The Ironies of "As It Is In Heaven"

Back from Regent University's production of As It Is In Heaven, a play written by Arlene Hutton first produced in 2001. As usual, Regent's production was top-notch, with spare but appropriate scenery, good staging, and energetic performers. Given the close range of ages of Regent's student-actors, it took me a while to distinguish the three "older" members of the Shaker community from the six young ones. Perhaps my Protestant confessional bent caused me to see more irony in the play than was intended: I found it mildly humorous that a religious sect (cult?) established on the ecstatic visions of Ann Lee would be roiled by the visions of another, even younger gal, less than a century later. (If Wikipedia can be believed, the play is consistent with the history of the Shakers in the mid-1840s.)

That the same confessional Protestant would find Robert Bresson's 60-year old black and white celebrated cinematic version of Diary of a Country Priest (based on the novel by Georges Bernanos) far more gripping than As It Is In Heaven may be the greater irony. We had watched Diary of a Country Priest the previous night and for all of its non-action, I found its portrayal of the very Catholic practice of a theology of suffering quite convicting. Drawing on the non-ecstatic insights of St. Therese of Lisieux, Bresson (following Bernanos) presents a decidedly un-shaking vision of the Christian life characterized by consistent humility (if not humiliation)--a lesson easier to acknowledge than to practice.