In the next couple of weeks, I’ll hear from the places that I auditioned for a couple of weeks ago.  My application to Western Illinois University is being processed.  I know I have a job from May to September, but after that, who knows what I’ll be up to?

I’ve thought of a couple of other options, but what do I really want to do?  I want to be able to create things.  I want to found my own theatre, but the people that I really want to do that with won’t necessarily be available come the fall.

I also wouldn’t mind being able to write full time.  Or play poker.  The one thing I want to avoid is working a traditional nine to five.  Which probably isn’t a bad thing to not want, mostly because, at least in Michigan, there really aren’t any of those available.

My girlfriend just got an internship, though.  So there’s some hope in Michigan, right?

Before I can begin a discussion of what I mean by that statement, it would make sense to briefly explain the Ontological Argument.  To explain, I’ll use my favorite, and perhaps the most famous – the argument put forth by Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm first gets us to agree on a definition of God that is “the-being-than-which-there-is-no-greater.”  From there, we are to agree that existence adds to a things greatness (for surely, alcohol in reality is better than alcohol that only exists in my mind), and so if we concede that point, we’ve made Anselm’s argument.  For if something exists in reality than it is greater than something which exists solely in the mind, and so God must exist, otherwise there would be a being that is greater than God, who is “the-being-than-which-there-is-no-greater.”

Guanilo, a contemporary of Anselm, and a Monk, rejects Anselm’s logic, though he would most likely ultimately agree with Anselm’s conclusion that God does exist.  Guanilo argues that by applying the same logic to the idea of an island, and calling this island “the-island-than-which-there-is-no-greater”, and following Anselm’s logic, concludes that the island must exist through the same reasoning that Anselm is able to conclude that God exists.

However, there is a problem with this objection, which Anselm would bring up, but a philosopher by the name of William Rowe would defend much better.  I too, will do my best to defend Anselm in the same manner.  The objection to Guanilo’s objection is simple – that an island, and any other thing we might try and put in the place of God, is finite.  God, by definition, is necessarily infinite, so the comparison of an island (or hockey play, as Rowe would demonstrate), to God is not analogical.  When it comes to the perfection of a finite thing, it is actually impossible for our minds to conceive of those things, which is a requirement of Anselm’s argument for God’s existence.  We must be able to actually conceive of the thing in our mind, and because perfection is a part of our conception of God, we can conceive of a perfect God, but not a perfect island.

This brings me back to my original statement – it is within this objection and response that one can begin to see what I meant by the lack of experience being evoked creates both a strong and weak argument.  The argument itself is strong in that it is hard to dispute that a non-existent God is not as great as an existent God, regardless of if you want to believe that God exists or not.  As someone who wants to believe, I obviously come down on one side of that, and if someone does not want to believe they’ll come down on the other.  However, the question still remains of if one can truly conceive of a perfect God existing in the universe, because we are in the finite world, we have no experience on which to base the idea of an infinitely perfect being existing within the confines of the universe that we occupy.

Think about the healthcare bill.  If the democrats had stood up for what was right, we would right now be on the verge of implementing a health care plan that would provide health care for the 45 million uninsured American’s, of which I’m about to quickly become a part of once I graduate from college.  And it won’t be because I’m not working.  It will be because I can’t afford it.

If things work out for me, than I’ll be a work-a-day actor, and I’ll be making enough money to be above the poverty line, but not enough where I could actually afford health insurance.  There are plenty of people that fall within this area.

For more on the health care bill, there was an interesting op/ed earlier this week in USA today.  You can read it here.

On a side note, sorry for my long absence.  I think I’ll be back.  I’ve been missing this for a while now.

I feel really hopeful about the State of Michigan.  I think that this could become a fantastic place for the entertainment industry, particularly when you combine it with all of the natural beauty which helps to drive tourism in our state.  If we could build an infrastructure and support for the arts within this state, than that will only work to our advantage as we build up our tourism dollars.

Think about summer time, one of the peaks of Michigan’s tourist season (and rightfully so), how many summer theaters are there in the state of Michigan?  7.  Compare that to Michigan’s neighbor to the south, and you’ll find 15 summer theater’s in Ohio.  Why am I going to Ohio this summer to work?  Because that’s where the jobs in my field are.  At least 2 of the Ohio summer theater’s employ 60+ actors and technicians, not to mention all of the box office, maintenance and parking people employed by these companies.  The Michigan companies are not nearly that large.

Ohio is a summer theatre destination, Michigan is not.

Michigan however, should have the advantage.  Our landscape and natural beauty greatly outstrips Ohio in the ability to draw tourism.  If we want to start bringing in tourists year round, than we need to give them something more to do than stare at the beautiful snow.  We must entertain them.  We want to draw young people to our cities?  Than we must give them cool and innovative things to do during the evening hours.  We can’t call someplace a “hip city” and still have businesses shutting down at 5.

We also can’t expect theater to fully sustain itself right from the outset of a shift in our economy.  Like all industries, starting a theater company and creating and building a base of supporters takes time and lots of money.  Once the word gets out however, and an area really rallies around a theatre, the effects are felt by everyone – restaurants and shops near the theatre as well as the theatre itself.

I look forward to hearing more from those running for Governor about how the arts fit into their economic recovery plan.  So far, the Rick Snyder campaign is the only campaign to acknowledge that the arts even have a place in their plan.  This is what I’ve heard from them:

RickForMI @asfreeman The arts fit heavily into Rick’s vision for #Michigan.They are critical to our quality of life and retaining our youth in state.

RickForMI @asfreeman And, let’s be honest, events like#ArtPrize in #GrandRapids is just plain COOL!http://bit.ly/1u4daE

I realize that these aren’t specific plans, but it’s a step in the right direction.  No candidates have released official plans as of yet, as it is still very early in the campaign season.  However, campaigns are beginning to form these plans, and I hope that they won’t forget about the arts when they do.

One final example before I end this post.  I was talking to some friends last night, and we were talking about future plans, and the thought came up of starting a theatre in Lansing, as there are plenty of spaces available in the city.  ”That’d be great,” one guy said, ‘if Lansing was a cool place.”  The other friend agreed.

I tried to argue that Lansing, and Michigan, could be cool if people do the work to make it cool.  Most people in my age group seem to be looking at the state of Michigan and thinking that nothing can be done.  I look at Michigan and think that there are some incredible opportunities to create things that no one has ever seen before.  I’m very hopeful about Michigan.  But we need help.  We need leadership in Lansing that recognizes the costs with starting these ventures and will help us get off the ground.  Who in the governor’s race is that going to be?  Hopefully one of the candidates.  Hopefully they’ll follow through on what they promise.  Hopefully, we can rebuild Michigan into some place wildly cool that people can’t stay away from, let alone choose something else.

The exchange went like this:

RickForMI  Generation Y Michiganders pledge allegiance to Michigan http://bit.ly/1oaxdb. Rick will insure that all young people can find work in MI.

asfreeman  @RickForMI How?

RickForMI  @asfreeman Rick has a proven record of creating jobs. Soon he will release his plan to create jobs as Gov. In meantime: http://bit.ly/3FQXzU

I recommend everyone go out and click that link.  I don’t endorse Rick Snyder as a candidate, but I do greatly appreciate his campaign working to use Twitter not only put out news on the campaign trail, but to actually interact and listen to voters.  I hope the other campaigns will follow suit as we enter the year 2010 and the election slowly but surely starts to pick up.  Other campaigns I’ve tweeted at have seemed to ignore my questions.

It should also be noted that I am still waiting a response from the Snyder campaign to my follow up question about his jobs plan: How do creative and performing arts jobs figure into this plan?

I call on all of the gubernatorial campaigns to answer that one simple question.

This weekend, he gave a wonderful sermon about submitting like Jesus.  (You can hear it here.)  As a part of that sermon, he talked about submission within the context of a marriage, a message I had never really heard before.  Within his own message, Noel referenced a message from Matt Chandler on the idea of submission within marriage, which you can listen to here.

There are a lot of interesting things in these messages for married couples, and it left me trying to figure out what they meant for the rest of us.  I’m not married.  Some day, I probably will be, so I mean, I can look forward to putting these messages to good use then.  But is there any way that these messages apply to me now?

I’m dating, and, in theory, dating is a precursor to marriage.  So if I know what the biblical model of marriage is, then in theory, I should know what I’m looking for when I’m dating – someone with whom I can have that kind of marriage with.  How do I learn that about someone?  I don’t know, but I’m going to pray and try and figure it out.  If you have any advice on how I might be able to do that, please, share it.

I don’t know exactly what the biblical model of dating would look like, and I’m not even sure if their is one.  There is a biblical model of marriage though, and if we know what we’re supposed to be aiming for, that can probably be a good guide into how we should be conducting ourselves while we date, with God at the center of everything.

If you want to talk about Him, let me know.  Let’s talk.

How many times do we find ourselves doing something because “it’s what we’ve always done.”  That is a meaningless reason to do things.

One of the things I lvoe about theatre is the tradition.  Live performance is an act that ties something I’m doing today all the way back tot he Greeks, the founders of western civilization.  That’s wildly cool to me.  But I also don’t want to do somethign because it’s what’s always been done.  I want to do things with meaning.  Things that will change everything.

The question we’re always supposed to ask in the theatre is “why?”  I’m going to start asking it about life.  I invite you to do the same.

Let us ask “why?”

Let us not answer, “because that’s what we’ve always done.”

“It is a sign of weakness – an admission that religion needs artificial life support – to push religious symbols into the smothering embrace of government.  If the push succeeds, religion is weakened further when it is distorted to fit governmental desires.”

“In American culture today, religion is inevitably watered down or distorted beyond recognition when its symbols are forced into the public square.”

“In an endless series of bitter and costly legal battles, courts have sometimes allowed the display of the Ten Commandments on public property and sometimes forbidden it.  But the commandments have gotten lost in the process.  Christians have lost sight of the Jewish origins of the commandments and of what Jesus said about which commandments really matter.”

In case you’re unsure, here’s what Jesus has to say about the commandments, from Matthew 22, starting with verse 34, and going through verse 40:  ”But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to questionhim again.  One of them, an expert in religions law, tried to trap him with this question:  ”Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

“Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important:  ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’  The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”"

“The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”  So should we really be worried about forcing our faith into the public sphere?  The United States was founded by those escaping religious persecution.  Instead of focusing our energies on wharping and distorting Christianity to re-enforce our government, shouldn’t we instead focusing on governing and leading by following the example laid forth by Christ?  We must serve our fellow man, love God, and love our neighbor.  The rest is unimportant.  There should be nothing but love.

God bless.

God bless you.