One of the considerations in preparing for a play is ensuring costume changes that are fast. There are scenes in which an actor had to transform from a statue to a chimney sweep in less time than it takes to say Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Which is why I have made vests that button in the front for style, but velcro in the back for speed. 

The current production has a large enough cast that each person plays but one part, with the exception of Father Christmas and his elf. They double dip. Everyone else puts on their hangar's worth of articles and keeps them zipped all night. Simple enough. I could hot glue them on in a pinch. 

The story we are reflecting on in my small group this week is the Prodigal Son.

The younger son retreats to a far country, wastes his inheritance, lives with the pigs, and drags home feeling like a failure. The father waits for his child to return, and when he sees him coming across the horizon runs to embrace him. The older son, who never wandered and never disobeyed his father, is miffed.

I notice that the three characters are widely dissimilar in their behavior, yet are all me. I have played each of them. 

Putting distance between myself and the people I care about is indeed foolish. Yet I have done it. Being in a far country, and facing the reality that I was being boorish is not a memory I relish. Yet humility can be the portal to genuine reconciliation. 

Waiting for a relationship to come back to life is lonely. Yet if it resurges the celebration that plows past being Right is a party worth lifting your glass for.

Sometimes we still choose sanctimoniousness.  As if that high horse gets us anywhere interesting. 

Taking on various roles deepens our understanding of the plot. Plus, if I am not mistaken, the son who felt the full saturation of his father's adoration was not the one who never left, but rather the one who was lost.