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“Christianity was meant to provide wholeness, to know we are going somewhere good and coming from somewhere good,” said Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday Ecumenical Service in the Amphitheater.

His sermon title was “A Chinese Doll,” and the Scripture text was 1 John 1:1-4.

“John seems to be saying the beginning already revealed the end, and in the end we will see what the beginning was pointing toward,” Rohr said.

The postmodern world does not believe there is a great, overarching story.

“Postmodernism believes that all stories are just anecdotal and incoherent,” he said. “We are considered old-fashioned if we talk about a great story. We have seen where that incoherence has led in politics.”

Genesis begins with matter and spirit becoming one.

“It was good, and then there came a very fast series of: good, good, good, good and very good. What happened to that goodness?” Rohr asked.

The church, he said, contributed to the postmodern incoherence by beginning the story of the world with Genesis 3, original sin, instead of Genesis 1, what American theologian Matthew Fox called original blessing.

By starting with Genesis 3, “we started with a problem and never got beyond problem-solving,” Rohr said.

Rohr cited St. Athanasius, called the “father of orthodoxy.” Athanasius said that God consistently worked through one man to reveal God’s self everywhere.

“Nothing is devoid of God’s knowledge,” Rohr said. “Each part of creation has a piece of the consciousness of God.”

Rohr then told the congregation: “We waited for the written words and did not take to the created words. My book, The Universal Christ, is a footnote to Athanasius. This is the oldest teaching, not the newest.”

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 C.E., it aligned its theology with the empire.

“We forgot about the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes,” Rohr said.

Then, in 1054 C.E., the Patriarch of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other.

“That was the beginning of ecumenism,” Rohr said. “Afterward we never had one, holy church.”

Protestants only reformed the Western half of the church.

“The Eastern church held the universality of the church, and now there is no longer a wholeness to the universal story,” Rohr said. “Jesus never said, ‘thou shalt be right,’ but we sure do try.”

In Genesis 1:26-27, God says “let us create in our image.”

“There are two plural pronouns here and that is a problem for monotheists,” Rohr said. “That is why we have the trinity; God is connection and communion.”

However, our image of God is pretty pagan, according to Rohr.

“He is an old white man sitting on a throne throwing lightning bolts,” he said. “The Latin word deos is a transliteration of the Greek Zeus. If we have a punishing, problem-solving God, we don’t know how to love a unifying God. If God is the primary torturer, violence is legitimated all the way down the line. This is why we are not known as a peace-making church; this is the thinking of teenagers. I think we grow spiritually one year every century in comprehending the Christ mystery. The Reformation happened when we were about 16. Today we are young adults and are just ready for the cosmic Christ.”

Genesis 1:26-27 also talks about the image and likeness of God. Franciscans, Rohr told the congregation, came to understand image as the universality given equally to all creatures from the mind of God, and we should learn to draw on it.

Likeness is the subjective appropriation of the objective image.

“Some of us are more like the objective image than others, but as Jesus said, ‘all have fallen short of the glory of God,’ ” Rohr said.

The image of God, the imago dei, is within you, Rohr told the congregation. For Catholics, the imago dei was found in the sacraments; for Protestants, the imago dei was in moral behavior.

“Then the fight became who was moral enough,” he said.

The feast day of St. Bonaventure was Monday. After a lifetime of reading, Bonaventure distilled all he learned into three statements: Everything emanates from God, everything exemplifies God, and the consummation of life is the ascension of Christ.

“We came from God, we play on life’s stage and then we go back to God,” Rohr said. “In the beginning was the end, and at the end we will know where the beginning was pointing.”

The Rev. Paul Womack presided. Audrey Williamson, a scholarship student with the International Order of the King’s Daughters and Sons, read the Scriptures. She is from Brookhaven, Mississippi, and attends Mississippi State University, studying communications. For the prelude George Wolfe, saxophone, and Joseph Musser, piano, played “Largo” from “A Tribute to Sax” by Alain Crepin, a tribute to Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone. The Motet Choir sang “The Prayers I Make,” by Jane M. Marshall under the direction of Jared Jacobsen, organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music. The Alison and Craig Marthinsen Endowment for the Department of Religion provides support for this week’s services.

Richard Osborne wanted to buy a house in the mountains of North Carolina. Instead, he found himself six states north, mountain-less, surrounded by a lake, an Amphitheater and rows of 19th-century houses.

Osborne — a newly appointed member of Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees — was enamored with the arts and intellectual stimulation he found on the grounds, and has returned every season since.

After three decades, Osborne retired from North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corporation, where he served as chief financial officer and chief risk officer. Aside from Chautauqua’s board of trustees, Osborne serves on Charlotte Ballet’s board of trustees and is president of the Chautauqua Dance Circle.

How did you discover Chautauqua?

I was invited to Chautauqua by friends of mine who had been coming for many years. At that point, I came for four weeks a season and stayed at the same house. I actually knew a number of people who came to Chautauqua, but that was the first time I could come myself — that was in 2011.

I loved it as soon as I got here. … It’s just a different kind of summer, and it has all the kinds of activities I like: intellectually challenging activities and entertaining and artistic kinds of activities. It was clearly something I was going to pursue.

What’s your Chautauqua elevator pitch?

I think the shorthand description I’ve heard — and I won’t take credit for this — is that it’s summer camp for geeks. I think that’s a good description; it is summer camp and there are activities and there is relaxation and there is an opportunity to do as much as you want.

I think that’s part of the chemistry, or the magic of Chautauqua; it does permit you to create the program that you want and personalize it in a very real and significant way.

What does being a trustee mean to you? How do you perceive your role on the board?

I was very honored; I was very flattered when they approached me about being on the board, and I’ve served on other boards and I still serve on other boards, so I’m generally familiar with the responsibilities and the aspects that are enjoyable and challenging, and the aspects that are not so enjoyable.

This is a different kind of board because Chautauqua is so different; this is, to some large part, like most nonprofit organizations are but it has a wholly-owned, for-profit entity — the hotel. It also has aspects that are really much more like a town, or a city, or a municipal operation than like a traditional nonprofit. So, it is very different in some respects than other boards I’ve worked.

I was surprised and flattered to be approached, and I have really found it very interesting. The board is engaged — in my mind — the way a board should be, looking at oversight and strategy and leaving the daily operations … to President Michael E. Hill and his team. I think that’s a healthy way for a board to operate.

I have been very pleased with the level of discussion and engagement by the other trustees and the really positive, constructive spirit with which people approach the challenges and the questions, because there are serious challenges facing the Institution.

Our challenge as Chautauquans and as the board is to guide the development of the Institution.

How do you think 150 Forward accomplishes or aids the board’s work?

I think the strategic plan is the most obvious and specific result of those considerations. That is the road map that the trustees have come up with after querying the community and Chautuaquans.

And that was a very thorough and arduous process that (Strategic Planning Working Group Chair) Laura Currie led and that is now being implemented. I think the strategic plan really is the road map forward.

It will change; there are some things in there that will probably prove to be impractical or wrong. That’s the way it is with any strategic plan — it’s a plan, but you go forward and you start to implement and you figure out what’s really right and what’s somewhat wrong or sometimes really significantly wrong.

We’ll do that, and I’m confident that we’ll make changes, and hopefully we’ll make them in a timely and appropriate way.

How much have you been involved with the strategic plan?

Well I wasn’t on the board for most of the development; I only came on the board in the final stages of the strategic plan, so most of it was pretty vague. Now, coming to Chautauqua I was aware that there was a strategic plan being developed, and I remember going to (meetings).

But when I came on the board it was mostly done; there was fine-tuning up until the very end, up until it was put-to-bed and printed. I really was impressed with the degree of ownership that the board had for it, the seriousness with which the trustees approached it, and of course bringing (Chief of Staff and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives) Shannon Rozner on, really specifically for the implementation, was I think a sign of how important Michael and his team view getting this right.

How do you think your professional experience is going to translate to your committee assignment? 

My professional experience is mostly in finance and accounting, and then to some extent in public policy and regulatory policy and lobbying. I think a lot of that is directly applicable here; Chautauqua is a public entity in so many respects and so etched in the political world, in New York, in Chautauqua County, in the lake.

The whole challenge with Chautauqua Lake is to some extent constrained and guided by the legal and regulatory world in which we live. … You’re dealing with what appears to be red tape, and it’s well-meaning red tape, but it’s red tape.

I worked for a very large utility for 33 years, so I know about red tape.

And then on the financial end, I do think Chautauqua has financial challenges. We’re fortunate in that there’s no burning platform right now and that … everything is going fine. … Yet if you look at the financial and demographic projections, if you just keep doing what we’re doing, you’ll go right off a cliff — well, you’ll just go down a slow grade.

So I think the challenge we have is to create a sense of urgency — not a sense of alarm. There’s no reason to be alarmed but there is a reason to address the situation with urgency and figure out how to preserve the best aspects of what we’re doing and enhance them in ways that are more relevant for the world we live in.

And I think that’s part of what the strategic plan is trying (to do), and it’s trying to do it in a thoughtful but urgent way, and I think that’s appropriate — that’s exactly what we should be doing.

What are your hopes for your first full season as a trustee?

I think we’re having a good launch of the strategic plan; I hope that continues to go well and unfolds in a way where Chautauquans recognize it as reflecting what they told the committee and the board of trustees, and that the trustees tried very hard to incorporate that in a cohesive plan.

The success of the plan will depend upon the community’s willingness to grab it and say, “this is our plan, and this is where we want to go.”

Fourteen of New York State’s 62 counties — including Chautauqua County — are situated within Appalachia.

The Appalachia Regional Commission determined in June 2019 that within Chautauqua County there are seven economically “distressed areas” — one more since June 2018, and since July 2016, when Jane Cleaver Becker last spoke at the Chautauqua Women’s Club.

The poverty rate within each distressed area is at least 150% of the U.S. average.

At 9:15 a.m. Thursday, July 18 at the CWC, Becker and Hope Zielinski will give a presentation titled “Chautauqua Women2Women Caring and Coaching.”

Becker is an executive coach and consultant in Lakewood. Since 2014, she has been the leading impetus behind the all-volunteer Coalition of Chautauqua County Women and Girls, which “provides opportunities for women and girls to thrive … and build a better future.”

Zielinski is a rising senior at the State University of New York at Fredonia, majoring in business administration; a certified BNY Mellon Enactus student fellow; and the incoming COO of Enactus at SUNY Fredonia. In May 2017, she earned her associate degree in science business at Jamestown Community College and won the A.S. Outstanding Student Award. 

Zielinski is currently the executive associate at the Women’s Club. This is the fourth season during which she’s been providing support to the CWC president, board of directors and all committees.

This year during her spring semester, which began in January, Zielinksi served as an intern with the coalition, focusing on marketing and public relations.

Initially, the work of the coalition has concentrated on two programs — Women2Women and Women & Finance — undertaken collaboratively with United Way of Southern Chautauqua County, of which Becker is a former board member and planning council chair.

The W&F initiative hosts interactive educational workshops specifically created for women to help them manage their personal finances throughout their lifetime.

W2W — the primary topic of Thursday’s talk — is an adult mentoring program designed to help women achieve their personal goals through one-on-one coaching relationships.

Although the overall approach has been the same, Becker said that at the southern end of Chautauqua County, the coalition’s focus has been on “women in poverty with their children” and “helping them become more stable financially.” 

At the northern end — which is where SUNY Fredonia is located — the focus has been on traditional and non-traditional students.

“The coaches offer unbiased mentorship to women my age who are in or leaving college,” Zielinski said. “Having relationships with inspirational women is very useful because some people may not have that in their family. Having someone to talk through your plans with is useful. Should I go to graduate school, or should I work?”

According to Becker, the coalition’s first goal for students is for them to stay in school and then work through the challenges they’re facing.

W2W coaching “is about setting goals and helping people think about intentional change,” she said.

“We ask that the women not be in crisis,” Becker said. “… We spend time identifying the symptoms. … We have a referral process that gets (each) coach the support she needs for the woman she’s coaching or the woman’s family.”

Several years ago, Becker studied 2010 census data to determine the status of women and girls in Chautauqua County, and realized they were no better off than they had been 30 years earlier.

“Even with all the people working on this and all the resources spent, we’re not moving the dial,” Becker told the Daily in 2016, referring to what had concerned her after she dove into that census data.

Now, Becker considers the five years that have passed since she first gathered about 80 women together for a half-day meeting to discuss that data, and issues a call to action: “What are we, in this room, going to do with our resources?” 

“I think one of our major accomplishments (of W2W) is that we’ve been able to print all of our training manuals,” she said. “We’ve had four to five rounds of training coaches. … There are 40 pairs at any time. We’ve pulled it all together. Now we’re in a position to share this with other organizations. When I spoke (at the CWC) before, we were still piloting; now we’re in full flow.”   

Becker said her message to other groups and volunteers is that “we’re here to support you and to train you,” because “training other organizations is the only way to scale up.”

She said her first goal is to scale up in Chautauqua County and engage other groups.

“But I feel it’s good to engage with other communities, so that’s why I’m glad we’re coming to the Women’s Club,” Becker added. “I know a lot of women who do good works in their communities.”

She said she would like women from other places to collect basic demographic data about the women and girls in their communities, and to do so without taking down names and other identifying information. 

Even though another area in northern Chautauqua County was added to ARC’s “distressed” list just last month, thanks to Becker, Zielinski and the coalition, progress is being made for women living there, too.

“We really feel like we’re ready to go to scale,” Becker said. “Chautauqua County’s greatest asset is these amazingly talented women. (Zielinkski) is an example. … We had a gathering of nearly 200 people in April. She got the message out, including through social media. … We’re at a different stage than we were a couple years ago.”

When Linda P. Fried earned her Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in 1984, she didn’t expect to enter the emerging field of geriatric medicine. A fellow doctor recommended she look into the topic, and she did — more out of respect than interest.

Thirty-six hours later, she had decided to change the course of her career.

“The data were overwhelming,” she said. “We had added all these years to the length of our lives, but we were forecasting all this gloom and doom about what it meant. … I thought, ‘You know, there are other questions we should be asking and answering first, before we decide this is a disaster,’ … and I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since.”

Fried is the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

She will speak at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday, July 17 in the Amphitheater as part of Week Four, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with Stanford Center on Longevity.”

Fried said that in the last century, humans have added 30 years to the average life expectancy.

“Through intentional societal investment, we have created a whole new stage of human life,” she said. “This is unprecedented in the history of the world.”

She has spent decades studying the science of healthy aging. Among her accomplishments, she developed an assessment tool to test for frailty in the elderly, helping to define what was a formerly ambiguous medical term.

Fried believes that restructuring society to make room for this new stage of life has the potential to benefit everyone.

“I think there is more to say about how (longer lives) could change the world, than how they are already changing the world,” she said, “but we have unprecedented and unique human capital that older people bring, and we are learning a lot about the assets that people bring in older age, and how actually to invest in that so people are healthy in older age and can do the things that would matter to them and the world around them.”

In her talk, Fried will discuss some of the programs that already exist, and more that she believes should be created, to adapt the world to increased human longevity.

Although her field of study is geriatric medicine, Fried doesn’t want younger Chautauquans to think this topic is not relevant to their lives.

“I think the people who have the most to gain are actually younger people,” she said. “By the time we accomplish (societal change) they’re going to be ready to use it. It takes 40 years to build the next stage of a society, and by that time 25-year-olds will be 65.”

Fried said that besides climate change, addressing increased human longevity is one of the most critical issues facing the world today.

“If we do it well, everybody of every age will be better off,” she said, “And if we don’t, … everyone will lose.”

It’s Fr. Richard Rohr’s hope that his interfaith lectures will give people “intelligent compassion,” for themselves and for others.

“If the only agenda that’s given to you is what I call the ‘first half of life,’ then you keep trying to attain fame, power, money and success,” said Rohr, a spiritual writer, Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Repetition of that agenda eventually leads to disappointment, according to Rohr.

“(People) will not just be disappointed, but bitter,” he said. “They won’t know how to deal with being an exception.”

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 17 in the Hall of Philosophy, Rohr will discuss the importance of “The Resistance” in growing through life. Rohr’s lecture is part of Week Four’s interfaith theme, “Falling Upward: A Week with Richard Rohr.”

“We name things ‘evil’ in such a trivial way,” Rohr said. “I’ll pick a gross example: I was raised Catholic, and you’ve probably heard the jokes about not eating meat on Friday. Before Vatican II, we couldn’t eat meat on Friday. But when you think eating meat on Friday even approaches the meaning of ‘evil,’ and when you concentrate on things like that being evil, when the real evil comes, you have no eyes to see it.”

According to Rohr, focusing attention on the “inessential features” of religion over its “essential features” is missing the point.

“Every church has done this,” he said. “It’s just heartbreaking. I’ve been a priest for 49 years, so I’ve had to see this happen again and again and again.”

In 1965, Julie Andrews graced the big screen with her iconic voice and taught the world about a few of her “Favorite Things.”

By November 1966, “The Sound of Music” had become the highest-grossing movie of all time and received five Academy Awards. Directed by Robert Wise, the film remains a musical lover’s staple with songs that people of all ages recognize.

At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 17 in the Amphitheater, the movie musical will return to the big screen, and the Amp will be alive with “The Sound of Music” in the Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music event as part of the Family Entertainment Series.

In Sing-a-Long-a events, a host leads the audience in vocal warmups and the use of their fun packs. The former Vice President and Director of Programming Marty W. Merkley will serve as host and lead “The Sound of Music” fans through their “magic moments fun pack.”

The fun packs will be given to the first 1,500 people to be used during the event.

Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts, said she is excited to have Merkley as host, particularly because of his musical background.

“Marty is a singer,” Moore said. “So he will lead pre-show fun and activities, including walking the audience through what all of their participation points will be and how to use their audience fun pack.”

Moore said that putting on this show, where costumes are encouraged, was an easy decision.

“I decided to have the show because it’s a great community-building event,” Moore said. “Chautauqua is the right place to celebrate and love ‘The Sound of Music.’ ”

The classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, set in Austria in the late 1930s, follows a young novice named Maria, played by Andrews, as she becomes a governess for the seven children of Captain von Trapp, played by Christopher Plummer.

From rolling hills outside the Nonnberg Abbey to extravagant mansion parties with Austria’s elite, Maria is whisked away into a new world. Her free spirit sparks trouble for her in her new post, as well as interest from Captain von Trapp.

Maria teaches the children to sing, bringing music back into the house years after their mother died. 

“The Sound of Music” is based on a true story — Maria von Trapp’s memoir, which was published in 1949 to help promote her family’s singing group. In 1956, German producer Wolfgang Liebeneiner released his film, “The Trapp Family,” which was a major success. After he released a sequel called “The Trapp Family in America,” the story made its way to American film and musical producers.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical hit the Broadway stage in 1959 and won five Tony Awards. In 1960, the story made its way into a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, with one actress in mind for the role of Maria — Andrews.

Since its release on March 2, 1965, “The Sound of Music” has remained a top musical classic for both stage and screen. Now, Sing-a-long-a events sell out at the Hollywood Bowl each year, according to Moore.

“It happens in several different places all throughout the country,” Moore said. “It’s hugely popular.”

Audiences will get to cheer for their favorite characters and sing along to their favorite songs like “My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “So Long, Farewell,” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” and many others. Moore said she hopes Chautauquans will enjoy an evening of musical fun.

“They’re going to get to applaud for their favorite characters and hiss for those they don’t like, and be a part of one of America’s favorite movies,” Moore said.

When politician, lawyer and author Stacey Abrams was 17 years old, she graduated from high school as valedictorian.

“I was very proud of myself,” Abrams said in her 2018 Ted Talk “3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do.”

As valedictorian, she received the opportunity to meet the governor of Georgia, along with other students from across the state. Abrams and her family walked up to the governor’s mansion ready for the day ahead.

And it was that experience that sparked passion for her future career.

At 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 17 in the Hall of Philosophy, Abrams will draw from her book, Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change, for her lecture, “The Road to a Fair Fight: A Conversation About Voting Rights,” as part of the African American Heritage House Speaker Series.

Abrams said she actually doesn’t even remember meeting the governor. She remembers what happened outside the mansion.

The mansion guard told her and her family they didn’t belong there, without checking the list to find their names.

“The only clear memory I have of that day was a man standing in front of the most powerful place in Georgia, looking at me and telling me I don’t belong,” Abrams said in her 2018 Ted Talk. “And so, I decided, 20-some-odd years later, to be the person who got to open those gates.”

Abrams has earned degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and Yale Law School.

As a dedicated public servant, she founded the New Georgia Project, which helped submit voter registrations for people of color between 2014 and 2016.

Abrams served as the minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives until 2017, and narrowly lost the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. In February, she became the first African American woman to deliver a response to the State of the Union Address.

Recently, she launched Fair Fight, which ensures that every person in Georgia has a voice in state and national elections. She said she is determined to affect change in Georgia and “open gates” for all people.

“I want change,” Abrams said in her 2018 Ted Talk. “But the question is: What change do I want to see?”

African American Heritage House President Erroll Davis has known Abrams for a long time. “She is a very dynamic young woman,” Davis said. “She is very knowledgeable on the issue of voting rights around the country.”

Michael Holloman, Abrams’ deputy communications director, said Abrams is looking forward to speaking at Chautauqua and hopes the audience understands the impact of voting rights.

“Leader Abrams looks forward to being a part of an important conversation in the Chautauqua community about the importance of fighting voter suppression,” Holloman said. “She will highlight the importance of safeguarding the right to vote and ensuring that we have a fair fight, so our democracy works for everyone.”

Shakespeare is in the air at Chautauqua this season, and as the halfway point of the summer approaches, the School of Music Voice Program will put on four productions of Benjamin Britten’s three-act operatic version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The show opens at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 in McKnight Hall.

The voice students are not the only ones to tell the story this season — alongside Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of Shakespeare’s original play and the Inter-Arts Collaboration performance that also hits the stage tonight, the Voice Program’s production is one of three versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be performed on the grounds. This version, however, is unique because it’s a full opera.

Besides cutting the first act of the original play and making some minor additions to account for this change, Britten’s version is “religiously faithful” to Shakespeare’s masterpiece, said Stage Director John Giampietro. The removal of the first act does a service to the music; instead of opening with an act set in the city of Athens, the opera begins in the forest, with a mystical mood.

“Right off the bat, Britten starts us out with this mysterious, magical music, and we’re just plunged into the world,” Giampietro said. “If he started in Athens in the first act, the texture of the music would have been different. So this way, he just throws (us) into the middle of this magical world, which is great.”

Britten kept the language of the original text and even preserved much of the rhythm and meter of Shakespeare’s poetic intent in his melodies. However, those who are familiar with the original work will find something new in this opera — even Giampietro, who has directed the original play five times.

“I knew Shakespeare’s rhythms so well; they were just a part of me,” Giampietro said. “Then when I was studying the opera I almost had to unlearn the Shakespeare to get the Britten into my body and my heart.”

The music for the opera was originally written for a full orchestra, but Music Director Julias Abrahams managed to reduce the score for an ensemble of seven: two flutes, two horns, one trumpet, one trombone and one harp. This ensemble is composed entirely of members of the Music School Festival Orchestra.

The opera will have four showings this week, and will make use of a rotating cast — meaning that the major characters of Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, as well as the four lovers Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia, have multiple people cast and the person playing each character will change each show.

“It has made rehearsing this an adventure beyond belief,” Giampietro said. “Because basically, we have to do everything three times.”

Tonight’s opening performance will feature countertenor Sam Siegel as Oberon, soprano Meredith Wohlgemuth as Titania, tenor Santiago Pizarro as Lysander, bass baritone Luke Sutliff as Demetrius, soprano Mackenzie Jacquemin as Helena and mezzo-soprano Sophia Maekawa as Hermia.

Additionally, School of Music alumnus, guest faculty and award-winning operatic bass Matthew Rose will play the part of Bottom — a particularly difficult role — in every show.

“He’s done the role,” said Donna Gill, head voice coach and coordinator of voice scheduling. “He’s sung a lot in Britain, he sings at the Met, he’s a very accomplished professional. … (It’s) good for the students to be working alongside a professional like that.”

The casts have been rehearsing for about three weeks — an incredibly short amount of time considering that professional operas might rehearse for four to six weeks with only a single cast, and that Britten’s music is sophisticated and complex. Additionally, it’s a long opera — about three hours in length, according to Giampietro.

“(The students) are amazing,” Giampietro said. “They’re rising to the challenge of the music and the piece. They’re collaborators in it — we’re building this thing together and they have something to say about the piece. And they’re so supportive of each (other), even the three who are sharing a role.”

Additional performances of the opera are at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in McKnight Hall. Seating, which will be partially outdoors, is limited to the first 100 attendees.

“They’ll be brilliant,” Giampietro said. “I’m just eager to see them succeed and see them realize what they’ve done — what a challenge it was, and how they met it.”

Two Pucks, eight lovers — no, you’re not seeing double.

At 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 in the Amphitheater, four of Chautauqua Institution’s art disciplines — Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, Chautauqua Theater Company, the School of Music Voice Program and the School of Dance — will come together for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Inter-Arts Collaboration is co-directed by CTC Artistic Producer Sarah Elizabeth Wansley and Artistic Director Andrew Borba.

“We’re excited about (this collaboration) because it takes one of our masterworks, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and we all have these different contribution points to make it something that is not only well-known, but uniquely Chautauqua,” said Deborah Sunya Moore, vice president of performing and visual arts.

The CSO will be performing Felix Mendelssohn’s score to Midsummer, directed and conducted by Rossen Milanov; CTC, School of Dance and Voice Program will follow the lovers — Demetrius, Helena, Lysander and Hermia — and fairies’ storylines. 

“The different organizations are weaving their work together to create one interdisciplinary performance with a few essential design gestures,” said Maggie Wilson, CTC marketing and communications director.

Mendelssohn’s composition is made up of 14 shorter numbers, including instrumental songs like the famous “Wedding March” and vocal songs like “The Spells,” “The Removal of the Spells” and “Ye spotted snakes.”

“It’s a really known work,”  said mezzo-soprano voice student Sarah Zieba. “ ‘The Wedding March’ in the last movement is really the most famous part of it, so I’m excited to hear the whole piece because I’ve never heard it live, and being part of that is really cool.”

Zieba and soprano Lydia Graham will each have a solo as elves in the fairy chorus, part of Oberon and Titania’s — the king of fairies and his queen — court.

“Honestly, they haven’t really told us much about it, so we’ll see how it goes,” Zieba said.

Apprentice and Festival School of Dance students will perform as core fairies and lovers, weaving and interacting with the actors and vocalists. Additionally, Festival ballerino Jack Grohmann will dance as Puck, alongside CTC’s Kayla Kearney.

In some scenes, the actors will replace the dancers during poignant moments throughout the comedy, according to Sasha Janes, the School of Dance director of contemporary studies. Janes also hinted that some dancers will have minimal speaking parts and will be dancing to the actors’ unaccompanied monologues.

“If you’re going and expecting to see a Shakespearean play verbatim, you’re not going to see that — you’re going to see something different,” Janes said.

In addition to tonight’s performance, Voice Program students will stage Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opera at 7 p.m. tonight through Friday in McKnight Hall. CTC will be performing Jeff Whitty’s modernized A Midsummer Night’s Dream throughout the summer; the next performance will start at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Southern Tier Brewing Company.

Staff writers Julia Arwine, Duard Headley and Val Lick contributed to this report.

From book club discussions to visual arts exhibitions to orchestra performances, literature, art and music all have their place at Chautauqua — and today, classical piano and poetry will collide at a recital given by J.Y. Song, guest member of the School of Music piano faculty.

Song will perform in concert with Sofia Bunting Newman, a conservatory actor for Chautauqua Theater Company, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall. Song will play three compositions by Claude Debussy — “Images, L. 87,” “Etudes, L. 136,” and “Epigraphes antiques, L. 131” — and one piece by Heitor Villa-Lobos: “Rudepoêma, W. 184.”

Song will play the piano, and Newman will read accompanying poetry. Song was inspired to put together a program in this format because of Week Five’s theme, “The Life of the Spoken Word.” Though Song will not be at the Institution during that week, the idea of combining music and poems inspired her.

“It’s all just very colorful music,” Song said. “Debussy was known for using color in new ways, and in that way I think he was very inventive in his use of sound … and Villa-Lobos as well — there are sounds in ‘Rudepoêma’ that I think were probably unprecedented.”

The first Debussy suite, “Images,” consists of three short pieces: “Lent – mélancolique et doux” (Slow — melancholic and sweet), “Souvenir du Louvre” (Remembrance of the Louvre) and “Quelques aspects de ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois’ parce qu’il fait un temps insupportable’ ” (A few aspects of “We won’t go to the woods” because the weather is dreadful). These pieces are not often played and are sometimes called “the forgotten ‘Images,’ ” as they were published after Debussy’s death.

“(It’s) sort of an immediately beautiful work, very characteristic of his style, very fluid; there are moments that seem timeless,” Song said.

The third piece within this set is based on a French nursery rhyme, with a lively and tongue-in-cheek tone, according to Song.

“He puts a few phrases here and there throughout the music, which is quite unusual for him,” Song said. “It’s a very charming set.”

The second suite, “Etudes,” is also made of three smaller pieces, which Song chose from the original 12 pieces in the full suite: “Pour les arpèges composés” (For compound arpeggios), “Pour les octaves” (For the octaves) and “Pour les huit doigts” (For eight fingers). The first is characteristic of Debussy’s colorful, liquid style. The second is happy in tone and “technically challenging,” Song said. The third is an unusual piece that requires the pianist not to use their thumbs, limiting them to eight fingers.

“I don’t know that there’s any other piece in the (piano) repertoire that does this,” Song said.

The third suite, “Epigraphes antiques,” is made up of six shorter pieces based on poems by Pierre Louÿs, a French poet and friend of Debussy’s. Louÿs claimed to have translated these poems from text found on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus that belonged to an Ancient Greek woman Bilitis, a contemporary of Sappho. Though this claim was later debunked, the poems retain an ancient quality to them, and caused some scandal when first published due to their erotic, lesbian themes and content.

“(Debussy) wrote music that seems to sound very ancient,” Song said. “It seems to refer to another time and place … based on memories, or this feeling of things being in the distant past.”

Newman will recite the original poems in between Song playing each piece. In this way, they will blend spoken word and classical music. The six movements are “Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d’été” (For Pan, god of the summer wind), “Pour un tombeau sans nom” (For an unnamed shrine), “Pour que la nuit soit propice” (For a good night), “Pour la danseuse aux crotales” (For the dancer with rattlesnakes), “Pour l’Egyptienne” (For the Egyptian) and “Pour remercier la pluie au matin” (To thank the rain in the morning).

“I think the words are, themselves, very beautiful, and they blend very well with the music of Debussy,” Song said. “There’s something very free about his music; it doesn’t seem tight and rhythmic, so it’s almost like speech. … There’s a seamlessness to moving to the music and the text and back and forth.”

The final piece, by Villa-Lobos, is a musical portrait of Arthur Rubinstein, a pianist with whom Villa-Lobos was close friends. It is a departure from the other pieces, but Song chose it for its contrast. It also fits the theme of spoken word because the title, “Rudepoêma” translates to “Savage Poem.”

“I think there’s something really quite special about this piece, in that Villa-Lobos said that it’s meant to be this intimate portrait of his friend,” Song said. “And so it’s a very personal work in that way.”

As visiting faculty, Song will also be giving a master class to students in the piano program at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 18 in Sherwood-Marsh Studios. Song is at Chautauqua as a guest member of the faculty until Saturday.

People of color experience discriminatory microagressions on a daily basis. They may have more difficulty hailing a cab than their white counterparts. They may be followed around a store by a clerk, or experience poor service at a restaurant.

Social epidemiologist Amani Allen studies how these experiences, which she calls “social stressors,” affect the health of members of marginalized communities. She has heard about these experiences time and time again during interviews and focus groups with African American women in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“These are subtle experiences, but they are very persistent,” Allen said. “It is a kind of a day-in, day-out subtle form of mistreatment that has to do with one’s social identity. What is particularly insidious, is its chronic nature.”

At 10:45 a.m. today, July 16, in the Amphitheater, Allen will explain how social stressors can affect the health of the people who experience them.

“For a long time, there’s been evidence demonstrating the fact that stress impacts health,” she said. “This is one particular form of stress that is particularly salient and is a unique stressor among minority groups.”

Allen is a professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. She is also the principal investigator of the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study.

In the context of this week’s theme, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with Stanford Center on Longevity” Allen will discuss the inequities of the length and quality of life people experience depending on their social identity, as life expectancies of every group have increased over the past century or so.

“When we think about health and longevity, my primary question is who gets to live longer?” Allen said. “All groups don’t get to live long. I’m going to be talking a lot about premature aging and accelerated health decline and how certain groups experience premature aging that limits their ability to live into older age, and live into older age healthily.”

While Allen’s research focuses mostly on racial discrimination as a determinant of health, she also considers factors such as gender and socioeconomic status.

“People don’t experience their race apart from other aspects of their social identity,” she said. “It’s looking at how the intersection of all of those things impact health.”

Before becoming a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Allen worked in the Department of Health in Washington, D.C., as well as at the Ministry of Health in Jerusalem.

“Everywhere I’ve been, whether it’s been corporate, government, domestic or global work, one of the patterns I have seen is that people who experience some form of social disadvantage tend to have poorer health,” she said. “I wanted to understand why.”

At age 5, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo crossed a desert.

It was spring 1993 when Castillo immigrated from Tepechitlán, Mexico, to the United States with his family of six, beginning his life as an undocumented person. His relationship to his citizenship status was governed by the “don’t tell anyone” mentality of his parents’ generation — a survival tactic that protected him, but also limited his voice as a poet.

“I had to pick up these habits in order to either blend in, or go under the radar or, essentially, fake my way through life,” he said. “I had a lot of fears about what I would write, how I would write and what it would say about me — how much to reveal about myself.”

Castillo, who has won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and a GLCA New Writers Award, would later become the first undocumented student to graduate from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets Campaign, a movement that eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes, and has also helped establish the Undocupoet Fellowship to help undocumented writers fund submission costs to journals and contests.

As Week Four’s poet-in-residence at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Castillo will give a Brown Bag lecture titled “Trusting the Image to Live on Its Own” at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall. The craft talk will theorize the image as “the smallest unit of measure that has a significant meaning” in a poem. He wants to discuss the idea that poems do not have to rely on simile and metaphor to convey description — instead, poets should “trust in the power of the images enough to stand on its own, to just be exactly what it is.”

He’s also interested in the world between images; the space wherein readers have to make their own leaps and associations, and cites James Wright and Richard Siken as poets who allow images to push their poems forward.

“Crush by Richard Siken completely changed the way that I approached things,” Castillo said. “It changed everything, everything, everything. What he’s able to do with his images — circumvent ‘A’ to ‘B’ to ‘C,’ and just go to ‘C.’ (The poetry book is) called Crush because it’s claustrophobic; it’s almost overwhelming how much information and emotion and imagery is packed into one thing.”

Becoming a father and developing his voice in the style of different genres affected Castillo’s writing, too. His son disrupted his steady writing rhythm, but clarified his perspective. Jumping between genres was an act inspired in part by his experience as an undocumented person.

“I came of age when it was not as OK to be as out and undocumented and proud of that,” he said, explaining that poetry was a way to write what he wanted “without really saying it.” Even after overcoming the immediate threat of deportation and family separation, he still finds it difficult to escape the “emotional resonances” of a life in hiding.

“All of the behaviors I had to adopt — that were inculcated in me — stayed there,” Castillo said. “The only way I could break out of that was by literally changing genres. I set out to write a memoir, which has to be more direct.”

Castillo’s memoir Children of the Land, forthcoming in 2020, forced him to speak plainly about his experience navigating a nation hostile to a lack of official papers. The openness of his prose translated to his life as a poet.

“I feel more emboldened,” Castillo said. “I finished that book before everything really exploded and changed with this administration. Poems I’ve written since then are much more directly related to my lived experiences. I am not afforded the luxury of being cryptic.”

He looks to Documents, a book of poems by Jan-Henry Gray, as an example of an undocumented immigrant “(using) the language of the state to subvert his experiences.” Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive is another work Castillo called “monumental and breathtaking.” But in 2019, Castillo reaches for Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet and politician.

“Where I once went specifically (to Neruda) for his love poems and for his beauty, I now value him for taking a stance against what he saw was a totalitarian regime,” Castillo said. “Rather than solace, I go to his poems for courage.”

Aside from performing a vast array of repertoire and transforming into characters, opera singers can also be teachers.

In June, Chautauqua Opera Company Young Artists, including tenor James Stevens, mezzo-soprano Antona Yost, mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Beteag and baritone Yazid Gray, toured 18 local elementary schools performing Kristine McIntyre’s The Barber of Seville in California. They also taught a music lesson to the students before the performance.

For Stevens, introducing kids to music — particularly opera — and teaching different life lessons through music is important.

“The rewarding part about bringing this into schools is that it’s all still the same music, and they are still getting exposed to a masterpiece, but it’s getting presented in a little bit different way,” Stevens said. 

At 5 and 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 in Smith Wilkes Hall, Stevens, Yost, Beteag and Gray will bring the Family Entertainment Series performance of The Barber of Seville in California out of the classroom and onto the stage.

The performance is a condensed, bilingual adaptation of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. It’s a one-act opera lasting less than 45 minutes, intended for young audiences. Gray, who plays Figaro, said the opera was a lot of fun to perform despite how fast it moved.

“It moves very quickly,” Gray said, “which is great for staying engaged with the piece, but you still have all those major plot points.”

Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is a classic romantic comedy about a rich nobleman is in love with a lovely maiden. The love-struck nobleman — Count Almaviva — hopes to make the lovely Rosina fall in love with him. But Rosina is the ward of the grumpy Dr. Bartolo, who wants to marry Rosina himself when she becomes of age. Figaro, his servant, helps the Count in his pursuit of Rosina’s love, per the Count’s request.

The Barber of Seville in California is the same story — English-speaking Count Almaviva, played by Stevens, hopes to make the Spanish-speaking Rosina, played by Yost, fall in love with him. In this version, Rosina’s guardian Dr. Bartolo is Aunt Bartolo, played by Beteag. Instead of Bartolo’s obsession to marry Rosina to get her money, Aunt Bartolo is a micromanaging aunt who wants to keep control of Rosina and her money. The Count asks Figaro to help him in his quest.

Beteag said since Bartolo is a bass-baritone role, she got to experiment with different octaves as well as the comedy. 

“It was an interesting challenge to think beyond my own voice part,” Beteag said. “Of course, I sang it in a comfortable octave but I still got to play around with the buffoonery.”

The comedy in the opera is played up a bit more, creating an entertaining opera for all ages. When the Young Artists performed this show in elementary schools, the message from the performance was clear — no matter a person’s background or language, love will find anyone.

“My favorite part was showing (students) through the show that it’s cool to be bilingual,” Yost said, “and that people who speak different languages can fall in love.”

Rosina and the Count fall in love despite their differences in language. Throughout the school visits in June, students would ask other students who spoke Spanish to translate some of the lines  — a favorite moment for Yost. The performance not only taught the students about opera, but about language.

Director of Arts Education Suzanne Fassett Wright said the performance will help audience members of all ages learn more about opera and language — they may even start singing along with Figaro.

“They will enjoy a very energetic experience that brings opera home to them,” Wright said. “It enables students to become involved in the performance — it’s a very interactive performance.”

Wright hopes the two performances of The Barber of Seville in California will not only entertain, but connect people through opera.

“I would encourage people to come and experience opera in a new and unique way that is meant to reach people of all ages and embrace opera as an art form for everyone,” Wright said.

In the 20th century, the average life expectancy increased by more than ever before; more than all life expectancy increases over the course of human evolution, combined. This gives Laura L. Carstensen good reason to assume that much of the current population, young and old alike, will live to see their 100s.

But an uncertainty still lingers: What’s the best use of all this time?

Carstensen, Stanford University professor and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, discussed SCL’s new and improved map of life at the 10:45 a.m. morning lecture Monday, July 15 in the Amphitheater, opening Week Four, “The New Map of Life: How Longer Lives are Changing the World — In Collaboration with Stanford Center on Longevity.”

Life has been short throughout the course of human evolution. In the beginning of human existence, the average life expectancy was 18 years. By in the late 1800s, life expectancy had increased to 47. Throughout the 20th century, it made its most dramatic increase to 77. Now, it is 79.

“The speed with which these changes took place, my colleagues and I maintain, is the reason that aging feels so tense for many of us — that it feels different and awkward and frightening,” Carstensen said. “It’s brand new. In an evolutionary sense, this happened in the blink of an eye.”

As life expectancy increased over the last century, fertility rates dropped by half. The decreased fertility rates created aging societies — societies where there are more older people than younger people. In 1900, about 4% of the global population was over 65. By 2030, over 20% of the population is projected to be over 65.

“These are game changers,” Carstensen said. “These numbers will change every aspect of life as we know it.”

The story of longevity doesn’t start with the elderly; it actually begins with babies.

In 1900, 25% of children born in the United States died before they reached 5 years old. During that time period, population graphs were pyramid shaped because the age distribution got smaller at the top, which represented people who made it to old age. In the 20th century, those pyramids began to reshape into rectangles.

“What this means is we have created a world where the vast majority of little ones are going to have the opportunity to live their entire lives,” Carstensen said. “This is an extraordinary cultural achievement.”

Culture changed as the world was redesigned to support young life. Carstensen said past generations deemed the high infant death rates unacceptable, and in response, they invested in science and technology to understand ways to improve children’s chances of survival.

Those previous generations studied medical science to understand how diseases spread and  created vaccinations to prevent young people from ever having to experience certain diseases. In addition to medical science, culture changed — not in the sense of languages and food, but social norms and practices.

“There are some historians about this era who write that you have your garbage collectors to thank as much as your physicians for longer lives,” Carstensen said. “Improved sanitation greatly contributed.”

As sanitation improved, other aspects of life did too. Milk was pasteurized, water was disinfected. Electricity was distributed, and along came refrigeration.

“We came to understand nutritional needs and built nutrients into food fortification programs that virtually eradicated nutritional disorders like gout,” Carstensen said. “We didn’t ask every parent to change their practices. We made this an institutional practice; we built this into the food supply. The water became safer, and food was preserved as it should be.”

A society that recognized it had fewer children decided to invest in those children. Thus, public education became accessible in every state.

“Education is a better predictor of life expectancy than age,” she said. “It is an extraordinarily potent contributor to life expectancy.”

Longevity is also a story of cooperation, Carsetensen said.

“These changes, this effort to work together to improve the entire population, has resulted in a point in history where for the first time, five, and conceivably six generations, will be alive at the same time,” she said. “A 20-year-old male today has a better chance of having a living grandmother than a 20-year-old male in 1900 had of having a living mother. These are game changers.”

The prospect of more time doesn’t make humans as excited as Carstensen once thought. People are worried, but their worry is based on assumptions of very different times than their own. Aging used to be synonymous with deficits, but that downward trajectory is no longer apparent in current generations.

“There are many assumptions we have made about aging that are wrong,” she said. “There are some aspects of life that improve: emotional wellbeing gets better as people get older, our stores of knowledge go up and in the last 50 years, every birth cohort that has arrived at 65, has been healthier than the one before it.”

The number of diseases among older people are increasing; however, they’re mostly chronic diseases like arthritis because they take longer to develop.

Regardless of those diseases, older people are functioning better than ever before. Carstensen said people need to start thinking of aging as an increase in variability and heterogeneity.

Additionally, people are functioning better cognitively as they get older.

“People today in their 80s are testing like people in prior generations tested at 65,” Carstensen said. “People are doing better.”

Dementia rates have been falling since 1977. Between 2000 and 2012, incidents of dementia fell by 24% in the United States. Yet again, rates of dementia decreased among those with higher education, which is providing a buffer against brain disease.

Older people are also happier than younger people. They are slower to anger, they can regulate emotions better, they know how to solve emotionally charged conflict better, and are more grateful and likely to forgive.

“I want you to begin to imagine with me what a society might do with a growing number of people who are knowledgeable, functionally healthy and emotionally stable,” Carstensen said.

As people become healthier, fitter and more knowledgeable, they are also more likely to keep working. Carstensen said an aging workforce is not the biggest change in society. Instead, it’s age diversification in the workforce, as six birth cohorts are currently working at the same time.

“It looks like mixed-age workforces may be more productive than anything we’ve ever seen in the past,” she said.

Besides the advancements that have already been made, there is promise of further improvements in the 21st century.

Carstensen showed a cover photo of TIME magazine with the headline “Can Google solve death?” Some scientists have argued that immortality is possible, according to Carstensen, but for her, the goal is not to stop aging — the goal is to slow it down.

“We are beginning to understand what aging is in a biological level, and then we can affect it,” she said. “Techniques like parabiosis and senolytics are really encouraging.”

Senolytics focuses on the destruction of senescent, or aged, cells. As one ages, senescent cells stop dividing and secrete inflammatory proteins that destroy or impair the function of healthy cells around them. New research proposes the removal of some of those senescent cells to promote healthy longevity.

In terms of technology, Carstensen is excited about flexible polymer tattoos that may replace Fitbits and Apple watches. Connected by bluetooth, the tattoos can monitor respiration, glucose, heart rate and temperature, and warn the user of potential health problems.

An extraordinary amount of evidence shows that the best thing one can do for aging is to keep moving. Carstensen said if the effects of exercise could be bottled, it would be the most prescribed and expensive drug on the market.

“When you exercise, it improves mood, it improves bone strength, it improves your heart and lowers your risk of cardiovascular diseases,” she said. “Exercise. This is it. What we need to do in the meantime, while we wait for scientists to figure out what to do about some of this aging stuff, is keep moving.”

Carstensen doesn’t lose a minute of sleep over the prospect of living forever; what keeps her up at night is the potential cost of these medical and technological advancements and how broadly they will be distributed in society.

“I do think that, to an extent, if we find ways for the top 10% of people in the world — the most educated and affluent — if we find ways for us essentially to live better and we live better and we leave the rest of the population in the dust, we will have inequities and disadvantaged differences that would make today’s experience hell by comparison,” she said.

The SCL is working toward a “New Map of Life” to prevent those drastic inequities. Carstensen said the first step to their design was asking people to envision what a high quality, satisfying, century-long life could look like.

“You cannot achieve what you cannot envision,” she said. “Today, we are not doing a good job of envisioning century-long lives as lives that are flourishing.”

Carstensen hosted a meeting of 50 experts, including academics, architects, climate scientists, educators and pediatricians, who collaborated to envision the possibilities that might come with longer lives.

They started by mapping the basic stepping stones of life, such as school, marriage and retirement. The team noticed there was a huge blank spot for the 30 years after retirement. As Carstensen asked people what they would do with those 30 extra years, no one said they would want to use them at the end of their lives. Instead, people said they would add them to the years they raised kids or to time spent in high school. Some said the years belonged in early childhood, others said they would work multiple jobs or take multiple sabbaticals throughout their careers.

Castensen said there are no right answers to her question, but there is a clarification: Younger generations have just as much to do with longevity as older generations.

“Find ways to use this growing population of even-handed people who can address some of the greatest problems facing the world today,” she said. “We need to find ways that having more older people makes life better for the youngest among us.”

The next time someone sees kids playing outside at their local preschool, Carstensen hopes they will not only view them as kids, but as the first centenarians of the 22nd century. More importantly, she wants people to realize it is their job — now — to build a world that will support those kids “all the way through.”

“This is hard,” Carstensen said. “It is going to be hard. But I assure you, the greatest risk of failure is setting the bar too low.”

“All our Christmas songs talk about Jesus coming into the world, but it would be more theologically correct to say that Jesus is coming out of the Christ-soaked world,” said Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, at the 9:15 a.m. Monday, July 15 Ecumenical Service. His sermon title was “Everything Belongs,” and the Scripture text was Hebrew 1:1-3.

God has been speaking for a long time, Rohr said.

“Jesus is the culmination of that speaking, but we got so excited about the culmination that we forgot the 13.6 billion years before,” he said.

As an illustration, Rohr reminded the congregation of the story of Jacob sleeping on a rock as a pillow in the desert. Jacob had a dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder.

Jacob had a “eureka” moment.

“Maybe this was a metaphor for prayer,” Rohr said.

Jacob said: “You have been here all the time, and I never knew it.” Jacob anointed the rock as a gate to heaven; he realized that the world was already Christ-soaked.

“This act might have been considered paganism,” Rohr said. “The root of the Hebrew word for anointing is meshach. The messiah is the anointed one.”

The Jewish people were waiting for the anointed one, Rohr said.

“It should shake your mind to think differently,” he said. “We have a mystery too great, too grand to comprehend.”

The church fathers wrote about the great chain of being. The chain began with finding the divine in the Earth, the firmament, then in plants, trees and animals, then humans, then angels, then the divinity.

“Notice that humans are only one link in the chain,” Rohr said. “Once the chain is broken, we have stopped honoring the divine presence in any link. The link was broken in humans and we believe we have found it only in a few of us, and we have developed thousands of reasons to exclude others.”

For our children and grandchildren, Rohr told the congregation, this exclusion would not work.

“For them, all is sacred or nothing is sacred,” he said. “Christians should be the first in line to recognize the divine DNA in everything.”

Rohr said it takes a contemplative mind to see the DNA in everything, a mind that has the capacity to see at depth. Jacob has a contemplative mind.

“At the end of his life, Thomas Merton said, ‘The gate of heaven is everywhere,’ ” Rohr said.  “Maybe you need to get to the end of life to see that.”

The view that any one individual group is “chosen” is narcissistic, Rohr said. As children, he told the congregation, our parents make us feel chosen and elected.

“The point is to pass that chosenness to everyone else,” he said. “In the last 2,000 years, we have just been jumping up and down saying ‘I’m special.’ You are, but everyone else is, too.”

If creation is the universality of the presence of Christ, then Jesus is the personalization of that presence.

“The world was finally ready for an I-Thou moment, as Martin Buber said,” Rohr said. “We are able to love something as it is, of itself, by itself; not just what it does for me.”

When Christ is the universal principle and Jesus is the personal manifestation in a religion, then the religion is good.

“If you just have the personal Jesus, it is sentimental religion — Jesus is my boyfriend, Jesus-and-me religion,” Rohr said. “If you just have the universal principle, there is no devotion, no heart, only intellectual belief. True Christianity is head and heart.”

Jesus is the “radiance of the glory of God,” Rohr said. “He is a microcosm of the macrocosm,” he said. “The writer of Revelation called Jesus the alpha and omega. We latched on to the omega; this week we are going to be talking about the alpha.”

Rohr told the congregation that the universe is still expanding — and expanding at an increasing rate.

“We can only kneel before the mystery that is larger than we think or we can think, according to physicist David Bohm,” Rohr said. “We can only kneel before the mystery that is larger than we think or can think.”

The Rt. Rev V. Gene Robinson, vice president of religion and senior pastor, presided. The Rev. Paul Womack, former pastor of Hurlbut Memorial Community United Methodist Church and co-host at the United Methodist Missionary Home, read the Scriptures. The Motet Choir sang “Holy God We Praise Thy Name,” by John Ferguson, under the direction of Jared Jacobsen, organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music. The Alison and Craig Marthinsen Endowment for the Department of Religion provides support for this week’s services.

Fifty-two years ago, Argentinian composer and organist Norberto Guinaldo wrote his “Suite for an Old Tracker Organ” as a way to honor his own two-manual tracker organ.

Now, Jared Jacobsen — Chautauqua’s organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music — will breathe new life into this obscure suite and honor the Tallman Tracker Organ at the same time.

At 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 in the Hall of Christ, Jacobsen will pay homage to Guinaldo’s suite and other musical pieces that were written for antique organs in the Tallman Tracker Organ Mini-Concert, “Suite for an Old Tracker Organ.”

“Guinaldo was born and educated in Argentina,” Jacobsen said. “Then he came to the United States, and earned a master’s degree at the University of California, Riverside. He settled in California in a suburb of Los Angeles called Garden Grove. He became the organist at the United Methodist of Garden Grove in 1965, and he’s been there ever since.”

According to Jacobsen, Guinaldo bought his tracker organ from an old church and put it in his living room to practice on.

“He was exploring music as a composer, and he had been trained in mid-19th century styles of music, both in Argentina and here,” Jacobsen said.

The suite is “spiky and angular,” according to Jacobsen, and doesn’t necessarily contain “hummable tunes.”

“But it is the kind of music people were writing around the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “So it’s not for everybody’s taste, but it’s worth hearing every now and then. He wrote this piece to be played on a little tracker organ, which is what we have in the Hall of Christ.”

To “sweeten the pot” for his prospective audience, Jacobsen will play other pieces written for historic instruments or in an antique style.

“One of these is a little English throw-away piece by a composer named Giles Farnaby,” he said. “He titled this piece ‘The New Sa-Hoo.’ Well, who could resist playing a piece called ‘The New Sa-Hoo’?”

Jacobsen said that piece was one of many included in a collection from the 1940s that focused on obscure music.

“It’s just two minutes of fluff,” Jacobsen said.

But the oddity in the concert will be a piece by the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn, according to Jacobsen.

“You could build a small organ that was run by a clockwork mechanism, which was a big deal in the time of Haydn and Mozart,” he said. “Haydn was unable to resist a wealthy patron who came and said, ‘I have this gadget, a musical clock that sits on my table. And it would just be the bee’s knees if you could write me a piece for this, Mr. Haydn, because everybody knows you’re such a famous composer.’ ”

The smaller pieces to be featured in the concert, like Haydn’s and Farnaby’s, work well on the Tallman Organ, according to Jacobsen.

“Not only are we keeping the instrument alive,” he said, “but the instrument is keeping those interesting little corners of music alive, too.”