March 15: Is it a good idea to take a leap of faith?
Back in 1992, the proprietor of Drumheller's only pool hall looked just like Rod Stewart.
This was more than just a slight resemblance. I mean that this cat looked so much like him that people would actually ask if he was Rod Stewart. He probably had a real name but everyone just called him Rod Stewart. I think he liked it. I never heard him sing. He had an earring. I don't know if the real Rod Stewart has an earring. He probably does.
I have not been to Drumheller in a very long time. I know the pool hall is no longer there, which means that Rod Stewart has another job now. I do not know if he is still alive or if he still looks like Rod Stewart. Perhaps he shaved his head.
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Drumheller is the closest city to Rosebud, which is the home of the Rosebud School of the Arts, which is where I spent my first year out of high school. Rosebud was, and still is, a Christian-based theatre guild school. I did not last long in Rosebud because in my early years, I was an arrogant and unteachable student. I was this way because of unresolved trauma from my experiences in junior high school.
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Back then, Drumheller was famous for two things - dinosaurs and a federal prison. Drumheller was also famous for teenaged pregnancies but things might have improved since I was there last.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is in Drumheller and it has 40 dinosaur skeletons and over 100,000 fossils. There is also a big Tyranosaurus Rex statue outside and you can climb it and stand in its mouth and take a picture through its fangs.
Today, Drumheller has something else to be famous for - its passion play.
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Listen:
I was actually present when they did the groundbreaking at the site where the passion play takes place. A Calgary television evangelist named Alan Dunbar came up to preside over it. During his address, he referred to the city as "Drum-heaven-er." He said that if we were going to dedicate so much energy to depicting the life of Christ, we'd better darn well change the city's name to something more appropriate.
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More than 20 years later, the passion play is still going strong. I even know some of the actors who participated, including at least two who played the Lord.
At one time, someone took a leap of faith and decided to mount a passion play in Drumheller. Good thing, I guess.
-
I saw a passion play in South Dakota the year before I entered high school. We were on a family vacation and my dad, a lay pastor, decided it would be a good thing if we all went to see it. I didn't like the passion play for one reason. Here it is:
Before the passion play started, the producers insisted on playing the national anthem.
So Old Glory was trotted out on to the first century Palestine set. The trumpets sounded, the people rose, hands slapped hearts and thousands of people around me started singing the Star Spangled Banner.
I didn't like it when I was 15 and I still don't like it now that I'm 41. I have no objection to the Star Spangled Banner being played at sporting events or before school starts or in the locker room of one of the United States hockey teams after it wins yet another silver medal. But I don't think it's appropriate for a passion play. It strikes me as idolatrous.
If you're in the audience, you must know that the producers have an agenda. They want to convert you to Christianity (I promise you that there's a prayer before each performance where the actors plead for the Holy Spirit to open the audience's hearts to the gospel message.) Well, Christianity and American patriotism do not always go hand in hand. American legislation - just like legislation from any other country on Earth - is often the polar opposite of what is written on the pages of Scripture. Depending on your political stripes, you can decide if that's abortion and gay marriage or unfettered capitalism and bombing the shit out of arabs.
And let's not insist that the national anthem should be played because the constitution guarantees free speech, which makes the passion play possible. Let's not water down God's sovereignty with such conditional claptrap. The gospel has always been preached, even when its proponents were fed to lions.
They also took a leap of faith, I suppose.
-
I have a friend who hates passion plays. He says they promote anti-Semitism.
He's right. After I saw that play in South Dakota, I went straight home and burned all my Barbra Streisand albums.
-
Last night, while lying in bed, I started thinking about Rod Stewart.
It alarmed me that I was thinking about Rod Stewart when I was in bed by myself and my one-year-old son was sleeping in the playpen beside me. I started wondering why I'd start thinking about Rod Stewart and then the answer came to me.
I was watching an episode of Oz and there was a scene where the inmates were celebrating Christmas and there was some Christmas music and that got me thinking about how I haven't been home to Calgary for Christmas for two years and then I started thinking about the music that my mom listens to at Christmas and I remembered that one of her favourite albums was the Rod Stewart Christmas album.
And that made me think of the guy who used to run the pool hall and I decided that I was going to use that anecdote to open today's note, even though I had no idea what the title was going to be.
It turns out the note's theme was to be on leaps of faith. I knew I'd be in danger of repeating myself - how often can I tell the story contained in my Feb. 26 note, It was the best mistake I ever made? And when you think about it, isn't that what a leap of faith is? Doing something that most sane people would consider a mistake?
Getting married is probably always a leap of faith, given how often marriages fail these days. Going to theatre school is also a leap of faith since you will invest a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money so that coffee-drinking gray-haired failed actors can tell you how much you suck. Buying Edmonton Oilers tickets is a leap of faith because the Oilers will probably lose. Reading my note-a-day is a leap of faith because it might not be funny and it may contain yet another story about something bad that happened to me in Grade 4.
-
After the passion play in South Dakota, I asked my dad what he thought of it. He said he didn't care for the Lord much. Jesus came across as an arrogant upright individual who'd studied English diction at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Oh to see a human Jesus, delivering the sermon on the mount not like a righteous judge but as a loving and caring teacher who really wants his students to live that beautiful message.
-
It should be noted that the people who run the Royal Tyrrell Museum are probably not Young Earth Creationists. It should further be noted that some of the actors in the passion play probably are. And yet the two institutions exist peacefully, side by side. There are no bomb threats. The paleontologists do not threaten to play noisemakers during the crucifixion scene.
It should also be noted that I took a leap of faith to see if I could open this note with the Rod Stewart bit and somehow make it work.
Did I succeed?
I don't know.
I guess that's up to you.
This was more than just a slight resemblance. I mean that this cat looked so much like him that people would actually ask if he was Rod Stewart. He probably had a real name but everyone just called him Rod Stewart. I think he liked it. I never heard him sing. He had an earring. I don't know if the real Rod Stewart has an earring. He probably does.
I have not been to Drumheller in a very long time. I know the pool hall is no longer there, which means that Rod Stewart has another job now. I do not know if he is still alive or if he still looks like Rod Stewart. Perhaps he shaved his head.
If you want my body and you think I'm sexy come on baby shoot some pool
-
Drumheller is the closest city to Rosebud, which is the home of the Rosebud School of the Arts, which is where I spent my first year out of high school. Rosebud was, and still is, a Christian-based theatre guild school. I did not last long in Rosebud because in my early years, I was an arrogant and unteachable student. I was this way because of unresolved trauma from my experiences in junior high school.
-
Back then, Drumheller was famous for two things - dinosaurs and a federal prison. Drumheller was also famous for teenaged pregnancies but things might have improved since I was there last.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is in Drumheller and it has 40 dinosaur skeletons and over 100,000 fossils. There is also a big Tyranosaurus Rex statue outside and you can climb it and stand in its mouth and take a picture through its fangs.
Today, Drumheller has something else to be famous for - its passion play.
-
Listen:
I was actually present when they did the groundbreaking at the site where the passion play takes place. A Calgary television evangelist named Alan Dunbar came up to preside over it. During his address, he referred to the city as "Drum-heaven-er." He said that if we were going to dedicate so much energy to depicting the life of Christ, we'd better darn well change the city's name to something more appropriate.
-
More than 20 years later, the passion play is still going strong. I even know some of the actors who participated, including at least two who played the Lord.
At one time, someone took a leap of faith and decided to mount a passion play in Drumheller. Good thing, I guess.
-
I saw a passion play in South Dakota the year before I entered high school. We were on a family vacation and my dad, a lay pastor, decided it would be a good thing if we all went to see it. I didn't like the passion play for one reason. Here it is:
Before the passion play started, the producers insisted on playing the national anthem.
So Old Glory was trotted out on to the first century Palestine set. The trumpets sounded, the people rose, hands slapped hearts and thousands of people around me started singing the Star Spangled Banner.
I didn't like it when I was 15 and I still don't like it now that I'm 41. I have no objection to the Star Spangled Banner being played at sporting events or before school starts or in the locker room of one of the United States hockey teams after it wins yet another silver medal. But I don't think it's appropriate for a passion play. It strikes me as idolatrous.
If you're in the audience, you must know that the producers have an agenda. They want to convert you to Christianity (I promise you that there's a prayer before each performance where the actors plead for the Holy Spirit to open the audience's hearts to the gospel message.) Well, Christianity and American patriotism do not always go hand in hand. American legislation - just like legislation from any other country on Earth - is often the polar opposite of what is written on the pages of Scripture. Depending on your political stripes, you can decide if that's abortion and gay marriage or unfettered capitalism and bombing the shit out of arabs.
And let's not insist that the national anthem should be played because the constitution guarantees free speech, which makes the passion play possible. Let's not water down God's sovereignty with such conditional claptrap. The gospel has always been preached, even when its proponents were fed to lions.
They also took a leap of faith, I suppose.
-
I have a friend who hates passion plays. He says they promote anti-Semitism.
He's right. After I saw that play in South Dakota, I went straight home and burned all my Barbra Streisand albums.
-
Last night, while lying in bed, I started thinking about Rod Stewart.
It alarmed me that I was thinking about Rod Stewart when I was in bed by myself and my one-year-old son was sleeping in the playpen beside me. I started wondering why I'd start thinking about Rod Stewart and then the answer came to me.
I was watching an episode of Oz and there was a scene where the inmates were celebrating Christmas and there was some Christmas music and that got me thinking about how I haven't been home to Calgary for Christmas for two years and then I started thinking about the music that my mom listens to at Christmas and I remembered that one of her favourite albums was the Rod Stewart Christmas album.
And that made me think of the guy who used to run the pool hall and I decided that I was going to use that anecdote to open today's note, even though I had no idea what the title was going to be.
It turns out the note's theme was to be on leaps of faith. I knew I'd be in danger of repeating myself - how often can I tell the story contained in my Feb. 26 note, It was the best mistake I ever made? And when you think about it, isn't that what a leap of faith is? Doing something that most sane people would consider a mistake?
Getting married is probably always a leap of faith, given how often marriages fail these days. Going to theatre school is also a leap of faith since you will invest a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money so that coffee-drinking gray-haired failed actors can tell you how much you suck. Buying Edmonton Oilers tickets is a leap of faith because the Oilers will probably lose. Reading my note-a-day is a leap of faith because it might not be funny and it may contain yet another story about something bad that happened to me in Grade 4.
-
After the passion play in South Dakota, I asked my dad what he thought of it. He said he didn't care for the Lord much. Jesus came across as an arrogant upright individual who'd studied English diction at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Oh to see a human Jesus, delivering the sermon on the mount not like a righteous judge but as a loving and caring teacher who really wants his students to live that beautiful message.
-
It should be noted that the people who run the Royal Tyrrell Museum are probably not Young Earth Creationists. It should further be noted that some of the actors in the passion play probably are. And yet the two institutions exist peacefully, side by side. There are no bomb threats. The paleontologists do not threaten to play noisemakers during the crucifixion scene.
It should also be noted that I took a leap of faith to see if I could open this note with the Rod Stewart bit and somehow make it work.
Did I succeed?
I don't know.
I guess that's up to you.
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