And now I’m supposed to say something like, “An ancient, twice-removed, long-lost great-great aunt just died and left me half a million dollars!” (That’s after taxes.) Or, “Uh, I may have forgotten to mention it, but I eloped last week.”
Well, it’s nothing quite that astonishing. Just a brief update. If any of you have ever read James Thurber, you’re about to be thrilled. He’s an author (or was; I think he may have died) who had his eye shot out with an arrow in a game of William Tell. Which in my mind makes him utterly fascinating (even if he is dead). If you do recognize the name, you probably know that he wrote books with rather clever, interesting twists of humor. One of those books happens to be called The Thirteen Clocks. And it is about to become a play.
I’m back in my role as director. Sort of. We’ve actually got two groups starting up rehearsals for what we hope to be many performances this summer. I’m directing in one and acting in the other. It ought to be great fun. The goal is to get out to different places where people can come who wouldn’t normally get to see a play. Like the kids from social services who come out to Royal Family Kids’ Camp, just fifteen minutes out of Central City. Or the people you might meet at the Salvation Army in Grand Island or Crossroads in Hastings.
Perhaps we’re intending to revive the old, traveling troupe idea. Rather like the gypsies. But the real goal behind this is to tell our audiences, who are often ignored by today’s entertainment-crazed world, that not only did we show them a little bit of love by getting all this stuff together to put on a decent play, but Jesus loves them even more and proved it by coming into our world as a man and dying on the cross and coming back to life again.
So, if you’d like to start hanging out at your local Salvation Army, maybe we’ll see you out in the audience. In the meantime, we’d greatly appreciate your prayers. We’ve got the crew to find, insanely busy schedules to deal with, medieval costumes, different stages, lines to memorize, and a thousand jewels to track down!
Trusting in the God who named the stars, sees a bird when it falls, and knit us together in our mother’s womb.
