Just One More Play

Have you ever been around someone who is so excited about something, and it wears off on you? I have. Many times. But this last week I had opportunity to discover it again. My granddaughter is attending day camp for two weeks. I know what your saying. Who wouldn’t be excited about camp. Let me just say, it’s not your ordinary every day camp. There is no sun and sand. No boats or water, archery or ponies anywhere.
Are you ready sports fans? It’s Shakespeare Camp. Yes, you are reading it right. She goes every day for two weeks to a warm old office building right down town Hamilton with the restored Lister Block just steps away, to learn about Shakespeare and to be involved in one of his plays. This is her third year and she is excited. A few days this week I volunteered to pick her up and I could feel the excitement. It’s not my thing but it’s hers.
The most exciting four o’clock pick up was the day she received her lines for the play she is going to be in this coming Friday. Her eyes were lit up and you saw the enthusiasm in the way she danced out of the building and jumped in the back seat. She was eager and ready to get down to it.
After letting us know the play, she asked if I would help her learn her lines. Really? And being the most awesome grandfather a child could ever have, I agreed to help. We were no sooner in the house then we started. I could not hold my smile in as we sat and went through the lines and she began the process of taking those words and committing them to memory. And in the process, I know some of them as well. “We begin in Athens, in a time before . . . ”
The whole process took me back to a time long ago, when I too was in stage plays at school. There were the Mikado, Bye Bye Birdie, Calamity Jane and the like. And I smiled some more and became excited with her.
After we went to bed that night, I lay there thinking about learning lines, and thought about the bible verses I learned as well so many years ago. I thought of the sword drills at young peoples, and read scripture in church. Together we can all recite John 3:16. “For God . . . “ But unlike the words of a play, they are words that changed our heart forever. It goes beyond a nice story. It’s learning the lines that change our lives forever. As I lay there, my last thought before drifting off to sleep was, -Are we still as excited about the lines in our bibles that once captured our hearts and lives? and do we desire to live the lines rather then just learning them and act?
Something to think about.
Rob