A Renaissance Festival

The middle ages were an exciting time. Hope was starting to pull back the dark veil covering civilization during the dark ages. The drama and history teachers decided to put on a Renaissance Festival as a project for their classes. Soon the whole highschool was involved. The large gathering was a re-enactment of one of King Henry's weddings, his last one I think. Keeping King Henry's wives straight is a chore.

I led a session called Heretics and Heathens in which I pretended to be an inqustitor for the church. After familiarizing the group with the inquistitor's job and some of the tortures used in the process, Spencer, a 12th grade Bible student and I acted out the Diet of Worms. I was Johann Eck, the papal representative and the man responsible for questioning Martin Luther (Spencer).

Quintin and others from his class also participated in the festival. They put on a puppet show for some of the elementary students and served as performers in the Renaissance village between sessions. Quintin was a mime. He's pictured with a friend from his class, Zach.

The Renaissance Festival got me thinking. It's only been a few hundred years since the middle ages, yet the world or at least the world I've known, has changed dramatically. Since coming to Indonesia we've seen places barely touched by time; places where the people continue to live just as they have for hundreds of years. In seeing these places I can better understand what the middles ages might have been like. This causes me to wonder what the average Indonesian thinks of us. Are we seen as crusaders armed with wealth, priviledge and a New Testament Bible? During my research on the middle ages, I found myself appalled and ashamed of some of the church's history. I think and will continue to hope that the aliens living among the indigenous people here are living a better story than the one's that came out of the middle ages. Of course this is the hope that we are all called to live out.

Shalom, Jeff