At the Humana Festival for New Plays

I woke up this morning with sunlight on my face. I opened my eyes and could see across the Ohio River to Indiana, the state where I was borne. There’s a big steel clock on top of what looks to be the long brick manufacturing plant for COLGATE. Ironically, I had to borrow toothpaste from the front desk.

The bridge which emanates from almost just below my window has intermittent steel peaks that punctuate its otherwise square architecture. I couldn’t really see the peaks when the bridge was outlined in green lights last night. I see the peaks now in the severe shadow it casts next to it on the grey green water of the river below.

If you train your eye to just focus on the the line of the bridge and the line of the shadow particularly where they meet…They form the perfect figure of an eye – so gigantic that it could only be the reflection of God checking out the spring morning in Louisville.

I saw my first of 9 (maybe 10!) plays last night – Sans Culottes in the Promised Land. It was a very solid, profound, aching funny play about the “promised land” of America and the ways that that promise gets played out for black women. One of the characters was a 10 year old African American girl who was the only person of color in her riding class, her ballet class, her private school. She was obsessed with Disney heroines and over the course of the play transformed herself into (literally) Snow White. Ouch.

I listened to a bunch of Mars Hill tapes that Matt let me borrow. I because more deeply convinced of how important it is that mainstream Christianity be exposed to the ways that Social Constructionist / PoMo thinking meshes with Christianity. The tyranny of Natural Law thinking, Platonic ideals & Allen-Bloom-like-devotion-to-High-Culture sometimes make me feel claustrophobic…

…But the freedom to think and listen and drive en route (!)

…The Persian food I had for dinner last night(!)

…the prospect of three plays this afternoon (!)

It’s funny how I feel a little bit guilty about blogging from the place of delight. (as if the very nature of blogging belongs to the world of mundanity – to the quotidian) But I know that the delight of the weekend is only as sweet as it is because it is bounded on both sides by a return to my world.

Hope a little of delight surprises you whether you're a weary sojourner, in a hospital in florida, or juggling children, house-showings & a speaking engagement....

Peace~