The Brimstone Chronicles

On Friday, October 19th we held an event we called the Brimstone Chronicles. Thsi was a new and strange event for us to host. It was sponsored in part by a group called Festival of the Dead. A friend of mine who is a Witch is the Festival of the Dead owner. He wanted to have a Christian event which spoke ot the issue of sdeath and afterlife. Christian Day (my Witch friend) asked if we would host it - we said yes. I responded by saying that our religion certianly had something valuable to say about life and death. After all, is based upon a guy who rose from the dead.

So the day of the event came. It was an interactive event comprised of "the stations of Torment and Bliss," a feast, dance, live music, readings from Dante's Inferno, and drama from the history of redemption.

We asked for people to give to the cause of helping the homeless, and in turn gave them indulgences for thiekr sins, only to have Jeff Gentry play Martin Luther and decry the evils of indulgences, thus playing out the story of the reformation, and the call to salvation by faith alone. Mike Crockett played the part of a Baptiost preacher recalling the famous sermon by Jonthan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Carl, Melissa, and James read portions of Dante's Inferno.

We began the evening with a funeral service, and a mirror was placed in the bottom of the casket to allow ourselves to consider our own mortality. We put people through a series of stations: They had to serve one another a apple - since like Adam and Eve, we have all eaten the apple and given the apple to others. They laid in a casket and the lid was closed, they feasted at the table of marriage super of the Lamb, they were locked in a vault to reinact the sensory deprivation of Outer Darkness, and we created a light at the end of the tunnel experience which was prepared by a real life story by Lucy Lincoln.

This was the first pay event we have held in nine years, and it was $50/person. We had turn out of Christians, Pagans, and tweeners - they all appeared to love the event. It seems that perhaps this will be a repeat.