Confessions of a Drama Queen
I tend to have a rather dramatic life. I do interesting and unusual things. I have interesting friends. I have adventures on a regular basis. In the last year I went dancing at least twice a week every week, made a feature length film (which I co-wrote and was featured in) and a short film, saw my poetry published in a real book for sale in real bookstores, got my butt licked by an overeager calf, had my car catch on fire (while driving it!), made some lifelong friends and said good-bye to others, discovered my vocation, and found out that my roommate has liver cancer. That’s just the highlights (and not even all of them).
The adventurous nature of my life also tends to lean towards Drama. I have always been rather conflicted about this. Having a dramatic life seemed something like a moral failing or a character defect. If I were only holier, healthier, saner, more organized, then my life would calm down. It would be more boring, but I thought that it would be worth it. To my surprise (rather like when I stopped flirting and discovered that I got more attention from guys, not less), as I learned to refuse to generate Drama, to allow life to be what it is without trying to make it any more or less than reality, the drama did not abate. Instead, the character changed, from interior angst over real or perceived situations (oh, the unrequited crush!) to the need to respond to exterior situations (my roommate has liver cancer, this guy keeps paying attention to me, he won’t go away, I’m not sure that I want him to, and meanwhile he keeps doing these things that impact me). I ran into a dilema. How do I live a dramatic life if Drama is a kind of character defect?
Recently I came to a realization that no matter how much I might try to stifle the drama, it’s not going to go away. This is who I am, my reality. The dramatic character of my life is part of being fully the person that God created me to be. As long as I am not creating the drama, I can embrace it as part of God’s will for my everyday life. There is nothing inherently virtuous about living a boring life.
Soon after reaching this conclusion, I was introduced to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s concept of Theo-drama, his answer to the age old question of predestination versus free will (which I will not go into here). He offers the metaphor of the stage to model how God’s omnipotence intersects with grace and our personal choices. He says that it is as if we are all actors performing a play which is written, directed, and produced (Divine Providence) by God. In this play we are given lines to speak and specific actions to perform, whispered to us moment by moment by the Holy Spirit, the Divine Prompter. The audience we are performing for is God Himself, and He acts along with us in the person of Jesus Christ. Each of us has the choice of how we are going to perform our roles. We must choose whether or not we will speak the lines and perform the actions given us, and how we will perform them. Will it be grudgingly, or with our whole hearts? What interpretation will we give our role? How much will we become the role given us? The saints, he says, “are the authentic interpreter of theo-drama. Their knowledge, lived out in dramatic existence, must be regarded as setting a standard of interpretation…” (Theo-Drama Book 2, p.14, quoted in Pattern of Redemption by Edward T. Oakes, p. 225).
In reflecting on this, I began to see a new way of looking at my dramatic life. As I live the life that God has given me, responding to the situations He has placed me in and the relationships He has called me to, I am performing my part to the best of my ability. By embracing this reality I am really embracing God’s will for me, the role He has given me to act out for His glory. If I am constantly responding to the Holy Spirit as He prompts me in my part, my life can be, not Drama, but Theo-Drama. May He enjoy the performance.
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