A Reflection for XXV Pentecost (proper 28) All Saints Church, Southern Shores, N.C.
November 15, 2015 Thomas E Wilson, Rector
1 Samuel 1:4-20 1 Samuel 2:1-10 Hebrews 10:11-14 19-25 Mark 13:1-8
God On a Hot Tin Roof
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| Patrick Sinclair and I playing in Cat at Mercer in Macon, GA |
Years ago I was working at a Parish down the street from a university trying to reach out to the undergraduates. One way I chose was to play the character of “Big Daddy” in a University theater production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat On a Hot Tin Roof .Tennessee had written the play when he had been staying in that town and the local gossip was that some of the characters were influenced by some of the church’s parishioners. The play was a success and some of the parishioners were a bit confused at seeing their Rector all dressed up in an off-white suit yelling at people and shouting more than my fair share of obscenities. But it was good because it gave me a chance to talk with students about the spiritual journey of the characters as they face death, meaninglessness, despair and the complex connections between family members and lovers. In short the play presents some oversized characters and situations as a way of shining a spotlight on the very real and more mundane life the people in the audience are living, moments in which they find themselves deeply distressed. In my understanding of the play, which might well be different from the author’s, Maggie is a God metaphor of the deep longing to be connected to the one she loves. Art is not mere illustration of the outward forms of life but as Emily Dickenson directed:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
The play opens with “Maggie the Cat”, a deeply
distressed woman, filled with anger, anxiety, resentment, love, fear and
torment, and not knowing what to do with it; so she lashes out at whoever is
around. She bursts into her and her husband Brick’s bedroom. Brick is in the off
stage bathroom taking a shower
MARGARET [shouting above roar of water]: One of those
no-neck monsters hit me with a hot buttered biscuit so I havet' change!
BRICK: Wha'd you say, Maggie? Water was on s' loud I
couldn't hear ya....
MARGARET: Well, I!--just remarked that!—one of th' no-neck
monsters messed up m' lovely lace dress so I got t' cha-a-ange....
BRICK: Why d'ya call Gooper's kiddies no-neck monsters?
MARGARET: Because they've got no necks! Isn't that a good
enough reason?
BRICK: Don't they have any necks?
MARGARET: None visible. Their fat little heads are set on
their fat little
bodies without a bit of connexion.
BRICK: That's too bad.
MARGARET: Yes, it's too bad because you can 't wring their
necks if they've got no necks to wring!
Isn't that right, honey?
Yep, they're no-neck monsters, monsters.... All no-neck
people are monsters.
The Hebrew Testament story and Psalm for today come
from the beginning of the Book of Samuel, telling the story of Hannah. Hannah
is one of two wives married to Elkanah. The other wife had given Elkanah lots
of kids and Hannah had given him none. Being barren was considered a curse and
the other wife just rubbed it in a lot to Hannah. The translator says that she
is “deeply distressed.” which is an understatement for the Hebrew which
literally reads “a bitterness of the soul”, the life energy. She is like a Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof searching for a meaning in her life and finding none. There
seems to be no one who can help. The other woman in the house is a rival stirring
salt into Hannah’s wounds. Her husband doesn’t understand and tries to feed her
with double portions of food, as if that could make her feel better. He tries
to tell her that she should not feel bad telling her that at least; “You got me
babe!” The Priest doesn’t understand because he thinks she is drunk. There are
no friends to turn to, no self-help book available, no exercise regiment, no
boxes of candy, no posters and mottos or advice that speaks to that deep hole
in her life and Hannah is alone, all alone, with a bitterness of soul.
The Books of Samuel begins with Hannah’s predicament
as an enacted metaphor of where the people of the promise find themselves. We
will see this metaphor repeated over and over again in the Book of Samuel. Eli
the Priest will go through that Valley in the Shadow of meaninglessness, Samuel
the prophet with visit that valley when
his dreams are shattered, Saul the King will enter into madness and David will
also become very familiar with that all too tragic place of emptiness. In these
stories all the truth is told that all characters in the stories in the books
and all characters in our stories that we encounter outside of books, and we
ourselves, will find moments being deeply distressed; of living moments with a bitterness
of our souls.
Except the editor of the Books of Samuel will also
tell all the truth slant as we are reminded that Hannah and all the others are
never alone. He lets Hannah sing that there is a healing presence in our lives
that can help us deal with the times of bitterness of soul. As the responsorial
verse to Hannah’s song that was our Psalm for today: “There is none that can be
compared to you our God.” We will be raised up from the depths of despair and
see it as a new beginning.
The writer of Mark writes his Gospel around 70 AD
when the Temple, the place where Jewish Christians had seen as the center of their
worship was destroyed by the Romans and he remembers that Jesus had predicted this event years before and tells
the truth slant but suggesting that all this would be only the beginning of the
birth pangs into new life. The good news is that there begins a deeper life on
the healed side of bitterness.
In the play, Cat
On A Hot Tin Roof, Maggie reflects on the new birth of relationship:
MARGARET: Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with
such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you—gently, with love, and
hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of –(now here is where she takes the place of God
in my analogy but just imagine God saying it to each of us for it is not the
first time we hear God in the feminine voice) -and I can! I'm
determined to do it--and nothing's
more determined than a cat on a tin
roof--is there? Is there, baby?
God
On A Hot Tin Roof (poem)
The
ceiling fans turn as Big Daddy struts across the stage
ready
to bellow about mendacity, “one of those five dollar
words
that cheap politicians throw back and forth at each
other.”
“Pretense; ain’t that mendacity” the actor snorts,
lying
through his before performance brushed off-whites,
matching
the costume. The costumes, sets, the make-up;
all
accessories to the lies, yet, part of the truth told slant
about
what does it mean to the preacher posturing actor to
live
into having a bitter soul. He knows better than anyone
a
four o’clock morning tasting Father McKenzie walking
from,
not the grave, but the earnest talk which changed not
another
bitter soul. There are nights he so longs to hear the
howlings
of one of Ceridwyn’s, Welsh Inspiration Goddess,
accompanied
cats calling to be joined on the roof so that she,
the
Goddess, might purr in his ear and take hold of him gently
and
give back something of gold which he had so misplaced,
singing to him that song again that Mary and Hannah
cried.
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