Thomas B. Woodward ‘63: Religious Faith and the Arts: A Personal Journey

I first discovered the power of the arts to push me beneath the surface of my life when I was at GTS. I trace it back to the classes I had taken in college from Paul Tillich, later made real in the words and encouragement from Norman Pittenger, in particular in his class on Apologetics. Responding to all that, whenever I felt depressed or disoriented as a seminarian, I took the subway to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street to spend time with two paintings: Picasso’s Guernica and Fernando Botero’s enormous painting of the Mona Lisa in a little girl’s dress. Those two pieces took me well into the depths within myself, somehow addressing and healing my distress – as well as I later discovered, preparing me to address the same in the people I would later serve as priest.

That experience in the museum was later replicated in other ways. Soon after seminary, three movies in particular called me into a deeper understanding of my faith and my place and vocation in the world. The witness of Maude in Harold and Maude and Mac in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was summed up in the words of the unconventional Murray in A Thousand Clowns. A social worker has come to take away Murray’s 12-year-old nephew, Nick, fearing that under Murray’s influence Nick would soon be lost to any life as a normal person. She sums up her charge, saying to Murray, “You must come back to reality.” Murray responds, “OK, but only as a tourist.” His life was rooted somewhere else, or as St. Paul put it, “We are in, but not of the world.”  That is clearly the reality to which St. Paul points over and over again, but it took Murray, Mac, and Maude to implant it deep within my psyche. For me it was a marriage between Scripture and the Silver Screen.

Picasso’s Guernica (1937)

In writing about the arts, Paul Tillich made the distinction between religious subject and religious content. Most of what is considered religious art in popular culture consists of religious subject – praying hands, Biblical scenes, Jesus with the children – but without religious content, that which speaks of matters of ultimate concern, such as guilt and sacrifice, sin and redemption, grace and forgiveness. Likewise, there is art lacking a religious subject which may be full of religious content. I think of difference between ubiquitous plastic crucifixes and Grunewald’s depiction of Jesus dying on the Cross from the Black Death in his Isenheim Altarpiece, the difference between the current Smiling Jesus and Botero’s Mona Lisa, between Sally Fields in The Flying Nun and Mac in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

On a more mundane level, while serving as Protestant Chaplain at the University of Rochester, I entered the world of the clown/fool. I had become overwhelmed by the words upon words that engulfed nearly everything on that campus. After thinking of how I might disrupt that atmosphere, one day I exchanged my black shirt and clerical collar for a white tee shirt and rainbow suspenders as I painted a simple clown’s face upon my own. Then with no training and little guidance, I spent the day interacting with students as well as with inanimate symbols of their life at the university. If something worked, I would replicate it; if not, I would move on to something else. My best was when armed with my red bandana, I would dust off the sidewalk for an approaching student. When he or she would say “Thank you,” I would respond, “You deserve it.” It was after only a few similar forays for the word to spread that I was an ordained minister that those words suddenly had significant religious content for some, as those simple words from the clown represented mercy, forgiveness, or hope. It was secular subject taking on religious content

Botero’s Mona Lisa, Aged 12 (1959)

When I later moved to Chapel Hill to serve as Episcopal Chaplain to the University of North Carolina, I soon was spending my lunch hours passing clubs with an exceptional juggler, Kenny Kaye. Then one day Kenny told me he was running out of money. I suggested that we form a street show with Kenny juggling while I devised a few simple mime pieces. We could call ourselves Uncle Billy’s Pocket Circus. I had no training as a mime, but I tried acting our a few pieces which might capture some of the Christian vision. A perennial favorite dealt with the sin of self-deception as I pretended to be a woman weighing herself on a public scale. As I put my imaginary purse on the floor, I stepped on the unseen scale, inserted my imaginary coin into its slot, and then watched with increasing dismay as the pointer climbed higher and higher. Dismayed, I left the scale and removed my shoes before repeating the experience - alas, with the same result. And so it went, discarding one imaginary item of clothing after another until I was virtually stark naked. Then it occurred to me; I had one last shot. I carefully removed my contact lenses, put them safely with my stuff, stumbled blindly back onto the scale, inserted my quarter, and watched gleefully as the scale’s pointer stopped exactly where I wanted – to my joy and satisfaction and to the applause of everyone who saw themselves metaphorically in the same situation. That piece was combined with others dealing with death, resurrection, and our finitude - each infused with religious subtext

The circus was a big success. There was enough money from passing the hat to support Kenny (he also kept the occasional donated weed) and for me it was something just as good. At the end of the show, as I traded my red rubber nose for my clerical collar, it was an occasion to chat with members of the crowd about their experience. Later, when I left for Wisconsin and Kenny joined a couple of circuses, I continued doing Uncle Billy’s in churches and street corners in nearly every State, adding fire eating to the opening of the circus.

The Jesuit priest, Nick Webber, who created the marvelous Royal Lichtenstein One Quarter Circus, a street show consisting of variety of acts exemplifying gospel values, put things this way: “We don’t preach the gospel with the circus, but when someone who has seen our show hears the gospel, even from a street corner preacher, they often say to themselves ‘I know what this means, this is what I experienced during that circus.’” Non-religious subject, but with enormous religious content.

After leaving North Carolina for Madison, Wisconsin, I continued performing Uncle Billy’s on my own, though mostly in religious contexts in different parts of the country.

At the request of a social worker in my congregation, I also formed a clown troupe of significantly disabled adults (cerebral palsy, brain damage, disabling phobias) who occasioned what I considered as real miracles whenever they clowned in hospitals, street parades, and on the university campus. They called themselves “The Care Fools,” as they who had been the recipients of care most of their lives were now the care givers.

The Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-1516)

One of the many stories about their exploits involved Lydell Swenson, a young man terribly crippled by his cerebral palsy complicated by spina bifida, on a visit to the VA hospital. As Robert, with both legs amputated and determined to die in the hospital confined to his nurse, "I was deep in my depression when this guy was wheeled into in my room. He had a little cowboy hat on his head and clown make up smeared on his face. He was making gurgling noises and his arms were flailing around. It was obvious that he couldn't talk, but he was looking at me with what I thought were with eyes of love. After about five minutes, his caretaker wheeled him out of the room and I burst out with terrible tears. I realized that that guy in the wheelchair, who had so much less than I have, was in here giving me everything he had. Everything. And then everything changed for me. Everything. And from that time I could not wait to get out of this hospital to see what I can do with what I have left.'" 

There have been times in writing this piece on faith and the arts when I thought about Lydell with his awful and complete disabilities. Lydell was the healer. It was not with the laying on of hands or praying the prayers, but it was art, maybe unintended art.

My last experience with faith and the performing arts began in my first years in retirement. Frustrated at not preaching, I had begun using a unique way of exploring conflicts – putting a colored sock on one hand and a different colored sock on the other and letting the two duke it out. Remarkably, their ability to resolve conflicts was remarkable. I soon moved to using different characters on my computer, taking the advice of novelist Anne Lamott in her book, Bird by Bird; “Never put words in your characters’ mouths.” When I told my comedy writer friend, Ron Bloomberg, about that process, he suggested putting a couple of my conversations into the form of a Fifteen Minute Play. I did so, just in time for a national competition in that genre.

The plays were the result of exploring two quite different conflicts: God refusing to cure a young man who had just been told he had cancer and a homeless person refusing to say “thank you” to a man who had just put a dollar into his tin cup. The plays seemed to write themselves. I set the first play, a comedy, roughly in the form of the Book of Job and the second consisted solely in letting the two men, one of whom might or might not be God, struggle their way to a resolution. Both did well in a predominately secular theater. What’s Up With Eliot? edged out two Emmy and Grammy winning playwrights for Best Play. I believe that was because it dealt with matters of ultimate concern. A bonus for me was that I was preaching to the unchurched.

In all of this, the norm for a ministry of performing arts in whatever context is probably best centered in the laity, not the clergy. I would much rather send out a clown than be one, myself. But we clergy certainly have our part – encouraging, supporting, helping to frame lay initiatives, maybe creating our own material and searching out others. And what could be a better study group than a trip to the museum, the library, or the writings of blessed St. Paul?