Advent Reflection | Monday, December 21

Today’s A Weary World Rejoices story comes from Eva Perez:

In this world without live theatre, Verona Area Community Theatre offered an opportunity for a virtual play. So, naturally, I auditioned.

I wasn’t expecting to get anything out of it. I expected a dumb little thing to fill up my time after school. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My 10 castmates and student director were all incredibly talented. Everyone was putting in all we had, because this opportunity was all we had.

I also didn’t expect to get an emotional experience out of it. Especially not from just talking. The show we performed was some monologues written by American Teens this Spring. We covered topics from boredom to death, to online school, watching X-men, and racism. Before this, I had never seriously talked to people my age about quarantine and COVID.

And it was so freeing! We were (and are) all feeling the same, thinking the same, and asking the same questions. It was liberating to talk about these issues that are so present in our lives, yet never deeply discussed. We’d been stuck for months not being able to do what we loved the most, and it showed. Because this opportunity went far beyond a virtual play. It became a way to lift our burdens through art and communication. I didn’t really recognize the joy this play created for me until I finished it. And it only came because I had realized that everyone else was feeling the same way as me, and we just hadn’t talked about it.

So, talk! It seems so simple, yet sometimes it’s so hard. Talk to the people in your life about the things that make you squirm, the things that make you sad, or angry. Because I didn’t realize how important talking is until I really did it.

Hebrews 10: 23-25

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ²⁵ not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.