The Prodigal Altar Boy

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown T-82 Days to Go 28 October 2012






Prodigal Altar Boy 100 Day Countdown
T-82 Days to Go
28 October 2012





Goal:  2 hours per day working on the film
Details: 

·     Met with Andrew Omotosho, web developer.  Discussed Web needs.
·     Reviewed mailing plan.
Total time:  2 hours


Goal:  30 minutes per day music practice
Details:
·     Warm-up on the Roland-ready Stratocaster
·     Grace City – Two services
Total time:  2 hours

Goal:  15 minutes exercise per day Body Opus Week 10
No carbohydrates after 6:00 PM
Active rest and recovery.
Total time: 

Goal:  30 Minutes “Tangential Endeavors”
“Fretboard Domination” – George Christian
Total time:  1 hour





“Accept No Cheap Substitutes”
Richard Rohr writes:
The most common substitute for liminal space is known as liminoid space.  Events and occasions that occur in liminoid space look liminal but aren’t.   Nothing new can happen in liminoid space, only more of the same.  We as a culture have become expert at passing off counterfeit experiences for the real thing.  Entertainment serves as worship, loud music and big crowds substitute for depth or breadth, and spectacles substitute for any true catharsis.
Fr. Jim Clarke, an elder for the organization Rites of Passage, taught us the difference between ceremony and ritual.  Ceremony is meant to maintain the status quo, but ritual always reveals the shadow and is meant to change us or at least transition us.
True ritual like true drama, always creates a catharsis, or emotional cleansing.  We prefer ceremony to ritual because it asks so little of us; we merely have to show up physically and be entertained.  True ritual demands psychic and personal participation, maybe even a change of heart or mind, whereas the liminoid character of ceremony allows us to observe at a distance.
(From the book: On The Threshold of Transformation by Richard Rohr)


Rohr’s observations cut at the heart of TQ’s “Shock Liturgy.”  On the one hand, TQ leveraged expectations violation theory by behaving outside the “priest paradigm” of behavior and drawing people in to his message.  The other side of that is the attention his tactic attracted often overshadowed the message he was trying to get across.  I have said that often, and now realize the people hung up on the spectacle at the expense of the message probably were not that engaged in the first place.  TQ alluded to that in one interview, arguing that the majority of the people who objected to one of his controversial Lenten themes had not been paying attention to all of his communications and planning before the Lenten season.  I don’t know whether TQ would agree with Rohr on the liminal and the liminoid, but I do know TQ was a fountainhead of liminal opportunity.  He gave thousands of people the opportunity for catharsis through liturgy using the principle of adaptation.  Judging from the people I interviewed and the throngs at his funeral, many took advantage of those opportunities to change not only themselves, but also the world around them.   

Fly on, Blue Angel!