A Christian on the Faculty

Ray Dooley, Professor, Department of Dramatic Art

My work as professor of dramatic art at UNC is divided into three areas: teacher, administrator, and performing artist. Each is leavened by my efforts to live into a Christian life.

As a teacher, I take seriously these words from Each Day We Begin Again, The Benedictine Way of Living, by John McQuiston, III, a book that Tammy Lee introduced me to some years ago: "One who seeks to teach should strive to remember what a perilous and serious task it is to attempt to instruct others."

It is perilous because the position of authority granted to a professor is a constant temptation to take pride in one's knowledge and make oneself the "star" of the classroom. And it is a serious task in that one is teaching not only subject matter, but by example also teaching compassion or arrogance, rigor or slothfulness, commitment or cynicism. Recalling one's attempt at living into a Christian life restores balance and promotes useful behavior. If one is paying attention it is hard to sing the following and then feel self-important:

Lord, for thy tender mercy's sake

Lay not our sins to our charge;

Forgive what is past, and give us grace

To amend our sinful lives,

To decline to sin, and incline to virtue...

As an administrator, I served for five and one half years, until this past July, as chair of the Department of Dramatic Art. Based on that experience I can state with conviction, "with God all things are possible." A counseling session with the rector helped me overcome my initial doubt and lack of faith that God would strengthen me, and an active prayer life saw me through many a rough day.

And the Christian tradition provided practical advice as well as spiritual resilience. Early in my tenure as chair I subscribed to an email service that provided daily excerpts from the Rule of Benedict. I was at first surprised that the challenges of serving as administrator of an academic department bore a striking resemblance to serving as leader of a 7th-century monastery. But any department chair might easily recognize herself or himself in passages such as this:

... the prioress or abbot should always observe the apostle's recommendation in which it is said: "Use argument, appeal, reproof (2 Tm 4:2)." This means that they must vary with circumstances, threatening and coaxing by turns, at times stern, at times devoted and tender. With the undisciplined and restless, they will use firm argument: with the obedient and docile and patient, they will appeal for greater virtue; but as for the negligent and disdainful, we charge the abbot or prioress to use reproof and rebuke.

A compelling association also has developed between my striving to lead a Christian life and my work as an actor. I have taken to the habit of uttering the brief Celtic prayer, "I on my path, thou in my steps" in preparation for my work on stage or camera, seeking to consecrate "the work of my hand" to God, as any craftsman might. And I have come to approach many of the characters I portray as studies of people suffering the consequences of, and attempting to compensate for, the lack of God in their lives. There is Serge, in ART, for example, attempting to lend his life meaning with the purchase of a $40,000 painting; or Tom, in Dinner With Friends, his marriage falling apart, convincing himself that his life will be redeemed by an affair with a younger woman; or Dr. Astrov in Chekhov's masterful Uncle Vanya, fighting his restless discontent with alcohol and a fixation on another man's wife. Conversely, in playing Hamlet, who inhabits a manifestly Christian cosmos and who can say with confidence, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough-hew them how we will," I found extraordinary power in a performance that was the product of the intersection of the character's Christianity and my own.

In closing, let me offer one final thought from Each Day We Begin Again, which sums up my feeling of gratitude for the proximity of UNC and the Chapel of the Cross:

"It is best to live one's life with the support of a community which shares right values... A human being is especially vulnerable when not supported by others."

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© 2005 The Chapel of the Cross