blog-aleuia!

[qibitum]

The Revealer blogs Rev. Billy. As it's lead story no less.

The writer gets as far as musing on authenticity and faith:

"Whether this is theater or religion remains an open question. I have come to see a man expound a moral truth to a crowd of believers while his choir sings hymns from the dais behind him--in a church no less. So how is that

Comments

Re: The religious roots of theatre. Theatre as a route to enthousiasmos/yoga/union

[qibitum]

Thanks for your comment. All sorts of unexpected yet interesting folks have been dropping by here lately.

I'm not sure that Rev. Billy is consciously deploying a spiritual technology, although there have been a few moments of something like Ekstasis that I've experienced in his services. It's the way in which he dances along the edge of sacred/profane that gets me. He once told me when I asked him about how he understood spirituality in his work--

Because the word "spiritual" is bankrupt, because of religion, because the word "religious" is bankrupt, because of churches, we tend to not return to those words. ... Dead language makes a dead experience. It's better in a Rev. Billy performance for us to walk to the edge of the abyss, beyond which is silence, and to stand there and say, "alright, we’re gonna jump." And that’s the point in the sermon where I start to stutter and I'll say, "somebody give me an amen, help me, help me," and somebody will say, "we're with ya, we're with ya." And I haven't said anything, but we've walked to a place together.

Finally, while I get your point about organized clerical religion, I must quibble a bit. Christian mystics have through the centuries achieved "religio"--Teresa of Avila or Thomas Merton come to mind, though they of course were monastics. So I agree that popular Christianity has tended historically to lack ekstasis. But even in Buddhism the spiritual technology has traditionally been accessible mostly only to those who dedicated their lives to the sangha--the popularity of meditation amongst laity in American Buddhism is a relatively new development. I also think there is something like Enthousiasmos that is often experienced in Pentecostal Christianity. Sufi shaykhs and their students also--which depending on context have in many times and places been part of the mainstream of clerical Islam. Etc.

Anyhow, thanks again for your informative comment. Welcome.