A church is many things. It is an idea about what it means to be human. It is a community of faith. It is a place, a building, sometimes full of beauty, echoing the faith of generations. At each of these levels our church - our people, our space and its ancient stones collaborated with the talented and committed cast and crew of Proper Job Theatre.
The wonderful architectural hotch potch that is Huddersfield Parish Church (stones that wouldn't look out of place on a Dales' barn, an Elizabethan font, Georgian galleries, all like a jigsaw taken appart and put back together in the 1820s) became the mead hall of a Viking lord. A long ship sailed down the nave, bearing a hero who would save a community. She (yes, delightfully, she) would later reflect on life and death, victors' guilt and the trauma of the vanquished, compassion and the just wielding of power.
Light danced across our vaulted ceiling, bringing the warmth of sunshine, prosperity and peaceful blue skies. Shaddows and curdling screams took us as close as any of us would every like to be to desperate carnage, devestation and primordial fear as the dragon passed over our heads. As our dead hero was carried in state through the audience and the pall bearers sang "will we remember?" it didn't pass me by that we literally would. And we did - about 14 hours later, in the same space, although by that time it would appear very different.
We remembered courage and sacrifice. We remembered the dilemas we face when we attempt to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly - while needing to defend the right of all humanity to do the same. We remembered the carnage that comes from the sky for people in all the places our world fights and sheds blood today, and prayed for those whose every moment is still domonated by equal fear.
As I mentioned - it was wonderful. It was wonderful because such story telling belongs in churches - places that understand storytelling is not just reportage or clickbait. It's not just that something happened, and it's certainly not that anyone has anything to sell (though we may ask you to follow and subscribe!)
Storytelling is learning how to live, acknowledging shared humanity. It is turning our faces towards the possible or impossible truth of how good and how bad we can be. Our capacity for gore and for glory. And the story is richest and most revealing when it is told together. We know that more is revealed when we are together, when we each bring our skills and gifts to the process.
In telling our story, and God's story which is our own, we glimpse our own possibliities. I would say that when we tell our story together (in word, in music, in dance, in bread broken together) we become greater than the sum of our parts. Something is made that we could not have made alone and is greater than each of our individual contributions. Transcendence.
For me, proof of our Creator's limitless love. Both that God gives us this spark of creativity so we might know ourselves, one another and God - but also this transcendence is a sign that God is with us now.
