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I am not a Picasso, a brutal misogynist who inflicted terror on nearly every female around him. Neither am I a Hemingway, a drunken lout given to baring his chest and knuckles at the drop of a hat. I adore Van Gogh, but I would not cut off my ear for anyone. I respect the dramatic accomplishments of Elizabeth Taylor, a woman who's gone through nearly as many husbands as she has major roles. To my mind, Tolstoy is the world's greatest novelist, even though he was impossible to live with.

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I am an artist, but I don't think of myself as a social misfit or a study in pathology. I believe that art requires balance and design, commitment and zeal, the diligence of our closest attention, but not insanity or bizarre antics. I do not take the stage unprepared. I believe I know Willy Loman, even though he never existed except on paper. I have done Hamlet's soliloquies with such fierce regard for the young prince that even today I could do "To be or not to be" and wring passion from my own hesitations.

I adore grand opera, Brahms's Requiem, and anything by Verdi. I wouldn't think of spending a Christmas without Handel. I once thought Andrew Wyeth too garishly ordinary, but he haunted me until I could not resist him, and now my home is filled with his paintings.

I despise kitsch and almost everything sold in media stores, save the Bible, most of C. S. Lewis, and a few CDs no one else buys. Most of rock music I find to be noise. It's difficult to believe that television could be more of a wasteland than Newton Minnow called it more than three decades ago, but it is. Most of evangelical Christendom's antics, from California Magic Kingdoms to the nearest suburb's faddish megachurch, I find unseemly.

I'm sorry. I'm not nice. I don't like smiley faces or annoying people who say, "Have a nice day." Health concerns aside, I won't eat fast food. In my 50 years, I have become conditioned to believe that whatever America thinks cool will soon be seen as silly.

I am, as you may have guessed, unabashedly elitist.

I chose the church I attend (at first) because of its architecture. Its unobtrusiveness in the surrounding hilly, wooded landscape seemed a tasteful reminder of the quiet importance of deep spirituality. I found the place a delight. The preaching is thoughtful; the earnestness, understated. Most of all, I appreciate the fact that the people I've come to know there really do like each other. I've met several of them, and they're not showy or pretentious. When you enter Deer Valley Church, people don't hang on you as if church were a discount shoe market. You're not a mark at Deer Valley. I like that.

This year, they asked me to narrate their Christmas program. They gave me the script, and I read it. I found it slightly zealous but acceptable, even unassuming. It was a retelling of the old story, and it demanded a big voice, they said. I have been in theater for most my life. I teach theater at the university.

I appreciated the manner by which they asked. They told me they knew I was busy—and I am. They told me they felt the whole evening would be a triumph if they had someone with my presence to read the part. One of them said, "We can get by without you, but we'd love to have you. It would be an honor."

I couldn't say no.

I have never denied my need for God. I have, like many, forgotten him for considerable portions of my life, but he has not forgotten me. So I told the people from Deer Valley, the church I attend somewhat more than occasionally, that I would read the script for their Christmas program. I may have preferred T. S. Eliot, but the performance, I knew, would not be an embarrassment.

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December 2005, Vol. 49, No. 12