Improv

My friends are going through the rituals necessary to put their 3-year-old to bed, so I'll make some comments about the day.

Equipment I brought with me....

1. Video Camera
2. Digital Camera
3. Digital Audio Recorder
4. GPS
5. Cell Phone

I know--I'm a nerd. But I'm a nerd who is coming back to Toronto with lots of material to share. For example, I recorded a fascinating talk about how to lead "paperless" congregational singing. This stuff is amazing to experience, and recording it will make it much easier to share with others!

Morning Prayer this morning was neat. I found singing the Gospel improvisationally be as amazing as I hoped. I was able to find an emotional center in some sections, and that is very cool to convey with voice.

We spent some time in our conference sessions working on improv. At one point we were put into small groups with the task of acting out short snippets of assigned Gospel stories--and we couldn't use words at all, not even as we planned what to do. The idea was to convey the emontional content of these stories without relying on traditional narrative. The results were stunning. I ended up playing the Good Samaritan, and as I collapsed to the ground having been struck, I had moment of really inhabiting that role.

From there we ended up doing some work around how to "land" your communications. That is, there is a subtle way in which an actor or preacher can "land" his words on the people in the congregation. This is the opposite of the kind of preaching where eye contact is considered a good embelishment of a act which is still really about conveyance of the written word. This is advanced teaching, and yet totally intuitive. I think it's something people respond to in my preaching even when the "understandings" I convey are not particularly profound or remarkable.

there is much more to say--I'll be reflecting on this trip for a long time, I think. Good thing I brought plenty of equipment to capture some of it.

-t