JOURNEYING WITH MOSES: A conversation with Val Kilmer
It's Saturday, a two-performance "doubleheader day" — which is more than a full plate for most actors. But Val Kilmer shows no sign of flagging. He's just come from a matinee performance of the new hit show The Ten Commandments — The Musical, in which he stars as Moses, and a post-performance discussion with several hundred members of the audience at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California, known around the world as home to the Academy Awards telecast.
Tomorrow will offer him little respite. Ordinarily, he would be whisking his two kids off to Sunday School while he attended church. But this particular Sunday he'll be up at the crack of dawn, travel across the Los Angeles basin to Garden Grove, make a guest appearance at Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral — a mainstream church of several thousand in-house congregants, plus a huge television audience that watches Schuller's Hour of Power — and then journey back across the sprawl of Los Angeles in time for another matinee at the Kodak.
Yet despite his tight schedule, he manages to find time to talk with me about his new role over a light dinner, before Saturday's evening performance, which will keep him working late into the night.
Whatever Moses knew about whirlwinds, Kilmer must be learning from his own Moses-driven life these days. Although the demands spinning around him don't seem to lessen, neither does the passion he feels for the story, the vision of the divine law it relates, and most of all, the spiritual journey.
It's this journey — from basketed babe, to son of Pharaoh, to murderer, to shepherd, to leader and instrument of the law — that most captivates Kilmer's imagination and harnesses his energies. In the case of Moses, it was finding the path, making the quest, seeking the truth, which made all the difference. A line from one of the show's songs goes, "Metaphysics and religion, philosophy and love. / A prince has got to know some things about all of the above. / But what about the life that can't be learned from a teacher? / What about the kind of truth only found by a seeker?" (from "When we rule the world," by Maribeth Derry).
"Every stage of his life reveals such a human story with divine inspiration," reflects Kilmer. "Moses' whole life was a struggle. He was searching for a sense of home, then he's banished and living in the desert. He finally comes home, finds a good woman, and becomes a shepherd. It's the most humble job, but he's happy. It has to be his complete acceptance of his situation — without anger or remorse — that makes him the chosen one for the job [to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt]. Then he tries to get out of it. Maybe he was afraid . . . probably.
"The first time I was offered a grand responsibility, I ran away from it. I was terrified of growing up and being responsible. I didn't think I could do it. But Moses accepts the job. Most of us, I think, are given opportunities we end up believing we're not worthy to fulfill."
Kilmer's own journey to play Moses was a result of sincere prayer and what he calls "the spirit of humility," which he feels Moses exemplified so fully. Common show-business wisdom dictates that a film actor of Kilmer's star-power doesn't take the financial and career risks of appearing in a stage production. (His resume includes roles such as Batman in Batman Forever, Jim Morrison in The Doors, Doc Holiday in Tombstone, an earlier turn as Moses' voice in the DreamWorks animated feature The Prince of Egypt, and Philip in the newly released movie Alexander). "My agents, advisors, and business manager told me, 'You just can't afford to do a play right now.' And I said, 'I really can't afford not to,' " explains Kilmer. Not when it's a play about this man, this journey.
"Think of it," Kilmer says. "There are millions of laws that have been written [since Moses' time] trying to adhere to the Ten Commandments. And even further, the essence of those ten [is] really two." Here, Kilmer sees a clear link between the teachings of Moses and of Jesus. "It's really love God with all your heart and soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. If you do that, you can't lie, you can't cheat, you can't steal, you can't take Him for granted."
Heartening as that is, and despite all the protection from the plagues and scourges that the children of Israel experienced because of their adherence to these laws, their arrival involved overcoming mountainous opposition, even from within the ranks of Moses' followers. Again, it's the journey over those mountains of resistance, the journey for greater spiritual insight and understanding, that so engages Kilmer. If the critics' initial response to the Ten Commandments was uneven, the audience's response has been uniformly thunderous. After the musical had been running a month, the Los Angeles Times observed: Thirty shows, thirty standing ovations. Discussions are now underway about possible dates in other cities.
Like most well-established performers, Kilmer has his own official website, www.valkilmer.com. According to his homepage, his favorite place on the Web is www.spirituality.com. So, it's not surprising that our discussion turns to this passage in Science and Health (the book that is central to the site), that helped Kilmer prepare for the role. "Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind" (p. 200 ).
Perhaps part of the journey Spiritward involves taking whatever talents or capacities you have, and, despite the self doubts and feelings of inadequacy, trusting those capabilities to God to be magnified, expanded. Then the capacities truly are grand — genuinely good enough to carry your journey through to triumph.
"There are moments in the life of every sincere seeker of truth," says Kilmer, "when you don't know how to do it. You wonder what it's all been for. 'Weren't we supposed to get there by now?' Imagine being driven to an ocean. And you're telling people every hour — not every day, every hour — 'It's OK. God's telling me what to do.' And you're literally driven by murderers behind you. And you still say, 'It's OK. God's going to part [the waters].' " And then there's the opening, the parting of the sea, the proof, the victory. The journey goes forward.
Perhaps every journey, if it's to be counted a success, involves not just venture but also arrival. Kilmer, who's been animated throughout our discussion, turns contemplative. "The saddest part is, after all those years in the wilderness, leading those people and all the hardships, Moses didn't get to go to the Promised Land. It's sad. But if you think of it spiritually, it can only mean that he was already there. He had this sense of home that was divine, leading to some speculation that he may have actually ascended."
The comment hangs in the air. And one gets the feeling that even with arrival, the journey for spiritual understanding does not come to an end. There are always higher peaks to climb, more expansive vistas to take in, more of God's nature to know. More of His love and guidance to feel.
