I spent Saturday at a "Higher Ground" Bible seminar. (That would be the sacred bit.) What I loved about it was a.) the fellowship, b.) the scholarship, and c.) the idea of Bible study as transformative, more than informative. There's no reason to accumulate Bible facts if you aren't going to allow your relationship with the Bible to unsettle some of your incorrect assumptions and convictions. That we can't settle for "mining" the Bible, pulling out bits and pieces merely to scaffold our worldview. Instead, we should be expecting to be challenged and stirred and confused and surprised. I have honestly never ever thought of it this way, which might explain why I have never ever been very interested in Bible study. I guess I've been transformed. A little, anyway.
Saturday night was a different story. Rob and I had tickets for "What About Dick?" which is a new radio play being performed in a test run at the former home of the "Lux Radio Theater" in Hollywood. The play was by Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, and had an amazing cast: Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves (from Frazier), Emily Mortimer (from Lars and the Real Girl), Jim Piddock (from Best in Show), Tracy Ullman, and Eric Idle. We were in the last row of the balcony. I was seated behind a very sweaty man who was continually wiping his head and neck with his handkerchief. Because I am in my complaint-free days, I refrained from whacking him upside the head and shouting that my hot flashes were more powerful than anything he was dealing with, and, no, I would not be seen bothering people with my handkerchief...
The play was about as raunchy as one would expect (the title says it all). It starts out with a typical Python comment - "This takes place between 1910... and 8:30" and then launches into the subject of the play (this would be the profane bit), the primary "cure" for female hysteria at the beginning of the twentieth century which is... uh... vibrators. The best part was seeing the actors laughing at each other so hard that they couldn't read their own lines, and watching the sound effects man do the sounds.
Outside the theater we saw the lead actress from our favorite TV show, Pushing Daisies, so that was a nice way to cap off a great evening.
Today, Sunday, more Bible seminar. How jarring to go from Bible, to (a play about)... well...you-know-what, and back to the Bible, all in one weekend. But then again, the Bible is filled up full with more than its share of shock. Stories more profoundly disturbing than what anyone could dream up today (especially during a writers' strike). If I'm going to spend more quality time with the Bible, as I think I am, I probably better get used to being jolted out of established patterns, used to the unknown as well as the known, with struggle as well as peace. I had better get cozy with being jarred. As was said in the seminar, the Bible can't be domesticated. It can only be inhabited.
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