DIALOGUE ON PARK BENCH
(Woman sitting on bench. Man enters and sits next to her.)
Man.Oh god! When are we going to admit how boring and stupid it is to live the way we do? When!?
Woman. (Pause.)What?
Man. I said. When are we going to admit how boring and stupid it is to live the way we do? When!?
Woman. (Pause. Thinking.) What? Everything is fine. We’ve got Harry Potter. The Arsenal. The Time’s Literary Supplement. What more do you want?
Man. I’ll tell you what I bleeding want.
Woman. No need to swear.
Man. I want meaning. You idiot.
Woman. Now resorting to personal abuse will not help your case. Now be more explicit.
Man. Yeah. Right. Explicit.(Pause.) Look around at our godless world completely devoid of any kind of sacred element.
Woman. Oh! It’s religion you want! What? Protestant. Catholic. Hindu?
Man. No!!!!! Not religion!!!
Woman. Not religion??
Man. No. I want a sacred element.
Woman. But we have that. Look at all the spiritual bookshops like ‘paradox’ and ‘arcane’ and the new age crystal healing centers like ‘quartz.com.’ there’s definitely a sacred atmosphere in those places.
Man. Look. That ain’t sacred. That’s our view of the sacred. We’ve turned it into something nice. Digestible. Commercial. To suit us and our tastes. We made god into a product just like everything else.
Woman. Oh you shouldn’t take god’s name in vain. He might curse you with boils, or something.
Man. That’s just what I mean. God isn’t a name. A word. God is some kind of transcendant intelligent purpose beyond words or names.
Woman. Oh. He won’t like you saying that. Oh no. Not at all.
Man. And are you a Christian?
Woman. Yes. Yes I am.
Man. And do you go to church?
Woman. Well.. not exactly to church. It’s too boring. But I believe in love thy neighbor and do unto others etcetera.
Man. Yes. But you don’t go to church.
Woman. No.
Man. Because it’s boring.
Woman. Yes.
Man. So to all intents and purposes, if you don’t bother going, you have no church, because it doesn’t work for you, so what you need is one that does. A new kind of church. A church without god.
Woman. How can you have a church without god. That’s stupid.
Man. It would be the godless church of the sacred.
Woman. No! no! That’s impossible! Sacriligeous! Awful!
Man. And it would be shaped like a giant sphere, and inside it would be zero gravity and the vicar would be a red Indian, floating round with a pair of sacred pliers pulling out people’s teeth!!!!
Woman. (Hands over ears.) Stop! Stop! That’s horrible. Crazy! Insane! And you are a bad person to say it.
Man. Well. At the moment we have a church that people don’t go to. What’s the point in that?
Woman. Are you suggesting we should scrap thousands of years of religious history?
Man. No.
Woman. Thank… god.
Man. I’m suggesting we learn from it. Adapt it. Allow it to evolve. We can keep the church, but not our idea of what should happen in it. I mean. Take sex.
Woman. I thought we’d get round to sex, sooner or later.
Man. Why is there no sex in church?
Woman. For very good reasons, which must be obvious even to someone of your dubious moral standards.
Man. No sex, despite the fact that everywhere you look in our society/culture, in every pop vid, advert, movie, you see sex sex sex, and that even though we are, quite obsessed with it, the church, in it’s infinite wisdom chooses to act as if this were not the case, taking strategy of , if we just ignore it, or pretend it is otherwise and act all pure and pious it will just go away.
Woman. I suppose you. You’d have the pope making a porno vid or something.
Man. (Pause.) Yes! What a great idea! And afterwards he could explain that a true religious attitude embraces all aspects of life and he is in favour of pornography only he hopes people could use it as a springboard to a more meaningful relationship.
Woman. Oh god! I think ive definitely heard enough of this twaddle! Sex. Springboards. Churches. The next thing is you’ll be saying mankind had his dna spliced with an alien sub space crocodile. NO! Don’t! Enough is enough! (She stands. Hands on hips.) You know it’s people like you who underminded the moral climate and created all the dissatisfaction and unrest we see in the world. You spread unsettling and un nerving ideas that infiltrate the mass psyche causing hysteria outrage and confusion. Stop it! Stop it! Keep that big gob of yours, (takes hold jaw pressing lips shut.) shut! Sealed. Closed. (Letting go.) You want a better world? Just stay like that. Do us all a favour! (She exits. He sits with his lips compressed. Curtain.)
No comments:
Post a Comment