Musings on Purpose, Intent, Identity

I've been watching the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (GA) over the past few days through live streams online. Several of my closest friends, including my boyfriend, are there, and I wish this year more than ever to be there with them, as I've gotten more and more passionate and curious and involved with the UU movement, especially at the youth and young adult level. Right now I'm watching the "Service of the Living Tradition" which is the service for the ministers of the UU Association (UUA), serving our congregations across the country, in Canada, and around the world.

As these ministers are honored for their lives' work or welcomed into the fold, I think of all the lives they have touched and will touch. I think about Nic, who wants to go into the seminary and change people's lives through his ministry, his kindness, his knowledge. And the more I think about it, the more I want to do the same. I want to have a positive effect on people's lives. I want to be life-altering and helpful for as many people as possible. 

For the last few days, I've been thinking that maybe I want to do that through the seminary. Yet as I've been thinking about that tonight, I think I've been forgetting that I believe (I think) that I can do that through theatre, through my art. That's why I love theatre so much - because I feel that my life is touched and I can touch lives by theatre.

I am religious. I am spiritual. I am a Unitarian Universalist. I want to touch lives. I want to be an actress. I want to change the world.

I think I think I want to go into the seminary partially because my friends have been talking about it; partially because I'm very intensely drawn to my faith right now, partially because I want to change the world, partially because I want to be at the heart of my faith community. But before I got so attached to UUism beyond its social benefits, I believed I could touch lives and change the world through theatre. I still believe that, and I need to remind myself of that belief.

This summer I've been more disconnected from the theatre world than I have been in years, and it probably feels more severe than it actually is since I was live almost 24/7 theatre at school. More than NYC I miss my studio friends and working on projects, creating something from nothing. To me, each work of theatre is a miracle. It is a collaboration of so many people, ideas, influences, and intricacies. I learned that more this year than ever before, and I know that experience and knowledge will only increase over the rest of my life. Collaboration I think equally excites and terrifies me.

Perhaps my artistic identity "crisis" is really just a reconfiguring of who I am. Last summer, I mused on my identity after packing up thirteen years of public school into one cardboard box that is still sitting in my room next to my desk. I looked at that box, and thought, This is my life as I've known it, in this box. For the last ten years or so I've thought of myself as someone who excels academically and is connected to and understands this world through theatre. Yet in the days before I left for NYU, I thought about how everyone I was going to school with would be just like me in that respect. I needed to find more in me to distinguish myself as an individual while I entered a world of my peers, of people I expected I could finally relate to. (And, for the most part, I can.) 

At this very moment I think I am coming to the realization that perhaps my faith was an aspect of my identity that just hadn't come into full vibrancy yet. It certainly is shining now, adding itself to my passion for theatre and learning. I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding, and I find both theatre and religion as an outlet for those curiosities.

I am eternally grateful for the people that have touched my life, most of them coming to me through theatre or church. I have shared transcendental experiences with them; feeling the same sitting in both worship services and in a theatre as an audience member or especially on stage. It's a feeling I can't quite describe - when I feel absolutely exhilarated and at peace simultaneously, my blood pumping steadily in my veins through every inch of my gift of a body. I've had such opportunities to experience this vibration, with such incredible people that somehow manage to touch my soul in a single instant.

Something I've been contemplating for some time, though I couldn't say at what point it started, is temporality and impermanence. I think about this time last year, about less than a year ago when I didn't know 90% of the people who have been most influential in the last year of my life. I have always had my parents, and my brother (well, once I was a little over three). For several years, I have had my DYSC friends. Yet this year, I was blessed with new beings. There are so many incredible people, both teachers and students, at my studio, like Colleen, with whom I continue to find I have more and more in common. There's Michael, who isn't at PHTS, who graduated, who I understand in ways I wish I couldn't. There are new UU friends. There's Nic, who I thank the stars for every day. I wonder how they will continue to create tiny shifts in my path as I try to navigate this life. I wonder what impact I have on them, what fingerprints I am leaving on the web of life. Everything changes every instant. Minutely, so often invisible. Sometimes I spend so much time thinking about time that I literally get lost and don't understand what I'm thinking. I wish I better understood time, or had the patience for quantum physics.

For now I know or at least believe a few things. I have time. For now, I explore. I keep learning (as I always have, and always will). I don't expect to know and understand everything about myself right this second. I don't have to make definitive decisions. Life is not definitive. Everything is not extremes, black and white, on and off. There is dimness, and brightness. There are shades of gray.

11:11. Make a wish.

Blessed Be

This post might have a lot or nothing to do with God. (Slash the universe/creator/destiny/etc.)

I've been reading my friend Colleen's blog a lot lately (I almost said religiously, but that would have turned into a really bad pun). She's spending the summer working A/V crew at a religious (Presbyterian) retreat in North Carolina, and I've been fascinated by her updates about her spiritual musings and journey and so on, which of course got me thinking about my own.

In case somehow you're reading this and you didn't know, I'm a Unitarian Universalist. UUism came from the merge of Unitarianism (an outgrowth of transcendentalism and the belief in one God rather than the holy trinity) and Universalism (an older faith that is sort of what it sounds like in preaching what were then considered "universal" principles of religion). UUs are the more liberal cousins of the United Church of Christ (UCC), the Methodists. I have an uncle who is a UCC minister, and from what I have gleaned from his sermons, Methodists are like UUs who specifically call that force of the universe "God", rather than calling it the "Universe" or the "Bigger Forces" or something like that.

But anyway, my point is that Unitarian Universalists (and I've been one all my life) have many names for a generally-understood concept (notice I said "understood" not "believed). Yet in comparing my experiences of "worship" or that creator/universe/god with those of my aforementioned friend Colleen, I realized that when I attend "worship" services and have a general idea of what I want to worship (though I don't define that entity as "God" specifically), I'm not sure that the church services I attend are "worship." I find them spiritual, yes, and energizing and uplifting in most cases (at least when they are successful services), but I'm not sure they are necessarily worshipful of that which I revere.

So then I was thinking about what I would consider worshipful behavior, or what would make for a successful worship service, not just an hour sitting in a church singing and listening to a theological lecture (which, while stimulating and usually engaging, is rarely worshipful). I think the conclusion I have come to is that the services I go to in general are interesting and intellectual, but not worshipful. So much of the UU community is composed of adults who have found this faith away from the religion in which they grew up and find freedom in the principles that allow each person his or her own search for an individual truth. This faith has many great liberties, teachings, and values and is invaluable to me, but like all religions, it is not infallible. It does not have (nor does it pretend to) have all the answers, and instead says, "Go, and seek the answers for yourself," which I appreciate as an independent and curious person, but which I find hard to understand on a religious "This is how I explain my faith" sort of level. UUism doesn't make it easy to explain things, even when you think you know the answer, and I both love and hate that.

That paragraph got slightly tangential. Returning to my thoughts on methods of worship, I think on my personal level, worship comes from two places, each equally powerful. On some occasions I create my individual worship, which I experience and enact on my own terms in any place I choose (a church is a good one, but not necessarily more spiritual for me than a silent theatre or, occasionally, a walk through NYC). On (unfortunately) rare occasions, I happily find myself among other UU young adults in a circle worship with moments for a silent meditation that is at once solitary and unifying in the silence. I find meditation very worshipful, because it allows me to reflect upon that which I believes deserves worship, the most fundamental elements of existence and the universe that in their simplicity create all the complexities of the world.

I appreciate the chalice (I have three in my room, one made by me, one a bridging gift made by Victoria, and one a college gift from Meredith) for its simple flame that signifies so much in our faith, and for its little spark that I can contemplate endlessly. When I get my chalice tattoo (soon, I hope), it will be a symbol of my lifelong faith, my journey that continually changes like a burning flame, but like the ink flame on my skin, will never die. The chalice reminds me to slow down and contemplate, to truly appreciate the beauty of this earth, this life, this existence in this space that is ever-minutely changing, thanks to the creatures in it, and the universal spirit that created it.

Words and labels are only that. Spirituality is deeper. It is vibrant in its intangibility and disguised in many names and faces. Colleen grew up Christian (with experience in many denominations). She worships God, believes the stories of the Bible. I grew up Unitarian Universalist, the daughter of a Methodist mother and a Jewish father. I learned a whole lot of traditions involving God, but I worship the universe as creator. Still, when I read Colleen's thoughts about God and her relationship to Him and His teachings in her life, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what she says. And I find that's where there's a difference - religion puts labels on everything so we can understand where we fit in with others in the world. But spirituality transcends that to something more universal beyond names to truths in many forms that connect us all. And I think that matters more that semantics.

An Artist's Manifesto

Yesterday I started reading the collection of essays by Chuck Klosterman entitled Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (this interrupted my reading of Tennessee Williams' Memoirs but I think he'll be just as (ir)relevant in a few days). Anyway, Klosterman calls his opus "A Low Culture Manifesto," in which he discusses society at its best and worst, and how it is influenced and influential in the viscous circle of life, through the lens of the mundane yet hyperreal. As I've been reading, I've been thinking about what people think about, what makes them think, and how conceptions of the world I live in have come to be what they are.

Let me clarify that I do not intend to presume that I know all there is to know about the conceptions of my world; I'm not sure I know all of my own conceptions, and I cannot pretend that the ones I recognize are in any way static. Fluidity is part of the point of life, I think.

So as you probably know, when I think about life and the world, I think about art. I find art to be the greatest form of unique expression and at the same time the unifier of communities large and small. I believe it is a basic necessity for living, for surviving, which is different from existence, which is pretty pointless if you can't find meaning, and to me, meaning is art.

Thus I think about the term "art" itself. If I say, "I like art" to the majority of the population, that means I like paintings that are framed and hanging in museums, reprinted millions of times over and hanging in housing developments across the globe. And then there's the "performing arts," the field I say I'm in when I'm applying for scholarships or looking for jobs, but really what's the difference? Does not a painting perform, instigate an interaction with its viewer, a medium between artist and audience, one time and another? 

Perhaps one may look at The Mona Lisa and say both, "This is art," and, "This is an inanimate object." I have come to believe that both cannot be true. Whether a painting, a sculpture, a theatrical performance, a concerto, or a paper towel wrapped around a pencil, if it was created with intention, in my book, it's art. And that art breathes, and has a voice, a spirit, a message, a purpose that it actively puts forth whenever a passerby chooses to engage it. Therein lies the beauty: art is everywhere, and art is eternal.

Art is not always aesthetically beautiful. I believe it is inherently beautiful through its intention of creation, but it may manifest itself in less universally harmonious ways. The United States' government was created with the intention of being separate from that of England and with voice given to the people, presumably with the hope of fairness, security, stability, and wellness for its people. Of course I realize this has not always been a successful endeavor (see the years 2001-2008 for example), but I believe the core vision of this government is beautiful, a work of political art (and I don't mean propaganda, like Mao's big posters).

I believe something out there created me, created humans and relationships. I haven't figured out that purpose yet (if I had, I guess I'd be Buddha), but I have faith that there is a purpose, and that faith allows me to believe that individuals are works of art. Granted, I sometimes have a hard time believing that of some people (see the year 2001), but it is a truth that allows the world to look a little brighter in my eyes.

Part of the beauty of the art that is humanity is that each world view is unique. No two people believe exactly the same things, and that creates billions of realities, a malleable common experience of this earth upon which we live. The beliefs I'm currently expounding is perhaps more optimistic than my usual world view, but I think my inherent truth is perhaps more enlightened and perhaps also therefore more optimistic than my daily drudging self. And that's okay. Nobody can wear rose-tinted glasses every day.

Chuck Klosterman says in a footnote about Billy Joel's song "Laura" after interviewing him, "Obviously I can't argue about the meaning of a song with the person who wrote it. But I still think my interpretation is more interesting than his truth." And here I deviate from much of what I agree with in Klosterman's postmodernic-societal crusade. I certainly agree that one's interpretation can be much more interesting than another individual's truth. And sure, if Billy Joel says his song is about something, that's what it's about--but art isn't about what it's about. Art is about interpreting what it's about. That's what makes it universal, that's what makes it fluid and eternal and omnipresent. And those things are what make it art.

"You Deserve Beauty"

I've been reflecting a lot the past weekend on community, faith, responsibility, spirituality, relationships, my place in my world. There are so many different groups of people I'm involved with and have attachment to, and those people seem to be continuously spreading themselves further across the globe. I'm finding it difficult to figure out where I fit within these different groups, and who I am as a constant among them.

I'm having a little bit of a theatrical (and therefore life) identity crisis this summer; after my final presentations for studio and my critique with the faculty, I found myself feeling more passionate and accomplished about my directing work than any acting I had done this year.  I've always considered myself primarily an actress, and I came to PHTS with the intention of learning about all aspects of theatre, but with the goal of using that information to inform my acting abilities and approach. I also took a great interest in lighting design this past semester, and the longer I work in theatre, the more I seem to be taking a backstage approach to things. One of my acting teachers even told me I approach my acting like a director, thinking about the effect on the audience rather than on myself. My dear friend Colleen, who is a year ahead of me and encountered the opposite situation says I shouldn't worry too much, because the first year is very directing focused, but second year gives you a lot more acting opportunities. I guess in the meantime I guess I'm just thinking more about why I do theatre and what being a part of theatre means to me, from more than just the standpoint of an actress.

I also had a long conversation with Victoria on the way home from Con this weekend, and we spent a lot of time talking about our involvement and responsibilities and the oddities of being a part of two different faith (and other) communities during the year. I realized during the discussion that what I have very much missed while at school was being accountable to people, taking a leadership role in some formal capacity. I am a natural leader and as such acted as the organizer and leader of my studio group of 15 this year, but by 3/4 of the way through the year I was burnt out, because I was doing everything myself. It was hard to give it up and watch some things fall apart, but I was exhausted. Still I realize I function best when I have projects I'm working on, and communities of people with whom I'm trying to accomplish a common goal.

This year was quite a journey in trying to figure out my spirituality and my community in a new place. I visited a few UU churches, and Carrie and I seem to have found a home at 4th U on the upper west side. Since con we're both energized to really gain involvement in our new district and start campus ministry groups at our school. I've come to really appreciate just how energizing it is for me to be around UUs on some sort of regular basis, and I missed that this year. My involvement with the youth movement in my home district served a lot of fulfilling purposes in my life, and I need to find a way to establish that in New York.

On top of all this, I've been thinking about relationships. (Well really, when in the last 2 years have I not been thinking about relationships?) Today in particular I was thinking about the fact that the 2 year anniversary of what was my doomsday is coming up on Sunday. The time has kind of flown, really. And I think it's starting to take a back seat to some other things, at least on the outside. I know it still has some fundamental effects on how I interact with people, and I'm fighting that as much as possible, but there are still some trigger phrases that cause little freak outs on the inside, and I still miss him very much. But I'm trying to figure out who I am now, that is not who I was then. I'm thinking about the many significant relationships I've forged since then, and how they've evolved, disappeared, come back, faded, changed, and so on. There's a lot of people I never knew I'd know who play important roles in my life and in my daily thoughts, and some of them really don't know how much they mean to me without even talking to me. I feel like in the last few years I've become really internal and maybe I need to express outwardly more, but at the same time I have a contradictory fear of talking too much, which is something I used to always be guilty of and still have to combat on occasion.

Attached to all these thoughts about relationships (and this is on a basic non-sexual level) is trying to figure out what I think about love, because I think more than anything else, my understanding or definition of that concept has changed radically in the last 2 years. It seems to have become much more spiritual and at the same time more fleeting than in the past. I think I think about it in much more complex ways than I used to, and that makes it easier and harder and more painful and more exhilarating all at the same time. I'm a natural pessimist (one of my best friends has no shame in telling me) but I do try to believe in hope (it is my middle name, after all), and love, and the possibilities of peace and progress and the beauty of life.

That's all for now I guess. Believe it or not, I think this is the simplified version of what I'm thinking about this summer, and I'm reading and creating and growing and believing and doubting, laughing, loving, and living out loud.

[[Deepest love to the Fire Cat gang (Nic, Victoria, Meredith, Nat, and Carrie), and to those I wish were reading this, but with whom I have some things to work out first.]]