1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
Psalm 23
Homily by Fr R Christopher Heying
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
In Tel Aviv and select venues around the globe, well over 150,000 people have seen the poignantly named Not by Bread Alone, a production of Nalaga’at Theater.1
Remarkable on many levels, it is especially so because the eleven actors and actresses are in varying degrees both deaf and blind, some completely. Most have Usher’s Syndrome, where one is born deaf and then with adolescence becomes increasingly blind.
In Not by Bread Alone, they make, knead, and bake dough on stage while sharing their memories, their dreams, and their joys through the use of different kinds of sign language and physical comedy. The audience sees, hears, and even smells the production as the bread bakes on stage and then shared with the audience at the conclusion of the play.
Adina Tal, actress-turn-director, is able both to see and hear. She admits that when periodically asked to put on acting workshops for persons with disabilities, she politely declined, because as she says her interest was theater, not social work. But in the late 1990s, after repeated requests by a deaf-blind social group, Adina finally relented. She says it was something of a shock to her to be before a group that could neither see nor hear her.
Adina remembers that first day when she put down the coffee she had been given and it was immediately stepped on. She says she couldn’t conceive of even where to begin: “So we sat in a circle and squeezed hands and tapped knees and tried to find a way of communicating. [Then] [a]t every meeting I learned something new, but it was frustrating
Adina was not the only one to find it rough-going. One of the would-be actors finally burst out with, “This is stupid—how can we ever be actors?” Adina wasn’t at all sure that they could be, and when she pointedly asked one of them how as a deaf-blind, non-verbal person they were going to act, he simply responded by saying, “That’s your problem—you’re the director!”
And so they began.
Learning to tell their stories.
Learning to share their dreams and their joys with audiences, who increasingly felt the power of this interaction with the deaf and blind.
Their genius, Adina knew, is that no one else can actually do what her actors and actresses can do. They have never heard, let alone seen, the famous actors and actresses with whom we are so familiar. They can only be themselves, act in their own way. Adina acknowledges that what other actors and actresses can’t do is what Nalaga’at can do: “The strength of Nalaga’at is in being us. That’s what we do really well.”
Being who they are. Not allowing themselves to be trapped by their darkness and silence, these men and women through their daring play give their audience insight, perhaps even compassion.
But there’s more . . . if one is interested. In Tel Aviv and in modified ways at other venues, there’s the Café Kapish with its deaf wait staff and the Blackout Restaurant which serves an entire meal in abject darkness, forcing sighted patrons to rely on their other senses, especially taste and touch.
In fact Nalaga’at—the troupe’s and its Foundation’s name—is Hebrew for “Please touch.”
This unique acting troupe—Nalaga’at—is made up Jewish, Christian, and Muslim actors and actresses who work in remarkable harmony supporting each other in living their dreams by being themselves and in their world of darknesses and silences our world becomes brighter, our own lives richer.
“Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Ephesians. Light bears fruit in that which is good and right and true.
The dark and silent world of Nalaga’at yields the light of new insight and the sound of hearts beating, beating with an enriched humanity in which the world can discover what it means that whatever the so-called disability, “God’s works might indeed be revealed” in and through them, in and through us. New possibilities arise when (like in the choosing of David) we look not upon the outward appearance which deceive but actually see the heart of the matter, the which God sees.
This morning, deep in mid-Lent might our eyes and hearts become far too focused on deficits, those things our body or mind or even spirit cannot seem to do anymore . . . or maybe never could?
Or, and much worse for us, perhaps our focus is not on our own deficits but on those of another: that special someone whom it seems that God, or even the devil put near us not only to test and tempt us in the desert but to annoy the ever-living hell out of us?
What is it that we see? hear? smell? taste? touch?
As we work to make some sense of our sensible awareness, could we step back a moment and just imagine what God sees? The one who looks not at outward appearance but sees the heart . . . that God’s works might be revealed in them and in us.
Nalaga’at. Please touch. Touch the dirt mixed with saliva Jesus has placed on us that we may go and wash and see. See the miraculous possibilities that God has uniquely preparedfor everyone, even you and me, that we may come a little closer to the genius of being our truest selves.
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1 Quotations come from an interview by Lyn Gardner published in The Guardian, 21 June 2010. Nalaga’at’s website: http://www.nalagaat.org. Many reviews and news articles are available online.