reflections on disorientation: good friday, spirituality and popular culture - part one

NOTE:  Here is a first shot at a short essay I am working on re: our recent Good Friday liturgy we called: "Disorientation:  A Gathering in Sound, Song,  Scripture, Silence and Solidarity."  I would be curious about your reaction:  does it communicate?  Does it matter?  Does it say anything helpful to the wider church in the US at this moment in time? 

Introduction
On Friday, March 29, 2013 one hundred twenty adults gathered in the candle lit Sanctuary of First Church of Christ (Congregational – United Church of Christ) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for a multi-media presentation of “Disorientation:  A Good Friday Meditation in Sound, Song, Scripture, Silence, and Solidarity.”  They were young and old, gay and straight, women and men, professional and working class from a variety of spiritual traditions each searching for common ground on one of Christianity’s most complicated holy days.

Good Friday is NOT when most people go to church.  It is NOT a feel good celebration nor a sacred time that is easily grasped in our overly busy and all too superficial culture.  And yet this diverse collection of people chose to brave the rain, darkness and legacy of Good Friday in order to share our “Disorientation” experiment.  Like Bob Dylan sang in another era of transition, “Something’s going on all around you – and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” (Ballad of a Thin Man, Highway 61 Revisited, Columbia 1965)

Thirty years ago Pittsfield was a well-oiled, blue collar community dependent upon the ups and downs of General Electric for stability – and First Church was often known as “the country club at prayer.”   But those days are long gone – economically, socially and theologically – and I suspect that our “Disorientation” Good Friday experiment tapped into the quest for spiritual authenticity that is ripening in 21^st century America.

Insights
New England is one of the regions in the United States where people who self-classify

themselves as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) is a growing presence.  Once the home to both a solid Protestant and Roman Catholic mainstream, these traditions are now a minority report.  Even the once ascending Evangelical movement seems to have stagnated, too.

Part of this shift in public religiosity can be linked to the closing of a unique chapter in American history.  For roughly fifty years, a measure of stability and affluence became the norm throughout the United States as modestly educated workers in highly unionized industries kept the nation’s machines, mills, mines and factories running at full tilt in order to meet the needs of an ever expanding economy.  In Pittsfield, the major employer was General Electric, who at one time employed 15,000 residents.   By 1974, however, the demand for electrical transformers was slowing and GE eventually closed its local operations in 1984.  With Main Street boarded-up and the foundation for economic stability dismantled, fissures in the body politic began to intensify – including American civil religion.  Churches began to shrink – and close – as Pittsfield, like countless other small industrial cities, fell on hard times.  Census reports show that in 1960, the population of Pittsfield was 57,879; by 1990 it had fallen by nearly 10,000.

For nearly twenty years, political confusion and social nostalgia were the rule of the day.  But over the past seven years, new life has taken root in this tough little city in the Berkshires.  Given the vision and hard work of those committed to the “creative economy” in Western Massachusetts, Pittsfield is no longer “a speed bump in the road” to paraphrase former Mayor James Ruberto: it is an emerging center for the arts.  (Bob Oakes/Lisa Tobin, “Pittsfield:  Once a Speed Bump, Now a Destination,” WBUR.org, September 24, 2010) From the early days of the Storefront Artist program and the renovation of the Colonial Theatre, to the nearly 40 current art studios in town, First Friday Arts Walk and the 2012 award by the Massachusetts Cultural Council designating Pittsfield an ArtsLink center, a commitment to creativity is changing the face of this community. (DiscoverPittsfield.org, City Receives $20K ArtsLink Grant, October 24, 2012)  A recent article in the Boston Globe put it like this:

Where others saw despair, artists saw opportunity. In 2002, local artist Maggie Mailer, the daughter of author Norman Mailer, founded the Storefront Artists Project, converting vacant retail space into artists’ studios. Backed by Pittsfield’s mayor at the time, James Ruberto, and Megan Whilden, director of the city’s Office of Cultural Development, a new arts district started to take root. In 2006, the long dormant Colonial Theatre, an epic Vaudevillian stage that first made its debut in 1903, reopened to much fanfare. That same summer, the Barrington Stage Company moved to town and made the 1912 Music Hall its new home. (check it out @ http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/03/16/first-fridays-artswalk-energizes-downtown-pittsfield/E0eamIxVpXroqwllZjLxQO/story.html 

And this is one subtext to our Good Friday 2013 “Disorientation” meditation and the support it has generated.  People here have experienced a sense of renewal and rebirth – they have journeyed as a community from despair to hope – and our Good Friday “Disorientation” project gave artistic shape and form to this experience. Intuitively they grasped that not only was “Disorientation” part of the sacred story of the Christian tradition, but it was also part of their own story as a town.

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In additional installments I expect to talk about:  a) the importance of our emerging intra-faith cooperation in Pittsfield; and b) the fruit of my 15 year experiments in "liturgical art."  I will also add my commentary from Good Friday into the mix.  And my hope is this: this essay (and the subsequent postings on YouTube) might give other churches who are interested in mixing the wisdom and beauty of popular culture into their worship in ways that are meaningful and real a working road map.  We'll see... so let me know what you think, ok? (Even if you think it is bullshit - that would be helpful, too - but please be kind.)