Anyone who knows me knows my favorite Broadway musical: Hadestown. It’s an updated version of the ancient Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice.
For those who may not be super familiar with Greek mythology, Orpheus and Eurydice are young lovers. One day, Eurydice gets taken to the Underworld and Orpheus goes down there to save her. He gets caught by Hades, the god of the Underworld.
Hades gives them a challenge: if they can walk back to the surface world the way Orpheus came, Eurydice can go free. But there’s a catch. They have to walk single file, Orpheus in front, Eurydice in back. If Orpehus looks back to make sure she’s following him, then Eurydice will get swept back to the Underworld forever.
Running parallel to the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice is the love story of Hades and Persephone. Because the crops don’t grow when Persephone (the goddess of nature) is in the Underworld with her husband, they agree that she’ll only spend half of the year down below; the other half, she’ll spend in the sun so that the crops will grow.
That was a sweeping overview of the plot. Lucky for you, the show is “sung-through,” which means if you want to get all the details, you can just listen to the album.
I love this show because its social commentary on modern-day issues like greed, climate change, and late-stage capitalism is remarkably well done. It’s thoughtful, engaging, and forces the listener to evaluate how they’re living their own life.
My favorite line, though, happens during a part unrelated to all of that.
At one point early in the show, Persephone returns from the Underworld. The mortals of Earth are so excited she’s back that they throw an impromptu party. She shares wine with them as they dance, sing, and make merry. They urge Orpheus (a poet and musician) to toast to Persephone’s return, so he does.
The music stops. Orpheus raises his glass and says “To the world we dream about –and– the one we live in now.” They drink to the toast, then continue their frivolity.
I love that line because it perfectly captures the liminality of what prayer is. It’s a recognition that we’re caught between the world as it is and the world as we wish it was, which is exactly what we’re doing when we pray. When we ask God to make things on Earth as they are in heaven, we’re simultaneously recognizing the lack of the present and the hope of the future.
We pray for peace not only because we see the tragedy around us, but because we can imagine a world where peace is possible.
We pray for justice not only because we see the corruption around us, but because we can imagine a world where we all make sure one another gets what we need.
We pray for our daily bread not only because we’re hungry now, but we can imagine a future in which our bellies –and the bellies of all those around us– are full.
We can’t build a better future by dwelling on the past; likewise, we can’t address things in the present if we’re only thinking about the future. Prayer invites us into a liminal space where we don’t forsake our current reality by only daydreaming about the future, but instead reminds us why we need a better future in the first place.
Prayer is queer because it challenges us to break the binary of past and future while holding both in tension. The tension we feel outside of that binary is uncomfortable because it’s full of uncertainty. In a world that runs on our rigid measurement of passing time, this uncertainty is terrifying. We thrive off the certainty of what happens next –or, we at least think we do.
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
Certainty is an illusion that allows us to be complacent with the way things are. Genuine prayer invites us to break that illusion and to trust that God will provide us with what we need to be the hands and feet of Christ on Earth– even and especially when we don’t know what that looks like.
Willingly leaning into uncertainty is a scary thing if you’re used to being in control all the time. The more I’ve explored my gender identity, the more I’ve become comfortable sitting in the unknown. When people wonder if I’m a woman, a trans man, nonbinary, or whatever, I used to feel pressure to have a succinct answer for them. Recently, though, I’ve found that having a definitive answer doesn’t change who I am in the world. I don’t have to have my gender identity completely figured out in order to inhabit the world in genuine, embodied ways. So I stopped accepting their pressure as my own.
Letting go of that need to have it all figured out has freed up many things in my faith as well. I don’t have to have the perfect atonement theory under my belt. I don’t have to have every single translation issue in the Bible reconciled.
I can trust that God will honor me doing the best I can to follow the teachings of Jesus. As long as we err on the side of love, I believe we’re going the right way.
Cheers to the liminal spaces that challenge us to grow beyond the binaries of past and future, certain and uncertain. To the tension that strengthens us. To the practices that stretch us in all the best ways. To the prayers that remind us of what we care about now and what we dream about.
“To the world we dream about –and– the one we live in now.” Amen.