"Someone has altered the script.
My lines have been changed.
The other actors are shifting roles.
They don't come in when they're expected to,
and they don't say the lines I've written
and I'm being upstaged.
I thought I was writing this play
with a rather nice role for myself,
small, but juicy
and some excellent lines.
But nobody gives me my cues
and the scenery has been replaced
and I don't recognize the new sets.
This isn't the script I was writing.
I don't understand this play at all.
To grow up
is to find
the small part you are playing
in this extraordinary drama
written by
somebody else."
~Madeleine L'Engle

I was a actually searching for a specific Advent reading in a book of Madeleine L'Engle's writing when my eyes fell on this poem. Its message took be aback. I read it over several times wondering what disturbed me about it. Knowing that L'Engle spent the early part of her career in the theater, I understood why she chose the words she did. Perhaps because my first career was in the theater I was drawn to the poem in ways others might not be.

Upon further reflection I realized that I was connecting it to a set of interviews I had watched this morning on television. I was mindlessly wrapping Christmas presents while watching Good Morning America. My attention was not fully with the presents or the show. By then my eyes fell on the faces of the people being interviewed and I put down my scissors and tape and really focused on the five people who have lost their jobs over the last months in this economic down turn. They were professional people of varying ages who were now in a play they never imaged being in, one they did not audition for. They were jobless. As at least two pointed out, they were jobless at Christmas time. They spoke poignantly of how awful it was.

I listened as they talked about how they spend each day, how they look for work, how they deal with their humiliation, their despair, their fear, their sadness. I listened as they described losing weight, gaining weight, receiving joyfully hand-me-down clothes from friends. They told how much they needed their friends not to withdraw from them, how much they need community. The final statement made by one of the men:"I know that in the end it will all be fine. It will get better. I believe that." His words brought nodding  smiles from some and worried, distant looks from others.

These people are living 'altered scripts' right now. They find themselves in a play not of their own making, saying lines they did not write or choose. L'Engle is right that each of us is engaged in an extraordinary drama. Sometimes we are able to alter the script, write new lines we love and play the part we had prepared for. Still other times, through a variety of life circumstances, we find ourselves in a wakeful state living every actor's nightmare: finding yourself in a play where everyone else knows their lines and you are trying to figure out what play you are in. Every actor I've ever known tells of having this dream.

As I turned back to my wrapping, the presents held a little less luster. My heart was with those people as they searched for the next line to say. I pray they, and all in the same situation, will once again find their role in the extraordinary drama that is their life. May we who know our lines right now keep them in our prayers and reach out to them as they make their way on the stage.

It is a full moon tonight. Look up!