Via Pharyngula I see that my friend and sweetiepie Julia Sweeney was interviewed in the Seattle Times about her play, “Letting Go of God”. I’ve seen her perform this one-woman play a couple of times now, and it is funny, poignant, and thought-provoking. Most people think of Julia as “Pat” from Saturday Night Live and are likely to dismiss her, but in fact she is a person who has a deep love of thinking, of chewing over philosophical notions, and is a voracious consumer of ideas. Conversations with her are a little dizzying because she changes topics and caroms off into tangents so much. Like me, one of her guiding principles is: there’s so much to learn!
So it’s nice to see her written up in the papers for her work. I particularly like the final paragraph from the article:
So what beliefs guide her today? “Every time I describe it I sound like a ‘Star Trek’ convention, but I do wish we could worship the sun, the moon and the stars. For me, just reading about astronomy and what conditions were right on Earth for life to evolve, how all those molecules became me, is so profound.”
I don’t think she means literally worship astronomy, as in having blind belief and dogma about it. She means cherish, appreciate, feel awe… you know, grok it.
Who am I to disagree with that?
