Tomorrow Night !

My girl Elphaba ~

Little Retreat - 15: Anticipation

The Lovely Daughter and I have tickets, the show starts tomorrow night, and our performance is in less than two weeks!

In the meantime, the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth with the Boston Pops ~

And yes, Josh, I have been changed for the better, and for good.

Silver Falls State Park - Magis

If you are inclined to pay attention to St.Ignatius, you'll get the magis. If not, let's just say that in the fall it seems that the earth always offers more.

And, to my personal way of thinking, the moss-encased branches so prevalent in Oregon seem to belong to a stage set for Wicked. One expects to see Elphaba behind every tree trunk.

Issues Issues Issues

None of them bloggable.

For those who have asked: I have 6.5 weeks of school left, including exams, and then a (very) few days off before starting CPE at Giant Famous Hospital. GFH offers the double benefit of a wildly diverse patient population and a wildly diverse array of medical challenges, meaning that opportunities for pastoral care will be boundless (none of which is, of course and ironically, beneficial or good news in any way to the people in said population presenting the conditions which create said challenges). I am not going to be able to carve out time to go away on retreat this summer (which is making me just a little crazy), but the aforesaid GFH is a 2-mile walk from my front door, so I guess I will have a couple of mini-retreats each day, provided that the skies do not turn black and gush forth water on too regular a basis.

The Lovely Daughter will be home and will perhaps return to her camp counseling job in North Carolina, which may garner me a short hiking-and-waterfall sojourn in August. The Son Who Has Been Looking For A Job For Months starts one this coming week. Chicago Son and Charming Girlfriend will perhaps host us for a summer week-end, which will perhaps include tickets to WICKED (!!!!!!).

In the meantime, there are a lot of things that I need to know by tomorrow morning that I don't. Know. And a lot of issues bubbling up on every front.

I leave you with images of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine, which does not look remotely Presbyterian, but is surely one of my most favorite church buildings ever. Who could not love a building with an interior dome painted the color of the sea and an address on Sevilla Street?

WICKED ~ The Addiction Continues

Last night I was supposed to be writing a paper. On theology.

So I spent an hour investigating WICKED on youtube. (Hint: Search "Because I knew you + Wicked." Here's a good one.)

I found some great Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth stuff. I found an insipid interview Katie Couric did with them when the musical first opened on Broadway; she seemed to be under the impression that it is for children.

The impetus for yet another WICKED-obsessed evening: I had been listening to it in the car again this week. The intricacy and irony with which the theme of good and evil is interwoven from the very first song to the very last, and through even moments which appear utterly trivial is really, really wonderful.

The photo above? The house has fallen on Elphaba's sister and she's stomping around in fury because Glinda has given her sister's shoes to the perpetrator.

The Quiet Husband (who has not seen the musical) and I had a lengthy argument about whether the Wicked Witch of the West is, in fact, wicked. Needless to say, my definition of wickedness has undergone something of a transformation, at least as it is characterized by Elphaba. And Glinda as well, whose own compromises argue for a more nuanced defintion of evil.

I need to see it again!

It's a much better way of doing theology.

But I did get up early this morning and write the paper.

Defying Gravity - One Last Wicked Post

The music is fun, the sets and special effects are terrific, and the costuming is nothing short of spectacular.

But what I love most of all about WICKED is the thematic progression represented by Elphaba, known to us as the Wicked Witch of the West, with whom I feel such an uncanny sense of identification:

uncertainty

dreams

limitless possibility

failure

the embrace of limitation

It really is an incredible musical.

And while The Lovely Daughter showed me the mystery of youtube embedding when she was here over Christmas, I have completely forgotten how to do it, and I can't figure it out. But if you go here, you can see a performance of Defying Gravity with Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who are themselves nothing short of spectacular.

No One Mourns the WICKED ~ Oh, But Someone Does

I think I can get through WICKED in two posts.

Good and Evil. I have discovered in seminary that not everyone questions Evil's existence and meanderings, but most other people do.

Glinda: Are some people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?

When you encounter evil, don't you wonder from whence it originated? In WICKED, the one authentically good character, the one character of unwavering intergrity, has wickedness thrust upon her. But others come to it via alternate routes: carelessness, expedience, desire, confusion, adulation.

Other themes: Integrity. Longing. Choices. Second Chances. Glinda sings,

But I couldn't be happier

Simply couldn't be happier

Well - not "simply:

'Cause getting your dreams

It's strange, but it seems

A little - well - complicated

There's a kind of a sort of : cost

There's a couple of things get: lost

There are bridges you cross

You didn't know you crossed

Until you've crossed . . .

And the audience goes wild when she reaches out for her lost self at the very end of the show, connecting past heartache to future power.

Connections across the decades. I will never forget how terrified I was by those flying monkeys when I first saw The Wizard of Oz at the age of five. Now I know why they are so loyal to Elphaba. And who in the western world does not associate striped stockings and sparkling ruby slippers with her sister? When Nessa gets the ruby slippers, we know exactly where she and they are going to end up and, when the house falls and Glinda shows up, don't those of us who are now grown women remember wanting the sparkly dress, the wand, the crown, and the bubble method of transportation? And now, perhaps, we know that we don't want them at all because, like Glinda, we have learned something about cost.

The friendship of women. From one girls' boarding school to another to a women's college to the practice of law to at-home mothering back to work and now back to fulltime school, I have experienced the friendships of women as mainstays of my life. From the clever verbal comedy when Elphaba and Glinda first encounter one another ~

What is this feeling?
Fervid as a flame,
Does it have a name?
Yes! Loathing
Unadulterated loathing
Let's just say - I loathe it all
Ev'ry little trait, however small
Makes my very flesh begin to crawl
With simple utter loathing
There's a strange exhilaration
In such total detestation
It's so pure, so strong!

to the hilarious physical comedy that marks Glinda's irrepressible enthusiasm in undertaking an impossible makeover ~

And when someone needs a makeover
I simply have to take over
I know, I know exactly what they need
And even in your case
Though it's the toughest case I've yet to face
Don't worry, I'm determined to succeed

to the love expressed by friends choosing different paths ~

I really hope you get it,
And you don't live to regret it!
I hope you're happy in the end!
I hope you're happy, my friend!

to the final acknowledgment of that love ~ the show lifts up friendship as the great gift that it is.

Friendship across the board. There are a number of combinations of characters who could sing Elphaba's and Glinda's final duet, as there are no doubt a few friends in your own life of whom you would sing it:

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you ~
I have been changed for good

You need the music to do the lyrics justice -- go out and get a CD!

G is for Green

I got tagged by Katherine E at Meaning and Authenticity. Here's the deal:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.
2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name or your mother's maiden name).
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged.)

Modifying, per usual. Gannet's middle name is the name she actually uses, and her last name is her maiden name (since she wasn't inclined to change it when she got married), either of which might thereby reveal the woman behind the curtain.. Therefore, she will stick to her authentic and essential Gannet identity for this one.

Wanna play? Go for it!

G is for Green, a la Elpheba, which is my way of getting a WICKED Post in. I think that one reason for WICKED's working on so many levels is that we all can see something of ourselves in both Elpheba and Glinda. Haven't we all felt green -- isolated and insignificent at times -- at times? And then, perhaps, someone tells us that the very parts of us that seem destined for the rubbish heap are, in fact, the gifts we most need to cherish and hone?

Did that really just happen?

Have I actually understood?

This weird quirk I've tried

To suppress or hide

Is a talent that could

Help me meet the Wizard

If I make good

So I'll make good...

(The Wizard and I, sung by Elphaba)

A is for Adventurous. Not the sky-diving kind of adventurous, but the hand-me-my-passport-and-a-plane-ticket and I am outta here kind. Or the go-to-seminary-in-your-50s kind.

N is for narrator. I love a good story, so much so that focus often eludes me. I started working on a sermon yesterday and, 2500 words into it (I always start by writing what turns out to be two or three of them and then figuring out which one it really is) it occurred to me to wonder, Is there a point here?

N is also for nevertheless. Because I am a both-and kind of girl.

E is for Energetic. I am in reality astonishingly lazy, which explains my presence at the computer when I have a thousand things to do, but I am also going to accomplish a great many of them. (Not the ones I don't care about, but the ones I do -- yeah, I will.)

T is for Transformed. Oh, I feel another WICKED post coming on. I'll try to contain it for a few days.

P.S. Would someone please comment???!!!! Here I am, ON VACATION, time to spare, and I am getting hardly any comments, hardly any mail -- HEY!!!! (That's the Glinda in me speaking!)

U-N-L-I-M-I-T-E-D

Just got back from WICKED.

INCREDIBLE.

(Which I guess you could sing to the tune of "Unlimited" or "I'm Limited" -- choose your version.

Went with a friend who said to me, "There are a lot of sermons in here."

Oh, yeah. There are. I'll be deconstructing this one for weeks. When I stop crying and laughing over it simultaneously.

Life After Greek

We have exams in two weeks. Somehow by then I will know all about participles and infinitives, Jeremiah and Isaiah, the quest for the historical Jesus, Calvin and Luther, and many other things with which I have little acquaintance at the moment (having already forgotten most of what I've learned this quarter).

And THEN -- I am SO excited!!! -- we are going to see Wicked. I just bought the tickets -- four weeks of shows are almost completely sold out. I had completely forgotten about Wicked, too.

It's supposed to be a tour-de-force contemplation of good and evil. Anyone care to offer a review?

And THEN -- we are going to our beloved St. Augustine for the first time in four years.

I feel completely reinvigorated for my assault on the Greek language.