Faith Stories project

With her family looking on, Crescent Hill’s Jennifer Thalman Kepler explained the genesis and possible future of the Faith Stories project of her theater company, Looking for Lilith, at a Food for Thought lunch after worship Sunday. The project goes back to Jennifer’s year as a Presbyterian young adult volunteer in Guatemala, when women in Guatemalan asked what she did back in the United States and she explained she had been active in theater. Eventually, Looking for Lilith led workshops in which she helped women tell their stories and then develop them into a play, which they eventually performed for others. A key part of this process was encouraging and enabling women to reflect on their lives and their faith, including on challenges they faced and how they did and could overcome those challenges. Eventually women they worked with (including one from Izabal) began to want lead workshop themselves, helping Guatemalan reflect on their experiences with the health care sector, with poverty and hunger, and with domestic violence, and how they might confront those challenges. A touring play, in Spanish and English, reflecting on the lives and faith of women in both Guatemala and the United States, is also envisioned. During the recession, Jennifer conceded, funding for projects like this has been more difficult to assemble.

Looking for Lilith led a theater workshop for young people this summer at Crescent Hill, and they have been involved in the transformation of the old James Lees Memorial Presbyterian Church into a new 1741 Frankfort Avenue space. Crescent Hill and Looking for Lilith folks have talked about combining forces for a Faith Stories-like project in Estoreño Presbytery, and Lowell and Jennifer talked Sunday about Jennifer showing a longer video (longer than the one she showed Sunday) about the project at an upcoming Crescent Hill Guatemala partnership gathering.

-- Perry