Yes, it has been a long time since I've posted anything. I don't make promises to continue or be regular at this but sometimes stuff comes up and ... ya know.
So I went to a Good Friday service and an Easter Sunday service this weekend. Friday was a show? multi-media presentation? seeker service? called Forsaken. I thought there were parts that were a bit heavy handed and emotionally manipulative but that could just be me. The people I went with really like it and thought it was "powerful" so maybe I'm just in the minority.
Either way, there were some good visuals and some great music to go with it so all was good. I think the music that I enjoyed were the pieces that started simple and just kept growing and moving. There is something about starting a work with piano, then adding cello and violin, then guitar, then vocal, then percussion that is pretty simple, but amazing.
when I think of songs like that to show what I mean, I think of "Endless Night" or 'He Live in You" both from the Broadway cast of "Lion King." I also think of Peter Gabriel, specifically the live version of "Come Talk to Me," or "Signal to Noise." They catch your attention and just keep building till at the end you are released. It is difficult to explain but I'm sure we all have our own examples.
so visually, there was a very large tree on the stage. At one point a dancer in white was dancing the role of Eve, and a dancer in black came on and tempted her. When she gave her the apple, she also wrapped a band of red cloth around Eve's arm. There was a time towards the end where Eve was brought back on stage and she had more bands of red wrapped around her body. The dancers in black took her and sat her in a chair. They went behind the tree and brought out longer bands of red that they used to wrap around her and the chair. A man in white came out, stopped them, and unbound Eve. When she was free of the red (except for the single arm band), he went to the tree and took her place. The dancers in black wrapped him up in a great visual of what the crucifixion was about. Eve also took the last band of red from her arm and handed it to the Christ-figure. I found this very moving and a really cool visual.
Before this took place, there was a single woman on stage with a lit candle, along with a video of a candle behind her. She was joined by more people all with lit candles. When they were all assembled, the dancers in black came out and danced around them and slowly blew the candles out. As the candles were blown out, the people left the stage until the first woman was there alone with her lit candle. She was surrounded and her candle was also blown out. She left and the video screen candle also went out. Then the video screens lit up with all the earlier footage of disasters, and tragedies but they were quickly shown in reverse and when they were gone, the video candle came back on. A great visual of never ending hope?
That was all on Friday night during Forsaken. This morning was a good service but nothing too moving...until the last song which was finally a hymn. I have a thing for hymns as I grew up with them and the church I go to never sings them. So - when they do it fills me with great joy...like this am.
so - that was my Easter. And one of the best parts is that when I left, it was raining...like it always used to when I was a kid. Except this time there was blue sky visible AND the temp was low enough that the sprinkle of rain was actually a sprinkle of snow.
krl
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