Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then get up. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
One of my most favorite people called me tonight as he drove home. I love talking to him. I hear about his week, he hears a bit about mine, and sometimes we share a laugh. Tonight we spoke about change. Specifically how nigh on impossible it is for people to change and to what lengths people will go to not to change. He told me that he thought that if the coping mechanisms people used in their lives (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling, workaholism, whatever) didn't hinder their basic program, their basic routine, then they wouldn't change period.
Our talk reminded me of one of my favorite parts of "Angels in America", the conversation between the character Harper and a statue of a Mormon Mother on a wagon headed west. The figure comes alive and tells Harper to ask her something. Harper starts with "Was it hard?" The response comes "You ain't stupid, so don't ask stupid. Ask something real." It is then the Harper asks her question about change. I love the answer the Mormon Mother gives. It is full of the pain and violence and grief of true change. It's not the "tender green shoots of the economic recovery." It is tumult. It is displacement. It is dis-ease. And - forever after you are just mangled guts walking around pretending.
As I write this post, I think also of a recent conversation with another dear friend, 'J' who spoke to me of the Great Mystery of being and his faith that there is a G-d. I contrasted his view that there is a loving G-d behind everything with my own view that we are tiny anomalies in a vast howling void. At times I feel envious of him for his settled sense of how things work. I tell him that part of me really would love to believe the story. The other part of me always steps in and says "well.. that's all fine and good but what about this?" and the tiny possibility of faith disappears - a raindrop on hot slate. And so it has been with me since I was a child.
For me to change with respect to faith, and I fear in any respect really, G-d will have to open me with a jagged thumbnail as the Mother Morman describes. Anything short of trauma will yield nothing.
I say - let's have at it. Crack me open.
I have the needle and thread all ready.