On Belief

So, my sweetheart, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about those brief remarks, that “reflection” I wrote for the Good Friday service and posted here shortly thereafter. The reflection itself was meant to be on the short side – they asked me for 250-300 words – so it didn’t get to range at length and into any kind of discussion about personal, evolving belief. But I find myself wanting to wade into that just a bit here and now…

  

You never got to meet him, my love, but I know you remember my talking about a friend of mine, my playwriting mentor, the Founder of NYC’s Ensemble Studio Theatre, the late Curt Dempster. I remember that he told me once that teaching is a very important thing for an artist (maybe everyone, of any profession) to eventually take on because it makes you examine what you truly believe. I think writing is of a similar stripe – it requires that kind of self-inquiry.

I think one of the things that most puts people off religion is a perceived demand that one must accept a set of definitive answers as the price of admission. But I don’t think it has to be like that. Sweetheart, do you remember my telling you about happening upon Grace Catherdral after your Mom and I were at the Top of the Mark the Sunday after Christmas in SF? There’s this great sign at the entrance - an invitation to enter “a place of religious immunity” is how it begins and then goes on to say how they are committed to an “unconditional surrender to the freedom of God to speak in whatever language is understandable”. This little church I’ve been going to here in NYC feels welcoming in that exact way – a recognition and respect for every individual’s journey, to not knowing but to seeking.

So when you read those words of my “reflection” – indeed, when I read them myself, one may well ask: do I believe that God incarnate as human literally walked the earth, was executed and resurrected? I don’t know. But that language is one way, perhaps, of putting words to this idea, this feeling I have and most firmly do believe that we are not alone. That love is enteral. And that through love we will find our way again to those we love when we too pass from what we see and know now, to all we can’t yet but will, as do they - as do you, my little sweetheart - in due time.

There’s a wonderful moment in Penelope Spheeris’s documentary about the late-70’s punkrock scene in LA, “The Decline of Western Civilization”. She’s interviewing Black Flag and she asks the drummer about his rather startling haircut. He answers so softly she has to ask him a second time and he says, quietly, earnestly, “I’m searching.” Quite right…

Love & faith,

Michael