Playing with God and Other Big Questions

You haven't heard from me for a while because I'm working on a graphic novel! Well, that's pushing it a little...in the past two weeks, I got overcome by some creative spasm, and started this crazy project.  We'll see what happens.  It may be particularly ridiculous since I draw stick figures.  What compelled me was this overwhelming urge to create a story/portrait of what role(s) God has played in my life.  Which is especially weird since I'm a Unitarian Universalist, and often with people I love dearly  who are either agnostic or atheist.  I feel like I'm coming out of the closet!

Anyway, as a creative project, I am just getting started and don't really know where it's going, but I wanted to share some really non-arty panels with you and connect it to some things I've been reading in the past week.  So, here goes. I'm very nervous.  If you look at this and ask, "is this supposed to be funny?", the answer is yes.  Sometimes when you write about a big thing like God, people think it's supposed to be 100% serious.  This is not.  Okay, I just had to get that out there.

In case you can't read it, I'm 10 years old and wondering what it means if people want to be good just to get to heaven.  Maybe I'm like this, I wonder. 

Now, it's 6 mo later and I decide it's better just to 'be good' and not worry about why.

Coincidentally, I stumbled upon an essay just after I drew this little 'ditty', From the journal, Image:  Art. Faith. Mystery.  http://imagejournal.org/ .  The piece, by Dan Wakefield, is called,  Kurt Vonnegut, Christ-Loving Atheist.   Here's a quote from this piece that I really liked - it's an exerpt from Timequake, a semi-autobiographical novel by Vonnegut,

 "Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.  The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far.  We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community."

But despite this theological theme today so far, what I'm grappling with is not so much the question of being 'good'  or the nature of God.  What I'm grappling with is why create something?  Whether it's a picture, a piece of music, a poem, etc?  I think Kurt Vonnegut and I may agree that one part of creating art is being of service to your community.  But I think, more basic and real than that - something that really inspires me - is that we can create art as a way to PLAY.  As a way to bring a light touch to the sometimes serious business of being a human.  \

This graphic novel is a way for me to 'play' with big ideas.  I think there are lots of things we can be more playful and light with in our lives - so many friends (and me) get so serious about HOW TO BE A GOOD PARENT or WHAT DO I REALLY WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE or I HAVE SO MANY REGRETS or lots and lots of other things.  Maybe it's just helpful to remember to play a little bit and not take ourselves so seriously.

Another one of my heroes, Bill Watterson, who wrote and drew, Calvin and Hobbes, mentioned in an interview that whenever Calvin and Hobbes were grappling with deep, universal questions, he'd send them a careening off a snowbank in their sled or tumbling into a pile of leaves in their wagon.  They couldn't take their philosophical pondering too seriously when they were in the middle of a crash landing.  So, here's what I'll leave you with - a comic from a total genius.  Shout out to Bill Watterson and my old friend from high school, Bob Early who I haven't talked to in years, but who shared a love of this comic strip with me as well as an earnestness about God and talking about vomit.