Kubik | Esperanto | Greenbelt 2005

As we enter the service we are given...

... a chalkboard to hang around our necks, chalk and an eraser, and a bag containing a biscuit, a phial of wine, and a booklet...

... and our mouths are taped shut with duct tape!

For the first half of the service we can only communicate by writing on the chalkboard.

This riffs on the story of Zechariah [Luke 1 5-25, 57-64] who was made unable to speak until he wrote what the angel had told him on a writing tablet, thereby showing that he had at last believed the angel's message.

This is Kubik's first service in English, and cleverly it takes lack of language as its subject. Before Christ it was not possible to speak directly to God, except through a priest.

So we send text messages, prayers to God about our alienations, to the 'electronic pope', which speaks them in its computer voice and displays them on a screen.

Then we take the duct tape off, open the bags and take our individual communions using the liturgy in the booklet. "Because Jesus suffered silently you got a voice before God. Now talk with your God personally!"