Last night, after a series of great dinners with great friends, we watched The Perfect Stranger, which is the ultimate great dinner! A cynical lawyer gets an invitation to dinner at her favorite restaurant with Jesus Christ, and He answers all of her questions, quite profoundly. I highly recommend it!

I posted about the dinners and the movie on social media, and almost immediately my friend Katie Lentz commented:  Rich! In The Perfect Stranger, Nikki is played by my friend Pamela! You met her when we saw you in Revelation. Cool connection!

I'll say it's a cool connection! I got to thinking about it, and when Pamela saw Revelation she watched my character interact with Jesus. So, my mind kept going on this. I first saw The Perfect Stranger in the Philippines while performing and teaching some workshops at Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary, where I just found out our host for one of our dinners had taught a few years before I was there. The man playing Jesus with my character in Revelation was played by a Filipino.

So I had a little whoah moment, but my brain kept noodling. That cool God wink wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been in Revelation, which happened because I "happened" to be at the only combined gathering of Mastermedia and The Hang that I'm aware of. That was where I shared that I do a 1-man play about The Revelation, and the producers later called to see if I'd perform the role of John in their Off-Broadway musical.

But Pamela wouldn't have seen Revelation the Musical if Katie hadn't invited her, and Katie wouldn't be alive if it weren't for a series of extraordinary miracles after an extreme car wreck ( main miracles, follow-up).

I wouldn't have seen The Perfect Stranger in the Philippines if I hadn't met the folks who invited me to perform there while I was in Indiana, and I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't been invited to teach for one week... that turned into 16 years at the MasterWorks Festival. I wouldn't have been invited to teach for that week if I hadn't been a member of Christians in Theatre Arts.

And you wouldn't be reading this if I wasn't pondering it hours before I'd planned on getting up for my last work day before leaving town for seven weeks. I felt like the Lord wanted me to take the time to write this up. Maybe it was for you.

If you don't notice the profound things the Lord is doing all around you, I invite you to have dinner with Jesus.

I write more about that at www.RichDrama.com/MyPassion.



I play a lead in  Providence, which  you can bring to your area or watch at home.

I didn’t notice it until just now, but less than an hour BEFORE I posted my grandma’s interview about her prison ministry today, I received a link to the testimony of a prison ministry recipient below.

I met Buckie on a train last week. I made the decision to take that train, though it had a longer route than another option, because I wouldn’t need to transfer. I would have been on a much earlier train had I not stopped for dim sum with colleagues after recording a song.

So, on the train and in the car I was supposed to be on, I overheard someone giving his testimony to a friend about having found the Lord in prison. So I was praying. When the Christian got up for his stop I handed him my card and asked if his testimony was online. So it was a #DivineAppointment on the train and in the timing of him sending the testimony! I picked up the baton and kept sharing with the other man about the Lord for a few more stops.

Hope you enjoy it. You can watch it below or if you’re receiving this via email, visit www.Blog.RichDrama.com (Thanksgiving Day).

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mI_7ZGxOdKs


See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story in Beyond the Chariots. Watch it online and book a live performance.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/w0UFt9jy8nI



See the rest of Olympic champion Eric Liddell's Chariots of Fire story in Beyond the Chariots. Watch it online and book a live performance.

This morning I got to share a report about the  Salvation Army's Territorial Arts Ministry Conservatory, and I made reference to a series of Divine appointments that occurred yesterday,  which you can read about here.


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I teach annually at the  Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp.  Subscribe to get a note that registration is open.

We never got all five faculty members who were my former students together for a single photo, but this is Jonathon Shaffstall, Brad Cain, and Kathryn Ballantine.

All week I've been performing, teaching and directing at the Salvation Army's TAM Conservatory, where we've been meditating on Acts 1:8, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."

This morning during the send out I shared with the community how the Lord had been speaking to me about his long-term plans with the Conservatory. The Territorial Commanders, William and Lorraine Bamford, addressed our students after many faculty and students shared, and Commander William Bamford pointed out that we're approaching 1500 students who have been trained at the Conservatory, and many have gone on to do great things for the Lord. This year four faculty members had been my students at TAMC years ago, and one other was a student at a Christians in Theatres Arts event in Puerto Rico. I asked faculty members to stand who had previously been a student at TAMC, and I believe there were nine!

We had a BLAST catching up with Sean and Cath Gaffney, who taught me so much about writing, acting, and teaching!

So, this morning I was on faculty at TAMC with Brad Cain, who had been my student at TAMC 15 years ago. Then, tonight Sean and Cath Gaffney messaged me that they were in NYC and asked if we were free. Sean was on the faculty at Regent University while Brad and Cath (Sean loved being a professor dating a student!) were working on their M.F.A.s in acting at Regent together.

But wait, there's more! Sean and Cath were in the city to see Samantha Sturm, who the three of us taught...wait for it... about 15 years ago! Samantha is now in her sixth Broadway show, CATS, and that's the Broadway show that brought Carol Jaudes, the founding director of TAMC and Susie Somerville Brown into their first collaboration.

OK, so now it gets really interesting: Samantha was 14 when we worked with her. On Thursday Susie worked with my students, who were 14 and up, and this morning a 14-year-old student of mine at the Rocky Mountain Christian Filmmakers Camp a month ago was staying with her family at our place while we were at TAMC.

So the only four 14-year-olds I believe I've ever worked with were connected by this day.

Ryan Livingston was my student for acting, and though he was on faculty to teach visual arts he used his flair for performance in the presentation of their artwork.

Lord, raise up all of our students to co-create with You, the only One who could have even thought of arranging that many Divine appointments in a single day to blow my mind and encourage me to pray all the more diligently for my students, no matter their age!


#PowerToBe
#smallworldBIGKINGDOM

I was sitting at the train station when an inebriated man stumbled toward me and threw a punch. Find out what happened below. It's at the 16-minute mark in this morning's service...

Dr. Linda Warren led us through an immersive journey into Psalm 96. Pastor Jim Warren opened the service and closed by giving gifts of some of his artwork he created to illustrate this morning's service.
This service is available for download free on iTunes, where you can also subscribe to our podcast. Search for "Westchester Chapel" on the iTunes Store.

I had a great time at the screening of The Screenwriters at the alma mater of our director, Peter Forbes, and screenwriter, Elizabeth Stinnette. I was honored to join them and producer David Cook in a Q/A after the show, and we all had a blast at the afterparty. I had to leave early though. The screening just "happened" to have been scheduled the night before I performed and taught in a nearby school.

Happy 50th Birthday to Sean Gaffney!

Sean and I in Colorado, July 1995.

Sean launched a 20 year career in the performing arts for me. I’m sure that’s not what he had in mind when he invited me to drive out to Seattle from NYC to take the position of managing director at Taproot Theatre, but when I said yes to the trip I quit my day job forever. He and I pulled together some of our own sketches, including Sean’s “ Lazarus," which I still perform all over the world in a one-man version. We drove together six days and performed together just about every night. Somewhere out there between jumping over a 15’ cyclone fence and running through a cemetery in a Nebraska downpour only to discover the folks we were supposed to perform for in a park on the other side of that cemetery decided to go camping instead, to long chats about good and bad plays, to the Lamb’s Theatre where we met, Sean encouraged me not to go back to my day job. Miraculously I never have, and Sean was a very big part of that.

We both happened to be in London early this July, 20 years to the month after we started that trek. I was tremendously disappointed that our schedules didn’t quite coincide, but the Lord connected us in a very cool way. I was in London to perform with John Rhys-Davies ( The Lord of the Rings,Beyond the Mask) and Helen George (Call the Midwife) for an audio movie on Alfred the Great ( www.RichDrama.com/TheDragonAndTheRaven). Toward the end of one day a colleague approached me: “Is your last name Swingle?” I confirmed it, and he said, “I’m about to have tea with your friends Sean and Cath Gaffney.” I was tremendously disappointed that I couldn’t join them, but I sensed the Lord celebrating two decades of artistic service in that Divine appointment.

Joyce and I were hanging out with Nathan when Josh texted to see if we could get together. I asked if Nathan Clarkson could join us. He said, "I just had dinner with someone who said I should connect with Nathan Clarkson!" So I told them both about how a friend gave Patricia Mauceri a DVD of Settled (2012), and how her son noticed my name on the DVD. Our friend told them he ran into me on the subway about an hour earlier! Josh was also in Settled. You can watch it for free: www.RichDrama.com/Settled.

With Njeri in 2007.

As soon as I could understand English I was hearing stories about my mom growing up in Kenya when my grandparents were missionaries there from 1948-1953. So I grew up grateful for Njeri Gitonga, who watched over Mom and my Aunt Jeri when Grandma and Grandpa Miller were away ministering in the bush.

Our families had lost touch, but sometime in the mid-90's my Aunt Jeri was visiting Kenya and asked someone how she might go about finding Njeri. The local asked her what her maiden name was, and when he heard, he exclaimed, "There's an Njeri Miller living up on that hill." Aunt Jeri knocked on the door, and Njeri invited her into her home, where Aunt Jeri saw photos of herself, Mom, and my grandparents. We've stayed in touch over the years, and though I haven't made it to Kenya yet, I have had two miraculous connections with Njeri!

Njeri in 1999.

In 1999 I did a 16 city tour of England with my play A Clear Leading. I happened to be there the first time Njeri visited England to visit her children who were staying there. Though Njeri wasn't there when I was performing the play, her daughter, Alice, made it to a performance in Muswell Hill, a suburb of London. When I performed the dream of my character Dolly swimming to Africa I had tears streaming down my face. I'll never forget that performance.

With Mom and Alice in 1999.

When Njeri did arrive we spent time at a mall, where Alice interpreted for Mom and me. One memory of that visit was when Njeri got on an escalator for the first time. What a frightening contraption that must have looked like in her eyes.

Then, in 2007 I was back in England, where I got to perform "Lazarus" with some Swahili translations for Alice's church. I learned the start of a Swahili praise song, and opened the piece with that. They all joined in and went way past what I had memorized! I can still sing some of it: "Sifu bwana, sifu bwana, dayama. Moyuwangu, sifu bwana, dayama."

Later I was at Eltham College, where Eric Liddell had attended school. I was interviewing the headmaster and had an idea for a shot of their choir singing a song which was written about Liddell for the documentary Olympic Hero in China: The Eric Liddell Story. In the midst of scouting for the documentary I got a text from Mom saying she couldn't get to Heathrow in time to greet Njeri. So I hopped on the next train... the wrong way! I turned around, got off at Piccadilly and transferred to the metro bound for Heathrow. As soon as the door opened I sprinted for Arrivals. Just as I came bounding up, someone was pushing Njeri out in a wheelchair. I calmed my breathing, walked up like I'd been there for a good long while, gave her a Kenyan handshake (flying down from up above), and said, "Jambo!" That's a Swahili greeting. I also know a few phrases of her tribal language, Kikuyu, so I was also able to say, "Wimwega." That was about it until Mom was able to arrive with Alice who was able to take over the translations.

In my post from December 14, 2007 I wrote:

What are the chances my trips corresponded with hers without either of us knowing of the others' schedule either time? Only the One who set up both visits knows.

Njeri "Miller" Gitonga went to be with the Lord earlier this month. My heart is filled to the brim with gratitude for how she cared for my mom and how the Lord allowed our schedules to connect in England twice!!

Our prayers are with her whole family!

With Njeri, her son, Kamau, and Mom.