I don't know how many of you have seen Sondheim's "Into the Woods." It's a set of fractured fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzul, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, with a new story added, one about a Baker and his wife, who seek to lift a curse in order to have a child.
The plot is too complicated to summarize here, but its themes are not. Each of the characters is looking for something he or she lacks and dearly wants: money, love, beauty, power. To find these things they go into the woods, each alone, each on a journey. And to pluck up their courage they go one step further. They convince themselves that the woods present no overwhelming threat: "The way is clear. The light is good. I have no fear and no one should. The woods are just trees. The trees are just woods. No need to be afraid there. Though there's something in the glade there."
Indeed there is. But they try to overlook the dangers. Both without and within. For, once in the woods, no moral holds are barred. To get what they want they steal from one another; they lie to one another and to themselves; and, by the way, for all this stealing and lying - perhaps even because of it -- each of the characters is initially successful in his or her quest. Having found what they sought, they go out of the woods and are home before dark. Happily ever after. That's the end of the first act.
When the curtain rises on the second act, a strange disquiet hovers over their hearts. Yes, they have what they want, but all is not well. Certainly not well at all. A giant appears; he crushes their houses; and they are cast back into the woods, this time knowing how difficult and dangerous journeys into the woods truly can be. Not only that, but also how fragile our human claims on love and happiness and even life itself actually are.
Up to this point a narrator has been telling the story. Since none of the characters like the way it is going, they pull the narrator onto the stage and sacrifice him to the giant. At first it seems like a good move, but then they panic. For without a narrator, no one knows how the story will turn out. That, by the way, is good liberal theology.
As the danger grows, however, the characters lapse into recrimination. Each blames the others for how things have transpired. Everyone fingers a scapegoat. This is not difficult, because, in part at least, everyone is to blame. But as we all know, it is easier to identify another's culpability than to see our own reflected in the mirror.
In any event, following this particular orgy of recrimination, every member of the little band loses all hope. The Baker pleads to his dead father, who visits him in a dream, "no more questions, no more riddles please, no more quests, no more feelings, no more despair or burdens to bear, time to shut the door, please, no more. . . Where are we to go? Where are we ever to go?"
Some critics view "In to the Woods" as a parable for the nuclear arms race or perhaps the AIDS Epidemic, It is a combination of both, but also more. In fact, at its most basic level, Sondheim's musical is an exploration of the tension between individualism and community. Each journey begins as an individual quest for happiness. So long as each individual is successful, there is no problem. But that doesn't last long, first because life isn't like that, and second, because our stories inter link. They weave in and out of one another, working unanticipated changes, confounding plot, theme and character as well. When this happens, we begin to blame one another for wrecking our story, our journey, as if all would have been well if only we had been free to pursue our dreams alone. We throw stones at mirrors. At our parents or children or mentors or fellow pilgrims. They, of course, can't save us as we want to be saved, because they remind us too much of ourselves.
Not only are we all characters in one another's story, more importantly, we act in and co-script the greatest story of all, the story of life and death. It is not us versus them, but us versus us, or us for us as the case may be. Once we acknowledge this, once we are more honest with ourselves, often we will become more gentle with one another, and therefore better able to pull together.
That is what happens at the end of Sondheim's musical. Some of the characters run from the consequences, others refuse to own any complicity, but enough of them pool together tiny bits of individual strength, humility, compassion and goodness, for the giant to be defeated. To complicate things further, even the giant is not really bad, not really to blame, but that is another story.
The closing song from "Into the Woods," a hymn really, is entitled "No one is alone." We all struggle with right and wrong, bad and good. There is no black or white, only perplexing, yet potentially beautiful shades of gray. It is both/and, not either/or. It is yes and no, sunshine and rain at once. Each of us faces painful yet unescapable questions and riddles and feelings and quests. We cannot run away, but the good news remains that we are not alone.
Sondheim's musical is not a paean to relativism, to anything goes; rather it is a humble celebration of the redemptive power of community, interdependent, open, nurturing, non-vindictive, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and yet present in each. At some point, almost every character is disappointed with him or herself and also with everyone else. All the parents are disappointed with their children; the children with their parents. As the Baker;s father says, "We disappoint, we leave a mess, we die but we don't." There is no such thing as happily ever after. But what finally redeems this apparently tragic vision is the recognition of universal kinship, which when acknowledged, brings us together, wiser, more humble and better equipped to enter the woods again. I need that reminder every now and again. I expect you do as well. For throughout our lives we either skirt the woods, or choose or are forced to walk through them. Anyone who thinks that the path is straight and the way unfrought with danger is a fool. Sometimes we wander from the path; sometimes the path seems to wander away from us. We get lost. We make mistakes. And still we have a hard time when others make mistakes. Especially our parents. Or anyone we love.
The good news of the liberal gospel is that it acknowledges this. There is not only one true path, but many. And the journey has more meaning than the destination. That is to say, the goal is not individual salvation, not getting from one end of the woods to the other, but in forgetting ourselves every once in a while by helping others along the way. From a liberal religious viewpoint, we are not saved from the woods but in the woods. And even then the woods don't go away.
But we are not, nor do we claim to be here, in possession of the one true map. We do not preach follow us, but walk along side by side. We try to help one another forgive and accept. That we have a high tolerance for ambiguities doesn't mean that we don't care. It means we respect the truth and one another too much to simplify the complexity of either, however tempting that may sometimes be.
When our moments of affirmation come, they are therefore much less likely to be proclamations that WE or You are saved, simply that we and you Are not alone. Copyright AllSouls 2000.