Road to Romania, or Exposition

Dear Friend,

I’ve never written a blog before. Sharing my thoughts with a disembodied hodgepodge of circuit boards and electrons seems rather impersonal, not to mention downright odd. I’m sharing my thoughts with a computer. So, I’m hoping this tactic will work out more. I’ll simply write letters to you, because I know you will read them and receive them.

I remember a day four years ago: January 19, 2004. I was a senior in high school, a time when I had no clue what I was doing, but had two passions I wanted to keep pursuing. I was visiting Northwestern, and as I was leaving the brand new theatre building I mentioned to a newly introduced Jeff Barker that I wanted to discover where my faith and my theatre craft intersected, where they met and began working together succinctly. Jeff smiled at me and told me I had come to the right place.

Three and a half years later, on the Friday before school was let out for Spring Break, I met with Dave Nonnemacher. Dave is in charge of experiential learning at Northwestern, and someone I’ve worked with in New Orleans doing hurricane relief. We met in the Hub, Northwestern campus’ coffee shop. A couple weeks prior to this meeting he had expressed a desire to discuss with me an idea he had, so my anticipation was going through the roof at this point. As we sat in the Hub, Dave began introducing me to the work being done by New Horizons, a non-government organization located in the town of Lupeni, Romania. New Horizons’ primary goal is to promote social capital in Romania. Social capital, simply put, is community, trust, respect for each other, working together for the common good, and the like. A lot of their work has been directed towards the youth in the Jiu Valley, where Lupeni is located, notably the most impoverished region of Romania. The youth participate in IMPACT groups, groups with activities facilitated by New Horizons leaders, during the school year and summer.

New Horizons had recently come in contact with another organization started by college students called A.R.T. Fusion. A.R.T. Fusion, Dave explained, is an organization based in Bucureşti which uses art, music, dance, and theatre to promote social capital amongst the city’s youth. Their theatre work has been primarily Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, which many Northwestern theatre students become familiar with in their studies. Dave finally expressed not only his desire, but New Horizons and A.R.T. Fusion’s as well, to have a Northwestern College theatre student do an internship with A.R.T. Fusion through New Horizons. After discussing this with the theatre department, going through a preliminary list of theatre students and weighing the possibilities, Dave wanted to offer this opportunity to me. He gave me Spring Break to pray about it and mull it over. Believe it or not, Spring Break was a welcome time to think about it. I naturally accepted, but not right away.

My initial hesitation to accept Dave’s offer was not an inability to see how his plan would work, but rather an inability to see how I would work in the plan. At that point in the Hub, when Dave offered the internship to me, I felt, not for the first time, an immense fear and humility. Any plans I had ever had now seemed relatively obsolete. I felt again what a person feels when the realization of one’s mortality come in contact with God’s immortality, when one’s weakness comes into contact with God’s power, and when one’s ignorance comes into contact with God’s omniscience. I felt really small.

The plan made sense to me, except my part in it. I knew very little about Augusto Boal and Theatre of the Oppressed, and Romania was a country that registered in my mind only when speaking with peers who had been there. I began to feel what I think Abraham might’ve felt on that fateful day of Genesis 12:1. The idea must’ve sounded rather far fetched for Abraham, and even if it didn’t his direct involvement in the idea must’ve sounded even more so. However, I felt as if this was something I had to see through to the end. I did accept, and did what I could to prepare myself, knowing full well there was probably nothing that could prepare me. I would have to trust and obey.

Just a couple days before I left, Saturday in fact, I met with Dr. Bob Hubbard, another one of my theatre professors at Northwestern. I was auditioning for his show that would enter production just before my return to campus in December. After the audition, Dr. Bob told me a little of his experience working with Augusto Boal at a workshop a couple weeks prior. He explained how Theatre of the Oppressed isn’t a form of theatre that Christians are generally drawn to, but how it can be a very Christian form of theatre. He said that listening to Boal speak about the liberation purposes of Theatre of the Oppressed was like listening to a speaker in our own college chapel. Dr. Bob called Theatre of the Oppressed “kingdom work.” He shared his enthusiasm for my work in Romania and gave me his blessing.

God is at work around me. What I’m about to do, the journey I’m about to embark on, is only small evidence of that. What excites me (scares me?) is the bigger picture. What does my internship in Romania mean? In the bigger picture? In the bigger picture of my life? In God’s bigger picture? These are questions that can’t be answered by reading a book or studying for a test. At least, they are questions that can’t be answered the way I’d think they should be. They can only be answered by doing.

Doing works is complimentary of one’s faith. James writes about this in his epistle. Works without faith are nothing, and vice versa. By doing “kingdom work,” you can serve God and be faithful. That’s what I hope to do this semester: kingdom work. Your prayers and support up until this point, friend, have been immeasurably helpful, and I desire for those prayers and support to continue during my time here. I miss you already, and while I wait patiently for my return to the states and my reunion with you I will work diligently at the task that is set before me. Who knows, this all could turn out to be for naught in my mind, but I am not here in Romania by chance. Let us together wait and see what happens.

Blessings.
Kailen