Shop Lift!

This is one of the simplest yet most powerful Actions. It helps in this Action if the participants are world diverse. It's quicker -- you can hit a number of stores in succession -- and because like Bump and Grind it is Body Theater, you'll want a big tight crowd in the store.

File into the Devil's chain store. On the signal from the Action Manager, lift store items up high over your heads. All the chairs, ashtrays, napkin dispensers, gum machines, products -- everything in the store that isn't nailed down is hovering up there, held aloft. Now your prayer-leader makes a statement about the origins of these objects.

So this action requires good research. The prayer is a direct-address to the people who made these things. Close your eyes with the store's assets and inventory suspended above you and give the prayer its powerful send-off. We call this a Push Prayer. "We know that you have made these products. We feel your touch on these things that surround us!

If these are Wal Mart clothes, have a Chinese-American member of the church call out in Cantonese or Mandarin to the workers on the other end of the labor loop. What an honest feeling to get this message going in the language of the workers as well as the consumers. Make a request that "somehow the division between consumers and workers be ended, so that we can talk directly to each another. So that we can talk to you."

"There is a silence in this thing I have up here in my hand, a vision is locked in this, a witnessing. We upset the product from its presentation, take it back a step toward you. The journey of these products keeps us apart, the false ‘Free Market' keeps us apart, and we are both powerless and we are both poor because we are kept apart. We believe that you hear us in the sweatshops and that we hear you calling from your toxic fields and when the distance in this product is finally crushed that we will touch."

Carefully put the items down -- so as not to damage them -- and exit the store. This can be solemn. Or it can be joyous!

Tell us your joyus experience in the contents! We want to hear your stories...