As I sit here on my laptop, or rather with my laptop to be more prepositionally accurate, I am struck by a multitude of contrasts and congruities.

2026 marks the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Jefferson Avenue Mission in St. Louis, Missouri, where Buck Nelson is receiving its first staging. Because we are unmiked for this ‘stumble-through’, we are in fact using the exact same acoustics for which this space was designed. The actors' voices will vibrate the same air and achieve, if we are successful, the same spiritual effect.

Our eyes and ears will be lifted up to the heavens.

This week’s gathering of 20 extremely kind and talented cast and crew from around this area mainly, but from all parts of the U.S. more recently, and indeed other parts of the world when the stones of this church were first laid to be sure, has been the embodiment of what this play is all about.

We have sung, and danced, and talked, and laughed together. We have created something beautiful, and funny, and moving…and it will inevitably become even more so during the ongoing development process and in the treatments it receives in high school auditoriums and community theatres, and opera houses, and (if I can dream an impossible dream) Broadway and the West End.

We have disagreed at times about various theatrical issues that require no space here. But the fact that space was made for these clashes of idea and spirit, of mind and heart and soul, is the point of Buck Nelson. The work is better as a result.

As in life, the mirror of which a play is the thing, we must not be afraid to express our opinions from all sides of the proverbial aisle, one of which runs straight down the middle of this church, and many a worship space.

We must be able to talk to those we disagree with, about politics, about religion, about war, about AI, about raising our kids and our tomatoes. About aliens!

It doesn’t bleepin’ matter. We must be able to disagree about important things, and we must be able to do so with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

If we can’t do this, we might as well hand off the responsibility that God has granted us all to the fire and water that were in the beginning, creative acts of destruction, heralded by the hovering of His mighty spirit above the waters.

If we can’t do this, we will all have to start over.

Buck Nelson exists because I, for one, don’t want to.