Ahhhhh, the end of the semester (not teaching again until Fall), my show has closed (to some awesome reviews, I might add) and I’m back in bidness!
Most people (if you're not in the theatre) know John Patrick Shanley as the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Moonstruck. However, he's written many more stage plays and there is talk of a Pulitzer Prize for his current show, Doubt, now running on Broadway. The human need to know and to seek the answer to the ultimate question: Why are we here? is what forces the weak and frightened to remove doubt from their thinking. That's how and why the fundamentalist religions exist. But none of us living on this earth know the answer. You don't. I don't. And that's the beauty of Mr. Shanley's play. He doesn't attempt to answer the question. He finds beauty in doubt. It's a profound and timely message. Read more here.
"Doubt has gotten a bad reputation. People who are utterly certain are vulnerable to a brand of foolishness that people who maintain a level of doubt are not." (11/20/04 New York Times, interview with David Cote).
“....doubt itself is a passionate exercise. I think it's perceived in this culture as something weak or denatured, and that's a huge mistake. Conviction is what you do to be comfortable, to write THE END on thinking. Doubt keeps you in the present, it keeps you conscious and reacting to and acting on what is going on now. It's work, and people like to avoid work." (4/1/05 Entertainment Weekly, interview with Mary Kaye Schilling) --- John Patrick Shanley
Sticking with evolution.
And not.
What is it with these right-wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time. I posit that they're just not doing it right.