ImprovSpirituality

I hate the phrase, "Maybe it was for the best." It's always seems like a cop-out at best, or bad theology at worst. I've heard this, or very similar messages, given to people experiencing loss or grief due to tragic accidents, the death of children, broken relationships, or whatever painful loss we experience. Loss is real and grief is natural We want understanding when all we can do is accept.  As it happens, this was the message on my tiny buddha calendar three days before we held the final service for the parish in which I had been serving. A faithful congregation of 119 years closed. Sadness, disappointment, loss, yes all of those. But it was clear that it was time. We can't change it, but as this buddha thought teaches, "if I resist the urge to judge a situation, I can find something good within it." Things don't always happen for the best, but if I act on the resurrected Christ, I can find something good. I can't change the situation, but I...

 Greetings! It's been quite some time since I've added new material to my blog. Life, it seems, has been a long season of living in Improv. I planned on spending my retirement working on my improv workshops, writing, consulting, and blogging. Apparently I failed at retirement because about two years ago I went back to parish work. I became the Priest-in-Charge at a small parish in Louisville. That time has now come to an end. After much discernment and prayer, the parish decided to close its doors. So back to retirement for me and back to spending time writing blogs instead of sermons.  Through my writing I hope to share what I've learned through this last career phase. Life is always improv and the only thing you can count on is the unexpected. Everything is an offer, good or bad, and our only response is to "yes, and."  I look forward to reconnecting to my old readers and maybe gaining some new ones. Let's journey together through this thing called life and ...

In a previous Improvising With the Buddha post, I wrote about shoshin, “beginner’s mind.” In this post I’m writing about energy work. If you’ve studied or read about improvisation, you know the rule about making strong choices. One of the strong choices we make in scene work is choosing an emotion. In class I’ve used the Emotion or Feeling Wheel to help students understand the depth and range of emotions. In the center of wheel are six to ten core emotions depending on which wheel you use. The most common has seven core emotions. Those emotions fan out to four to eight secondary emotions that then fan out to four or more tertiary emotions. Through the wheel you can see that a feeling of numbness stems from a feeling of distance with comes from the primary emotion of anger.  In a scene knowing where our emotions come from helps with sub-text and in real life it helps us better understand our motivations and relationships. In scene work just knowing where an emotion comes from may...

  "Ya either got it, or ya ain't" The other day an artist friend held a gallery opening of their work. As I was gazing at the amazing work, I bemoaned a little and said to my friend, “I wish I could paint but I just don’t have any talent.” My friend lovingly chastised me and said, “you’ve got lots of talent!” I replied, “I know I have talent in some areas, just not in the visual arts.” We then went on to have a brief discussion on what it means to have talent. I came to realize that part of our disconnect was the use of the word talent. When most people think of talent, they think it’s something special that only a few people are born with. In fact, the Cambridge Dictionary defines talent as, “a natural skill or ability to be good at something, especially without being taught.” As Mama Rose sings in Gypsy, “Ya either got it, or ya ain't. And, boys, I got it!” It’s no wonder most people don’t think they have any talent. Talent implies something special that comes n...

  Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying, “God does not play dice with the universe.” The context of this quote comes from a disagreement Einstein had with the developers of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, primarily Niels Bohr. The Copenhagen interpretation states that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic and based on probabilities. Einstein believed that nature did “not play dice”, meaning that every event occurring in nature is caused by something else and is therefore not based on probabilities, which Bohr believed to be the case. Improvisation is all about rolling the dice. Unlike scripted theater, everything in Improv is basically a crap shoot. A performer doesn’t know what suggestion might come from the audience and although the performer comes prepared with improv skills such as making strong choices, having a distinct character, bringing an emotion to the scene, and even practicing pantomime to help set an imaginary stage, there is ...

  Jeremy Fiebig invites us to set fire to our lives to clear the thick underbrush that bogs us down, thus enabling us to welcome new growth. It is in this clearing, this “thin” place where magic happens. Fiebig defines magic as “the moments of ineffable, ethereal, and often indescribable transformation that happen in all kinds of bodies as a result of Controlled burning, Bonfire Experiences, and The Work.” I was drawn to this book due to my own personal work I’ve been undertaking the past four years since retirement and the pandemic. Personally, I connected with Fiebig because we share experiences in the theater and in coaching. Controlled Burn is part autobiography, self-help workbook, and inspirational guide. By sharing some of his own trauma and history, Fiebig draws us in to understand the root of his transformational work. He speaks authentically from experience. He points out that his journey is not ours, but he writes, “something in my journey might kindle a flame for yo...