RUNNING TOWARDS THE BLAST: An Ordained Comedian's Perspective on Terrorists and Hecklers

(This piece was also featured on the front page of Huffington Post Religion)

Readers, do me a favor. Fold your arms and don the surliest expression you can manage. Done? Good. Now you know what my last standup comedy audience looked like.

Mercifully, times like these don’t happen often. However, when they do, it’s excruciating. When faced with a surly crowd, I always fall back on the words of a long-time comic friend who once warned me to “never allow yourself to be defined by your audience.” He went on to explain that it’s inevitable to encounter the random angry, unstable person—the person who wants to bring you down. But no matter what happens, “you can’t let up and you can’t shrink in fear. Just the opposite—you have to stand straighter in defiance and keep on going.”

While a great lesson in standup (and in life), his words were taken to a whole new level this week by the responses to the Boston Marathon bombing. The people of Boston didn’t allow themselves to be defined by the actions of angry, unstable people bent on bringing them down. They didn’t let up. And they didn’t shrink in fear. They stood straighter in defiance and kept on going.

One of the most poignant images was highlighted in Thomas Friedman’s recent New York Times op-ed piece. He noted that, in the video images taken immediately after the explosion, you could see people running towards the blast—the ultimate act of courage and defiance.   "Lets schedule another Boston Marathon as soon as possible," he wrote. "We should make this one longer--from Boston to the site of the World Trade Center to the Pentagon--to remind ourselves ... we are not afraid." 

Given the world in which we live, we need a lot of those reminders. Our planet is filled with angry souls that want to bring us down, whether it be a bomber, the sender of poisonous letters, or a murderer with a gun. Sadly, while our law enforcement officers are working around the clock, our Congress seems more focused on political wrangling than on passing protective legislation for its citizens, and the results are devastating. It has been reported, for example, that since the Newton tragedy, an estimated 3,027 people have died in gun-related violence in the United States; more than the death toll from 9/11. 

If Boston taught us anything this week, it’s that we don’t have time to be scared. Life is fleeting, and we no longer have the luxury of making assumptions about the future.

Take, for example, 26-year-old MIT police officer Sean Collier. A skier, he may have been planning a late-spring ski trip—until he was gunned down late last Thursday on the MIT campus. Then there’s 8-year-old Martin Richard, who probably planned to play Little League baseball later last week. But an explosion near the Marathon finish line took his life. A budding ballerina, Martin’s little first-grade sister, Jane, may have planned to attend dance class. But the same explosion that killed her brother took her leg.

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, and, as Nelson Mandela said, life is too short to waste it “playing small.” We cannot allow ourselves to be defined by the angry people of this world. We cannot let up. We cannot shrink in fear. The best thing—the only thing—we can do is to straighten up in defiance.

We can raise our voices to our government officials regarding laws and legislation that will protect our people. We can speak out when we see someone being treated with disrespect. We can straighten up in defiance when human beings are not treated equally—and that includes making premature conclusions about who is responsible for a tragedy or offering uninformed, judgmental opinions about what, if any, particular group might be involved. (In comedy, that’s called being a “hack.”)

I pray that, in the future, our world will be free of the horrors we have witnessed this week. I hope this will be the last act of terrorism.  We all know, however, that the odds are against us in that hope. In comedy and in life, there will always be people who want to bring us down. So all I can do is utter this humble prayer as a comedian, a minister, and a human being: when the crisis hits, when the angry person strikes, may God give us the courage to stay the course, to straighten up in defiance, and to always--always--run towards the blast. 

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Leveling Up Religion

 

(This piece is also featured in my Huffington Post blog)

Many probably think I’m on a slippery slope to hell. I drink beer, I dance, and God help me, I’m a Baptist minister. However, it’s not the Stella Artois or tango lessons that are greasing my downward slide. The real shocker? My belief that online gaming may revive organized religion.

STOP – Don’t close this page because you think I’m talking about violent games. I’m not. This is about an entirely different genre; this is about games that are changing the world.

I began to understand the power of online games last November when I was invited to participate in a panel discussion with Jane McGonigal, world-renowned gaming theorist, Research Affiliate for The Institute for the Future, and author of the New York Times bestseller Reality isBroken. 

Not being a gamer myself (my last foray was Ms. Pac-Man in the ‘80s), I was skeptical of how our respective worlds overlapped. I envisioned us discussing ordained avatars and virtual communion wafers. Yet after a provocative panel discussion (and a standing ovation from the audience), it became clear that religion and games share way more than religious apps and virtual churches. They share a mutual end goal: to offer a healing alternative to our broken world.

It’s just that one is doing a much better job than the other.

Just look at the statistics. Membership in organized religion is plummeting worldwide, while global participation in online gaming is exploding, crossing from the millions into the billions in the next few years.

Rather than offer a better vision, our religious messages tend to mirror the pain of our broken world -- especially in the church. We don’t inspire followers, we shame them; we don’t bridge differences, we create them. We aren’t healing the kingdom because we’re too busy arguing about who is welcome, who owns the truth, and whether “smote” is to be taken literally or as a metaphor.  In short, we aren’t “leveling up” (a gaming term meaning to better your position).  

Alternatively, games are all about leveling up by inspiring players to better themselves, advance, and achieve epic missions. They do so by offering experiences and opportunities that meet core human needs, such as satisfying work, challenging but reachable goals, social connection, creating meaning, and being part of something bigger than ourselves. As a result, games attract massive voluntary global communities that come together to solve problems, create solutions, and level up our world.

For example, one of the fastest growing gaming areas is games for social change, a gaming community that is literally reinventing government, healthcare, education, social services, and business.

One such game, Foldit, has broken open issues such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and HIV/AIDS research. For years, scientists have struggled to understand how proteins fold and form in order to answer critical medical questions. Due to the intricacies and varieties of the patterns, however, it is taking scientists decades to break the codes. Recently, the gaming community got involved with Foldit, an online puzzle game which allows players to create new shapes of proteins by randomly folding digital molecules on their computer screens. The patterns that were taking the scientific community years to figure out took the online community a matter of days.

One of the newest games for change is Half the Sky, due for release in March 2013. Focusing on raising awareness of issues like female genital mutilation and child prostitution, supporters include the Ford, Rockefeller, and United Nations foundations, Zenga, Intel, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Other such games include World Without Oil, an alternate reality game created to engineer solutions to the global oil crisis, Family of Heroes, targeted at families and friends of veterans to recognize symptoms of post-deployment stress, Darfur is Dying, MTV’s 2006 offering in which players navigate the terrors of a Sudanese refugee camp, SuperBetter, an online game that harnesses the power of positive emotions and social connection to assist in recovery from illness and injury, and Free Rice, an online non-profit supporting the United Nations World Food Program through collaborative, multiplayer educational games.

People are starving for meaning and social connection—to be a part of something epic. And they are flocking from the church to games, because gamers are the ones creating opportunities for these needs; chances for real people to come together and create global solutions. To put it in religious terms: reality is the world after the fall and games are offering one of the few glimpses of the new Eden—a place where people find meaning and purpose, a world of global cooperation, a community where epic healing can happen.

Am I saying that religion should be a game? Obviously not. However, if we consider ourselves stewards of our faith, if we are serious about ensuring a legacy for these ancient traditions, it would behoove us to peer outside the doors of our vaulted cathedrals to see who is truly inspiring followers to come together to heal the kingdom. As Jane McGonigal wrote: “Games aren’t leading us to the downfall of human civilization. They’re leading us to its reinvention.” Perhaps if believers spent some time leveling up, we could also say that for religion.

Like Ever: How Taylor Swift and Jesus Can Help Us Avoid Bad Relationships

 

(This piece can also be found on my Psychology Today blog at http://tinyurl.com/aakuht7 )

The question of what to write about this week was pretty easy, as two clear themes emerged in the headlines:  relationships via Valentines and the US Air/American Airlines merger and disasters via Carnival Cruise Lines and the meteor hitting Siberia.  (As a quick aside, I will share my favorite tweet from an Alaska resident on the meteor crisis:  I live in Alaska but I couldn’t see the meteor from my house!)

With this combo of relationship and disasters what else could I do but write about bad relationships? Apparently I am good company with this theme, since last Sunday the opening song for the Grammy’s was created thanks to a “disastrous relationship.”  Yes, I am talking about Taylor Swift’s smash hit “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”  And if that title is not clear enough, she adds this great tag line throughout the song:   “Like ever!”   
Probably all of us have, at one time or another, faced a bad relationship; or God forbid, are in one now.  It may a romantic relationship, it may be a friend, or maybe it’s a business partner; relationships where we were drawn in for the wrong reasons, attracted thanks to our own weakness.   

And you know what this reminds me of?  Fifty dollars says no. 

Waiting…

Nope, didn’t think you’d get it.  Of course, who would?  Taylor Swift reminds me of Jesus’ temptation in the desert by the devil. 

Now don’t stop reading  simply because you're not religious.  I’m not trying to convert you.  I’m just linking in a relevant story about a guy who was tempted by a bad influence and found a way to overcome it by ultimately spouting off a version of Taylor Swift’s lyrics: “we are never ever getting together … like ever!”

How does one do this?  Well conveniently there are three easy steps.

First, we must recognize that we all have demons or devils.  When I say devil, I don’t mean a red guy with horns and a pitch fork.  Sometimes the devil is the negative voices of our own hearts.  The great psychotherapist Carl Jung called these our shadow selves; the parts of ourselves that we want to keep hidden away. 

Second, we must realize that we will be tempted by that devil. Those inner demons know us well; they know our deepest fears and insecurities; they know where we are weak, where we will break.  More importantly, they are relentless and will harp until we begin to believe the negative messages ourselves. 

Look at Jesus’ temptation in the desert for example.  His devil went after the places he was weakest:  food (command these stones to become bread – said to him after weeks without food), issues of abandonment (let your angels save you – said after he had wandered alone for forty days) and ego (I will give you the world and all its splendor, if only you will worship me).

The things the devil threw out to turn Jesus' head are the same things our demons throw at us: food for our emotionally starved hearts and words that play on abandonment, power and ego.   
The difference?  We can’t seem to say no.  

And that’s when the trouble begins; for it’s then we start to attract people into our lives who speak and act with those same negative voices.  It’s like the old saying:  “We attract the love we think we deserve.”

So how did Jesus manage to say no?  How did he resist?  Step three:  enter Taylor Swift.  To every temptation thrown at him, Jesus did two things:  1) he refused the temptation by saying “we are never ever getting together … like ever” and 2) he replaced the temptation with a greater power -- like the second and third steps of the Twelve Step program:

2) Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity;  and 3) Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

We can break the cycle of bad relationships; we can reprogram our hearts and minds to demand the best for ourselves and others; we can stop listening to the inner demons and face down any temptation, if we will only turn our lives over to a greater power and then say, with great gusto: “We are never ever getting back together … like ever!”

…

Homeless are they
Who would abide alone, apart from Me.
Yet would I call them home. My Voice I send
To sing in soundless places. Hear from Me
The song a Father sings to you, His child;
A melody from far beyond the world.
Step back and listen, for He comes to bless
And tell you that you are not comfortless.

Excerpt from “The Comforter” by Helen Schucman from her book “The Gifts of God”