It was President’s Day weekend in Los Angeles and raining cats and dogs. Our friends Keith & Tara (who are referenced often on the pages of tinkleflick.com) had recommended a show up in L.A. called Letting Go of God , a monologue written, produced and starring Julia Sweeney. If you didn’t watch Saturday Night Live in the 1990s, you won’t know Julia Sweeney. If you did, you will know her most famous character, the androgynous Pat. She made a movie with that character, but it bombed and we haven’t heard much from Sweeney since then (she has starred in some direct-to-video movies and the like. (Click here to see her credits.)
Anyway, we decided to take advantage of the three-day weekend, drop Noah off at the grandparents and make a date night out of it. We knew from Keith and Tara, plus some of the reviews, that we would like the show, but I don’t think I even expected to like it as much as I did.
The show is a monologue of Sweeney’s journey to figure out what she really believes about God and religion. She was raised as a Catholic and just believed what she was supposed to believe. It wasn’t until later in her life that she began to apply some critical examination to her beliefs. She takes you through a very funny, yet very personal, examination of the stories in the Bible and through other interpretations of what they mean. After she realizes that Bible just doesn’t make any sense, she looks for other ways to reconcile her belief in God with what the rational and critical side of her brain is telling her.
She obviously put a lot of thought into the matter, studying the brain, the eye, a hilarious trip through the writing of Deepak Chopra and, due to his teachings, a class in quantum mechanics (Deepak is full of shit, by the way) and travels to the Far East for answers from Eastern religion and to the Galapagos Islands and the theories of Charles Darwin. All of this leads her to a conclusion that maybe there isn’t a God and maybe that’s OK. Maybe, it is just nature in all of its randomness that leads us to where we are, maybe there is no human-centric figure directing it all as part of some master plan and maybe that is enough inspiration around which to build a system of moral values.
It is not a religion-bashing or God-bashing monologue at all. Rather, it is a very personal approach to a question that a lot of people of various walks of life are obviously asking themselves. Judging just from the crowd we were a part of, there were people of all ages (many more older people than we expected), a high-school kid with his Mom and so forth. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show, ending with a standing ovation. But don’t take our word for it, read another review of the show here. If you want to get discount tickets, click here and we get a credit for future ticket purchases (hey, all this great tinkleflick.com content ain’t free!)
I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately after reading John Krakauer’s excellent book about the Morman Church and its fundamentalist offspring, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Besides an odd fascination with Mormanism (which plays a role in “Letting Go of God”), I really like John Krakauer who wrote Into Thin Air about the 1996 Everest expedition. Anyway, some of the points that Krakauer makes in his commentary about religion in his examination of the Mormons you can hear from Sweeney. Mainly, the fact that in order to believe in many religions, you need to suspend rational thought because, upon further examination, none of the teachings really make any sense. However, they do offer answers to questions that are difficult or impossible to explain and offer comfort and hope. All of that is fine so long as they aren’t used to oppress people (which, unfortunately, through most of history they have). I came away from Sweeney’s show thinking that it was the first time I have heard anyone make any sense when speaking about these heavy topics and it was refreshing and, in a sense, uplifting to hear it.
Anyway, we’re not big fans of L.A. and, as such, we don’t go there very often. While we were up there, we were going to go to a restaurant in L.A. but it was raining so hard, and freeways were flooding out and such, so we decided to make our way back to Long Beach and go to a known quantity, one of our favorite restaurants Lasher’s. Lasher’s in an old, converted Craftsman home on Broadway near Redondo in Long Beach. It’s great American fare and we highly recommend it if you are looking for a nice night out in Long Beach.