In a play without a script
What is it like to live in another culture 24 hours a day 7 days a week? Well here is my analogy. Imagine you have a major role in a play. You come to what you think is the first practice but for some reason you have never got a script sent to you in the mail so you figure you'll pick one up when you arrive. As you get there, you discover that this is no rehearsal, this is the first performance and you are supposed to have your script memorized. But you never got a script. It's too late now. You are ushered out on stage.
Imagine yourself in the play, with other actors and actresses. All of them have their lines and have speaking parts. You know you must too, only you don't know when they come or what they are. You watch the other characters around you and you imagine what your character might say. Once in a while you say something and then look at the other characters for a response. Did you do it right? No response. You don't know. So you negotiate and in time you find yourself showing up in familiar scenes. Scenes that keep repeating themselves. Do you do the same thing as you did last time or do you adapt and change it up?
Sometimes you get clear negative messages from people that what you are doing is not good so in those cases you change it up. But ironically sometimes its the times you think you are at your best that you get those comments.
The funny thing is that the play just keeps going on. You can hardly get off stage. At times you duck aside and talk to your family members who lo and behold have parts in the play too. But then you find other actors/actresses are still watching. Sometimes its seems the audience finds out what you said off stage - how did they know that?
Eventually, things get more familiar and the play is recognizable as life, but I'll tell you what - after every day you become grateful that God invented sleep! I have never rested better than I do in Africa!
Imagine yourself in the play, with other actors and actresses. All of them have their lines and have speaking parts. You know you must too, only you don't know when they come or what they are. You watch the other characters around you and you imagine what your character might say. Once in a while you say something and then look at the other characters for a response. Did you do it right? No response. You don't know. So you negotiate and in time you find yourself showing up in familiar scenes. Scenes that keep repeating themselves. Do you do the same thing as you did last time or do you adapt and change it up?
Sometimes you get clear negative messages from people that what you are doing is not good so in those cases you change it up. But ironically sometimes its the times you think you are at your best that you get those comments.
The funny thing is that the play just keeps going on. You can hardly get off stage. At times you duck aside and talk to your family members who lo and behold have parts in the play too. But then you find other actors/actresses are still watching. Sometimes its seems the audience finds out what you said off stage - how did they know that?
Eventually, things get more familiar and the play is recognizable as life, but I'll tell you what - after every day you become grateful that God invented sleep! I have never rested better than I do in Africa!
posted by Nathan Esala at 11:03 AM
2 Comments:
touche
There is something really rewarding of being on that disorienting stage. There is a reduction of all these safety nets we have put up around ourselves. I remember Dr. Charles Arand saying that God created us to be dependent and I think being on that stage does open us up and remind us of our dependency on God. It is a good reminder of the priviledge that it is to serve cross culturally in less familiar "fresher" fields whether in Africa or the Detention Center.
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