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Like a meat pie in the oven, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has been simmering away in Steve Osgood’s mind for years.

“It’s been a piece that I’ve been dreaming about for a long, long time,” said Osgood, the general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera Company and Conservatory. “You know, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity, wondering if that opportunity would be here.”

That opportunity has come; Osgood’s first time conducting Sweeney Todd is with the first production of Chautauqua Opera’s season, set to open at 4 p.m. today in Norton Hall. 

It’s been a massive undertaking to bring the Sondheim work to Norton. Dozens of cast and crew, three stage managers, a fight choreographer, a lighting designer, a set designer — the list goes on. The fact that it was put together in three weeks, Osgood said, “is mind-boggling.”

“Everybody’s been firing on all cylinders. Everybody brought their A-game. That spirit in the room has been so supportive and delightful,” he said. “You can sense that in the company, can sense that on the stage, even as we tell this dark story. There’s a sparkling delight coming from every single individual.”

And what a delightfully dark, sordid tale — the devastated Sweeney Todd, the devious Mrs. Lovett, and their ghoulish solution to their problems. 

“Absolutely disgusting; absolutely delightful,” Osgood said. “That’s the narrative; the story, though, is one of profound humanity. … These characters all of those interweaving stories are fascinating and just so deep often, hysterically funny. And then seconds later, profoundly moving. That kind of theatrical storytelling is magical.”

Sondheim’s work premiered on Broadway in 1979, with a book by Hugh Wheeler and orchestration by Jonathan Tunick. Tunick’s original orchestration called for 26 musicians, making Sweeney Todd one of the only contemporary musicals to be scored for a full orchestra. Often, that number tended to get whittled down, Osgood said, just for sheer practicality. But Chautauqua Opera is pulling out all the stops — the full score, 26 musicians. Three trombones alone — “unheard of,” Osgood said, “for a musical theater piece.”

“It is so lush, and the orchestration that Jonathan Tunick made for it is absolutely sparkling,” he said. That is one of the delights of producing, especially conducting, Sweeney Todd.” 

Chautauqua Opera leadership is often asked when the company will stage a musical, and Osgood said Sweeney Todd is the perfect marriage of musical theater and opera.

“It has become a classic American musical, but one that lives and thrives in the opera house; we’ve seen that ever since its premiere,” he said. “It has been adopted by opera companies as much as it has by traditional musical theater stages. Everybody can embrace it and take it on from their own angle.”

Stage Director Dennis Whitehead Darling brings an “incredible theatrical sense” to Chautauqua Opera’s production, Osgood said, as the director is “as comfortable in straight theater as he is in musical theater and in opera. What he has brought to this production is really significant and a huge part of what makes it so successful, visually captivating, and nuanced in the storytelling.”

There’s a complexity to the music’s construction and to the text — an elevation of internal rhyme and wordplay that “will blow your mind,” Osgood said. Those elements, he said, are what make Sondheim’s work “live and breathe in this very elevated, operatic musical world. It’s just so great.”

Kaitlyn Finchler
Staff writer

Friendship looks different for everyone. It can be a long-lasting relationship, or quickly born of the kind acts of strangers. For Yemeni refugee Mohammed Al-Samawi, it’s both. His story of friendship and activism is the defining one of  his life.

Al-Samawi, author of The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming to America, delivered his lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy for Week Two of the Interfaith Lecture Series themed, “Holy Friendship: Source of Strength and Challenge.”

To lighten the mood ­— his story included, after all, death threats, and safety officers lined the perimeter during his talk — Al-Samawi warned the audience he has an accent, and would try to speak slowly while explaining his main points: friendship, the power of interfaith engagement and the power for change.

Due to a disability, he was not able to do most things young boys enjoy, like ride a bike or play football. 

“Even though I had a disability, I have amazing parents; both of them are medical doctors,” Al-Samawi said. “Actually, all my siblings and my parents are medical doctors. I’m the only one who is not a doctor in the family.”

His family taught him that, even with the disability, God had a mission for him. Sometimes it isn’t seen right away, but one day it would become clear.

“Because of my disability, I was having a difficult time having friends,” Al-Samawi said. “Other kids my age were making fun of the way I walk (and) the way my hand looks. But I was always trying to show them that even if I have a disability in my body, I don’t have a disability in my mind.”

This is why he learned English, “to show them that I can do things they cannot do.” 

As a person who loves love, Al-Samawi said he’s always felt connected to God and could always talk to God — then, “something amazing” happened.

“When I was 23 years old, I met a Christian teacher named Luke,” he said. “Luke was working in Yemen. For me, I had the chance to practice my English, finally, with someone and we were talking a lot and he became a father figure for me.”

Not to be confused with the love for his own father — Al-Samawi said his father is “an amazing human being.” But with Luke, he could talk about girls and other things “that I’m not able to talk with my dad about.”

One day, Luke told Al-Samawi he had to leave Yemen in three months. 

“I felt sad that a friend that, finally I know, will go away from me,” he said. “I wanted to get him a gift. A gift, so when he got back to his country (that) he would remember me always.”

He searched for various tangible gifts, ranging from a watch to perfume to a ring. Then, on a Friday in the mosque, the Imam started praying for what Al-Samawi described as “religious extremism” against Christians and Jews.

“The first thing that came to my mind is that ‘Oh my God, Luke is going to be in hell and I need to save his soul,’ ” Al-Samawi said. “So that was my gift for him. I wanted to save his soul from hell … by converting him to Islam.”

But how? He bought Luke a copy of the Quran in English.

“I told him, ‘If you care about our friendship, I want you to read it,’ ” Al-Samawi said. “He’s amazing — he didn’t tell me at that time that he had already read it.”

Luke told Al-Samawi he would take the book on one condition, and he agreed. The condition was Al-Samawi had to read the Bible, and Luke gave it to him hidden in a green plastic bag. Hidden, because if anyone found out Luke had gifted the Bible, or Al-Samawi had received it, they would both be persecuted. 

Nonetheless, Al-Samawi brought the Bible home, started reading and was instantly intrigued by Christianity. Through reading the Bible, he came to better understand Luke, as well as the Christian Ethiopians in Yemen. 

Al-Samawi decided he wanted to reach out and hear more from both Christians and Jews, so he searched “Israeli” on Facebook.

“The truth is, they have a lot of pretty girls,” he said. “I didn’t know how to use Facebook so I started adding them as friends — as you can imagine, nobody accepted my request.”

He then sent a message along the lines of, “Greetings from Yemen, I know that you’re a Jew. I know that you are from Israel. What do you think of Yemen? What do you think of Muslims? Yours sincerely, Mohammed.”

Looking back, Al-Samawi said he could see how the message would have been seen by those on the receiving end.

“It’s like a Nigerian prince asking for a million dollars,” he said. “But the amazing thing (was) that people responded to my message, and I started having my own (interfaith) journey.”

Through these conversations, Al-Samawi learned more and more about Christianity and Judaism from those he corresponded with. He also traveled to meet these people in different countries and ended up meeting a gay Jewish breakdancer, and a stand-up comedian named Justin Hefter at a conference in Jordan.

After returning to Yemen, he shared his stories with friends and family. His friend’s father accused him of being an agent for Mossad.

“It was a really hard time, because I wasn’t only afraid (for) myself — I was afraid (for) my family,” Al-Samawi said. 

He decided he needed to leave his family. He moved to another city, but was trapped by an extremist group raiding his house at the outset of the civil war in Yemen, which is still ongoing.

He hid out in his apartment and prayed while al-Qaeda ramsacked the neighborhood. Al-Samawi’s prayer led him to post on Facebook, asking if anyone could help him. 

Daniel Pincus, the previously mentioned breakdancer, reached out and “opened a window of hope for me.” Four people — who had never met, had no connection, nor any military evacuation skills — called in every favor they had to help Al-Samawi get out of Yemen. 

Megan Hallahan, a Christian, sent a message out to her friends asking if anyone could help her friend in Yemen escape from his apartment. She didn’t mention Al-Samawi by name, but Hefter knew him and offered Al-Samawi’s help to the man — not realizing he was the man in need of help.

News of Al-Samawi’s situation reached Jewish woman Natasha Westheimer. The four of them reached out to senators, embassies and governments around the world asking them for help.

“A lot of people didn’t even respond to that request,” Al-Samawi said. “But there is one country that responded, which is India. India, at that time, did an evacuation for the Indians who live in Yemen.”

The four individuals reached out to former Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, who had a disability similar to Al-Samawi’s. When Kirk heard his story, he reached out to the Indian government.

Hefter saw a tweet about the evacuation and asked Al-Samawi if he saw a military boat, and told him that was where he needed to go. He found himself among 100 Yemenis trying to get to the vessel, but couldn’t get there without a small fishing boat. 

“(The boat owners) were taking advantage of us, of course,” he said, requiring the refugees to give them money, or their phones, “in order for them to let us actually go through to the military ship.”

Someone on the ship called out Al-Samawi’s name over a megaphone, and as he raised his hand, they said they would take all the Yemenis in search of refuge. The Indian government was only expecting one refugee, but took and fed all 100 of them. 

Al-Samawi received seven invitations to come to the United States, but he never expected the American embassy to grant him a visa. They did. 

Pincus’ friend surprised him by buying Al-Samawi a business class ticket from Djibouti to San Francisco. While grateful, this raised two problems.

One, he had no luggage nor taken a shower. Next, as a Yemeni, he wasn’t permitted  a one-way ticket to the United States; it had to be a two-way ticket.

“When I was in Frankfurt, the police stopped me and they said ‘You cannot go to the United States,’ ” Al-Samawi said. “I don’t know what changed their minds, but I think maybe they were afraid that I would apply for asylum in Germany.”

The police changed their minds and said “the Americans gave him the visa, let them handle it,” and he arrived in San Francisco.

“A lot of Americans, I don’t think they realize how much this country is beautiful,” Al-Samawi said. “I wish they knew that we are so lucky to be in this land, having this freedom that we have right now.”

When he came to the United States, he didn’t want to continue his interfaith work. He wanted to work at Starbucks.

“I wanted to start fresh and forget about what happened to me,” Al-Samawi said. “But because I started talking more about my story, my story became popular in a lot of ways.”

A movie offer was the last thing on his mind when he arrived in the United States, but Al-Samawi was approached by producer Marc Platt, wanting to turn his story into a film. 

Next came a book deal, with about 12 different offers from various publishers. While he was glad to tell his story, when he watched the events of Jan. 6, 2021, unfold, it gave him flashbacks to Yemen in 2015. 

“I decided that I wanted to do something because I love the United States,” Al-Samawi said. “I want to give back a little bit of what freedom I am having here. So, with the help of the four individuals who helped me out, I created an organization called the Abrahamic House.”

The Abrahamic House is a multifaith co-living and co-creating space to learn, share, pray, celebrate, connect and serve. The organization has a fellowship allowing young professionals to stay in the house for free, as long as they are of Muslim, Jewish, Christian or Bahá’i faith.

“They need to live in the house, go to their work (and) go to their universities,” Al-Samawi said. “But every weekend, they need to do events that speak against hate and speak more about the peaceful things in our own religions.”

Through this work, Al-Samawi spends his time advocating for interfaith peace. Now living in Washington D.C., he spent the last month in Jordan reuniting with his family. While not in total support of his work, they want him to be happy. He hopes one day they can join him in the United States.

“I’m still, by the way, not an American,” Al-Samawi said. “I’ve been held in this country for seven years. But, by the end of this year, I will finally be able to apply for the nationality.”

He is still grateful, and said the love of God created people from different nations, times and religions. 

“Imagine this: We are in this beautiful land that only has one tree from the same type. You will never appreciate the beautiful things around it,” Al-Samawi said. “But, because we have different trees (and) different types, you can really appreciate the beautiful things about it. And I think that’s what America is for me today.”

Column by Mary Lee Talbot

Possession is the act of taking control, and it is an action between humans and things that excludes other people from enjoying them. “We say ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law.’ Why is it a stronger claim to say I have this thing even if you claim to own it?” asked Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling.

She preached at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “I Am a Friend of God: Practicing Resurrection,” and the scripture reading was Acts 4:32-35, the image of the new Christian community sharing everything. 

In Eden, she said, there was no death, pain or privation, but the Apostles were a long way from the garden. There was a chasm between the haves and the have-nots in the Roman Empire and “the garden of empire was impoverished, but resurrection says that neither death nor empire have the last word.”

In the new Christian community, the divine design was restored. “Imagine a community with no needy person. People laid everything at the Apostle’s feet,” Easterling said. “Imagine the heads of our judicatories or our churches. Are we as trustworthy? Can we be trusted to distribute resources equitably?”

The Apostles received the resources to serve the community, not themselves. That community had embraced the mind of Christ over the mind of the world. 

Ananias and Sapphira, by contrast, sold a piece of property but kept back a portion for themselves. Peter asked Ananias why Satan had told him to lie to the Holy Spirit. Ananais was not lying to the apostles but to God, Peter said. Ananias fell down and died. 

“This is what it means to love one’s neighbor — that no one has need. All we have belongs to God,” said Easterling. “God’s math is that the more we give, the more we are blessed. Hoarding wealth is not of God.”

God’s desire, she said, is that all persons will have life to the fullest. The power of the testimony of the apostles did not come from their academic degrees or any secret prayer or incantation. By ensuring that no one had need, they lived the resurrection and did not curry favor with the world. She contrasted the apostles with the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes who desired to be in control more than to follow God.

Easterling cited the Doctrine of Discovery promulgated by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, whereby Christians could “discover” a land peopled by “barbarous” communities and take that land in the name of God and the Roman Catholic Church. It became a principle in international law and was used by people of all faiths as a reason to remove, slaughter and try to “re-educate” Indigenous people, especially Native Americans, around the world. 

“We all have blood on our hands and this doctrine still influences our laws today,” Easterling said. “Practicing resurrection brings us back to God’s design.”

As an illustration, she told a story of an anthropologist who put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the children of the village that the first one who got to the basket could have all of the fruit. The children joined hands, walked together to the basket and shared the fruit with everyone. When the anthropologist asked why they did that, they replied, “How can anyone be happy when the rest are miserable?”

Easterling continued, “When we practice resurrection, all are fed. No one dominates; the lie of scarcity is destroyed and everybody gets their daily bread.”

One day, Easterling’s husband Marion left his class at Harvard, and as he was going to cross the street, he saw a man with a sign. Marion decided to give the man some of the quarters in his pocket. The man, in response, said, “Can you see this?” Marion asked, “Can I see what?” The man said, “You have to want to see the sign.”

Many people had walked by and acted as if the man was not present. Her husband had seen the sign and the person behind it. “We hide the poor and kill the prophets,” Easterling said. 

People often question what the person with the sign will do with the money. Will they get a job? Will they buy drugs? “Who asks what we do with God’s money?” Easterling asked. “Do we ask how it was gotten? Sometimes it was gotten illegitimately then cleansed, and it is now clean.” 

The Apostles were dealing with real people who needed access to money so that they would have options in life, access to power and freedom. Lack of money makes people powerless. Easterling told the congregation, “We have to address people’s needs and the systems that create scarcity and lack of access.”

The Rev. Michael Mather, who spoke at the 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture on Tuesday, told a story about putting a banner outside the church he served. The sign said, “Ending Poverty. 8:30 and 10:30” — the times for worship at the church. A neighbor called and said, “That’s great, but what about the rest of the time?”

“Dismantling poverty is consistent work; it demands consistency,” Easterling said. “The Bible calls for God’s justice, God’s shalom, which is distinctly different from charity. It is a radical reorientation to a partnership with the poor, to proximity with the poor, in solidarity with them.”

Practicing resurrection demands a reconciliation of faith with finances. She said there was nothing evil in possessing wealth or being wealthy. The problem becomes when wealth is possessed to the exclusion of others. 

Theologian Miroslav Volf has said that Christ-shaped action is much more than “thoughts and prayers.”  “ ‘There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve;’ but resolving our serious problems is the only chance we have,” he said.

Easterling shared a story about a church that was encouraging members to share their experience of tithing, giving at least 10% of their earnings to the church, and how it had changed their lives. A young man, from a very wealthy family, asked to speak one Sunday.

He said, “I have been acting like this wealth all belonged to me. What I was tithing was a pittance. I am pledging to make a real tithe to meet the needs of others.”

Easterling said that “the good news of Jesus is bad news for those who love money, not those who have money. In Jesus, the first are made last and the last first. The dead are raised, the poor blessed and the suffering made whole. In Jesus, we see through the lens of the poor.”

She ended her sermon with a poem she wrote, “What of the Resurrection? (if we are only willing to live in a Good Friday world).”  What of the resurrection if we are not willing to change the world? She challenged the congregation, “Are we living the resurrection? Chautauqua, may we be willing to live the resurrection.”

The Rev. George Wirth, a retired Presbyterian minister from Atlanta, presided. Craig McKee, an attorney and U.S. magistrate judge, read the scripture. Motet Consort members, Rebecca Scarnati, oboe; Debbir Grohman, clarinet; and Willie La Favor, piano; performed the prelude, “Andante” from Trio for Oboe, Clarinet and Piano by Paul Gilson. The anthem, sung by the Motet Choir, under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist and accompanied by Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar, sang “I will sing with the spirit,” by John Rutter. Stafford played “Fughetta and Finale” on “Hymn to Joy” by John G. Barr. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the J. Everett Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the Geraldine M. and Frank E. McElree, Jr. Chaplaincy Fund.

Alton Northup
Staff writer

After former Ambassador Deborah K. Jones evacuated her mission in wartorn Tripoli, Libya, without notice to her foreign counterpart, the Libyan Foreign Minister reproached her for caring more about the safety of her staff than solving the country’s conflict; from his perspective, “the USA was large enough to be more generous than that, even to the point of risking its own personnel.”

Diplomats find themselves in a complicated balance of advocating for their state’s goals while understanding the needs of their geopolitical counterparts. As Jones puts it, “diplomacy is finding space in the same words for agreements.” She shared her thoughts on this balance in her lecture, “The Role of Friendship in Diplomacy,” at 10:45 a.m. Thursday in the Amphitheater, for the fourth day of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week One Theme, “On Friendship.”

To prepare for her lecture, Jones asked her former colleagues to share examples of when friendship facilitated diplomatic solutions. The majority of them said it had no place in international relations and that “so-called friendships” can lead to unrealistic expectations that never stand a chance.

She was surprised by their answers; she felt instead of defining what friendship means, she needed to define what diplomacy means.

Jones traces modern diplomacy to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, commonly known as the Peace of Westphalia, that ended the Thirty Years’ War. The treaty established nation-states, not dynasties; and institutions for disagreements, not anarchy. For nearly 400 years, this system has endured, she argued, because of diplomats.

If you have traveled abroad, purchased clothing manufactured in another country or engaged in business with a foreign government, then you have benefited from diplomacy. Diplomats maintain the negotiations, upkeep and oversight that makes international cooperation possible. And it is this maintenance, Jones said, that “is the highest manifestation of civilization.”

Another role of ambassadors, however, is to be a tool of the state.

“‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow,’” she said, quoting 19th-century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston.

Throughout their duty, diplomats may be tempted to impress or form bonds with their foreign counterparts, but loyalty to the Constitution and the interests of the United States come first.

“Those who succumb to the siren song, and forget that they are simply an instrument of the American taxpayer,” Jones said, “do so at their own peril.”

The United States does, however, form long-standing relationships with nations. And while the U.S. often forgets the help it has received from other countries, she said, maintaining cordial relationships allows governments to know each other better. 

Within diplomatic cohorts, it becomes easier to understand each other’s red lines while acknowledging the other’s concerns. They can be honest about their needs without offending each other.

“It is being willing to acknowledge the essential dignity of the other person, or party, and sometimes, it is to accept what is perfectly honest, or truthful, if not necessarily completely truthful,” Jones said. “The opposite of conflict is not necessarily complete peace, it is process,”

So is there a role for friendship in diplomacy? Sort of.

Jones certainly has foreign friends, and establishing relationships of trust did aid in negotiations during her career. But the foundation of friendship does not translate well to diplomacy.

“All friendships are characterized by mutual respect, trust, confidence, reciprocal disclosure and loyalty,” she said. “Many of the qualities that go into creating successful diplomacy also go into creating successful friendships, but that loyalty piece is missing unless it is to a government.”

“I do try to conduct myself diplomatically,” she wryly concluded, “except with my very, very close friends.”

Mariia Novoselia
Staff Writer

“Friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to understand you” reads Ambassador Deborah K. Jones’ email signature. In her lecture about the place and role of friendship in international politics, she will elaborate on wise quotes and personal experience.

Jones has served as a diplomat representing the United States abroad in a number of countries around the world, and was appointed including as U.S. Ambassador to Libya and Kuwait. 

U.S. Ambassadors, according to their credentials, are “Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.” This means that as an ambassador, Jones said, one has an extraordinary authority to represent their country and the ability to bring that authority with them. This requires an ambassador to establish their credibility.

“As do friends,” Jones said. “Friends have to be credible; otherwise, they are not your friends.”

Jones’ lecture, “The Role of Friendship in Democracy,” is at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. 

There was never a day, Jones said, when she woke up and thought she did not want to go to work. 

It all started in December 1980 when, as an “impoverished graduate student” in Spain, Jones took the Department of State’s foreign service written exam after a colleague’s suggestion. 

Having successfully passed the test, she was invited to a regional testing center in Los Angeles, where she took the oral exam, which then, Jones said, consisted of being interviewed on a wide range of foreign policy issues and other current events by a panel of three former U.S. ambassadors, as well as an “inbox” test. 

Jones said she officially joined the Department of State in April 1982 and was sent to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in August that year.  

“In my experience, there are two kinds of people who enter the Foreign Service: so-called ‘prodigy personalities’, … who know from the time they are 14 or 16 (years old) that they want to be a diplomat or Foreign Service Officer, and take corresponding classes in university to prepare them to enter; and those who enter through an act of serendipity, and discover that they have actually been preparing all along for this sort of profession. I fall into the latter camp,” Jones said.

Being an ambassador, in Jones’ view, is a huge honor. She said it is a “privilege to serve your country, especially when you feel you are representing shared values.”

Throughout her career, Jones has managed to make a multitude of friends. She said her WhatsApp and Gmail are always full of messages from people “all over the place.”

Jones defines friendship as “a comfort zone with somebody.” It is about feeling that you can be yourself, she said, as well as building trust, being vulnerable and not being attacked for it.

Prior to departing to a new country, diplomats have to “do their homework,” Jones said. Learning a country’s history is part of that homework. Using Turkey, where she served from 2005 to 2007, as an example, Jones said one would have to be friends with a Turk to “understand what it means to them … not to have been able to read their grandparents correspondence because that writing and that language was rested from them”. 

“It was their head. It’s like taking a person and turning their head squarely to the west when it had been pointed to the east,” she said. 

Yet, Jones said she will be “a little more cynical about diplomacy and friendship” in her lecture. 

Diplomats are sometimes perceived as “soft and nice, and wanting to make friends,” she said. 

“I don’t want to call it naive, but it’s a misunderstanding of the history of diplomacy, and what and what a diplomat does.” 

At the same time, Jones said diplomats are sometimes accused of being deceptive or untruthful. Yet, diplomacy is about the art of negotiation. 

“It’s not about being nice. It’s about not being offensive. It’s about understanding where the other side is coming from,” she said.

With some surprises up her sleeve, Jones promises to question how critical friendship is to successful diplomacy and what role national interest plays on the stage of international relations.

As storytelling has always been a part of human relationships and flourishing, it’s no wonder that storytelling is just as vital to the concept of holy friendship.

“Stories are how holy friends can speak hard truths in love,” the Rev. Victoria White wrote for Faith and Leadership. “This holds not just for individuals but also for institutions — especially, I believe, for Christian institutions and those who lead them. Whether for individuals or institutions, holy friendship is a tall order.”

White would know — she literally wrote the book on holy friendship: Holy Friendships: Nurturing Relationships that Sustain Pastors and Leaders, published this March by Fortress Press. She’ll be giving her presentation on the topic as part of the Interfaith Lecture Series Week One theme, “Holy Friendship: Source of Strength and Challenge” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

White is a writer, pastor, designer, coach, facilitator, teacher, and the managing director of grants at Duke Divinity School’s Leadership Education. There, her work focuses on cultivating and supporting innovative Christian institutions and their leaders. 

As scholar L. Gregory Jones — who wrote the forward to White’s book — noted, “Holy friends challenge the sins we have come to love, affirm the gifts we are afraid to claim and help us dream dreams we otherwise would not dream.”

That honesty is important, White wrote. It opens people — and institutions — to growth, though it may be uncomfortable.

“Having others name our sins is painful, of course. So too, for some, is having them affirm our gifts and give voice to our hidden dreams — especially when that highlights how short we have fallen,” she wrote for Faith and Leadership. “Even so, we need to hear difficult truths about ourselves in order to grow into the people God created us to be. When holy friends couch these truths in stories, they make them easier to hear and our need to change easier to accept.”

Stories and holy friendships are plentiful in both the Old and New Testaments, but it’s really just one story, White wrote: God’s story of love for the world. 

Holy friends help to re-narrate old stories.

“Holy friends can help locate these stories within God’s larger ongoing story, opening our eyes to see where we have, in fact, grown and changed. Similarly, they can help us write new stories for the future, of what and who, with God’s help, we can become,” White wrote. “The same is true for institutions. A church or other Christian institution can cling to old stories and become stuck in tragic events, moments of human brokenness that happened generations ago.”

But naming sins and facing them allows for repentance and forgiveness.

“Holy friends, whether for individuals or institutions, use storytelling to speak difficult truths we might otherwise not be able to hear,” White wrote in Faith and Leadership. “In so doing, they help us grow and flourish in our unique individual and corporate roles in God’s ongoing story.”

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

It’s just the beginning for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, a staple of the summer season at Chautauqua Institution. Under the direction of Music Director Rossen Milanov, the CSO will kick off its summer schedule tonight at 8:15 p.m. in the Amphitheater, with a program that is wide ranging, festive and beautiful. 

The evening, and the CSO’s 2023 season, as always, opens with Star Spangled Banner composed by John Stafford Smith and arranged by Walter Damrosch. 

The program is followed by Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b; Julia Perry’s Study for Orchestra; and two Elgar works —  Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance March. 

“The program is quite varied, acting as a preview of the season as a whole which focuses on great classics (Beethoven),  new discoveries (Julia Perry) and majestic, sonic tapestries (Elgar),” Milanov said.

Lenelle Morse, a CSO musician of 31 years who sits in the first violin section, said that as the program unfolds with Beethoven and Elgar, the evening includes something for everyone with some recognizable movements like Nimrod, the slow movement in the middle of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. 

“It’s a wonderful program to grab the audience,” Morse said. “And opening night, the audience is always so appreciative, and we love hearing that.” 

Perry’s piece is the first of the “new discoveries” the CSO will present this season. It is a new piece for the CSO, at a tightly structured seven minutes. Perry was an African American composer, born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924, who pushed the boundaries of gender and race during a time when few composers of her background gained recognition. 

Throughout the summer season and its many performances, the CSO is the foundation of “not just the entertainment, but the enrichment of this community,” Morse said. “There are plenty of people on the grounds who come to Chautauqua partly because of the orchestra and to have us in residence for the entire summer, it’s a wonderful thing for this community.” 

For Morse, her work with the CSO has become a lot more than just performing. 

“I’ve played in this orchestra longer than any other orchestra and it’s home,” she said. “I love playing here. It’s a wonderful orchestra and these are some of my dearest friends.”

Milanov, who hopes Chautauquans feel “elated and happy to be back in the wonderful Amphitheater,” calls Chautauqua his “summer-music home,” and is excited to be back.

“Performing on stage with the wonderful musicians of the CSO for first time in the season is always exciting and full of energy musical experience,” he said.

Alton Northup
Staff writer

Most people might not be eager to share a bed with their friend. But when Marisa G. Franco arrived at Chautauqua this week and experienced a mix-up with her hotel reservation, that’s exactly what she considered doing. 

“I think the ways we see friendship now, as trivial but also so constrained in the types of behaviors we see as appropriate to do with friends, has not been (the case) throughout our history,” said Franco, a research psychologist and the author of the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make – and Keep – Friends.

Based on the lessons she learned from writing her book, and through her career as an assistant clinical professor at the University of Maryland Honors College, Franco presented her lecture, “How to Make and Keep Friends,” at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the Amphitheater for the third day of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week One theme, “On Friendship.”

Franco may be considered a friendship expert now, but she was not always. Admittedly a shy student in her early days of college – wanting to fit in but also to impress others – she found meaningful connections hard to come by. 

After a romantic breakup left her without a primary source of connection, she started a wellness group of fellow college students in hopes it might speed up getting out of the slump she found herself in. Each day, the group did a healing activity together, such as yoga or meditation. It worked, but Franco found the activities, as relaxing as they were, were not the primary motivator behind her happiness; it was the friends she had made. 

This realization sent her on a journey of studying connection and the science behind it. On that journey, she discovered too many people lack a meaningful connection with friends – close friendships have declined drastically over the past decade, according to data from the Survey Center on American Life – and she has since dubbed this “the friendship famine.”

“I felt like my experience reflected something larger about our culture,” Franco said. “In this society, where so many of us are lonely, how can we afford to throw any form of connection away?”

Her case: We cannot. 

Studying the effects of friendship, or the lack thereof, from a medical perspective, she found the statistics alarming. Not having a strong social network outside of the family negatively affects health and mortality. 

One study she presented showed people with fewer social ties were 4.2 times more likely to contract the common cold virus than those with six or more. In contrast, those who smoked were just three times more likely to contract the virus than those who did not.

Another study, a meta-analysis on social connection, found that while exercise decreases the risk of death by 23% to 30%, having a large social network decreases it by 45%. 

“Loneliness, in our bodies, is a sign that we are in danger,” Franco said.

We are all prone to the three types of loneliness – intimate, relational and collective – yet satisfying these areas is crucial to being happy and healthy.

“When you’re around one person all the time, you’re only having one experience of yourself because different people bring out different sides of ourselves,” she said.

Relying solely on a spouse for emotional needs can be damaging to that relationship, Franco argued. Yet, people are often hesitant to create deeper relationships with friends. She advises against this hesitation, insisting friendships are some of the most meaningful relationships because they “transcend the physical.”

But how can people find friendships in a world that seems hostile to the concept? First, they need to get past the four common myths of connection.

Our initial experience of making friends is in childhood, a time when proximity and repeated unplanned activities and settings that encourage people to confide in one another are common – think of recess back in grade school. However, Franco said, this feeds into the first myth of connection: Friendships should happen organically.

Franco said people who think friendships are organic are more likely to feel lonely than people who do not. This is because many adults, unlike children, do not live in an environment nourishing enough for organic relationships; friendships in adulthood take work. 

“This idea of friendship happening organically can really sabotage us from making friends because we end up being passive,” she said.

But actively trying to make friends brings about another worry: Won’t they reject me?

Franco’s calls this fear “the liking gap,” and her theory behind it is that people underestimate how likable they are.

Underestimating your likability can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, then those who fear rejection can appear cold to the very people they are trying to reel in. The best way around this, Franco said, is to assume you will be accepted, because you most likely will.

According to meta-analytic data she reviewed, people who intimately self-disclosed were more liked than those who did not. Still, people expect the worst from vulnerability, rather than seeing it as a crucial step to building relationships. This is Franco’s second myth of connection: Sharing things about yourself burdens people. 

“We are not really meant to work through our own emotions by ourselves; we are meant to support each other,” she said.

Vulnerability in practice is asking deeper questions and sharing the secrets weighing you down. The person on the receiving end, Franco said, will register the trust you show by confiding in them. However, this does not mean people should go around telling everyone their secrets. It takes time to gauge if a person can be trusted to react with love and respect.

As a college freshman attending club meetings and social events, the third rule of making friends was constantly in the back of Franco’s mind: Either you click, or you don’t. 

Likeability, she argued, is rooted in the exposure effect. One study she presented showed women who attended class more often were liked by their classmates 20% more than women who showed up occasionally. Exposure to people increases our likeability. 

When attempting to increase that exposure, expect to feel uncomfortable at first, but work toward making friends from repeated events and with people you see regularly.

A first-time meeting with a potential friend can also bring about anxiety over how you present yourself. This is Franco’s fourth and final myth of connection: “To make friends, I need to be cool, smart or funny.”

“What we find is that people don’t want to be friends with someone who’s necessarily the funniest or the smartest; they want to be friends with someone who makes them feel loved and valued,” she said.

What people value in friendships, Franco argued, are affirmations and affection. People like those who they think like them, someone who believes in them and who makes them feel like they matter. 

Franco’s hope is that with her advice on initiative, disclosure, exposure and affirmation, people will not just practice a radical new form of friendship, but will “become igniters for friendship.”

Arden Ryan
Contributing Writer

Miko Marks was singing in her church choir before she was fully able to talk. The church was a natural outlet for the music running deeply through her family. Her grandmother first opened Marks up to countless types of music, and she grew up listening to gospel and R&B, jazz and country — influences that later shaped her into a flourishing Americana musician.

“I try to bring who I am, total package, to the music, and that means so many things,” Marks said— Americana encompassing a “melting pot of different styles” in one genre. At 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, Marks will be bringing her own, personal musical mixture to Chautauqua for the first time.

When Laura Savia, Chautauqua’s vice president of performing and visual arts, first heard Marks’ music, it quickly became one of her favorites, she said, and  she started listening to her every day.

“There’s joy running through her music,” Savia said. “Joy often catches fire at Chautauqua.”

Marks’ upbeat and grooving performance will be just the right presence in the Amp for the opening week of the season, she said, as Chautauquans make their summer return to the grounds.

Marks weaves a multitude of diverse influences into the fabric of her music, from Black churches, spirituals and honky-tonks. She plays with sounds from the American canon, updated with her unique voice, Savia said.

“Her outlook has gone from the intensely personal to the more societal and national,” Savia said. “I hear her pulling together threads of American history, connecting her personal story and identity with this moment in time.”

Now, Marks is making the music she’s most wanted to make: “music that matters, that can speak truth to power, touch people and ignite changes within them,” she said — but it’s taken many years in her musical development to reach the songs she’ll be singing tonight.

“When I started out, I was just doing love songs; I didn’t have a lot of experience writing,” Marks said. But with maturity, growth, and simple life experience, she said she’s reached the level in her music where she can be the change-maker of her aspirations.

Marks said her two most recent releases, Our Country and Feel Like Going Home, will leave the meaningful legacy she’s been reaching for, as a musical artist and a “woman of color, moving and shaking in the country music world and Americana world.”

When Marks was making her place in the country music industry in the early 2000s, there were hardly any women, not to mention those of color.

“Now it’s too many I can’t even count, and I think that’s a beautiful thing,” Marks said. “I think the industry is expanding, but I also think there’s way more work to do.”

Marks said her following is growing among the Black community, which is also becoming more aware of Black Americans’ foundational roots in music.

“A lot of people of color don’t know the history of country music, but I’m seeing the tide turn,” she said. Audiences are more “open-minded,” more “colorful,” inspired by her joyous melodies.

“Her music leaps off the stage,” Savia said, and Chautauquans are likely to clap along and dance in their seats to her “lush and powerful” voice, backed by “first-class” musicians.

Savia has come to appreciate the “innate artistic curiosity” of Chautauquans and their willingness to expose themselves to art forms they may not be aware of. Even those who aren’t fans of country music, she said, will find something to enjoy at the Amp tonight.

Marks’ music stirs together a rousing and jubilant blend of styles in the amalgam that is Americana — a musical genre as diverse as its historical influences. It may be a new kind of music for some, but Savia believes the introduction will be a welcome one.

“Marks is emerging as one of the most important Black country musicians in her field,” Savia said. “It’s a privilege to introduce her to Chautauqua at a time when she is bursting onto the scene.”

Marks carries with her a lingering excitement from her debut last October at the Grand Ole Opry, one of the most venerated spaces in the country music world. Her grandmother, a major inspiration for Marks to this day, exposed her to the Opry at a young age. She said she’ll  never forget the feeling of finally stepping on the Opry stage, as she’d dreamt of since childhood.

“My whole body welled up with chills and heat at the same time. I felt the spirits of those that had come before me,” she said. “And I made it through my performance, but not without a lot of tears.”

The reverberations of the energy from that performance are what Chautauquans can expect tonight.

Sarah Russo
Staff writer

As Week One continues to discuss the theme of friendship, there’s one individual who has dedicated her entire career to the topic. Marisa G. Franco is an author, professor and psychologist — and a known friendship expert. Her presentation will begin at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater.

Her New York Times bestseller, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends, explores friendship using data and simple, digestible analysis. Platonic has been described by The Wall Street Journal as “an ode to modern friendship,” and Kirkus Reviews called it “a remarkable examination of the epidemic of loneliness and sound advice for alleviating it.” 

Platonic is a guidebook for friendship covering how to make, deepen and end friends in adulthood. This book will frame Franco’s lecture, as she shares her  work on human connection and systemic loneliness. 

“I was motivated to write Platonic to question, interrogate and level the hierarchy that we place on love,” Franco said. “I was reading a lot of books on friendship because I got so interested in the topic and realized that the book that I wanted to read didn’t exist. I wanted something that shared science and also just really saw friendship as sacred and thought very extensively about friendship beyond what our culture tells us. I guess at some point I was like, ‘Well, if it’s not there, I’ll be the one to write it.’ ” 

Franco, an assistant clinical professor and collegiate fellow in the University of Maryland Honors College, has work featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, Vice, The Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times.

At the University of Maryland, Franco teaches a class on why people are lonely.
Her studies on friendship in particular started as a personal interest. 

“I had gone through some breakups in my young 20s and felt really bad about it,” Franco said. “So I decided to see if my friends wanted to start a wellness group, and I thought that would really help me heal from this breakup.”

After meeting with friends each week for yoga, meditation and cooking, Franco had a “life-changing” realization on the power of the relationship of friends.  

“It was really healing. But it wasn’t the meditation and the yoga or the walk as much as it was just being in community with people I loved every week,” she said. “It made me question, I think, some of the ideas I had about friendship before that made me take the breakup so hard, which was just that romantic love is the only form of love that counts.” 

Friendship in adulthood can become secondary in terms of relationship importance, but Franco has suggestions on how to make new friends and gain stronger connections.  

“When it comes to how to make friends, I think there’s a lot of stale advice. It’s like, ‘join a club, pursue your hobby’ and kind of basic,” Franco said. “I look for the advice that people haven’t heard that feels more revelatory, more groundbreaking, more science-backed.”  

Mohammed Al-Samawi has long been involved in interfaith peace work. When, in 2015, that work drew death threats from extremists in Yemen and civil war erupted in the streets, Al-Samawi hid in his small apartment bathroom, thinking he was about to die.

He prayed, but food dwindled and his cell phone battery was dying. He opened Facebook and typed out an appeal for help.

What happened next is a story of strangers who became friends, all with the goal of helping Al-Samawi escape. 

“In that bathroom, as I worshiped Allah, I prayed he would save me,” Al-Samawi told People magazine. 

At 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Al-Samawi will give his presentation in the Week One Interfaith Lecture Series theme, “Holy Friendship: Source of Strength and Challenge,” talking about his ongoing interfaith work, and the friends who saved his life.

Those friends — a bioengineer in New York City, an entrepreneur in San Francisco, and two Israel-based humanitarian activists — each, on their own, replied to Al-Samawi’s Facebook post in 2015, and sprang into action. Daniel Pincus, Justin Hefter, Megan Hallahan and Natasha Westheimer took to their own networks of friends, colleagues and acquaintances in their international peace work, reaching out to friends-of-friends, calling in favors. It worked.

“They are like family,” Al-Samawi told People. “These four people came, like angels — an answer from God.”

They were able to get Al-Samawi on a boat to Djibouti, then to Ethiopia and Germany, and finally to San Francisco. He was granted political asylum in the United States in 2016.

Since then, Al-Samawi has spoken across the country; one of his first audiences was at Moishe House, an international non-profit made up of a collection of homes and programs that serve as hubs for the young adult Jewish community, according to its website. Al-Samawi found it revelatory.

“Why don’t I create something like (Moishe House) but also for Muslims, Christians, Jews and other faiths?” he told Jewish Journal. Abrahamic House was born.

A multifaith co-living and co-creating space, the organization works to challenge assumptions, prejudices and inequities — and then inspire others to do so, as well.

“… Everyone is ‘othering’ and in the Abrahamic House, there’s no ‘others,’” he told Jewish Journal. “It’s ‘we,’ and we need to know more about each other.”

Al-Samawi is the author of The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming To America, which traces his journey out of Yemen, and his journey as an interfaith activist. That part of the journey continues through Abrahamic House, where the focus is on “gathering, not othering.” Communities represented at Abrahamic House include Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Baha’i, working to foster an environment of learning, respect, and social change. 

“Hate isn’t something you’re born with,” he told Jewish Journal. “People educate you to hate.”

Alton Northup
Staff writer

During the pandemic, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Senior did something most people can relate to – reevaluated her friendships. 

The culmination of this examination was a cover story for The Atlantic that ignited a new perspective on friendship and its importance to our spirit, happiness and health, which she shared at 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday in the Amphitheater for the second installment of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week One theme, “On Friendship.”

Senior’s original plan for her article, “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” published in 2022, was to explore midlife friendship. Of course, it would be naive to do such a dive without undergoing a little introspection.

“What that meant, in turn, was to some degree – in fact to a rather painful degree – was looking at the friendships of mine that have either died or were on treacherously thin ice,” Senior said.

One of the friends she reflected on for her piece was central to forming her identity, yet grew distant after he became a father and said he had higher moral obligations than their friendship or her feelings. Senior was honest about the pain this caused her, and said while she now understands his perspective, “there was something so staggeringly hurtful about so crudely and so ruthlessly locating a person in the moral pecking order of your priorities.”

After publishing her article, she received a surprising response from the long-lost friend. Knowing he had egg on his face, he wanted to make things right; he had missed their friendship. 

Senior said rebuilding their relationship was a “miraculous midlife gift,” but navigating the uncharted water of friendship was not easy. While researching her piece, she found scholarly articles on the matter to be few and far between.

“Friendship has sort of always been the red-headed step-child of the social sciences,” she said.

Most studies focused on childhood friendships, or were really “dopey self-help all gussied up in peer review drag.” There was practically nothing on middle-aged friendships.

When the social sciences consider relationships, it is usually the ones generated through strong bonds of blood, law and physical intimacy, Senior said. Yet, friendship is central to our lives, particularly when considering that nearly a quarter of American adults ages 30 to 49 are single.

As fertility rates continue to drop, older generations pass and social capital erodes through the loss of activity centers, meeting halls and worship communities, we lose access to cross-generational interaction and mentorship. With the loss of these vertical structures, we become reliant on looking horizontally toward our peers for cues. Friendship, Senior affirmed, is more important now than ever.

“Modern life conspires against friendship, while at the same time modern life is exactly what makes us need friendship the most,” she said.

The problem is there appears to be a correlation between the importance of friendship and the difficulty of maintaining them. Marriage, parenthood, politics, illness, success, failure, envy, death, divorce and geography are all all-too-common reasons for the dissolution of friendship.

“Most friendships don’t end operatically; they end in a very quiet, slow, gray dissolve. They simply fade,” Senior said. “But the ones with deliberate endings can really torment. At best, they ache and I think, at worst, they sort of feel like failures.”

She compared it to a “modest divorce” but without the counseling and mediation fitting for the deep wound inflicted by loss. 

So, how do we save ourselves from the isolation and disappearance of friends? We must recommit to the friends we already have.

Senior laid out how to do this in six steps she called “The Rules of Friendship”: 

Good friends stand up for each other

Good friends trust and confide in each other

Good friends support each other emotionally

Good friends offer help if it’s required

Good friends try to make each other happy

Good friends keep each other up to date on positive life developments

“It’s effortful, it’s premeditated,” she said. “This is not just a matter of making somebody happy over dinner; it’s thinking beforehand about what you can do.”

The benefits of friendships are bountiful. Spending time with a friend has the same effect on your health as quitting smoking, Senior said, and noted friendships were the highest valued relationships in antiquity.

“‘The person is giving back to you the feelings you wish you could give to yourself, and seeing the person you wish to be in the world,’” she said, quoting Ben Taylor.

Senior closed her lecture remembering common reactions to the passing of Nora Ephron, a beloved American journalist, writer and filmmaker.

“She told no one she was dying of cancer, so when everyone found out they were like, ‘Oh my god, had I known – had I only known – I would have spent more time with her. I would never have just blindly assumed that more dinners were ahead,’” she said. “But this is true for all of us; we are all one day not going to be here. How long, honestly, can we all keep postponing dinner?”

Editors’ note: While we mistakenly omitted Alton Northup’s staff bio in the first edition of the Daily, we are pleased to share it here:

Alton Northup is a rising junior at Kent State University majoring in journalism. This is his first summer at Chautauqua, and he is covering morning lectures. He recently covered the crisis and help beat for KentWired, where he previously worked as a general assignment reporter and senior reporter. A proud Erieite — a resident of Erie, Pennsylvania — he never misses an opportunity to share his city with others. He is excited to continue learning this summer while growing as a reporter.

Mariia Novoselia
Staff writer

Michael Humphrey’s interest in space was born when he was 10 years old, after he looked up at the sky and started asking questions. Now, he plans to share his passion with Chautauquans. 

Humphrey is the president of the Buffalo Astronomical Association, and he’ll give a talk titled “Wonders of the Webb Space Telescope at 9:15 a.m. today in the Hurlbut Church Sanctuary. 

The lecture is organized by the Chautauqua Science Group in collaboration with the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative. 

Humphrey said his talk will consist of two parts. First, he will talk about the engineering of the telescope. Then, he will provide updates on recent research and discoveries. He said he will also be presenting some NASA-generated images. 

By the end of his lecture, Humphrey said he hopes attendees will have a better understanding of space and what the future of using equipment like the James Webb Space Telescope might be like. He said he will also touch on what the purpose of researching space is. 

“Whenever I look into the sky, I feel connected to everyone looking at it,” Humphrey said. 

The ability to “hold the future and show our past” is just one of the aspects that has helped Humphrey sustain his interest in space and astronomy over the years, he said. 

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope first launched on Dec. 25, 2021. Robert Hopper, president of the Chautauqua Science Group, said community members started asking for a talk about the telescope right after that, during the 2022 season. 

He said the Science Group decided to wait a while before inviting a speaker for this topic. 

“Let’s let it have been up for a year and gotten some results, and let’s talk about the science that came from the telescope — rather than the fact that the telescope went into space and started taking magnificent pictures,” Hopper said. 

Teresa Kammerman, a member of the Chautauqua Science Group, said the wait “allows the science to be more prominent.”

Humphrey said he feels great about his upcoming talk, and is excited to return to Chautauqua. He’s previously given Special Studies classes on general astronomy and night sky viewings, and a talk on “The Power of ‘I Don’t Know,’” in which he discussed how admitting to not knowing is the first step to finding answers. 

Hopper said in the last several years the Chautauqua Science Group has been “making efforts to complement what the Institution has been doing” and promote speakers who work in the realm of science. 

He said they encourage Chautauquans who have or have had “interesting and successful science careers … to speak about things they have firsthand knowledge of.”

“It’s been charming and rewarding that we have been able to do that for almost 20 years,” Hopper said.

Robert Spirtas, vice president and program chair of the Chautauqua Science Group, said the Science Group also grants scholarships to students at Chautauqua Lake Central School. Hopper said the $500 scholarship has been awarded once a summer for five years.

Spirtas said this season, the group has collaborated a lot with Mark Wenzler, director of the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, who Spirtas said was “very helpful … in finding a lot of the speakers.”

Humphrey’s talk about the Space Webb Telescope will be the first lecture in this season’s series programmed by the Chautauqua Science Group. It is also this year’s first product of the collaboration between the Science Group and the Climate Change Initiative. 

Those who cannot attend the lecture in person, can also tune in virtually. To do that, Spirtas said, they will need to send an email to ScienceTalksCHQ@gmail.com and request a Zoom link. 

Column by Mary Lee Talbot

Love — the word rolls off our tongues so easily. Our greeting cards drip with declarations of love. I am numbed by the sheer volume of the messages in what we write and sing that claim to love a lot. But most of the time, we get love wrong,” said Bishop Latrelle Miller Easterling. 

She preached at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. The title of her sermon was “I am a Friend of God: Not a Greeting Card Kind of Love.” The scripture reading was from Matthew 22:34-37.

Easterling told the congregation that we use love to describe many different experiences. “We say ‘I love your hair,’ or ‘Pastor, I loved that service,’ or ‘I loved that movie; it kept me on the edge of my seat.’ ” Love dominates art and the soundtrack of our lives.

She noted that people have been singing “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” in honor of “the late, great, queen of rock and roll, Tina Turner.”

M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote that love is too large and deep to be measured by words. Love, he said, is not an emotion but an action. “From Genesis to Revelation, the canon of the Bible leads us to love,” said Easterling. 

In the scripture lesson in Matthew, when confronted by the Pharisees and asked to name the greatest commandment in the law, Jesus reached back into Hebrew Scripture to the Shema prayer. After declaring God is one, the prayer commands the Jewish people to love God with “all your heart, soul and strength.”

Jesus knew the question was a loaded one, but he added another scripture from Leviticus: to love your neighbor as yourself. “This was the message of Jesus’ life in the Sermon on the Mount, the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, from the washing of the disciples’ feet to the farewell address in John: To be in relationship with Jesus, we must love,” Easterling said.

She continued, “The only way to fulfill the law is to love. God said, ‘I am who I am and I am love.’ ”

The Pharisees took their best shot, Easterling said, and tried to throw Jesus a theological curveball. “The word ‘test’ in the Bible is only used in relation to the Pharisees and the devil. They didn’t realize that Jesus could play ball. They threw a curveball and he hit a home run. Jesus called them out as they were trying to demean him. He said, ‘All are worthy of love. Full stop. All are worthy of love.’ ”

No one is beyond grace, and in the grasp of God, divisions are destroyed. 

“There is no separation between us,” Easterling said. “There is an African proverb, ‘I am because you are.’ We are in a web that can’t be untied. The nature of God is love. As the saying goes: ‘The isness of God Is not troubled by the ain’tness of man.’ ”

She called the congregation to love as disciples, not like manufactured, Hallmark love. Real love is self-opening, not self-gratifying. It is unfettered. 

Author bell hooks defined love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of one’s own and others spiritual growth. This love nurtures the self and the other. Love is as love does. It is impossible to tell someone you love them and do them harm. “Love and abuse can never coexist,” said hooks.

Theologian Howard Thurman noted that the only way to deal with a person is in the concrete, not the abstract. To say “I love all humanity,” is ridiculous, asserted Easterling.

She continued, “That bit of humanity gets born, has a name, gets hungry. We can’t say ‘I love you in general, but I am not so sure I can live next door to you.’ If we are friends of God, we need to include migrants as our neighbors. We need to stand with the queer community so they don’t lose any more rights. We must see the world as the differently abled do. We will never look into the eyes of someone God does not love.”

Easterling told the congregation: “You can’t call yourself transformed and still see people in a carnal way. Love in the trenches, in the muck and mire, requires a decision to remain and love someone even when you don’t like them. You don’t have to acquiesce to their hatred, but you can work for justice, oppose evil and give voice to the truth.”

She urged the congregation to “trust God to do what only God can do.” There are people who are causing pain in the world and they know it and they do it anyway. Jesus commanded that his disciples should pray for their enemies. “We have to pray that they will hear the still, small voice and let God be God,” she said. “That, too, is love.”

The answer, she said, is not more hate. Easterling quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. that hate cannot drive out hate, only love can drive out hate. “We have to love our enemies before it’s too late,” she said. 

She closed her sermon with a poem that she wrote in a time of great turmoil, titled “Before it’s too late.” She said, “God help us to understand before it’s too late. God help us to love.”

The Rev. George Wirth, a retired Presbyterian pastor, presided. Joanne Sorensen, a member of the Chautauqua Motet Choir, read the scriptures. Nicholas Stigall, organ scholar, played “O Perfect Love,” by Raymond Haan, for the prelude.The Chautauqua Motet Choir sang “Love is the Key,” music by Arlen Clarke and words by Christina Rossetti. Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, directed the choir accompanied by Stigall on the Massey Memorial Organ. The postlude was “Alla Marcia” by John Ireland, played by Stafford. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the J. Evert Hall Memorial Chaplaincy and the Geraldine M. and Frank E. McElree, Jr. Chaplaincy Fund.

De’Amon Harges and the Rev. Michael Mather have been friends for 23 years. They’ve also been friends of Melissa Spas for years, and so when the vice president of religion at Chautauqua started to conceive of a week on “Holy Friendship: Source of Strength and Challenge,” she knew who to call.

“Something I’ve heard De’Amon say again and again is that he helps people fall in love with each other,” Spas said. “Mike was my pastor for five years in Indianapolis, and he leads congregations with more authenticity and truth-telling than any other pastor I’ve ever had.”

At the heart of their friendship and respective ministries is the church’s call to be good neighbors.

Harges is  a community organizer and creator of The Learning Tree, while Mather is the pastor of the First United Church of Boulder. Both men are faculty members at the Asset Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University, and they’ll join the Interfaith Lecture Series with a conversation on their friendship and their work at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.

Harges is a layperson at Broadway UMC, where Mather used to serve as pastor.  At Broadway  UMC, leadership and congregants undertook a radical shift to connect and serve its community. 

“The church, and me in particular,” Mather told Duke Divinity School’s Faith & Leadership, “has done a lot of work where we have treated the people around us as if, at worst, they are a different species and, at best, as if they are people to be pitied and helped by us.”

The church’s food pantry, clothing ministry, and other more traditional forms of outreach were replaced by other, more organic ways of enriching neighborhoods.

“The church decided its call was to be good neighbors. And that we should listen and see people as children of God,” Harges said in the same Faith & Leadership story. He became a “roving listener,” going block by block to spend time in the community, asking people what they wanted and needed from the church.

But more than that, “I really started paying attention to what they really cared about,” he told Duke Divinity School. 

He started to gauge what talents and passions lay in the neighborhood, and started making connections. Monthly gardening meetings sprouted up, and Sunday school classrooms were filled by gamers, artists, small businesses — and from these connections, people network, collaborate, and make friends.

Tapping into talents that already exist, rather than identifying needs and trying to fulfill them, is foundational to both Mather’s and Harges’ approach to neighborhood rejuvenation.

“Everything is based around scarcity,” Mather told UM News. “With De’Amon, everything is based around abundance. Everybody is looking for what things are lacking, and he goes looking for where the cup overflows.”

Arden Ryan
Contributing Writer

Human relationships, in every form and with every complex emotion attached, appear again and again in Jennifer Senior’s journalism. She feels she may have missed her calling to be a psychologist, but still finds ways to weave an underlying passion for psychology and sensitivity for relationships into her work. 

That sensitivity and passion went into her 2021 piece in The Atlantic, “Twenty Years Gone,” about the lingering grief of a family who lost a son in 9/11, and how relationships helped create meaning. It garnered Senior a Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.

Recently, she’s been pondering friendship in the modern age and an American society seeming to pull people farther apart.

“Modern life really conspires against friendship, but that is precisely why we need it,” said Senior, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The Atlantic. 

At 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater, Senior will discuss the importance of such friendships and maintaining togetherness despite the forces separating us, bringing her perspective to Week One’s Chautauqua Lecture Series theme, “On Friendship.”

Americans have more choice in their lives than ever before, able to curate them to individual desires in what Senior describes as a “culture of radical individualism.” Marrying, having children, and pursuing a career no longer progress on the same timetable for everyone.

“We now live in an era of radical individual freedoms,” Senior wrote in “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” a 2022 article for The Atlantic. “There’s little synchrony to our lives.”

At the same time, Americans are spending less time in personal contact with others. Attendance is decreasing at places of worship across the country, Senior said, noting similar decreases in civic participation, in volunteering, and in simple conversations with neighbors. This fact, she said, can largely be attributed to the increasing time Americans are spending online, “foregoing embodied contact.” That contact and those friendships, however, are vitally important to good health and human development.

With increasing discord between lifestyles and life directions, the already fragile and impermanent nature of friendship is under further pressure, Senior said. The difficulty in keeping friends is increasing. Yet the “customized nature” of modern life makes those friendships more important than ever, Senior wrote. Reliance on friends is stronger than ever, and so should be the effort put into keeping them.

“We’re designed to bond with other people. It’s how human beings learn and how they grow,” Senior said. Living such a “fractured, atomized existence,” with working remotely and engaging solely online the new societal norm, those bonds are becoming more difficult than ever to maintain.

Taking deliberate action to sustain friendships, making it a habit to stay in touch and not fall into passivity, is crucial to ensure those friends will be there when you need to rely on them most, Senior said.

“We need to have friendship anniversaries and annual road trips and reunions,” Senior said. Rituals with friends help to prioritize them, which Senior said more Americans should be doing, as families and careers can pull in the opposite direction.

Senior believes being “more demonstrative” would further strengthen our friendships, sharing words of care and affection as one might do with a romantic partner.

“We tell our spouses that we love them, and we tell our friends this much less, but they are also love relationships. We ought to be more expressive in our friendships,” Senior said, as an act as simple as telling a friend how much they are appreciated can have an impact.

“The paradox at the heart” of friendship, Senior said, is its fragility. The voluntary nature of friendship, making it fragile, also makes it special. If one were to have a binding or legal contract to a friend, as with a married partner, it would cease to be how friendship is defined.

Senior notes, however, that a cultural shift may be occurring, with more friends making binding commitments to each other, as with family. Friends are being increasingly “recruited” in family roles, acting “as siblings and cousins, even parents would,” Senior said, as families often live far separated, children going to college and working at a distance from home.

Friendships may be qualitatively different from other types of relationships, but Senior argues that perhaps the two shouldn’t be so unalike.

“Maybe we should really think about being very committed to our friends. They should sit somewhere closer to where our family and spouses sit. We should make them top priority.”