Keeping It Light: Having Fun with Religion
Comments by The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
June 12, 2005
Let me tell you a little story. When I was eighteen, I moved into Manzanita Dorm at ASU. My brother had died only nine months earlier and I was grieving along with struggling through the major changes that confront us all when we move out for the first time. I was angry with God at the time, especially because he--he was he at that time, as opposed to he/she or it—I was angry with him especially because he had made me be born a Unitarian Universalist with atheist leanings and so I really didn’t believe in him, and that was the major point one night when I took out my journal to write out my feelings. I assumed every other person in the world had been given an easy faith, and here I was, having to actually choose what to believe, especially in the face of life and death. How mean-spirited of God!
I was pretty angry. I started writing all those angry feelings, and getting more and more daring, since, as you all are perfectly aware, there is always the chance that there is a god and that that god is vindictive and unforgiving—remnants from the Calvinist influence on society. But I fought those little nagging doubts and started cussing at God. I wrote all the cuss words I could think of, and I knew enough by then to have a pretty good collection by the time I made it entirely through to the last page of that journal, writing one word per page since I didn’t want it to take forever. Then I laid down my pen and waited.
I was waiting for the lightning bolt to burn me to a crisp, or even just a thunderclap, or any terrible sign that God was angry back at me. Of course, it was quiet, and I knew then that, if there was a god, he or she or it really wasn’t going to get upset at me—that’s the Universalist in me that was taught to believe in a loving god, if any at all—and God probably had other things much more important to attend to than my emotional outburst. When it came right down to it, it probably didn’t matter if I believed in him or not because he, or she, was going to go right on doing whatever he or she needed to and wasn’t in the least dependent on whether I believed, or cared, or cursed.
Now I bet some of you were thinking, at the start of this sermon, “Oh, no! What is Susan talking about death for when she’s supposed to be talking about having fun with religion? What does a story about death and sorrow have to do with keeping it light? How light is that!”
Well, that is the point. Tragedy and humor are not very far apart in life. When that happened to me back in ’74, I was crying and screaming and in the throes of angst. But not long after, when I had healed some more, that became one of my favorite stories about faith in my life. When I think of that night, I still feel a deep love for God, even though I rarely believe in him-her-it, for not striking me dead like everyone who is fundamentalist might still claim today. My god is a loving god, if, if, if…
People are just too uptight today! I guess they always have been, though. It comes in waves: society is pushed back and forth like the tide depending on who has the floor. Right now, that’s conservative religionists, otherwise known as the Radical Religious Right. They’re in office working hard to take away our rights and to perpetuate oppressions. They proclaim that our country is a Christian country and forget the many and varied peoples who lived here before Christians existed and those who came after from places all over the world. They particularly like to forget those Christians in the history of our country who have evolved toward love and a liberal view of life and religion.
All we can do is agonize! Well, not really, but what is a person to do? We can spend all our time on the internet signing onto virtual marches on Washington with MoveOn.org, or we can have a nice summer. Which will it be? Gosh, I don’t know! I want to be a good person, a good minister, so should I do everything important that comes my way? How do I balance? How do I survive?
Now that’s where laughter comes in. We can’t do it all, we know that. So how come we feel guilty when we pass up the chances over and over? We no longer live in just a physical world bounded by the distances we can walk or drive a car in a day. We live in a virtual world with infinite possibilities. We can do, do, do all night long, and some people do do, do, do all night long, and all day long. At some point we have to stop and laugh at ourselves, laugh that we puny little beings, one in six billion people, or I guess it’s seven billion or maybe even eight by now, in the whole world and our lives are just so important that some of us have a hard time getting up in the morning because we’re worried we’re not good enough. Not only is God not watching, neither are the vast majority of your friends and neighbors. Who cares? Nobody but you!
Well, there might be one person who cares, or a couple, but all they really care about is you, not whether you went on the vigil yesterday or cleaned your house. If they do, if that’s all, you don’t need them. What are you doing hanging around people who don’t affirm the heart of your being? Get back in touch with life and enjoy! And love! And laugh!
Because life can get really tough! That’s why they invented the concept of the Devil, you know. Life is just damn tough, and as Angelica Houston put it in a movie I saw the other day, “it can always get worse!” (from “Ever After”)
And I’ll leave it at that!
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson