01-09-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
January 9, 2024
Last week, Donna and I saw The Tina Turner Musical. It wasn’t my favorite, but the lead was amazing. There was important truth-telling in the musical, specifically the naming of the physical abuse Tina Turner experienced in her marriage to Ike Turner. They did not try to hide it or leave it to the imagination. Toward the end, when Tina decided to fight back, the crowd erupted with applause. It was a moment of uneasiness for me—not that I was opposed to a woman doing whatever was necessary to escape the abuse, but applause seemed strange. Maybe it’s my place of sanctimonious privilege, but I dream of a day when we are applauding the end of all physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse. And then doubly strange was when, at the end of the show, the actor who played Ike was greeted with stirring applause. He’s an actor, and he deserved it. I know we were not applauding the character or what he had done, but an individual’s skill at helping tell a story. Maybe my uneasiness with everything is an unspoken desire to pretend such things don’t exist, but could it be that the conflict and the emotional discomfort were exactly what needed to happen and what the musical was seeking to do?

God of both compassion and justice, I desire that any naivety or avoidance around the real pain and maltreatment of a human being be removed from me so that my discomfort doesn’t lead to silence. Amen.