdf0i54f2KQ/s400/chap05-07.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-5Ri8tIZkgA4/TXmzzseqidI/AAAAAAAABR4/JxJKNHqnXsk/s1600/chap05-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-5Ri8tIZkgA4/TXmzzseqidI/AAAAAAAABR4/JxJKNHqnXsk/s400/chap05-08.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="http://gotthammer.blogspot.com/2011/05/josh-and-caleb-chapter-5-azrail-episode_11.html"><b>Previous Episode</b></a><br />
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<b>Director's Commentary: </b>Sorry about the lack of update yesterday - Blogger's dashboard was down, so I couldn't update. <br />
And here we come to the doubling of episodes. There are two of the original episodes on this page. At this point in the series, I made the decision to change the orientation of the strips to reflect the design of the original Gotthammer site. This ensured people didn't have to scroll to see the episode art. Sadly, it doesn't work so well for Blogger, but c'est la vie. You can just click on the images to see the art in all its full-sized glory, or lack thereof.<br />
I was reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kabbalah-its-Symbolism-Mysticism/dp/0805210512/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3"><i>On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism</i> by Gershom Scholem</a> when I was writing these strips, which is why I chose the Shekinah as the manifestation of YHWH in these episodes. Moses' speech is a paraphrase of a section of Scholem's book.<br />
While I'm not thrilled that Moses is changing his look yet again (different eyes from last page), I like everything else about these strips. I really like the second episode as Igal picks up Josh's sword, with ill intent in his eyes. Very happy with the reflection of the flames in the sword.<br />
The lines spoken by the Shekinah are from Eugene Peterson's dynamic translation of the Bible, <i>The Message</i>.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-58424767809627781792011-05-11T09:26:00.003-06:002011-05-13T11:39:58.547-06:00Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 06<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fuISI6p5yms/TXmzW5aS25I/AAAAAAAABRw/qdnPVVue0sE/s1600/chap05-06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fuISI6p5yms/TXmzW5aS25I/AAAAAAAABRw/qdnPVVue0sE/s1600/chap05-06.jpg" /></a></div><a href="http://gotthammer.blogspot.com/2011/05/josh-and-caleb-chapter-5-azrail-episode_10.html"><b>Previous Episode</b></a><br />
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<b>Director's Commentary:</b> I hate how I kept changing Moses's look. On this page, he's clearly Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. I should have had him say "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G54lfxiid_w">Takin' it to the streets</a>" or "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf-2P7jq-r4">Yah mo be there</a>" at some point. I also didn't make Caleb's line clear enough to be a joke - they're in a burning ring of fire - get it? As to why Josh is injured, who knows? After all, the rock hit him in the head. Maybe somebody stepped on him. It's a gong show on this page, folks.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30422841.post-37113554124650139362011-05-10T13:23:00.003-06:002011-05-11T09:27:28.100-06:00Josh and Caleb Chapter 5: Azra'il, Episode 05<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-mjZrZaGhodA/TXmzNl0M3VI/AAAAAAAABRs/tSgOh3QceQg/s1600/chap05-05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-mjZrZaGhodA/TXmzNl0M3VI/AAAAAAAABRs/tSgOh3QceQg/s1600/chap05-05.jpg" /></a></div><a href="http://gotthammer.blogspot.com/2011/05/josh-and-caleb-chapter-5-azrail-episode_09.html"><b>Previous Episode</b></a><br />
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<b>Director's Commentary:</b> I love this page. There isn't a thing I'd change about it, short of having had hours instead of one hour to do the line art. One of the ongoing challenges of making <i>Josh and Caleb</i> was always time. Sequential art is a big time investment.Mike Perschonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09335943113292616702noreply@blogger.com0