Words. Words. Words.

Ah…I love Shakespeare. It’s amazing how the plays can speak to any time, any place. The story lines may seem odd, the language hard to follow, but once you can comprehend what is being said, it’s simply amazing and can open so many doors to life.

The Guthrie is closing its original doors and moving to a new location by the river after this final production. They are closing up with Hamlet, as a tribute to the first show ever performed. The last show will be 43 years to the date the first show opened in the Guthrie (May 7 – get your tickets now!).

After the (amazing!) show last night, there was a discussion time with the actors. One couple stated they were very upset with the current location being shut down, having been season ticket holders since almost the very beginning. The actors took that to heart but also stated how much the spirit of the Guthrie moves with the group. Joe Dowling, Artistic Director, wrote in his dialogue in the program that “a theater is not a building. A theater is a group of people working together – actor and audience sharing a sense of our common humanity.”

This made me think, not only of theater (because what Joe says is incredibly true of theater people) but of the church. I think so many times people think of the church as a building (I know this is old hat to many of you reading it but I just need to type it out)…that the church building is where “God lives” and where ministry is done. E had made a point earlier this week about how to bring the Lenten discipline out of Lent and move it beyond Easter – moving the Fish Fry’s to a more needed place in the church world – beyond the times when it’s ‘only fish on Fridays’. This is such a hard thing to do when we live in the world of God on Sunday’s in the church building only.

But if we think in the mind of theater people – theater is everywhere. God is everywhere. It doesn’t just end in the church. A well-performed (even an ill-performed) play will stay with you forever, just as a sermon or ministerial moment will. There will always be remembrances, things that impact your life whether you know it or not, that take place in your whole being. God is the same way. Whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not…God takes place in our whole being. Who we are is a reflection and action of God’s work…as Hamlet said, “to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” Someone said last night, “We all have a little Hamlet inside us.” That’s true of God, too.

So maybe we need to think like Hamlet “…not in madness, But mad in craft.” Not crafty in the extent of conspiring to murder our uncle/father or aunt/mother but crafty in the way to help others to see God for who God is – 24/7/365.

It’s quite a feat, but since theater is everywhere, a little Hamlet is in all of us, perhaps we can bring the audience to life.