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• Saturday, October 4, 2008 11:13 AM

  [note] Movie spoiler in this letter

  I saw it last night and think the point isn't that Maher is perfectly right, or so intellectually superior to the point that he's better qualified than anybody else to ask the gross (as in broad) questions he asks.

  For me, the takeaway was that however abrasively, he tried.

  I see his sneering and his sexism. But I also saw the confused boy asking his Jewish mother (who raised him Catholic): "You're my mother. Guide me!" Truth in jest.

  At various points when he's not asserting his logical specialness, he really is trying, in moments, to understand how people get so enmeshed with the rules of religion that they veer away entirely from the compassion, inclusivity and gentleness that anybody who grasps the Golden Rule even vaguely can understand when they're very small.

  I think he resorts to pointing out the contradictions in religious documents and practices as a way of saying it indirectly. There's really only one question: if being good is about love and peace, what is this other stuff you're teaching?

  I have a huge sense of mysticism that was influenced by my childhood sense of unconditional love (which I was taught) and the wonder I experienced watching dust motes in sunbeams or stars. Later on I gave up on the notion that any book, any book, any book, any book, any book, any book -- anything expressed in human language EVER -- could get near it.

  What Maher's movie left out for me was the mystery of beauty. No matter how far along I am in agnositicism, sacred music moves me. As does gospel. As do spirituals. As do animals.

  I think they're all the same thing. Human loneliness. While we chatter and argue about TEXTS and interpretations of texts we're trying to win over, persuade or conquer one another. And we only do that because we're lonely.

  Kindness, not rightness, is the only fix.

  That takes just a few words to explain. And then you get it, and then you know how to live.

  —Lobelia Read Lobelia's other letters
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