A Black Woman in Search of Hamlet

Last week, Lorna and I went to see a production of Hamlet at the Stratford Festival.  It was a very positive experience in many respects and a not so positive one in others.  It was great to be at Stratford for the first time in three years because of COVID.  The production was up to the usual good standards of the Festival and the acting by many of the cast was very good especially that of Polonius by Michael Spencer -Davis who really caught the essence of the self satisfied and foolish character.  However, the main aspect that was not positive was the portrayal of Hamel by Amaka Umeh, which was extraordinary in ways that were not positive. 

The aspects of the portrayal of Hamlet which were unusual in my experience were that Umeh is black and a woman who is slight in stature.  I found this portrayal of Hamlet was marred for me throughout by the actor.  I reflected on my reaction to this and was able to come to some conclusions.  On reflection, the phrase that came to mind to describe the portrayal was, with apologies George Bernard Shaw, ‘A Black Girl in Search of Hamlet’.   Given that, a better phrase might have been a ‘Black Woman in Search of Hamlet.’  I will explain why I came up with this phrase.

The fact that she is a black actor is something that had little significance in the portrayal and, in fact, became irrelevant after the first few minutes.  The fact that she was a woman was another matter.  My first thought regarding this was that perhaps this was the director’s update in the Elizabethan tradition of boys or young men playing women’s parts as women were not allowed on stage.  I thought that it might have been very interesting if Ophelia was played by a man.  But that was not the case; Ophelia was played by Andrea Rankin, who gave a commendable performance.  I was also left wondering if there was an artistic purpose in this casting decision which was beyond my comprehension because I could see that it added anything to the production.  On further reflection, I came to the conclusion that my adverse reaction to the performance was not that it was a woman in the part. but it was the nature of the performance itself. 

The physicality of the actor was a challenge in some aspects especially when she was required to lift Ophelia’s body and struggled to do it.  Her voice was also jarring at times when it was high pitched.  However, those were minor points.  The main problem was that the portrayal of Hamlet was over the top and histrionic in many scenes.  Basically, my objection to the portrayal was that there was little attempt to capture the essence of the character of Hamlet.  Hamlet, in essence, was a person who was caught by indecision and fluctuated in his desire for revenge and his indecision about the truth of what his senses were telling him.  There is certainly great room for an actor to bring different interpretations to the role of Hamlet.  However, in no way was the essence of who Hamlet was, portrayed in this performance.

I am currently reading a book by John Dourley, a Roman Catholic priest, professor of religion, and Jungian Analyst.  It has the rather clunky title, The Intellectual Autobiography of a Jungian Analyst.  In part, he explores the theology of Paul Tillich and discusses the nature of essence.  He speaks of a person’s essence as that which, “refer(s) to the divine power in the individual seeking to become conscious in the unfolding of the individual’s life.”  In Shakespeare’s portrayal of Hamlet, we have such an unfolding of who Hamlet is becoming or perhaps attempting to become.  Whether he is successful is open to interpretation and provides a playing field for the actor to explore and participate in the game in which the rules are provided by Shakespeare within the play.  In this case the portrayal was definitely out of bounds and should be relegated to the penalty box permanently – if I may be permitted to stretch a sports analogy to its limit. 

Knowing our essence is what we are called to do on our journey.  May you be blessed to discover it.  

Whither Leadership 2

Last week, I began to explore the qualities of leadership which were developed in the Rule of St. Benedict.  This week, I want to continue with that exploration.  The first quality I explored was that of actions as well as words.  The Rule requires that leaders, “are to lead the community by a two- fold teaching: they must point out to the monastics all that is good and holy more by example than by words.”

This week I want to explore what qualities the leader must have to be able to actually practice what they preach.  Chapter 2 of the Rule states, in part, “They must know what a difficult and demanding burden they have undertaken: directing souls and serving a variety of temperaments.”  Joan Chittister’s commentary delves into this seemingly straightforward - if not easy requirement - and truly brings out the essence of what this means. 

Chittister points out what the leader, and by inference all of us, must do to achieve this.  They must encourage those whom they lead to, “struggle as they have struggled to grow in depth, in sincerity, and in holiness, to grow despite (my emphasis) weaknesses, to grow beyond weaknesses.”  The challenge of this is brought into focus in Chittister’s closing sentence of the commentary:

We must each strive for the ideal and we must encourage others to strive with us, not because we ourselves are not weak but because knowing our own weakness and admitting them can we with great confidence teach trust in God who watches with patience out puny efforts and our foolish failures.

There is truly the rub as Hamlet might say.  To acknowledge our weaknesses to ourselves, much less to others, is no small feat.  Indeed, that goes against our instincts, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, our egos.  Our ego does not want to admit to any weakness and will go to great lengths to excuse, rationalize, and even hide them from ourselves much less ourselves.   Carl Jung identified that hidden part of ourselves which contains the collective weaknesses which are inevitable in ourselves.  He named that aspect the Shadow which is resident in our unconsciousness.  The Shadow can appear in our dreams as a dark, foreboding, character, often of the same sex as the dreamer.  It can be very helpful, and I propose necessary, to get to know the shadow part of ourselves as Chittister proposes.

The fact is that we all have weaknesses as well as strengths – or at least part of ourselves that we hold to be weaknesses. It is part of our humanity.  We are formed in God’s image as we are told in the book of Genesis; we are not gods.  However, the good news and the Good News is that if we are to acknowledge our weaknesses to ourselves and to others there is great strength which will lead others by example as well as by words.  It will truly enable us to love one another as Jesus loves us.

Blessings on your journey and do not be afraid to ask for directions when the way is not clear – or even when it is.

Sermon July 10, 2016 Seventh Sunday after Trinity

These are the days of miracle and wonder 

This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah

In his song The Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon tells us that we are in a time of miracles.  That is true today even more than when the song was written in 1986.  It was a long distance call but today we have smart phones and the internet and all that comes with it; we have social media; and apparently we are going to have self-driving cars before we know it—actually they being tested on our roads today.  I heard on the radio this week that the first fatal accident involving a self-driving car has happened.  There will be more to come and they tell us they are inevitable; they are the future of driving.  So hang on to your hats and your steering wheels.

We do have things at our finger tips that would seem like miracles even when Paul Simon wrote that song.  I looked up the date it was composed on the internet and had an answer in less than a minute.  And yet with all these miracles around us we are in an age that no longer believes in what can’t be explained by science and technology.  Likely none of us here today can explain how the internet or most of what we use works. 

However, that doesn’t stop us from using them and considering them just a normal part of our lives.  Indeed if we didn’t have access to everything that involves computers and the internet our society would grind to a halt. 

Despite all these miracles many people dismiss religion as superstition.  They cannot believe what is portrayed in the biblical miracles such as the one described in today’s Gospel passage—the miracle of the loaves and fishes.  This modern movement to demythologize the events in the bible that could not be understood in our modern day perspective was proposed most notably by Rudolph Bultmann who attempted to demythologize the biblical accounts such as the story of the loaves and the fishes.  Indeed much liberal theology today continues with this approach.  The accounts of the miracles of Jesus and other such accounts are explained away psychologically or sociologically or even literary contexts. 

My father, who was a United Church minister, was very much in this approach to theology.  He did not accept that miraculous things such as this account of the feeding of the four thousand could have been a miraculous event as it was described.  I even recall discussing this account with him many years ago.  His explanation was that the miracle was the reaction by the crowd that was gathered. In his understanding the people gathered had food hidden under their cloaks and were moved by Jesus to share what they had with their neighbours.  As a result there was more than enough for everyone—there was even food left over.

In preparing to write this sermon I found out—another example of the modern miracle of the internet—that this was a common interpretation of the Gospel passage amongst theologians and clergy of a liberal bent. The desire or need by some people to have everything in life explained is, to my mind, a critical mistake.  The attempt to consider everything from the perspective of the intellect is a fatal mistake. As Hamlet says to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.  Mystery which is the purview of the divine does not deal only with the intellect.  That is a part, albeit an important part of God’s creation but there is much more to creation than intellect.  I believe it is a mistake to make the belief in miracles and other mysteries of our relationship with God to be the litmus test for orthodoxy on either the traditional or liberal understanding of God.

My understanding of God’s relationship with God’s greatest creation—humankind—does not depend on the details or facts of a particular part of scripture.  We should not get into arguments or worst over the details of a particular event portrayed in the bible or other accounts of God’s relationship with humankind.  We need to understand these accounts as myth rather than demythologizing them.  By that I mean we need to understand the meaning—the capital T truth of these events.  Why did they become part of the account of the story of God’s people?    Except for the Resurrection, the multiplication of loaves is the only miracle told in all four Gospels.  What is the truth in these accounts that made it essential for those Gospel writers to include the event?  Why did it resonate with people through the ages up to today?  What is the truth of this story regardless of the details of the story?  There are in total six different versions of this event; Jesus fed the people on at least two occasions—once 5,000 men and another time 4,000 men; once with five loaves and two fish and again with seven loaves and a few fish; once with twelve baskets of remaining bread and in another five baskets.  The details may vary but the truth of Jesus is eternal.

What then is the truth of the account of the feeding of the multitude—be it four thousand or five thousand or each and every one of us today. 

The truth is that we are fed by the person of Jesus Christ each time we partake in the Eucharist.  We are fed with the food that does not perish just as Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well the water that is eternal and once you drink of it will never be thirsty again.  Once you partake of the food that Jesus offers you, you will never be hungry or thirsty again.  That food that is offered is there in abundance.  There is food for everyone and there is more than we can ever consume.  It is offered freely to all.  Come and taste and see that the Lord is good.  Happy are they that trust in him.  Amen.