Jesuits, Drama, and Foolish Wisdom

Back in April, I had the privilege of serving as a leader on a retreat with Charis Ministries, the Chicago-based Ignatian retreat ministry for young adults. On this retreat, called “Spirit@Work,” I was blessed to work briefly with Charis’ founder, the oh-so-talented Fr. Michael Sparough, SJ. A spiritual director, writer, lecturer, actor and stage director, Fr. Michael has blazed trails in the arts and ministry, using his gifts and passions to help people encounter the power of the Gospel. (There are few priests out there who can incorporate two stage falls and an apple-juggling routine into a talk and THEN offer a profound Reconciliation experience to boot...just saying.) Therefore, I was beyond excited a few weeks back to hear that Fr. Michael would be presenting on the history of Jesuits and drama as part of the Loyola University Museum of Art’s Tea with the Jesuits series. 

Fr. Michael began with a story about the Shakespearean idea of the itinerant fool embodied in former Jesuit Ken Feit. Feit’s storytelling, sound poetry, and “foolish wisdom” creatively eased tensions and conveyed truth during difficult times. In fact, Sparough was able to experience Feit’s tactics firsthand back in the 1970s as Jesuits dealt with the potential closing of a certain (now thriving!) high school that is particularly close to my heart these days.

Sparough said that something had leapt in his soul that day, like John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb. “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I had to know this man and what he was doing.” Foolish wisdom was a different experience of God’s grace than the heady, logical understanding he had known previously, and he yearned to go deeper.

Sparough then brought us back into the life of St. Ignatius himself, a man of his age who valued logic...as well as womanizing, gambling, and dueling, of course. Beyond his intellect, though, and as his life was transformed, Ignatius gained an awareness that in God, all things, all gifts, are good. Ignatius’ view of our giftedness in Christ can be found in John 10:10: “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” He had a mystical knowing that there is unity and harmony in the world.

Without feelings and imagination, art is meaningless. Likewise, Ignatian spirituality calls people to engage both feelings and imagination to come into God’s presence. How can we, for example, encounter Jesus in Scripture? Ignatius challenges us to put ourselves into the stories and write our own scripts. T.S. Eliot writes, “We had the experience, but lost the meaning.” How can we become more aware of the meaning in our daily experiences? How can we know where the Spirit is working throughout our days? We can do an Examen, a way of looking back over the past 24 hours and doing essentially what Sparough asserts is the process of art: sifting and sorting, remembering and savoring, feeding it back and saying, This is what it means to me.

For Sparough, theatre is a vision of the Body of Christ. Unlike many other modes of art, theatre is not something that can be done alone. It is about collaboration and seeking unity. Theatre can be a reflection of the Trinity, divine unity and separation of personality. Yes, God is in all things, but as you come to find God, Sparough cautioned, don’t do it alone!

Sparough also stressed the Jesuit ideal of excellent education. Our education is not just about us, he explained; it’s about the magis. He traced the history of the earliest Jesuit dramas in 1551 and their spreading throughout Rome in 1565. By 1599, Jesuit pedagogy made participation in drama compulsory for students. Plays were performed in Latin, with music and dance and an emphasis on visual and technical sophistication. Through 1773, missionaries used drama to evangelize and teach. Drama and music both provided an accessible framework to help people come to know God.

Sparough shared about his transformative experiences in Rome at the Jesuit Institute of the Arts, which was founded by Jesuit author, historian, musicologist and linguist CJ McNaspy, SJ. McNaspy had a vision to call Jesuits from around the world who are involved in the arts to collaborate during summers. He stressed the importance of making the arts more accessible to “common folk” and prized the development of the human instrument over expensive theatre. During this time, Sparough also was impacted by the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, through which he encountered Jesus as the Holy Fool.

Through the Institute, it was determined that the Jesuits have five primary goals in their work in the arts (paraphrased):
1) To illustrate AMDG (ad majorem Dei gloriam -- for the greater glory of God)
2) To teach/evangelize humanity
3) To lead young people to Christian lives
4) To lead artists to a Christian lives
5) To focus on Christ as the inspiration and goal of all art

At a meeting with the Jesuits in Rome, Pedro Arrupe, SJ proclaimed, “You [Jesuit artists] are the fortunate ones. You speak and all listen, all understand. More than the preacherʼs word, it is the musicianʼs touch that is bringing the youth to God again. More than the politician, it is the folk singer who draws the races hand in hand. Heart speaks to heart in mysterious ways, and it is the artist who holds the key to the mystery. He can touch the wellsprings of the human heart, and release energies of the soul that the rest of the world does not suspect.”

As Sparough shared about the beauty of his years working with high school drama students, I am reminded of ways in which I can and hope to incorporate my love of drama into my ministries with young people. As I think about my own experiences in the arts and in ministry, I know the stir to which he referred -- the leaping in the soul that says “I don’t know exactly what this is yet, but I know there’s something in it for me.” So in this phase of excitement, confusion, and possibility, I will engage the gifts of prayer and discernment that Ignatius left for the fool in me.

Fellow YPTW alum and TONY AWARD NOMINEE JOSH YOUNG

Stay tuned for more on Fr. Michael’s screenplay of the book The The Gift of Peace, which chronicles the life of beloved former Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Joseph Bernadin.

© 2012 Katie Davis

Living It Out

In reading this week for my Foundations of Social Justice class, I was deeply moved by Beverley Haddad’s 2006 essay from the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, “Living It Out: Faith Resources and Sites as Critical to Participatory Learning With Rural South African Women.” As a result of the extreme patriarchal culture of rural South Africa, Haddad explains, women rarely have access safe sites in which they are able to share their stories openly. The need for such sacred spaces has never been more urgent; the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its surrounding issues like poverty and other cultural norms trap women in a web of crises. For African Christian women, the Bible is central. Haddad asserts, therefore, that Scripture can be used as a starting point to evoke conversations about gender violence, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS. Topics like these tend to scare women silent, even when men are not in the vicinity. In her work with a contextual Bible study group of marginalized Christian women in the poor, rural community of Vulindlela, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Haddad facilitated the building of a community of care that enabled women to begin articulating their own narratives and to identify creative possibilities for future action (136-138).

With the women of Vulindlela, Haddad used the contextual Bible study method. This methodology is rooted in the understanding that all people, academically trained or not, have resources to offer with regard to Biblical reading and understanding (145). In her essay, she compares and contrasts two case studies about the group’s reading of Bible passages. Considering my own background and interests, I especially was taken by Haddad's approach in breaking open the story of the rape of Tamar (2 Sam. 13:1-22) with the women. The group spent three weeks critically reading the text from Samuel and engaging Haddad’s questions about the characters and events in the text. Moreover, the women unpacked the story’s connections to their own experiences of rape, gender violence, and oppression. They became increasingly freer in the sharing of their feelings, and by the fourth week, the women were invited to role-play Tamar’s story within their own context (147-148):

"The play opened with one woman screaming loudly that her daughter had been raped. Other women then ran to her assistance and called a community meeting. The play ended with all the women marching to the police station with a memorandum demanding that the rapist be brought to trial...The opportunity to role-play rape in the group was an articulation and enactment of what was normally hidden" (Ibid.). 

By publicly articulating the previously hidden issue of rape for the first time through drama, the women were empowered to name for themselves potential future action steps, including organizing and protesting. The protagonist Tamar became a mirror for the women. Her ability to own her sexual oppression and speak out against it liberated the women in the group to begin to imagine and prepare for the day when they might do the same within their public sphere (149-150). Just one woman’s willingness to share her hidden story could provide another mirror in which the other women in the group could identify their own secret truths and eventually share them too. The collective storytelling and cooperative creation of shared narrative was contagious; it could very well lead to social transformation if sacred space is maintained (152-153).

As a singer-actor-minister-activist-intellectual (wannabe)-in-training (or some combination of those – take your pick!), I have been and continue to be seeking ways to integrate my passion for the arts into my ministry, particularly with youth and with people on the margins of society. In my previous two ministry positions, I have witnessed the power of the arts and storytelling in various ways. At Cristo Rey Houston, I had the privilege of creating and teaching a drama elective that culminated in sixteen students’ first full-scale play, Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Though the students were communicating a script, not their own stories, they undoubtedly grew by leaps and bounds. It was truly incredible working with them over the course of the year, throughout which they became increasingly confident in their own voices and comfortable in their own bodies. They took imaginative risks to embrace the realities of their characters, and they took ownership of conveying the heart of Fulghum’s message by working together, trusting each other, and being accountable for their roles within the communal effort.

DRAMA STUDENTS from CRISTO REY JESUIT after their successful performance of 
ROBERT FULGHUM'S ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN, 05.24.10

In Youth Ministry in Cicero, our Monday evening meetings were central in the building of our new community of teens and young adults. Every week, we came together for fellowship (during which we would share our stories from the past week), followed by prayer, the reading of Scripture, and a contemporary article or video around a particular theme/issue, culminating in our “so what?” discussion: how were we being called to live out the Gospel in our real lives? Over the course of two years, the safe space we created allowed for vulnerable, authentic sharing and genuine care for one another. The foundation we built within that space also propelled the group out into the world for service and Spirit-filled engagement in the larger community.

FUERZA Youth Ministry in LOS NEGRALES, ESPANA during their 
WORLD YOUTH DAY pilgrimage, August 2011 

I am inspired by the South African women about whom Haddad writes and by her amazing work as well. I hope to follow her example and contribute in my own small way to the creation of safe communities of self-expression that compel others and myself toward social transformation.

Work Cited

Haddad, Beverley. "Living It Out: Faith Resources and Sites as Critical to Participatory Learning With Rural
          South African Women." Journal of Feminist Studies for Religion 22.1 (2006): 135-54. PDF.

© 2012 Katie Davis