I discovered what I love

Roger Gordon

Roger Gordon – The Christian Science Journal, Dec. 2006

I was thrilled. I had been admitted to college at one of the top theater schools in the United States, in the conservatory’s most competitive year ever.

Freshman year I took theater classes all day long with the same group of 15 students. The program was designed so we would get to know each other intimately, and we formed a very tight knit ensemble together. In our classes and outside of them, we laughed, cried, mourned, and celebrated life together.

We had many projects assigned to us that helped make us better actors. My favorite project was my "Life River," in which I performed for my classmates some of the key events in my life. The work was meant to give each of us a better understanding of ourselves. The theory was: If we knew ourselves better, we’d be better actors.

At the beginning of the school year, I thought this kind of work would be incredibly rewarding. In addition to good actor training, I thought I would learn more about who God made me to be. I had glimpsed a sense of this identity growing up attending a Christian Science Sunday School, where I learned that God made me in His image, as being only good. But now I expected this spiritual self to dawn on me in a more tangible way.

But the irony was, as the year went on, while I felt that I knew myself better, I became more and more unhappy with where and what I was studying. Theater is my passion, so I couldn’t understand why I was feeling this way.

I reached out to God for an answer.

I got one, but I didn’t like it at first. My answer was to transfer to another college. It took me some six months before I finally followed this directive. I wasn’t sure if I was really hearing God’s direction. Then one night I opened to a hymn at random after a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at a branch Church of Christ, Scientist. The second verse from this hymn says,

Where streams of living water flow
My ransomed soul He leadeth,
And where the verdant pastures grow,
With food celestial feedeth.
(Henry W. Baker, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 330)

When I read that, I felt an incredible sense of trust in God’s plan for me. I stopped depending on human reasoning and instead leaned on the wisdom of God, divine Mind, to point out the way. It was obvious to me right there and then that God was leading my "soul," and I could trust God’s nudging for me to leave the conservatory.

And yet, I still asked myself why I had to make such a big transition. As I thought about it, I began to wonder if my motives for being in this theater program were good ones. When I applied to colleges during my senior year of high school, the conservatory did not appeal to me too greatly. I had wanted to attend a small, rural liberal arts school (which also had a strong theater program). The only reason I had applied to the conservatory was because of its reputation. I realized I had chosen the school because I thought it would make my acting dreams come true. I wanted fame first and foremost, and I felt assured that this school would give it to me.

Perhaps fame would have been mine, but as the school year continued, I began to see that I was missing a much deeper sense of satisfaction. My desire for fame shut me down from getting in touch with what really mattered to me—from doing something that felt more real, something that fed my spiritual sense.

But prayer helped me listen to my heart and led me to realize I wanted a different experience altogether. I wanted to attend a school that would allow me to grow and mature as a human being before committing myself early on so intensely to a career.

Once I knew that I wanted to transfer, I had no idea where to go. I considered the schools I had applied to the year before, but they no longer seemed right for me. I asked God to show me my right place.

One day in mid-June, I was scanning the Internet, and the thought came to me to research a small, liberal arts college I had heard about several years earlier. This spiritual intuition was so forceful that I knew I had to listen to it. After doing deep research on the school, it was clear to me that this was the right place. I quickly assembled an application and managed to submit it just before the deadline. I was soon accepted.

When I arrived on campus, I felt an even clearer sense that God had planted me there. My first semester I happened to live right next door to a Christian Scientist, and we both benefited spiritually from each other’s company. That relationship helped us both feel confident enough to hold Christian Science lectures on a campus that seemed completely uninterested in anything to do with religion. However, the lectures managed to bless and really hit home with the people who came to them.

In terms of my education, I broadened the kinds of courses I was taking and still managed to maintain a focus on drama. More importantly, I found courses that I wouldn’t have found at any other school—courses that applied perfectly to what I was interested in and allowed me to study in depth two of my favorite contemporary playwrights, Horton Foote and August Wilson.

The best thing that happened to me after transferring is that I really found myself, and I discovered playwriting, which is what I truly love. I never would have found this had I not been constantly praying and listening for God’s direction. I still love theater, but I no longer feel that I need to see my name in lights on Broadway to be happy.
TCSJ

Roger Gordon studies playwriting and is a senior at Bennington College in Vermont.

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