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Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff writer

From his perspective working in two presidential cabinets to running a news and opinion website, Bill Kristol believes the center, when it comes to political discourse, is more resilient than people think.

For Week Three’s theme, “Can the Center Hold? — A Question for Our Moment,” Kristol, editor-at-large at The Bulwark, will answer this question and explore its political meanings in his lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. 

There, he’ll “talk about the ways in which the center has held, more than people might have expected,” he said. 

The week’s theme draws its title from a 1920 William Butler Yeats poem, “The Second Coming,” written in a moment when the center wasn’t holding.

“We had a terrible 25 years in Europe (in the ‘20s),” Kristol said. “In a way, you could also argue it did hold for decades in the last half of the 20th century and during the Cold War. … We managed to make progress.”

When there’s no longer a strong political center — which Kristol said Americans are seeing now — there’s a lot of back and forth between Congress and the political parties.

At a meeting in Berlin, Kristol said there was urging from younger Europeans to “count on the U.S. helping Ukraine,” but he said it all depends on the 2024 presidential election.

“When you have real polarization, it’s very hard to have a consistent foreign policy for more than four years,” he said.

Political polarization is even worse with domestic policy, he said. People often stick with their party regardless of ramifications.

“We’re seeing in our politics, in real time, not just normal partisanship … it’s really much worse,” Kristol said. “The real tribalism (is) where you excuse everything on your side and attack everything on the other side.”

Kristol had his own “falling out” with the Republican Party when he opposed Donald Trump’s nomination for president in 2016.

“The reasons I feared and disliked him were the reasons that came to light as he was president,” he said. “Afterwards, on Jan. 6, I think this is one of the cases where I don’t regret my decision at all.”

People who were skeptical of Kristol’s criticism before Trump’s presidency are now under the “degree of damage” with Trump and his followers’ “toxic populism.”

“The character of our politics today — which already had problems — had been made much worse by Trump as the nominee,” he said. 

While the Republican Party isn’t entirely “pro-Trump,” Kristol said the party wasn’t willing to challenge Trump. 

“They won’t call him out when he’s breaking the law,” he said. “That’s not a very healthy party.”

Having worked in politics most of his life, Kristol said knowing the “contingency of things” helped him in his journalism career.

“It’s harder to make the right political decision sometimes,” he said. “(The Russian invasion of Ukraine) was a complicated decision. I think being in politics gave me a sense of the complexity of political choices.”

In his capacity as a journalist, Kristol said he gained experience in “influential, intelligent commentary” editing The Bulwark. 

“My influence in government, I hope, (helps readers understand) the sense of the difficulty of making these choices in politics and government,” he said. “Not just saying, ‘Oh, that (choice) was foolish.’ ”

Sara Toth
Editor

When was the last time, the Rev. Lakisha R. Lockhart asked, you played?

“I want you to just to take a moment, and I want you to imagine and just really go back to the last time you played — the last time you actually played; not on accident, when you did it on purpose,” Lockhart opened her lecture last Thursday in the Hall of Philosophy. 

Take a minute, go back to that place, she said. What were you doing?

Lockhart spoke as part of the Interfaith Lecture Series and the theme “A Spirit of Play.” Lockhart, an assistant professor of Christian education at Union Presbyterian  Seminary, focuses her research on religious education; practical, liberation and Womanist theologies; ethics and society; multiple intelligences; embodied faith and pedagogies; theological aesthetics’ theopoetics; and, perhaps most importantly, creativity, imagination and play. As she put it last Thursday, she believes in the combination of theory and practice. For her lecture, she wore a shirt emblazoned with the words “Stop Rescheduling Joy.”

Lockhart’s thinking on play comes from “a lot of different places,” she said. She cited Johan Huizinga, a Dutch philosopher who wrote about the culture of play in his book, Homo Lundens — literally, humans who play.

“It’s this beautiful space — it is cultural, it can be cultural, because we all play in different ways,” Lockhart said. In those differences, people can learn from each other, because the ways we play aren’t actually different at all. 

To illustrate this, Lockhart asked her audience to think of the nursery rhyme “Miss Mary Mack.” She didn’t even sing it; just asked Chautauquans to think of it.

“We just had a similar experience, because I didn’t even sing the song — even though I saw you singing it in your head,” she said. “We have a similar experience. And even though we might have different ways of understanding it, we were still able to find a commonality. That’s part of what play can do.”

Like Rabbi Michael Shire the day before her, Lockhart drew on Jerome Berryman, the founder of the concept of Godly Play, and coupled him with English psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, who conceptualized the idea of a “true” self and a “false” self.

Play, Lockhart argued, brings about that true self. It creates a space that allows people to live authentically, because it creates a world of possibility.

“We can imagine how we want to show up, who we want to be, and then maybe start putting that into practice,” she said. “It’s this beautiful way of trying on things in a more low-stakes way. But then we still get to see how it works. … This often works really, really well especially for young people, because they’re still figuring out, identity-wise, who they are, what they’re trying to be. … But also, I just think as adults, we should always continue to play. It just makes us better people.”

There’s a duality, Lockhart said, especially in theological spaces, that tends to separate the mind and the body. Like bell hooks, Lockhart argues that the two should go together: “Our body needs our mind, and our mind needs our body.” 

Play, Lockhart said, “is an embodied aesthetic experience and cultural expression. It’s part of what makes us human. It is the ontology of being.”

Humans are naturally playful; but taking an epistemological view, “it is the way we come to know the world.” Further, how we play and how we show up in our play “tells us a lot about who we are, and how we have been formed in our lives, in or faith, in what we think of God,” she said.

The space one creates for play, mental wellness, and self-love, Lockhart said, speaks to the commitment to the survival of, and the flourishing of, everyone. Or, as Fannie Lou Hamer put it, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

This thinking has been key to Lockhart’s framing of Womanism, in which play is key, and in her Biblical framing.

“I find the Bible to be very playful,” she said. “I literally cackle when I read the Bible, I promise you; this is my blessing.”

From God creating a giraffe — “Who ever would have thought to making a giraffe? I mean, have you ever really thought about a hippo?” — to images like Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt, there is a spirit of playfulness deeply embedded in a deeply serious text. 

“As a Black woman, the fact for me as a Christian, knowing that Christ came in bodily form, means something,” she said. “The fact that it was about flesh and body means that my body matters, and that my flesh matters, and that I need to do something. How do I care for it? How do I tend to it?”

Part of that care, that divine intentionally, should be a sense of both play, and of rest. 

Lockhart took the audience through a game of Red Light, Green Light, but centered around questions of their lives — whether you’re at “Green Light” moments, when things are going wonderfully to plan, or “Red Light” moments when you realized something wasn’t quite working the way you’d like Lockhart said the opportunities within the game can be applied to more serious reflection, “so it doesn’t feel so harsh.”

“Hopefully, as we (wrap up our time here), maybe you want to play more,” Lockhart said. “Maybe now you can maybe think of a place or two to start, but that you will do it on purpose and not just by accident — and that you know it’s OK to do it on purpose, even if you have a plan a little bit of it to start with. You’ll get there and it’s wonderful and it’s amazing. … No matter what, invite other people to play with you, My hope is that you will go and play on purpose.”

Column by Mary Lee Talbot

“Because we believe we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, because we believe, we can testify and we must testify,” said the Rev. Neal D. Presa at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “And What Then, and For What?” The scripture reading was from Numbers 6: 22-27, the Aaronic blessing. 

Presa described the world as a place that needs healing words, the ancient words from the Judeo-Christian faiths. This world included a downcast teenager, confronting the future with sadness, rather than joy and energy. There was an older woman whose medicine cabinet “keeps being filled with round plastic cylinders accumulated at great cost,” and believes she does not have long to live. 

There was also a mother with all her belongings in a bag, with a baby in her arms and a child at her side. She tries to give them security but is stopped (at the border) and has to wait, and wait and wait. “There is war in Ukraine and we just celebrated Independence Day in the ‘Divided States of America,’ ” Presa said. “The grass withers and worlds fade away, but the word of God stands and we need to tap the wellspring of our Judeo-Christian faith with healing words for a hurting world.”

Presa shared a story about British Prime Minister William Gladstone. The son of one of Gladstone’s friends came for advice on his career plans. The young man planned to study at Oxford, become a prominent barrister, stand for parliament, rise to a cabinet post and eventually become prime minister. At every point in his planned journey, Gladstone would ask the young man, “and then?” 

The young man allowed that he would one day be forced to retire and then expected to die. Gladstone asked, “and what then?” The young man had no reply. Gladstone told him: “Go home and think your life through to its end.”

“And what then? We say a benediction at the end of a service. We say goodbye, which means God go with you,” Presa said. “What if we would live with the ending at the beginning, with the ending always in sight? What if we offer ‘God be with you’ from the get go?”

He continued, “Eat dessert first. Most of the time we live from point to point, place to place. We reach 90 years and what then? We should start the day with the benediction, the good word, the blessing.”

The Aaronic blessing, the blessing that came while Israel was in the desert, was a reminder that God was with them. Told in stories and dramatized in worship, the blessing reminded them of being God’s beloved community. 

This blessing was not a “last word” but carried through the struggles, sweat and tears of Israel. 

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace,” Presa said, repeating the blessing. 

He continued, “The Lord’s name is stamped on God’s people. When this blessing is pronounced, it means ‘I am the Lord your God, you are my people. I have your back.’  We say to each other, ‘You and I belong to God, to one another, you matter to the Lord God Almighty, you are a precious child of God, you are loved and created in the image of the Lord God Almighty.’ ”

William Gladstone’s father was one of the largest slave holders in Britain. Gladstone advocated for compensation for slave holders when enslaved people were freed. He also advocated for gradual release of enslaved people, to educate them and give them apprenticeships. At the end of his life, he said that the abolition of slavery was one of the 10 greatest achievements of the previous 60 years where the masses were right and the upper classes wrong.

The phrase “and what then?” goes to the purpose of our lives, Presa told the congregation. “To say ‘God bless you and keep you’ is to testify to God’s love and grace, but it is not prosperity just for the sake of prosperity. We are blessed to be a blessing to others,” he said. 

“In our family, we believe we are blessed with food so that we can help others. We have a home to shelter us and to extend hospitality, an education to use our minds, work to lift the downtrodden and advocate for the disempowered,” Presa said. “It is work to pray that all people will flourish.”

He continued, “I travel a lot, and at every hotel I leave a note with a blessing and a gratuity for the household staff. I bless them and tell them I appreciate their service.”

Presa invited the congregation to stand and raise their arms wide open and slightly uplifted. He said, “This is an ancient stance of blessing. We are inviting the Holy Spirit to come. ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace.’ ”

The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua Institution, presided. Amy Gardner, vice president for advancement at Chautauqua Institution, read the scripture. The prelude, “Prelude, Fugue, and Chaccone,” BuxWV 137, by Dietrich Buxtehude, was performed by Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar. The anthem, sung a cappella by the Chautauqua Choir under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, was “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” music by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, arranged by Arthur Becker and words from Psalm 102. Stafford directed and Stigall accompanied the Chautauqua Choir in the offertory anthem “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” music by Craig Phillips and words from Matthew 5: 3-12. The postlude was “Toccata,” by John Weaver, played by Stafford on the Massey Memorial Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Edmond E. Robb-Walter C. Shaw Fund and the Randall-Hall Memorial Chaplaincy.

Sarah Russo
Staff Writer

Not only does Chautauqua County hold a special place for singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant as a Jamestown native – Chautauqua Institution was the first exposure she had to orchestral music.

She said it is a “thrill” to be able to perform again on the same stage, for the first time in 10 years, that she admired as a child.

“My mother would take me to the symphony all the time,” Merchant said. “Just sitting on those yellow benches, my little heart exploding with emotion … from the time I was 7 ‘til probably 20.”

Under the baton of Principal Pops Conductor Stuart Chafetz, Merchant will join the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amp.

Released in April, Merchant’s newest album, Keep Your Courage, features many songs with orchestral arrangements. And Merchant is no stranger to orchestras. She played her first show like this back in 2008 with the Boston Symphony and has since performed nearly 80 shows with orchestras. 

Merchant said she wants to be “faithful to the record” and perform with symphonies as much as possible. And when she’s not doing that, she’s performing with her own string quartet. 

When she was 17 and a student at Jamestown Community College, Merchant joined a band that went on to become 10,000 Maniacs. The group released four top 50 albums before Merchant left in 1995 to begin a solo career, which has included numerous accolades and awards including Billboard Hot 100 hits and multiple platinum records. But she said it has all led up to this moment and, Keep Your Courage, her eighth studio album, might be the best work she’s done yet.

“I feel like this album and this tour is the culmination of 40 years of experience as a songwriter, as a recording artist, as a performer,” Merchant said. “I feel like I’m kind of at the height of my skills. … I still have lots of energy and vitality.”

Saturday’s performance will feature new songs from Keep Your Courage and “gorgeous arrangements” played by the CSO. Merchant hopes the audience will be inspired by the program. 

“Even if people are familiar with the material, I think the way that the arrangements are constructed, there are just many passages that are just achingly beautiful,” Merchant said. “If you do know the music, then the combination of the words and the music will be very moving.”

Deborah Sunya Moore, senior vice president and chief program officer at Chautauqua, said Merchant’s cerebral approach to songwriting should appeal to Chautauquans.

“She’s just a perfect match for Chautauqua: A really sensitive songwriter, a beautiful musician and someone that’s also very committed to social justice, making the world a better place,” Moore said. “Hearing that all on stage is going to be spectacular.”

While the set list for the performance is a surprise, Moore said songs from Keep Your Courage, such as “Sister Tilly,” showcases the singer-songwriter’s thoughtful approach, encouraging concertgoers to “think beyond ourselves, to think about what they went through for us and how we live that out and how we can celebrate their lives.”

In 2018, while Merchant was in London, she was diagnosed with a degenerative spinal disease and needed to have emergency surgery. The six-hour operation involved making an incision below her throat and shunting her vocal cords to the side while surgeons removed three bones from her spine. Once Merchant was awake from the surgery, she discovered she could no longer sing.

 “It took me to a place of panic,” Merchant told The Guardian in an interview in April. “It made me wish I had made more records.”

Luckily for Merchant, singing has become just one of many passions in her life. She has also worked for more than three years fighting fracking across New York State and made a protest film about it. Merchant also spent a full year working on domestic violence issues in the Hudson Valley, producing and directing a film about that as well. She also curated a 10-disc box set and recorded a collection of songs based on old poems. 

Through it all, she has been raising her teenage daughter as a single mother. Writing new music and touring was not necessarily at the top of her to-do list. 

“The reason I didn’t do a lot of original writing was I require a lot of solitude and usually in a very foul mood,” Merchant said. “When I have to write, it takes just a lot of focus, and I have to put myself into a self-induced trance to really do the kind of writing that I want to do. Once my daughter was off to college, I had the time and space to both write the record and record it and now tour.”

During the pandemic, when Merchant wasn’t able to sing, a close friend gave her a book of narrative poetry called The Long Take by Scottish poet Robin Robertson.

“I remember opening the book, reading the first chapter and writing to him immediately,” Merchant told The Guardian. “I then sent him a copy of my box set, he sent me some of his other books, and I just fell in love with language again.” 

Soon after, Merchant regained her voice, and she began to write again, penning songs inspired by those conversations with Robertson. 

Focused on love in many forms, the songs on Keep Your Courage combine traditional folk with chamber pop, orchestration and soul.

“It’s almost as if I have to invent a new word to describe the music on this album,” Merchant told The Guardian. “I don’t even know what to call it.”

Moore said Saturday’s performance will impart a valuable message, particularly during a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is still affecting people, who may still be processing its emotional effects.

“When I think of Keep Your Courage, I think it’s a message of strength and courage,” she said. “ … It is a message of love.” 

The universal language of music, paired with Merchant’s lyrics, allow her to speak volumes, Moore said. Merchant’s songs are something to be cherished and listened to with a close ear and open mind.

“With artists like Natalie, she draws us to really look … and own where we are broken, and own where we are hurt and encourages us to lift ourselves out of that,” Moore said. “So many of her songs are about acknowledging where we are and encouraging us to meet each other there, and then encouraging us to lift each other out of that with love and connection.” 

While Merchant is visiting her native Chautauqua County, she will also be meeting nominees for the YWCA’s Women of Achievement awards, which recognize women who have demonstrated extraordinary achievements throughout their career and community involvement.

Deborah Trefts
Staff Writer

When Forbes chose Scarlett Lewis as one of its inaugural 2021 class of  “50 Over 50,” she had by then already accrued more than 20 meaningful awards in a very short period. At least six were awarded in 2019 alone.

When she was named to the list of outstanding female social entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists and creators making their biggest impact after the age of 50, she had garnered several honors many Chautauquans hold in particularly high esteem.

For example, for her work as an architect of change, Lewis earned the Common Ground Award and Hero of Forgiveness honor in 2014; the Character and Courage Award in 2018; the Global Presence Humanitarian, Charles Eliot, and Mindful Family awards in 2019; the Unsung Hero and Peace Hero awards in 2020.

At 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy, as part of the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum series, Lewis will present a talk titled, “Choose Love Movement: Be Part of the Solution.”

Many people living well beyond the borders of Connecticut can recall where they were on Dec. 14, 2012, when they first heard of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

As can Lewis, each and every day since, because her 6-year-old son, Jesse, along with 19 other first-graders and six educators, were murdered during the deadliest of America’s ongoing epidemic of school shootings.

Jesse had yelled “RUN!” to his classmates when there was a pause in the shooting.

Lewis understood, and rapidly began embodying, the spirit of the words that her little boy had written, phonetically, on their kitchen chalkboard a few days earlier: “Norurting Helinn Love” — Nurturing Healing Love.

It is this message – personifying the saying, “Out of the mouths of babes!” – that she has been spreading throughout the United States and the world for more than a decade.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if my son hadn’t been murdered,” Lewis said. “I’m taking responsibility for my own life, and community and service. It’s so important.”

It is probable that she also wouldn’t be doing this had she not spent over two decades immersing herself in challenging jobs, situations and life experiences.  

In 1990, Lewis earned a bachelor’s degree in communications at Boston University because she wanted to be a journalist. She said she loved writing, and she started out as the editorial assistant and assignment writer at the Greenwich Times Newspaper in Greenwich, Connecticut.

“Because my dad was always talking to me about needing to support myself,” she left the paper and went to work in the municipal arbitrage department of Greenwich Capital Markets.

“My dad was there, after he worked for Solomon Brothers,” she said. “He created this department, and he said, ‘I’ve done well with this and you’ll be able to support yourself.’ (The work) was fascinating.”

Lewis decided to move from Greenwich to Fayetteville, in northwest Arkansas – where she’d been born and many in her extended family still lived – to join Llama, an investment company founded in 1988 by Alice Walton.

As it happens, her grandfather – Herbert “Buck” Lewis – was the bank president who gave Alice Walton’s father, Walmart founder Sam Walton, his first loan of $50,000.

“While I was there, I opened the municipal arbitration desk and worked on the sales desk,” Lewis said. “I worked on the trading desk buying bonds so the traders could sell them to their clients.”

When she was still a “20-something,” she then began working in Llama’s investment banking department. Tasked with translating concepts to audiences distrustful of an investment firm, she said the concepts were complex for her, but she knew they were meaningful.

First, however, Llama put her through Dale Carnegie’s professional development training.

“My boss would send me out into the smaller communities to community events,” she said. “(Bonds are used) to finance public improvement projects and schools. I held public forums one week before the vote. I would go through the benefits, reasoning and numbers, and answer questions. I made some friendships, but it was way outside my comfort zone.”

Preferring to be closer to her mother and three brothers, who all lived in Connecticut, Lewis moved north to cover the New England territory for OptiMark Technologies, a company developing a super-computer driven, anonymous and confidential – “black box” – trading system.

In 1998, “in the middle of nowhere,” Lewis found a small farm and farmhouse the back way, driving down a dirt road in northern Connecticut.  

“An inspector pointed out what needed work,” she said. “My mom said the house has been standing since before the founding of America. … My stepfather was a real estate agent. I just knew it was going to be mine, but … I needed to get the finance in order. Then someone with a trust fund bought it with cash, and I flung myself on my bed.”

A month later, said Lewis, the sale fell through because the trust would not release the cash. There was a bidding war, she paid $1,000 more than the other person, and the little farmhouse in Sandy Hook was hers.

“I just had to have that house,” Lewis said. “Then, after the murder – (I thought) if I hadn’t gotten that house, my son wouldn’t have been murdered. But, I don’t do that; I don’t go there.”

As the sole provider for Jesse and his brother, JT, and the owner of a farm with horses and dogs, she was “always on the move.” While she worked as an executive assistant, she wrote Rosie’s Foal, published in 2009 about a horse with a newborn foal.

After being told that Jesse was not one of the children who had survived the mass shooting at the elementary school, Lewis said she sat on her mother’s couch for three days.

“The pain was so great I thought I would die, that I would dissolve,” she said.

Soon after the tragedy, a woman came to talk with Lewis. She wanted to share her experience as a mother whose son had died.

“I literally put my hand up and said, ‘Please stop. It’s good you survived,’ ” she said. “ ‘But your experience isn’t going to be mine.’ ”

Lewis said she felt there was no road map for what lay ahead, not only for herself, but also for how she could guide her 12-year-old surviving son. She knew she needed to take the reins and determine what would happen next, choosing joy.

“I saw a lot of very angry people,” she said. “I didn’t want to model that for my son.”

I had been “sitting on the couch realizing that I had no fear,” Lewis said. “I couldn’t think of things that could be worse. I lived through it. What do you fear as a parent? That your child could be killed.” 

She realized she couldn’t go forward in the same way she had before, making decisions out of fear.

“I went into the bond market when I wanted to be a journalist,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m not going to do that anymore.’ ”

Upon returning home, Lewis saw the message “Norurting Helinn Love” in Jesse’s first-grade handwriting.  

“ ‘Nurturing healing love’ is the solution for nearly all of society’s ills,” she said. “It addresses the root cause of really all of society’s problems. Yes, there are fires that we have to put out, but we’re focusing on the problems.”

Continuing, she said, “I decided to focus on their root cause. Pain is there for a reason. It helps us grow and be stronger. … (Yet) we have to give kids the skills to manage pain and turn it into something good.”

For Lewis, there were 28 victims rather than 26. She includes the 20-year-old shooter, and his mother, who had given him his gun.

“She was a single mom working with a special-needs kid with no help,” Lewis said. “I had a similar situation. I was a single mom with a kid with trauma. She paid for her sins with four shots to her face before (her son) left home. Blaming someone else takes you off the hook, and it makes no progress.”

According to Lewis, the most important thing she did was to take responsibility. Although she was criticized for doing so, she said that the act of taking responsibility enables that person to be part of the solution.

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” Lewis said. “Good people and good people in pain. No one is born a mass murderer.”

The words “monster” and “evil” are often heard after a mass shooting. “But the person isn’t a monster or evil,” Lewis countered. “What they did is monstrous and evil. What these young people are doing is in response to pain.”

She wants others to see that side of humanity because “everyone wants to be safe, seen, and celebrated.”

Having gone out of her way to talk with school shooters, Lewis realized that “they were failed.” One shooter told her, “I would leave a room and wonder if anyone knew that I was there.”

Lewis likened neuroscience research findings about thoughts and words, and Mahatma Gandhi’s famous statement:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,

Your thoughts become your words,

Your words become your actions,

Your actions become your habits,

Your habits become your values,

Your values become your destiny.” 

For her, “It all goes back to Jesse’s nurturing, healing message. … All school shootings are preventable. … No kid wants to be so freaking miserable that they want to attack others.”

Within a month of Jesse’s murder, Lewis began founding a nonprofit organization that she named the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement. Initially, she shared this message in response to the outpouring of letters she received. It has been spreading by word of mouth ever since.  

To mark the 10th year since the Sandy Hook massacre, John Moritz wrote in the Connecticut Insider in December about Lewis’ reaction to an especially memorable letter from a professor who had studied school shootings for more than 20 years.

“I used to carry the letter around with me everywhere I went,” Lewis said. “It said that, after all these years of research, he had summed it up that if an individual or a child received 15 minutes of a caring adult being present with them, really present in the moment and really caring about that child, and that child felt it, (then) that child would be OK. I love that because I think that I’ve come to the same conclusion.”

The intergenerational social and emotional learning and character development programs created through Choose Love Movement are being taught in more than 10,000 U.S. schools and in 120 countries.

Moreover, they are provided for free. Lewis said that the cost per student per year is only about 25 cents, and is being covered by “beautiful people who donate to our program.” 

Courses are now also being offered for prisons, police departments and government agencies.

Lewis has written extensively about her research, experiences, and educational concept in: Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother’s Journey of Hope & Forgiveness, From Sandy Hook to the World: How the Choose Love Movement Transforms Lives, and Choosing Love: A Pathway to Flourishing. 

On Saturday, Lewis will talk about the Choose Love Formula and explain how Chautauquans can become part of the solution to school shootings and many other devastating societal ills. The reason she has received numerous outstanding awards will become readily apparent.

Mary Lee Talbot
Staff Writer

“Our world is hurting and I want to offer ways the scriptures describe blessings from God,” said the Rev. Neal D. Presa, who will serve as chaplain at Chautauqua for Week Three. “No matter what people are struggling with, we can trust in God who abides in us. And as we bless others, God blesses that action too.” This is Presa’s first visit to Chautauqua.

Presa will preach at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon series is titled “Healing Words for a Hurting World: Blessings/Benedictions,” and the Sunday sermon is titled “And What Then, And For What?” 

His sermons will use readings from Hebrew scriptures for three sermons and Christian scriptures for three sermons. He will preach at the 9:15 a.m. Monday through Friday morning worship services in the Amp, and his sermon titles include “Selah,” “Control+Alt+Delete/Command+Shift+ESC,” “Hello,” “God is Able” and “Here But Not Yet.” 

Presa recently attended the World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The world is hurting. In our own country we have a mental health crisis, polarization, violence and a media that accelerates the volume and velocity of the pain,” he said. “I was glad at the WCC Central Committee meeting that we could express solidarity with so many hurting places. The world is so fragile.”

He continued, “There is a balm in Gilead; there is a timeless good word and benediction. We can adopt the ancient wisdom, the ageless wisdom, for ourselves and all of us. Even at Chautauqua, this wisdom can be an agent of healing.”

Presa is a Filipino/Pacific Islander/American pastor and theologian of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) serving remotely as the vice president of student affairs and vocational outreach and associate professor of preaching and worship at New Brunswick Theological Seminary at the New Jersey and New York sites.

Additionally, he holds concurrent appointments as affiliate associate professor of preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary; senior visiting professor of pastoral ministry and leadership at Union Theological Seminary in Dasmariñas, Philippines; adjunct professor of practical theology at the International Theological Seminary in West Covina, California; and a fellow of The Center for Pastor Theologians. For two decades, he served pastorates in New Jersey and California.

As a national and global ecumenical leader, he presently serves on both the Central Committee and Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, where he is the moderator of the finance policy committee and serves on the Strategic Planning Advisory Group to the General Secretary. He is the co-vice chair of the current round of bilateral dialogues between The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He was the convener of the Caribbean and North American Area Council for both the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

He is the immediate past chair of the board of trustees of the Presbyterian Foundation, the oldest religious philanthropic foundation with $2 billion in assets under management and annually disbursing about $93 million to support mission and ministries in the United States and around the world. In 2012, he was elected the moderator of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

He is the author/editor of nine books and many book chapters and essays, including the forthcoming Worship, Justice, and Joy: A Liturgical Pilgrimage from Cascade Books.

He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in philosophy from Drew University; a master’s degree in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary; a master’s degree in divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary; a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Davis; and a graduate certificate in project management from Missouri State University. He is a candidate for the master of professional studies at Missouri State University.

He and his family live in Carlsbad, California. His wife and two sons will accompany him to Chautauqua.

Mariia Novoselia
Staff Writer

What do you get when you mix science and comedy? Kaboom! Or, Doktor Kaboom!, that is.

“Doktor Kaboom! is a German scientist who has an over-the-top passion for both the subject and the audience,” said David Epley, who created the character more than a decade ago with a mission to change the way people view science. 

He will perform a comedic routine full of science demonstrations at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the Amphitheater as part of the Family Entertainment Series. 

Epley said his shows always include “a lot of character-driven improvisation” and interaction between the exuberant Doktor and the audience. One of the props – or scientific utensils, if you will – that Doktor Kaboom! will employ in his show is a vortex generator that used to be a 55-gallon drum. Another, which he calls his favorite experiment, involves a catapult, testing the hypothesis that “the catapult was not invented for war, but as a way to feed people.”

To test it, as with many of his experiments, he invites a child onstage. Making them “the hero of the moment” is how Epley implements personal empowerment into his shows. 

“I look for any opportunity to teach children to speak well of themselves, to think well of themselves and to understand that science is for everybody,” he said.

Epley said he had initially made a promise not to do routines that he thought were “too common.” Yet, he soon realized a significant number of people have not seen “the most basic of science demonstrations” they have read about them, but not carried the experiments out themselves. This, he said, may be because “culturally, we believe that science is only for certain people,” which is damaging. While some may believe that science is hard, Epley disagrees. He said it takes effort. 

“We’ve started thinking … as things have become easier and easier, that if we have to work at something that means it’s difficult. … I think that just means it’s worth doing,” he said.

The props Dr. Kaboom! uses in his shows are all made by the doctor himself, by hand. One of Epley’s ambitions is to make people want to redo the experiments on their own. 

“Science is like Shakespeare – it’s not meant to be read; it’s meant to be done,” he said.

Through interactions on Facebook, where he usually connects with audiences after his shows, Epley said he has learned that a lot of children and their parents try out his experiments, with some creating their own routines and others dressing up as Dr. Kaboom! for Halloween.  

One of the features that makes Dr. Kaboom! stand out is his German accent. Epley said when he first began performing 16 years ago, he wanted the character to be “bigger than life,” more memorable than Epley himself. 

Nothing “jumped out as energetic and huge” as a German-sounding scientist, he said. Since that time, countless exclamations of “Ja!” and “Kaboom!” are an indispensable part of his show.     

Epley said Dr. Kaboom! was inspired by three people: 1950s kids’ TV host Mr. Wizard, Mister Rogers who, taught people “how to be decent human beings, or how to remember to be human beings,” and his high-school physics professor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.  

It was there where Epley nurtured his passion for science with a bit of whimsy, since the campus had the internet “before the internet” and the mascot was a unicorn.

Being Dr. Kaboom! and teaching science through comedy has been the most fulfilling work he has ever done.

Just like science, comedy is also for everyone, not just for kids.

“I will make sure that everybody who comes to my show will laugh and learn something,” Epley said.

Alton Northup
Staff Writer

In the 8th grade, when asked to write a paper on what he wanted to do in life, Will Shortz chose professional puzzle-making. And while the career choice puzzled his teachers and classmates, for Shortz, the clues were always there.

“I wrote that it would be a life of ease,” he said. “I would just sit back and make my little puzzles.”

Shortz, who sold his first professional puzzle at 14 years old, is celebrating 30 years as the The New York Times crossword editor this year. He shared his love of crosswords and the history of the puzzles at 10:45 a.m. Friday in the Amphitheater to close the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Two theme, “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastime.”

Shortz ended up with a B+ on that essay and decided to explore other career options during high school, including disc jockey and mathematician. Despite the lack of degree programs for puzzle-making, every path he took led him back to his childhood dream. 

Luckily, his mother discovered Indiana University’s individualized major program. He developed his own course work consisting of 20th-century American puzzles, crossword construction and the psychology of puzzles. His 100-page thesis was on the history of American word puzzles before 1860.

“This had been my dream … and now I found I could do it,” he said. 

Upon graduation, Shortz became the first, and only, person to hold a college degree in enigmatology, or the study of puzzles.

The history of crosswords is another of Shortz’s obsessions. He owns the largest collection of puzzle paraphernalia in the world, including pieces dating back to 1545. But the modern crossword dates back 110 years.

Arthur Wynne, an editor for the New York World, introduced what he called a “Word-Cross Puzzle” in the Dec. 21, 1913, Sunday “Fun” section.

By the third week, Wynne changed the name to crossword. As they became a weekly fixture of the paper, the puzzles developed a “crank,” or eccentric, following.

In 1924, two Columbia University graduates, Richard Simon and Max Schuster, were looking for books to publish. Following a suggestion from a relative, the two approached the New York World puzzle editors and walked away with 75 unpublished puzzles.

Simon and Schuster published the collection of puzzles in April of that year; the first printing of 3,500 copies sold out. By the end of the year, the publishers’ three crossword books ranked No. 1, 2 and 3 on the national non-fiction bestseller list. 

Shortz now owns the very first copy of that crossword book, which includes an inscription by Simon and Schuster thanking Simon’s father for his investment in their firm. The inscription ends saying they are “ushering in the crossword puzzle era” together.

“Everybody was talking about crosswords in the 1920s,” Shortz said.

As publications started pumping the puzzles out, one big player abstained – The New York Times. The ’20s were full of crazes, Shortz said, and the publication saw crosswords as no more than a fad.

“The Times thought crosswords were beneath them; they didn’t do cartoons,” he said. “They actually ran an editorial decrying the popularity of crosswords, saying they were a childish pastime.”

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an editor for the paper conceded that the puzzle deserved a spot in the paper as a distraction from the hard news of the war. The first crossword in the Times ran on Sunday, Feb. 15, 1942. 

“One of the reasons we do puzzles is to put the world in order,” Shortz said. “Most of life’s problems don’t have solutions; we just muddle through and do the best we can. With a crossword, there is one perfect solution.”

The paper hired Margaret Farrar, who was co-editor of the original Simon and Schuster puzzle books, as editor. From the start, Shortz said, the Times set a new standard of quality for crosswords. 

Making a crossword is simple: The diagram must be symmetrical and every square has to be a cross answer or a down answer. Two-letter words and repeat words are not allowed and the words need to be real.

What makes a good crossword, Shortz said, is having a good vocabulary full of interesting phrases. Lively clues also keep a puzzle fresh and entertaining for readers.

Though some of his favorite crosswords, he admits, are the ones that break the rules. In 1996, the Times ran an election day crossword where the clue was the winner of the election; both candidates’ last names worked as the answer.

President Bill Clinton was an avid crossword player; he told Shortz he played as many as three puzzles per day while on the campaign trail. During a timed session with the editor, in the middle of which Clinton answered a phone call, the former president solved a crossword in just 6 minutes and 54 seconds.

For the past 110 years, people of all ages and backgrounds, even the president, have started their day the exact same way.

“We live in an age now where more people than ever use their brains to make a living,” Shortz said. “… If you’re using your brain all day to work, when you’re done, you want to use your brain to play.”

Julia Weber
Staff Writer

The first New Play Workshop of this summer season embodies one of Chautauqua Institution’s most treasured values: connection.

Proximity explores that theme and other related common threads found in playwright Harrison David Rivers’ past works.

“I’m really interested in intimacy and closeness and connection and so this play, I think, hits the nail on the head,” he said.

Performances are set for 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, and at 7:30 p.m. Sunday in Bratton Theater.

In past years, Chautauqua Theater Company has historically opened with a mainstage production. This year, with the continued support of the Roe Green Foundation and under the direction of Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll, CTC brings Proximity – a play inspired by a conversation between Rivers and a friend from college – to the stage for the first of three New Play Workshops before launching performance runs of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice and Mike Lew’s tiny father. This year, additional matinee performances of mainstage productions are set for 11:30 a.m. during their runs.

This weekend is the first time CTC Conservatory Actors and Guest Artists take the stage; Proximity is a romantic comedy that contemplates and explores the social impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown. 

A newly divorced mother of two, Ezra, played by CTC Guest Artist Lori Laing, meets another parent, Irie, played by fellow Guest Artist Kalyne Coleman, at a virtual PTA meeting. As Ezra searches for connection in an increasingly isolating world, she begins to reevaluate her isolation bubble.

Laing said she looked to the mothers in her life for inspiration in her role, examining how they interact with, support and use their creativity with their children.

“ … It means a lot to me to be playing Ezra because I want to do them justice,” she said. “I know how dynamic they are as individuals and how even more dynamic they are marrying that former individuality with who they are as a mother now.”

Coleman said Chautauqua’s grounds and quiet environment are a source of inspiration that has helped her hone her craft. 

“Because Chautauqua is so beautiful and so peaceful and so free, I feel like it invites me to be free within my process, it invites me to just get down to the truth of the thing,” she said. “I think that’s something that makes this experience so different because of what we’re walking out into – it invites more play and more freedom.”

Rivers said the play will undoubtedly resonate with all who were, are and will continue to be impacted by the pandemic.

“I think it is very specific – it’s mining the specific, mining the intimate, the small, for some sort of larger universal meaning, truth, revelation,” Rivers said. “For me, a lot of the best writing right now is tiny. It’s a moment and the way in which that moment cracks people open in a huge way and causes a shift or a change.”

To Rivers, the agency he’s been given in shaping the direction of Proximity has been one of the most valuable attributes of the New Play Workshop. 

“The best thing about the process so far is how much trust has been given to me as the lead artist in the room to proceed with this workshop in whatever way I feel is best for the play and for myself,” he said. 

Rivers said he’s also found the wealth of experience and perspective the cast brings to Proximity to be tremendously valuable, along with the grounds of the Institution as an inspirational component.

“This is a great place to be thinking about storytelling and artmaking and the impact that that could have on the world,” he said. “The venue itself, the location and the way that it’s been set up, it just sort of breeds creativity.”

Coleman said she hopes audience members will contemplate how they are showing up in the relationships that mean the most to them and how they can strengthen their relationships not only with others, but with themselves. 

“I hope that they come out being curious about self and about community in a way that’s fruitful,” she said.

Column by Mary Lee Talbot

The Rev. Zina Jacque was sitting at the 10:45 a.m. Thursday morning lecture in the Amphitheater as the speaker, Joseph R. Cyrulik, began speaking about intelligence analysis. 

He called it as “simple” as doing a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box, while not all of the pieces are yours and someone keeps dumping 100 more pieces on it that may or may not fit.

Jacque turned to a Chautauqua Choir member and said, “That’s my sermon.” 

She preached at the 9:15 a.m. Friday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. The title of her sermon was “The Gospel According to a Jigsaw Puzzle,” and the scripture lesson was Genesis 12:1-4. 

She asked the audience to do some “prep work” for later in the sermon. “Recall a lesson you learned before you were 30 that is still standing you in good stead.”

Jacque described a genre of jigsaw puzzles that have no picture on the box to follow. There is no clue of the puzzle’s shape, what kind of edges it has, no guide to help. “All you can do is dive in and hope for the best,” she said.

She continued, “That is how I believe Abram felt. He was fat and happy and living in Haran when God told him to ‘go to a land I will show you.’ ”

Reading Genesis chapters 12 to 25, things did not go well for Abram. He lied to Pharaoh and told him Sarai was his sister, not his wife. Lot and Abram went their separate ways “because they had too much stuff,” Jacque said. “Then there was the ‘big mama’ drama between Sarai and Hagar. Sarai put Hagar in Abram’s bed, but he was not exactly displeased.” 

She said when “Ishmael was born, God told Abram to circumcise his whole household, then God changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s to Sarah. Where is the picture on the box? When they were 100 and 90 years old, respectively, Isaac was born. Isaac married Rebekah. In chapter 23, Sarah died and Abraham married Keturah and had more children, but only Isaac was the son of the promise, and Sarah was the mother of many nations, and Abraham died in chapter 25.”

God told Abraham that he would bless him but God did not say how; God did not show Abraham a plan or a map. On his deathbed, Abraham might have been asking, “Where is my box top? What was God up to? This is not what I had bargained for.”

Jacque noted that Abraham is the only person in the Bible called God’s friend. “God never gave him the box top. Why did God treat his friend this way?” she asked. “Could it be that God knew Abraham would be so overwhelmed that he would not have started? If Abraham had been given the picture, might he have decided that was not what he imagined for his life?”

She continued, “Abraham might have simply rejected the plan because he was a perfectionist and there was more to do than he could finish. Do you have a full picture of your life? Maybe you have some pieces that don’t even belong to you.”

God knew that Abraham could not handle seeing the whole plan at once. It is easy to be overwhelmed when there are more trials than hallelujahs. Abraham could have told God he had made a mistake, that he was too overwhelmed to hold onto God’s word for himself and the world.

Jacque asked the congregation to think about a lesson they had learned that stood them in good stead. “How many of you learned that lesson in a time of ease?” she asked. Two people in the whole congregation raised their hands. She said, “It is the crucible moments that raise up our understanding.”

She told the congregation that “we can see ourselves in Abraham’s story. Sometimes the things you are going through are not about you, but for someone else to see God working through you.”

There is power in not being told the whole story. Injustice, racism, uneven healthcare, the penal system are too much, too heavy to finish in one lifetime. “God wants Abraham and us to move forward,” she said. 

Jacque shared “Prophets of a Future Not Our Own,” a prayer presented by John Cardinal Dearden in 1979, written by Father (later Bishop) Ken Untener. It was quoted by Pope Francis to the Roman curia in 2015. 

“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. / The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. / We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. / Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. / No statement says all that could be said. / No prayer fully expresses our faith. / No confession brings perfection. / No pastoral visit brings wholeness. / No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. / No set of goals and objectives includes everything. / This is what we are about. / We plant the seeds that one day will grow. / We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. / We lay foundations that will need further development. / We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. / We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. / This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. / It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. / We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master / builder and the worker. / We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. / We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Just like Abraham, we can only do our part, but Isaac could not do his part if Abraham had not done his. If Isaac had not done his part, Jacob could not have done his. 

“As the First Corinthians tells us, we are one body, and God honors the part of the body that no one sees. If we had been given the whole story at once, we might have backed away. The gift of the jigsaw is we only get one part. You only get your part to put in place,” Jacque said to the congregation.

She continued, “All that is needed is on the table, and we all come in to fulfill our part. Then someone dumps another puzzle into the mix. Your puzzle is not complete on its own; it is connected to another puzzle, and another and another.”

The vision of this puzzle is the peaceable kingdom of Isaiah 65 where “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” In this scripture, she said, we are told what the puzzle must look like. All that is needed to succeed has been provided.

The puzzle pieces are not made out of cardboard. “The puzzle pieces look back at you in the mirror. You and I are called to create this picture. You don’t need to do it all, just do your part,” Jacque said. “Let us bring our whole selves to the work God has given into our hands. God has given you one thing to do, tell God: ‘Here I am, send me.’ ”

The Rev. John Morgan, pastor of the Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, presided. The Rev. Susan Cartmell, interim senior pastor of the First Congregational Church of Appleton, Wisconsin, read the scripture. The prelude, played by Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar, was “Allegretto,” from Sonata No. 4, by Felix Mendelssohn. The Motet Choir sang “The Chautauqua Anthem,” with music by Paul Moravec and words from Micah 6:8. Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, directed the choir and Stigall accompanied them on the Massey Memorial Organ. The postlude was “Toccata,” from Symphony No. 5 by Charles-Marie Widor, played by Stafford. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching was provided by the Harold F. Reed, Sr. Chaplaincy and the John William Tyrrell Endowment for Religion.

Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff Writer

Keep the cooler filled with ice and beverages — Straight No Chaser will deliver a performance leaving Chautauquans wanting a second round.

The a cappella group will perform at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater in their latest stop on their “Yacht Rock Tour.” 

The setlist for the tour includes classic ‘80s songs of summer, such as “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” and “You’re The Only Woman,” all on their newly-released June 23 album, Yacht on the Rocks.

“What could possibly sound more like summer than yacht rock?” group member Steve Morgan told Broadway World Music. “We can’t wait to hit the road and celebrate the season of leisure with our fans. Grab a frozen beverage and beat the heat with us, reliving the decade of cool tunes and smooth sailing.”

The group is comprised of “nine dapper vocalists,” with the uncanny ability to belt out R&B smooth jams as well as traditional stadium favorites.

“Straight No Chaser is very popular with Chautauquans, so we tend to have them every few years,” said Deborah Sunya Moore, senior vice president and chief program officer. “It’s just such a beautiful a cappella concert.”

This is the group’s sixth time at Chautauqua, having previously performed in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2021.

“(There’s a) little something for everybody, whether you’re 8 years old or 80 years old,” vocalist Tyler Trepps told the Daily in 2021.

Moore said there’s one slight difference to this show: An “encouraged” dress code.

“Wear your pastels, because it’s the ‘Yacht Rock Tour,’ ” Moore said. “If you have a pastel (or) floral shirt, a sky-blue jacket or cream-colored boots, this is the time to bring them out.”

The group is also the founding force behind SNC Records, a label partnership with Warner Music Group’s Arts Music Division. Their EP Open Bar, featured the group’s favorite late-night songs, and was the first release on the label imprint.

“All we ever want to do with our music is provide joy for people through song,” Trepps is quoted as saying on Straight No Chaser’s website. 

Moore said this is exemplified through the continual “exclamation point” excitement from the audience.

“Chautauquans love song and singing,” she said. “… This group just embodies joy and beautiful a cappella song,” she said.

Straight No Chaser’s vocalists don’t take themselves too seriously on stage, and they try to “be in on the joke” with audiences, Morgan said in a 2022 Hanover Theatre blog post.

“We’ve done … some songs by Adele and Taylor Swift,” Morgan told the Hanover Theatre. “We’ve had a lot of fun with the choreography and that sort of thing, where we want the audience to be clapping along, dancing along, laughing it up with us.” 

Daily staffer Julia Weber contributed to this report.

Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff Writer

Puzzle master. Engimatologist. Crossword editor. These are all words to describe Will Shortz’s self-made degree and career. The only one in the world to hold his official title, Shortz graduated from Indiana University with his one-of-a-kind degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles.

He will deliver his lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater to close Week Two of the Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “Games: A Celebration of Our Most Human Pastimes”

The hope for the lecture is for Chautaquans to realize games “are not only fun, but there’s a value to them,” said Jordan Steves, interim Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education. 

“That was our intention to have this week, where families are gathering for holiday celebrations, to have a lighter (and) more fun theme, but certainly not lacking in substance,” Steves said.

Shortz sold his first professional puzzle at 14 years old; at age 16 he became a regular contributor to Dell puzzle publications. 

“In the eighth grade, when asked to write a paper on what I wanted to do with my life, I wrote on being a professional puzzle-maker,” Shortz told The New Yorker. “That was always my dream.”

An author and editor of more than 500 puzzle books, Shortz was editor of Games magazine for 15 years as well as the founder and director of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the co-founder of the World Puzzle Championship and program director of the National Puzzlers’ League convention.

The last time Vasudha Narayanan spoke at Chautauqua Institution, it was during the Interfaith Lecture Series week dedicated in 2018 to “The Spirituality of Play.” She spoke to the importance of playfulness in Hinduism, and at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy,  she’ll discuss aging and playing in Indian religions, and take her argument one step further.

It’s not just that people who have reached retirement age are freer than their working counterparts to play; it’s actually their spiritual responsibility to do so. Hinduism calls them to do that.

Narayanan is distinguished professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, former  president of the American Academy of Religion, and a preeminent scholar of the Hindu faith. This will be her sixth appearance at Chautauqua.

The author or editor of seven books and numerous articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia entries, Narayanan is associate editor of the five-volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. 

Throughout her career, her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from organizations like the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, among many others. 

In 2018, Narayanan spoke on “Creation, Recreation and the Joy of Play,” highlighting stories and games to indicate the importance of play in Hinduism.

She shared a story about Krishna, an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu — a story that “evokes a sense of wonder, a sense of enchantment, enjoyment and engagement with life and creation itself,” Narayanan said then. “All those who participate in the story are drawn to the wonder and playful nature of God.”

Narayanan also used her 2018 lecture to share the evolution of the classic childhood board game, “Chutes and Ladders” — a game that originated in India, where it was called “the ladder to the Supreme.” It’s a game of morals by design, originally with more snakes (chutes) than ladders to indicate “how much easier it is to slip down than it is to go up,” Narayanan said.

Western players made the game more child-friendly and more equitable — snakes became chutes, and there were an equal number of chutes and ladders. But the game still “signified the culture and idea that for every sin a person commits, there is an equal chance of redemption” and remained “aligned with the very life-affirming, happiness-invoking values of Hinduism. The traditional board game actually focused on the passage to salvation (and) how to get there.”

One of Hinduism’s foundational texts describes God’s creation of the universe as a form of divine play. The idea is that God is not motivated by any kind of desire because he is not lacking anything. God, she said, is inherently playful.

“There is nothing you stand to gain for the creation, maintenance and destruction of the world; these come by sheer play,” she said.

The ultimate argument, Narayanan said in 2018, is that it is our destiny to reach our own playful and supreme state of bliss — a liberation called “Moksha,” or the separation from the cycle of life and death.

“This comes with surrender or being in alignment with the ultimate power of the universe,” she told her audience then. “When one has grace, one is no longer playing the music for will, for money, but to wind away the time, to play the music for the sheer enjoyment until that release comes.”

A musical thriller with humor and tragedy both as sharp as a straight razor, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has garnered both a Tony and an Olivier, and this afternoon Chautauquans can experience Sondheim’s award-winning music and lyrics in person, as Chautauqua Opera Company continues its mainstage season in Norton Hall.

Sweeney Todd has the second of its four-performance run at 4 p.m. today in Norton, with a cast led by Guest Artists Kevin Burdette, bass, who The New York Times once described as “the Robin Williams of opera” and dramatic mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti, lauded as an “incisive actress” by Opera News. 

Those are key accolades for artists performing in a work that exists comfortably in both the world of opera and the world of musical theater — exactly what Sweeney Todd does.

“There is a complexity to the layering, the transitions, the setting of the text, the underscoring of action, that — even though there are some quite long sections of dialogue, without music — it still lives and breathes in this very elevated, operatic musical world,” said Steve Osgood, Chautauqua Opera’s general and artistic director.

The compositional language that elevates the text, Osgood said, is not to be taken for granted in American musical theater.

“There is a world of very good, strong musical theater pieces, where the music provides a platform on which the text tells the story,” he said. “The opposite side of this is an operatic musical setting, where the music elevates the text almost to the point where the music is telling the story. … What Sweeney Todd does is marry the two.” 

This afternoon’s performance is the first since the Institution announced Wednesday that Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory would shift to a workshop model for new pieces in 2025, with significant budget reductions planned in 2024. A community input session is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, to be held both in-person and on Zoom; it will be recorded and available for viewing for anyone not able to attend.

Column by Mary Lee Talbot

“Sorry! calls itself a sweet game of revenge,” said the Rev. Zina Jacque at the 9:15 am Thursday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. The title of her sermon was “Sorry,” and the scriptures were 2 Kings 1:9-10 and Luke 9:51-56. 

In the game of Sorry!, each player has four tokens to move around the board to get back to their home square. If someone else lands on an occupied square, the new player knocks the other player back to the start, hence “Sorry!”

“Revenge is as old as humankind,” Jacque said. “Its history began before courts as a way to say ‘Don’t mess with me, don’t come this way again.’ Revenge is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Humans may even be hard-wired for revenge, whether to teach someone a lesson before language; to save face; to get even; or to get power. 

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is going to Jerusalem but had to go through Samaritan territory to get there. The bad blood between Jews and Samaritans began after the reign of Solomon. The kingdom of David split and 10 of the tribes of Israel formed the northern kingdom and two of them formed the southern kingdom. They never came together again. “They were the Hatfields and McCoys of ancient times,” she said.

James and John reacted to the hostility of the Samaritans by asking Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans. Jesus rebuked them. Their request harkened back to a story about Elijah.

In 2 Kings, King Ahaziah fell through the roof of his palace and sent messengers to Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, to ask if he would recover. An angel spoke to Elijah, who told him to intercept the messengers and ask, “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?” Elijah told them to tell Ahaziah he would die.

The messengers returned and delivered the message. The king sent a company of 50 men to Elijah and the captain said, “Oh, man of God, the king says to come down.” Elijah responded, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down and consume you and your 50.” The fire did come down and consume them. 

The king sent another 50 men and the same thing happened. The king sent a third group. This time the captain fell on his knees and asked Elijah to let his life and the lives of his men be precious in Elijah’s sight. An angel told Elijah that he could trust the captain and to go down with him.

“James and John knew this story and when the Samaritans blocked Jesus’ path to Jerusalem they asked if they should call down fire on these people,” Jacque said. “The Vulgate translation adds a verse after Jesus rebukes them. He says, ‘Don’t you know the spirit you are from?’ ”

She continued, “We are not from the spirit that poisons, that puts hate in our hearts, that calls down fire. Revenge makes you feel worse; it makes you feel decrepit in your soul and it might backfire. Two wrongs don’t make one right.”

Jacque shared the story of Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel. In 1993, Israel was at a party and got into a fight that ended when he shot Johnson’s only son, Laramiun Byrd. Israel served 15 years in prison. Johnson went to visit him after about 12 years.

Johnson had been to the trial and she wanted to see if Israel was the same person he was as a 16-year-old. She talked to him about her son and Byrd became a real person to Israel. When Johnson hugged Israel as she was leaving the prison, she thought to herself, “I just hugged the man who murdered my son.” 

Johnson realized at that moment she had dropped all the hurt and anger she had been carrying. They now live beside each other and call each other “Mom” and “Son.” She is looking forward to seeing him graduate from college and maybe someday get married.

Jacque made the gesture sometimes called “mic drop,” opening her hand and letting go. “We are called to forgive, to release, let go, to take all the baggage of what has been done to you and put it down,” she said. “To forgive is an antidote to revenge. You are no longer carrying what is slowly killing you.”

To forgive does not mean to forget, but to remember and learn. “Have you made room in your heart to drop what burdens you?” she asked the congregation. “Have you made a space for love, to forgive as you have been forgiven? There is a quid pro quo in the Lord’s Prayer. When we are able to forgive, we make space for God to pour forgiveness into us.”

James and John thought they were right, but “when we hold on to revenge and believe we are right, we set boundaries on sinking sand,” Jacque said. “We have to let go so there is room for grace, so we can be part of the healing.”

She asked the congregation, “What baggage are you holding? What have you been holding onto that is weighing you down with anxiety, what you did wrong for which you can’t forgive yourself?”

God is a God of grace, and grace comes to us undeserved. God’s mercy is when we don’t get what we deserve. “God has so far removed our pain that we can forgive, be redeemed and be restored,” she said.

Jacque continued, “Do you believe it? Do you believe you are beloved of God, a child of God, washed clean? What game of revenge are you playing? Let go! God, let us know the truth by virtue of your forgiveness.”

The Rev. John Morgan, pastor of the Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, presided. Willie La Favor, a member of the Motet Choir and chime master at the Miller Bell Tower, read the scriptures. The Motet Consort performed the prelude, “Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano,” (2023) by Joseph Musser. The consort featured Barbara Hois, flute; Rebecca Scarnati, oboe; and Joseph Musser, piano. The trio is dedicated to Ms. Hois and Ms. Scarnati. The anthem, performed by the Motet Choir, was “Verleih uns frieden,” music by Felix Mendelssohn and words by Martin Luther. The choir was under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and accompanied by Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar. Stigall played “Postlude on Lauda anima,” by Robert Powell, as the postlude. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Harold F. Reed, Sr. Chaplaincy and the John William Tyrrell Endowment for Religion.

Sara Toth
Editor

Any teacher knows that play is an important tool in the toolkit of education — even, or especially, in religious education.

When Christian theologian Jerome Berryman taught Rabbi Michael Shire a new way of playing, Shire knew he had to introduce a new methodology in the teaching of Jewish religious education.

“Godly Play is a method of playing with sacred story from our faith traditions. That’s the heart of faith formation and spiritual developments,” Shire said to open his presentation as part of the Interfaith Lecture Series Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy, speaking to the theme of “A Spirit of Play.” “…. (Torah Godly Play is a way to) enhance the spiritual development of children and adults through the telling, and the exploration, of sacred story.”

Shire, who is the academic director of Hebrew College’s Master of Jewish Education program, outlined Torah Godly Play as an approach centered on storytelling, combined with “natural artifacts carefully and intentionally included for spiritual resonance” — sand, wood, stone, clay. As an example, he brought with him a model of Noah’s Ark, perched on the podium alongside him. 

Centering stories and playfulness allows for a “time of wandering and a creative exploration,” he said. “This encourages the heightened consciousness and enables the learner to make these sacred stories their own.”

It’s not about telling stories of faith to learn them, but to find meaning within, and hear the spiritual call of, those stories. 

“Stories are a natural way to hear God’s call,” he said. “Playing with those stories is an inherently Jewish way to understand and respond. Drawing upon the Hebrew Bible, the Torah Godly Play invites children into the narrative while leaving room for wonder, creativity and imagination, as they build their own religious language, to express the curiosity as well as the conceptions of a divine presence in their lives.”

Play, Maria Montessori once said, is children’s work. But it’s not restricted to just children, Shire cautioned — play should be the work on anyone who is curious, at any age. Judaism, in particular, has a “lively and interpretive tradition of actively interacting with its holy texts. … Judaism loves playing with our texts, and using this play to discern their hidden meanings.”

Playfulness — long a part of religion, with its “make-believe and fancy dress” — is an expression of freedom, of agency, Shire said. Most importantly, play is conducted for its own sake. Rules are structured by the players themselves, and can be changed by those same players. 

“This is very much how Judaism has structured its literary tradition and the work over centuries to play with the language of sacred text,” he said. “… Being curious about the way the world works, and its implications for making meaning is a key ingredient of Jewish life. But in order not to get too speculative, we keep ourselves grounded in the real world.”

For that grounding, Shire shared three ways Judaism uses both the questioning of and playing with stories to find spiritual depth.

The first is through the literary device of the Midrash — “an interpretive and often playful commentary on the Torah. It fills in gaps in the text or extrapolates meaning to extend the biblical characters motivations.”

The second, Shire said, is  “language play,” which encourages close readings of the text to glean implicit meanings. The first time that play is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible is when Isaac plays with his half-brother, Ishmael. Isaac’s mother Sarah views the children’s play as inappropriate — Ishmael is, after all, Hagar’s son. Sarah becomes cruel; her husband Abraham obeys; Hagar and Ishmael are banished. 

“But then comes rescue from divine protection in the form of a well of water,  and a promise that Ishmael will father a great people — but a separate people from Abraham, from Isaac,” Shire said. “The very story is a play on itself,” as Yitzchak, Shire reminded his audience, means laughter. Isaac’s name means to laugh. 

“These children are playing. Yitzchak, laughter, and Ishmael, man of God, they just want to play together,” Shire said. “But the tragic circumstances of their parents, of history, … separate them and their legacies. The interactions between Isaac and Ishmael from then on — to this very day — results in division and conflict rather than play and laughter.”

The third way Judaism questions and plays with sacred story, Shire said, is through religious liturgy “that endeavors to lighten the darkness of Jewish history and religious persecution.” That endeavor is particularly pronounced in the festival of Purim, a “festival of merriments” celebrating the victory of Esther and Mordecai over Haman — an Achaemenid official intent on annihilating the Jewish people.

“The first recorded instance of anti-semitism is turned into a raucous play much to the merriment of young children,” Shire said. 

Grown-ups know the darker side of these celebrations; but as children dressed as Cossacks celebrate alongside adults wearing visible signifiers of their Orthodox Jewish faith, Shire asked, “What could demonstrate the power of play more poignantly than dressing up as the very enemy who wanted to kill you?”

The “wonderful and joyous playing with sacred text,wrestling with God’s meaning for us, seeking to understand that our lack of control in our own lives, or the reasons for our pain and suffering, enables us to become authors of our own search for meaning,” Shire said. 

It gives license to a range of reactions to both the good and bad in life, and play — structured but not necessarily goal-oriented, is “ideal for this kind of spiritual knowing,” Shire said. “It is available and accessible from the youngest learner to the very oldest and it is the foundation upon which to build self awareness and self awareness for ourselves and awareness for others on a lifelong journey of playful growth.”

For children, play comes naturally. Their innate curiosity and imagination, guided by Godly Play, lets them “author their own orientation to biblical story, side by side with trusted adults who wonder with the children together,” Shire said. He concluded by asking his audience to  continue to enjoy the spirit of play embedded in our religious faiths, … in our stories, in our fanciful legends, in our texts, and our interpretations of them.”

In doing so, “we can pass on the vitality, the solace, the joy, the memory, the critical voice, and the spiritual sustenance that gives life to religious experience and faith.”