"I Shot an Arrow in the Air..."

So, I ask myself, why would an eagle sit and listen to St. John go on and on about his vision, if he didn't particularly like the man or the task he was being asked to carry out (deliver John's scroll to the seven churches)? Perhaps because it was injured and couldn't fly away from the island for awhile.

And how would it become injured? Archery seems the most likely way of injuring an eagle in the first century and forcing it to land (unless, of course, it was attacked by another eagle, but that would put all the drama in the clouds when I need my audience focused on the ground--and I can't think of a good motivation for one eagle to attack another). On the other hand, if two children were having a contest to see who could shoot the furthest (or highest), it is possible one of them could strike the eagle by accident.

If there are children on the isle of Patmos, then they would most likely be the children of one of the Roman guards. I cannot find any evidence, but it would seem that, with the eagle being a symbol of the Roman Empire (and the army in particular), shooting an eagle would be a crime and an incredibly unlucky thing to do. It could be ruled treasonous and/or sacrilegious (as the eagle was Jupiter's particular bird).

The father of said children would not want them associating with the prisoners on the island in general. But, if one of them had injured an eagle, and one of the prisoners thought he could nurse said eagle back to health, and Dad wanted to keep his child's crime covered up, I think we have the formula to give a good dramatic setting to the next several weeks' puppet shows for KidzLife.

The Continuing Adventures of the Heavenly Pearl - Early Thoughts on VBS

When last we saw our pirate friends (VBS two summers ago), the crew had voted nearly unanimously--the notable exception being the Captain Harry DuPillage--to accept the Royal Pardon and give up being pirates. "Dick Deadeye" had been named the new captain, the ship had been rechristened "The Heavenly Pearl," and the crew (minus Captain Harry) had set off from Paradise Island to spread the word about the Royal Pardon to others.

This summer, we intend to see how things are faring for our pirates-turned-missionaries. Missions will be the theme for this year's VBS, and each of the five days (August 10-14) will focus on a different aspect. Monday will focus on the call to "Go into all the world" and the Holy Spirit's role in directing the mission. Tuesday will focus on the Power the Holy Spirit gives in speaking out and confronting the powers of the evil one. Wednesday will deal with Perseverance in the face of persecution; Thursday will deal with the place of Wisdom in missions (and the fact that God's wisdom is seen as foolishness in the eyes of those who are perishing); and Friday we will focus on Endurance and "fighting the good fight and finishing the race." All of this will be shaped to reflect the missionary journeys of St. Paul as recorded in Acts.

Last year we found it was very effective to involve the children in the action by making them members of the "flock" and seating them inside the sheepfold. To apply this same principle this year, we will have them all sit in the boat as members of the crew. Although none of our actors from two years ago look like they will be available this year, I suppose we will write the same characters and simply recast the parts. In addition to Captain Dick Deadeye and first mate Andrew (and former Captain Harry, who will be stirring up trouble still trying to get his ship back and talking the crew into returning to piracy) we will be adding two new young men: Tim and Mark, who will be joining the crew and tracing the story arc of St. Paul's young traveling companions by those names (John Mark being one that turned back for awhile and was eventually restored; Timothy being the faithful son, servant, and successor to Paul).

Along the way we will meet other characters in port: Kingsmen, legalistic soldiers who don't trust these former pirates or their liberal application of King's pardon to others like themselves; Magicians whose authority and livelihood is threatened by the extension of the King's authority into their realms; Pirates who want to continue their lives of crime; Barbarians who believe in their backwardness that the missionaries are gods; and Sophisticates who don't believe anything, but love talking speculatively of how certain beliefs, if held, would alter their lives.

Specific characters and relationships need to be fleshed out and story arcs must be integrated into the overall plot, but this is where things stand as of now.

"Gotta Get a Message to You"

I was listening to an oldies station the other day and ever since then off and on I've had the Bee Gees song "Gotta Get a Message to You" in my head. It's not a song I remember hearing before, and I'm NOT a huge Bee Gees fan, but in thinking about my next dramatic endeavor, it has helped me to hone the central character's motivation...

The puppet play for tonight's KidzLife was a transition piece. Having gotten Daniel out of the lion's den last week, we arrived at Daniel 7, the point at which Daniel's dreams and visions of the future take precedence over his life history. The book actually goes for five more chapters in this vein, but it all gets a bit complicated and needs to be read in context with other similar passages. Hence the idea of moving on to Revelation. So tonight we had the angel Azmaveth help Daniel understand his dream, and then get called away to help John understand his vision on Patmos. Beginning next week, John will be our focus.

Daniel, of course, is alway pictured with lions, and John is often pictured with an eagle. To my knowledge there is no actual legend of John encountering an eagle, but ancient iconography made the identification as a way of saying how his Gospel (especially in its opening) "soared" above the others, and focuses on the Divinity of Christ. I had thought for some time that as I had Daniel talking with his lion companions, I would have John talk with his friend the eagle. But I had no idea what they would say to each other.

Then it occurred to me: John has just written down his revelation, with divine instructions to send it to the seven churches of Asia minor. John is a prisoner stuck on an island. He's "gotta get a message" to some people, but it seems doubtful that as a prisoner and non-citizen he could rely on the Roman postal system. So, if he encountered a creature that could fly, why not try to persuade it to deliver your letter?

The eagle, of course, would be offended by such a suggestion. Serving as a "common carrier pidgeon" would be beneath a bird of such regal elegance. So John will have to convince the bird that the message of his letter is lofty enough to require an eagle to carry it (hence giving us a reason for him to recount his vision to the eagle). To fill out this cast, I think I will write a part for a Roman Guard whose suspicions are aroused by the prisoner's time spent with the bird.

Stations of the Cross

A college friend, who went with me and several other students to Israel in January 1990, recently requested that I send him some photos of our trip. This prompted me to go back through my album and scan several of them, uploading them to Facebook and making them available not only to him but to all of my other friends online. Because our computer is slow, that took a good deal of time, stretching out over several weeks, and carried me into Holy Week. Though of course my experience of being in the Holy Land has affected my experience of reading scripture ever since, I don't often pull out these photos and dwell on them at the same time I am reading and meditating on particular passages. This was particularly meaningful to me as I was directing a dramatic reading of the Passion Narrative for our Palm Sunday service, and reading parts for a Maundy Thursday seder service and a Good Friday Stations of the Cross service.

I am glad that my first experience of the Stations of the Cross was at the actual sites in Jersualem where these events (some scriptural and others simply traditional) took place. Of course, a lot has changed in two thousand years, some of the events may have never happened or likely happened elsewhere (according to the best archaeological evidence today), and what sites are most likely to be authentic have ancient churches built over them so that what happened on that spot (if it happened on that spot) looked very different than it does today. Still, the idea of participating in something with millennia of pilgrims living and dead, trying to be faithful to what they believe to be following in Christ's footsteps from the place of his condemnation to the place of his burial, has a lot to commend it, and though I did it as part of a study tour rather than a pilgrimage ("Catholics do pilgrimages; Protestants do study tours"), having been there brings the experience alive to me in a way I can't otherwise imagine.

One of the things that stands out in my memory is the fact that there is (or at least was) a "Fourth Station T-Shirt Shop." I did not go in so I cannot testify as to what they sold there (and how sacriligeous or religious-kitschy it might have been), but the fact of the store's existence and name is a reminder of the struggle between God and Mammon, the sellers of livestock and moneychangers whom Jesus chased out of the temple, and of the thirty pieces of silver Judas collected for agreeing to betray his Lord. The movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, with its rows of shopkeepers who have turned the temple into a tourist trap really hits the nail on the head here. Yes it's awful how salesmen today are preying on pilgrims, but they were doing it in Jesus' day as well, and so it somehow makes the experience all that more authentic.

Another clear memory of walking the Via Dolorosa with our group was the fact that when we reached the Seventh Station (which alledgedly marks the spot where Jesus fell a second time, one of those things not specifically mentioned in scripture), the site had recently been vandalized and the smell of teargas was still strong in the area. Again one's immediate feelings are "How awful! How inappropriate!", but when one thinks back to the fact that Jerusalem has been a religious and political hotspot since at least the time of Jesus, when Samaritans and Jews constantly strove to desecrate each other's religious sites and Roman soldiers were always after Zealots and other troublemakers, it again reinforces the fact that nothing is new under the sun, and that if we want to truly walk in the way of Jesus, these are the kinds of things we should expect to encounter.

The last several stations are actually on or in the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Although "Gordon's Calvary" is much more what one would expect to see when visiting Jesus' tomb, there is no question among archaeologists as to which site is more likely to be authentic. Much in the church feels overwrought and distracting. But the rock under glass which is purported to be Golgotha seemed convincing to me, and the stillness of being in the actual Sepulchre (once one gets past the fact that all the rock from around the cave has been cleared away to make the church, once one makes it through the line and is out of sight of the crowds and the gold and everything else) is rather moving. The empty tomb is truly empty, and you can sense the disorientation of the women and disciples who ran here. Something is missing, something is not how we expected it to be. The pilgrimage ends in emptiness, but that emptiness is the heart of the Good News. "He is not here, He is risen! ALLELUIA!"

Babylon Wrap-Up

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are passing by this spring! Of course, "spring" seem like a misnomer as the temperatures have fallen and snow has been coming down most of the day. "A little bit of winter hid and came out in the spring," as my daughter described it (and thus began a poem the entire family contributed to this morning). That was a lovely start to the day, but nothing much seem to function as it should from that point on, and I was racing to get another scipt done before this evening's meeting.

We made it to Daniel 6, where we explained how Daniel got into the lion's den in the first place, and then got him out. So it's goodbye to the "denizens" and off to dreamland and from there to Patmos, where we switch dreamers and John the Revelator will take center stage. I have numerous problems to solve there, both in ideas and execution, but before I get to that, let me wrap up a few things from the Babylon segment.

We've had three different kings in the past three weeks, all performed by a very talented fourth grader named Beth. She had done Nebuchadnezzar in earlier episodes, and she helped to develop him into a very childish character. Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar's grandson, is known primarily for giving the big party at which God's hand appeared and wrote words of judgement on the wall. I played that up and developed him as a brain-dead party dude, egged on by a couple of "Bill and Ted" type buddies. Then tonight we had Darius the Mede, who was more pompous and self-important, egged on by a couple of his presidents (Jackson and Johnson) to pass the law forbidding prayer to any other than the king during "Darius the Mede Month." The last two weeks the flashback characters were handled as puppets in a separate acting space, rather than the live actors, and the children were involved as puppeteers.

When I first developed the lions, I thought Lenny and Leonora would be more important, with Lex remaining a gruff presence mostly offstage. As it turned out, Lex was the most important and the central story arc ended up being how he came to like and respect Daniel (whom he originally thought of as a forbidden delicacy he was determined to find some way of eating). Quite unexpectedly as I wrote, Daniel began using the stories of bad kings he had known to teach Lex how to be a better king, and he assured the lion that some day he would return to the wild and to his dominion (as Nebuchadnezzar did after his seven years of living like an wild animal). Thanks to a heavy sewing session last night, I was able to get Lex's mouth opened and working in time for tonight's opener, the ol' lion-tamer-putting-his-head-in-the-lion's-mouth routine. Nora startled him and reflexively he swallowed, then gagged on the prophet, which put Daniel in danger and called out the angel Azmaveth, but when they were finally able to explain they told everybody that Daniel was simply looking into a cavity which was giving Lex trouble. That display of trust, and the final farewell when Daniel left the den tonight proved what good friends they had become.

Flashbacks to Babylon

Our third week in the Lion's Den was a bit chaotic... My wife, who seemed to be getting over the flu on Monday had a major relapse on Tuesday, and I had to step up to the plate and handle the homeschooling for the day. Consequently, I didn't get my planned day off to prepare for that night, and around 3:00 decided to go with a "music video" approach to telling the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. I had sort of hoped to do something musically (probably the title song from *Cool in the Furnace*), but what was at hand was a song on a Beginner's Bible CD Pam loaned me. It was fun, involving sound effects of a fire chief and dispatcher's radio communication, had a female vocalist and a bit of a rap. It required purchasing four additional puppets to play those roles (the fireman actually was designed to be a fireman, but the dispatcher was a queen I redressed in a discarded policeman's uniform, the rapper was a knight that I converted to an angel (left the shiny suit on and just replaced the helmet with a starry halo and added wings) and the lead singer was a cowgirl (no reason she should be, but no reason she shouldn't, so I left her as she was, for lack of a better idea). We ad-libbed a short intro with Daniel and the Lions, in which Daniel explained he was away on a diplomatic mission when this happened, and so he had to read the story from official transcripts (he rolled out a scroll which was the cue for the music). Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn't tell us WHERE Daniel was when his three friends were thrown into the furnace, but the rabbis came up with some VERY interesting possibilities in the Talmud (one of my favorites was that he was in the Valley of Dry Bones with Ezekiel, helping to raise the dead).

I of course couldn't see how any of this went down (the fire department and space for the singers were in front of the kitchen window we use for the Den, out of my view), but I'm told the kids were into it, and the puppets danced appropriately. The only major problem was my puppeteer for the angel Azmaveth, Daniel's guardian, went AWOL, and the fearless prophet of God had to run away in order to end the scene.

Also out of my view was the doorway we filled with red, orange and yellow streamers to serve as the fiery furnace. Four child volunteers and one of my adult leaders acted out the story as the puppets narrated in song. This followed a pattern established the week before, involving live actors (including some of the kids) in the flashback scenes. That week we had combined the leftover part of the first script (involving Daniel's refusal to eat the king's food) from chapter 1 with the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2 for an extended flashback to his early days at court. Surprisingly I did not do much with the character of Nebuchadnezzar, but the young actress who took the role really played it up, turning him into a childish egocentric (giving me a good idea for how to develop the character for next week!). The standout in that week's script was Ashpenaz (who actually was a composite of the chief eunuch in chapter 1--I didn't bother explaining that--and Arioch the chief guard in chapter 2). I wrote him as annoying and annoyed, fearful and sarcastic, all at once. He couldn't understand why his young charges refused the finest food in the empire for the sake of a God who, if he cared anything for them, would not have allowed them to be conquered in the first place. He tried mocking them, reasoning with them, and eventually begging them, fearful that if they didn't do as they were told HE would lose his head. When they ended up being the most impressive new students, rewarded with high positions in the king's court, he had to admit maybe they knew what they were doing, and there "might be something to this God of yours after all!" As I tried to imagine this character, what came to me was a voice from one of the "Fractured Fairytales" in an old *Rocky and Bullwinkle* episode, the one in which Prince Charming is a crooked schemer who, instead of kissing Sleeping Beauty and waking her up, decides she's more interesting asleep, and turns her into a tourist attraction, building "Sleeping Beauty Land", charging admission, and making a fortune off of merchandise tie-ins. I don't know who the voice talent was, but he was very familiar and I'm sure had a lot of the work back in the day.

The challenge for the coming week is to write the script for King Nebuchadnezzar's "Beastly Time" (when he is humbled and eats grass like an ox), and to get the lions' mouths moving.

Denizens

Well, due to a 4-day mens' retreat (among other things) I was unable to get the puppets really ready for their debut, as I'd hoped; but we had a script, we had actors, and we had SOMETHING to help visualize the characters as we launched ourselves into the Lion's Den at KidzLife last Tuesday night...

Mr. Smith is not pretty. He's actually quite large and scary looking. He started out based on a caricature of Harrison Ford, but as I sewed him he got more and more wrinkled (of course, seeing the fourth installment of Indiana Jones, I'm not TOO far off the mark). He now has something of a Yoda-esque quality to him. But even as I created him (primarily to be "Pennsylvania Smith"), I had thought of letting him play a large archangel Michael in "The Legend of Slappy Hooper." So when I needed an angel to guard Daniel from the lions, it seemed a logical role for this puppet to play. I've given him the name of Azmaveth for this role, and explained his age and look by saying he's a Warrior angel who has been fighting evil for 3,000 years. He's all about action, and not terribly verbal, which fits in with the Indiana Jones/Pennyslvania Smith type of charater.

No one is quite sure who "Darius the Mede" was, but it seems that his reign in Babylon coincided with Cyrus I's reign over the Medo-Persian empire. That puts Daniel's time in the lion's den AFTER 70 years of him being in exile, which means he HAS to be 80 or older at this time. Thinking of likeable elderly people whose voices I could do, I ended up with a personality and style of speaking similar to Jimmy Stewart (dead now and forever young in many films, but I can recall him in several live appearances in the 60s and 70s, mostly on talk shows, at which point he was quite old). Originally I'd hoped to make both an old Daniel and younger Daniel (another reason for picking Stewart, in that I had a good idea of what he looked like at both ages), but I had to settle for buying a puppet, stripping him of his garb (in this case, a fireman's hat and coat), recostuming him in a simple tunic and putting white hair and beard on over his brown hair and moustache he came with. My wife informed me that his hair fell off shortly after the performance began last week, but I've had time this week to sew it in place, so FROM NOW ON, not a hair from his head shall be harmed...

At first, I thought we could get by with one lion, and I naturally pictured something large and ferocious, roaring with a wide-opened mouth (and from several classic cartoons of yesteryear, I pictured the angel slapping him with an "Ahhhhh, SHADDUP!"; at which point the big fierce cat becomes humorously meek). As I thought more about it, I realized that if I wanted a female character anywhere in this piece, it would have to be one of the lions. So I began to imagine a tough lioness named Leonora, as the primary "take charge" character in the den. Of course, the lion is the "king of beasts" and I didn't want to let go of my initial image, so Lexus Rex emerged as the big scary beast, who makes all the others do the work while he sits back and looks regal. I thought he could stand in for all the puffed-up self-important kings Daniel has to deal with in his flashbacks (as the most famous story about Daniel happened near the end of his life, I thought this would be the ideal setting from which to tell all of the earlier stories). Then Lenny appeared in my imagination as a comic foil, inspired partly by one of Scat Cat's band (in *The Aristocats*) and partly be Cheech Marin's voice work for Disney, as a hep cat beatnik/hippy who likes to take life easy and doesn't really go in for all this "king of the beasts" bit. He kind of likes Daniel, and is not so hip on Lex or other authority figures, and he acts in very undignified and unlionlike ways, partly in protest agains the pomposity and pretense of royalty which the other lions expect him to conform to. As Lenny and Leonora started dialoging, I began to see that their bickering, Lenny's attitude towards Lex and the Lion Code, and the fact that gets away with so much could best be explained if Lenny was Leonora's younger brother. This comes out clearest in the fact that, while everyone else refers to her as Leonora or "Nora", Lenny consistently calls here "Lena."

Though the lions' characters were well developed in the script, I didn't have time to do anything with their bodies before last Tuesday. I found a lion-headed rug which was the proper size for Lex, and picked up at a second-hand store a large stuffed Simba (the best I could do for a lioness) and another stuffed lion for Lenny (which I simply added orange sunglasses to, to help convey his character). I need to work in the coming weeks to turn these into actual puppets, hollowing them out, making them more flexible, and giving them movable mouths. It should be an interesting challeng, working from the outside in, rather than the inside out...