The Spirituality of 'Yes, And'

Opinion

by

Special to United Methodist Insight | Nov. 19, 2025

My 5- and 4-year-old grandsons have become one brain in two bodies. They talk nonstop at the same time, not in competition but in cooperation – keying off each other, participating in and developing each other’s fantasies. Every 20th word they say is “pretend” – pretend this, pretend that – coming up with new plots to act out, each loosely connected to the last. It is enormously entertaining for me to be the audience while they perform this improvisational theater together.

The essential principle of improv is “yes, and.” You pose a situation, and I go with it – adding to it – and you go with whatever I add, and you add to that. We accept the premises that each other adds, no matter how weird or outrageous.

You pretend to get on a bus in Los Angeles with your pet parrot on your shoulder. Yes, and – I go with that premise, and I lean my chin on your shoulder and ask, in a parrot accent, “What’s the next stop?” Yes, and – you pretend to be the loudspeaker on the bus, saying “Next stop Hollywood and Cahuenga.” I repeat the announcement, in a parrot accent: “Next stop Hollywood and Cahuenga.” Yes, and – you pretend to be the loudspeaker: “Next stop Hollywood and Vine.” I repeat. Yes, and – you smile and rub your finger on my head while I try to bite it. “Next stop Hollywood and Gower.” I repeat. You smile and rub your finger on my head again.

You run over to someone in the audience, with me still leaning my chin on your shoulder, and whisper to them to repeat whatever the parrot says, and spread the word. You go back to the stage: “Next stop Hollywood and Western” – I repeat, and people in the crowd repeat. “Next stop Hollywood and  Vermont” – the whole crowd loudly repeats. Yes, and – I pretend to fly wildly around in a panic, squawking “Hollywood and Vermont!  Hollywood and Vermont!” while everyone says the same thing, and I fly off the stage and down the aisle, squawking.  

In Portland, a lot of people have protested against the indiscriminate cruely of ICE against undocumented immigrants. Some of the protesters spontaneously came up with a new tactic: wearing plastic blow-up animal costumes. A definite “yes-and” move!

So improv to take a situation and instantly turn it sideways!  That’s how we got the spectacle of heavily armed soldiers confronting a plastic dinosaur. The images of these encounters shatter all clichés about what a people-vs-cops picture should look like. The absurdity of the costumes makes anger and violence look absurd. Inflated dinosaurs deflate ICE, making it seem silly instead of fearsome.

The costumes are an implicit recognition that very few undocumented immigrants are more threatening than a couple of people dancing inside an inflatable plastic dog at a demonstration. The costumes are an example of orthogonal intervention, doing something tangential to change a situation that isn’t directly aimed at the situation.  Living by "yes-and" improv opens us up to discover and apply such orthogonal interventions, taking a direction that seems off course, but gets you where you need to be. 

In the Vietnam war era, there were a lot of interventions to end the fighting that didn’t work. We got Nixon and Reagan because the wider public was frightened and unnerved by disorderly demonstrations. One quiet bit of peacenik improv had a lasting effect, however – taking the form of coffee houses set up near military bases. The coffee was good and free or cheap, and the music was mellow, and soldiers would go when they got leaves or breaks. There was no speechmaking, no organizing in the coffee houses. Just a chill scene where you’d inevitably get into friendly conversation that might lead into deeper discussion – and soldiers would find themselves making friends and finding common ground with the peaceniks who ran the place. This approach made it safe for the soldiers to question what they’d been told about the war. Hearts and minds were changed.

Jesus didn’t have a script. He made up stories on the spot – the parables, which are potent but mysterious, meaningful but with no fixed meanings – orthogonal interventions that bewildered his Pharisee detractors, putting them off-message, leaving them speechless. 

Love is the only plan God has for your life.  Trust that love will lead you in the direction you need to go in romance, family, and career.  God has no detailed plan for your specific life, because a good life, a divine life, a love-led life, is improv.  There’s no script.  Life at its best is yes-and, a story made up on the spot, on the fly, moment by moment, constantly re-calibrating in the face of surprises. 

"Yes-and" improv is training for “contemplatio” – the Christian mystical goal of union with the divine. To do improv, you have to be aware of the moment, in the moment – not fighting or resisting it, but seeing it and embracing it for what it is, and letting come what comes next. To enter into the realm of the love that is God, we open our inner eyes to the realities we find within, and say “yes” to what is – “and” we return the embrace of the Holy One within us who sees us as we really are, and says “yes-and…” – inviting us into Jesus’ Way of compassion.