I wrote and posted this to Facebook on 30 March of 2024, partially to commemorate Easter weekend which is coming up again. Bring on the pickled eggs and beets!
I've
never made any secret of the fact that, in spite of my "Reverend Will
the Thrill" moniker, my sense of spirituality is hardly what one would
call "orthodox." I don't regularly attend church services, I don't
necessarily identify myself with any religious labels (aside from maybe
"lapsed Mennonite," "Methonite," or "Dudeist Priest," although I don't
use them with any kind of regularity), and I do tend to look at
organized religion as a whole with an extraordinarily sarcastic and
irreverent attitude. How sarcastic and irreverent, you may ask? Let me
put it this way: I was once stopped at a stoplight and I saw a bumper
sticker on the car in front of me that read ,"Try Jesus." I gave it
some serious thought, but then I realized that the Romans beat me to
it. And while no offense was intended in that statement, I'm sure that
someone reading this probably took offense to it--especially this
weekend. On the flip side, I'm sure that even more people reading it
found it funny. And I'm pretty sure that a number of people reading it
laughed and then wondered if they should.
And
this is part of my problem--so many people take their religion so
seriously that they get offended if someone else has a different
viewpoint--or even a sense of humour. It's as if laughing at it is a
hell-worthy trespass (to borrow a line from this week's film)--which
really sucks because I can't control what I find funny. And I find a
lot of humour in people who get offended easily--especially over
something as intangible as religion or spirituality.
As
I've said in the past, I find a deep sense of spirituality in popular
culture, specifically movies and music. This really started for me as a
junior in high school. My English teacher asked us to give a report on
the last movie we had watched. Not surprisingly in any way, shape, or
form (especially in 1990), the last film I had watched was the 1980 hit The Blues Brothers.
In my report, I went into this whole line of BS about all the religious
symbolism I detected in the film and how spiritual I felt the film
was. Initially I did this partly because I didn't know what to say ("I
really liked this film" isn't exactly much of a report), and partly to
tweak my English teacher whom I strongly suspected thought she was
really teaching Sunday School. And while I doubt that Dan Aykroyd had
any of that in mind when he wrote the film, as time progressed, I
actually started to believe my own line of BS. To this day, I still
consider it one of the most spiritually uplifting movies I've ever seen.
Fun fact--in 2010, when The Blues Brothers was
celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, the Catholic Church endorsed the
film as being appropriate for all Catholics, in spite of its R rating.
I figure when the Catholic Church essentially agrees with something I
had said twenty years earlier, either I'm a visionary who's way ahead of
my time, or it may just be a sign of the apocalypse. Too bad they
weren't as open to this week's film.
Unlike The Blues Brothers,
I feel that this film is designed, perhaps unintentionally, to make the
viewer challenge their own beliefs and ask why we believe the things we
believe. Since its initial release twenty-five years ago, I've often
revisited this film because it not only restores my sense of faith in...
something, but it's also highly entertaining, both because of its
substance as well as the controversy that surrounded it.
When
it was released in 1999, Catholic organizations protested. There were
even a couple of death threats against the writer/director. The irony
is that the writer/director, Kevin Smith, identified (and I assume still
does) as a practicing Catholic. He even thanked God in the closing
credits as well as his infant daughter, "for giving me the opportunity
to raise my own little Catholic." Apparently, since no one at the time
recognized him, he even joined the protests, which just shows how much
of a sense of humour he has about it. My personal favourite story
involved William Donohue of the Catholic League. He railed against the
film for months without actually seeing it. When he approached the
filmmakers about setting up a special screening so he could "speak about
it intelligently," Smith said "So what has he been doing for the past
six months?"
If
you're not familiar with the plot, fallen angels Loki and Bartleby
(played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) are clued into a loophole in
Catholic dogma that would allow them to re-enter Heaven. The problem
with this plan is that it would prove God wrong and since God is
supposed to be infallible, proving him/her/whatever/whomever wrong would
destroy the entire universe. A seraphim named Metatron, who acts as
the voice of God (played by the late, great Alan Rickman), charges an
abortion clinic worker named Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) with a "holy
crusade" to stop the angels from carrying out their plan. Along the
way, she receives guidance and assistance from two "prophets" (Jason
Mewes and Kevin Smith in their recurring roles of Jay and Silent Bob),
the thirteenth apostle Rufus (Chris Rock), and a muse named Serendipity
(Salma Hayek). The cast also includes Jason Lee as the demon Azrael
and--in what is perhaps the most inspired casting choice in the history
of cinema--Geoge Carlin (who, in real life, was an atheist) as a
Catholic Cardinal.
Possibly
in anticipation of controversy from his own tribe, Smith put a
disclaimer at the beginning of the movie stating that it is a "work of
comedic fantasy, not to be taken seriously." And, for the most part, I
don't. But there's a lot in this film I find quite moving, especially
as someone who doesn't identify with any "traditional" sense of religion
or faith, Catholic or otherwise. Aside from Rufus's ruminations on the
difference between beliefs and ideas, I really responded to something
Serendipity tells Bethany with regards to faith and who has the right
answers. She said, "It's not about who's right or wrong. No
denomination's nailed it yet because they're all too self-righteous to
realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in--just that you
have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains gotta
wake up." Sometimes, I wish we could all be that enlightened.
So this Easter weekend, as a reaffirmation of faith and good ideas, I recommend the movie Dogma.
Until
next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember
that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for
you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
