Transcendence: A Sermon

Recent unexpected deaths have me thinking of mortality, and it occurs to me that all faiths, all the world’s religions, as well as atheists—anyone, in fact, who considers their own demise—face a question I almost never hear asked: After I die, what do I do?

Well, I won’t do anything, is one assumption. As a Catholic, I was taught that I would no longer be burdened with a free will, that my time would be spent in rapturous joy praising God, wanting nothing else, needing nothing else, an utter transcendence of everything I’ve experienced in life. My limited understanding of other religious traditions is that what comes after death is some similar experience: What you “do” after death, however glorious, is not something you choose.

For those who don’t accept this scenario, death is most likely a transition into nothingness.

But this means that, for all of us, what we do after death is as absurd a question to ask as it appears to be, that either there is nothing that can be done, or what can be done is utterly irrelevant to our former experience of living in a universe of choices, experiencing personal growth.

So what struck me as unexpected deaths occurred this week is that in our religious belief or non-belief we have arguably very similar expectations of what happens when we die. What follows is an unending period of stasis. That, however blessed, there is a quality of nothingness in what we should expect of an after-life, just as there is a quality of transcendence in believing death utterly ends our existence, simply because we’ve left life behind for all eternity.

Regardless, what we leave behind when we die rests in the living hearts of those who were touched by us in life, as well as anything we’ve left behind that represents us. It seems to me that all persons regardless of their beliefs have this in common.

I find strength in this, that regardless what we believe, death unites us as an overarching, shared passage. And in that passage we transcend all things we know.

If I’m wrong about any of this, the unanswered and largely unaddressed question necessarily remains: After I die, what do I do?

How to live forever and change the world

Here's inspiration from a young man who once portrayed my character's son in an indie film....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHNALcttrQo

Community Blvd

Wouldn't it be lovely to live where the streets had names like Paradise and Faith?  You could say, "I'll meet you at the corner of Hope and Peace."  Of course, we'd have to put up with things like, "Last night, shots were fired near the intersection of Chapel and Trinity, killing three.  The victims remain unidentified."

What Storytellers Do

The following I adapted from a speech by Tom Hanks' character in the film Saving Mr. Banks:

Forgiveness is what we learn from art, from books, from plays.  The author forgives himself.  Because life is a harsh sentence to impose on one’s self, and authors redeem themselves through writing.

The author must trust himself, must not disappoint himself.  Where there is blindness, the author gives sight, reveals truth.

The author’s characters, especially the main character, are precious to him.  If he trusts himself, he won’t be disappointed.  And every time anyone reads his words, they will witness characters revealed, understood, saved, honored.  They will love these characters with the guileless trust of children.  They will weep for their cares, they will wring their hands when they lose, and in the story’s final moments, they will rejoice in the humanity of these characters, they will sing.  For generations to come, the author’s characters will be honored, and they, as well as the author, as well as his audience, will be redeemed.  All these characters stand for will be saved—along with the author and his audience—not in life perhaps, but certainly in imagination. 

This is what we storytellers do.  We restore order with imagination.  We instill hope, again and again and again. 

Artists, authors, playwrights, all, trust yourselves.  Prove it to yourselves, and you will prove it for everyone for all time.  Your work is the meaning of your life, the fulfillment of your promise to the universe.

Common-Sense Terminology to Describe Units of Work

A primary purpose of language is to enable us to name things with reasonable terms we can all agree on that make sense.

Units of time, for example, are:  supereoneon, eon, era, period, epoch, and age.  And from there more granularly, I believe we would agree on millennium, century, decade, year, month, day, hour, minute, second, etc.

So what’s useful terminology to express discreet units of work effort?  The terms and the order I propose are:  Project, component, module, process, method, task, step, and detail.  I believe this is a clear, consistent, and common-sense way to conceptually modularize and express the elements of work.*

So I have a project, and I have to consider the components of my project, which is made up of modules, modules which are in their turn made up of processes.  Each process has methods, each method has associated tasks, each task has steps, and each step has details.

I'm not promoting an idiosyncratic grammar merely to appear clever.  My intention is to suggest a habit of easily using one appropriate term or another relative to the work at hand.  Is the work to which I’m referring at the project level, or does it deal with the details of a step?  Am I dealing with the methods of a process, or the tasks associated with those methods?  I’d like to be able to be able to use consistent terminology to characterize work and be immediately understood simply because there’s a general consensus that a task, for example, is more than a step but less than a method. 

Just seems to me that in English we’ve done a better, more precise job providing generally agreed-upon terms for units of time, for example, than for units of work.

*Note:  There are a variety of components in a project, including material.  Materials are, I suggest, part and piece, that is, pieces which make up parts.  There must be other components as well, but in this post I focus on the work effort itself, what must be done.

The Theatre of Facilitation

I am a software trainer by profession—what I refer to as my “day career.”  It’s my business, my S-Corp, my area of expertise and interest.  Software training works for me in part because it has a business model which is familiar to me:

• I  contact, or am contacted by, one of my agents.  A deal is made for a multi-week presentation.  (I review upcoming auditions.)
• I interview with my potential client (audition for the director), which usually consists of a live or taped example of my performance style.
• If selected for the role, I am sent contracts and other materials, invariably including a script, which I prepare for a train-the-trainer (T-3) boot camp (the rehearsal period).
• During the T3, in addition to the technical material, I am given lots of other useful information regarding dress code (costume), corporate culture (character development), and other role-specific information (director’s notes).
• Invariably I have resources to fall back on, subject matter experts (SMEs) who know more than I about the matters at hand.  (No theatrical parallel here—except that it means I’m not really the expert, I’m only a facilitator, much as an actor is not really the role, not really the person, but is portraying a person, backstory, theme, etc.)  It’s more important that I excel in my role as a facilitator (actor) than it is that I am an SME (the real-life person my character represents).
• During the training itself, there’s clearly a beginning (opening scene), a middle time (the dramatic arc), and an end (climax).
• So many practical elements must be addressed, the size of the audience (house), the mood and the abilities of the students (patrons) as good listeners.  Are they with you, are they learning—and hopefully enjoying themselves?
• At any time necessity may require changes to the script with limited or virtually no prior warning.  
• Anything can and will happen during training (the run of the show), depending on the audience, technical matters, and the instructor (actor) mood and competency in the moment.  The trainer (actor) has to improvise.
• There’s an abruptness to the end of training.  Relationships among trainers and their students, which may have been intense, usually promptly dissipate (when the show’s over, it’s over).  Everyone goes his or her separate ways, though as professionals it’s likely their paths will cross again (they may be cast together in another show).
• Even if the same training course is repeated, the audience is different and the trainer (actor) must respond accordingly.  And different contracts (plays) of course may be wildly different from each other, a universe unto themselves.

There’s some evidence that the software training model is changing, simply because so much self-directed learning is becoming available, and the idea of a person actually training a group of others, even virtually, present only remotely over the internet, is somehow passé, very 20^th century.

Regardless, I enjoy software training in part because it’s the closest thing to live theater I’ve found in the business world.

A Successful Player

My window of time during which I might have become a commercial success as a working actor has closed. This is not a statement of fact, I’m stating what’s highly probable. The work, the fame and money, go to talent who have the credits. I've been a working actor all my life, but few if any of my credits are commercially substantial.

What works for me is a deep understanding of the choices I made when I was younger, why I made them, and what I wanted my career on stage to mean.

I am a man. In life, I inhabit many roles. My resume reads like an encyclopedia. I've played more roles than most men. I've lived to fullest extent possible, tried to. It was the right way, the honest way, for me to live. I lived in as many ways as I could, tempered only by my understanding of what was life-affirming. In biblical terms, I did not worship false gods.

I've always believed that civilization is marvelous but rather beside the point. Put another way, I wanted to observe and understand everything as best I could without prejudice, admitting my predispositions as I knew them. Understanding was my purpose in life. I might have taken more risks, but was never idle. I was busy gaining insight.

On my own terms, I’m a success. I have been the man I planned to be. My window remains wide open. The fresh air keeps me alive, the possibilities remain endless—at least until I end, perhaps even beyond if my legacy has any value.

I encourage my actor contemporaries to celebrate choices made, because they were made honestly. 

And those of you who are young? If you make the right choices, you may achieve commercial success. I know what I wanted, what drove me.

What do you want?