Jesus, in the famous poem "Footprints in the Sand", says, "The times when you have seen only one set of footprints is when I carried you."
Carl Jung said, "Walk your path or be dragged."
This version seems more accurate for my life.
So I drew this cartoon,
"Walk or Be Dragged":
(Want a fine art print of this cartoon? Click on the image! If you want the actual original drawing, click HERE!)
Actually, that's not what this is about. This is about the question, "Does recovering from religion always have to be so morose?"
Yesterday, a friend commented on my cartoon and blog post that he misses the funnier cartoons I used to post and that I seem to be focusing more and more on the privileges and abuses of power.
He's not the only one. Others have mentioned the same concern.
This cartoon is in their honor to hopefully show that I haven't lost my sense of humor. It is true. I have focused more on the privileges and abuses of power because I think it is the core consideration about communities, including religious or spiritual ones. It is serious business.
And, to be honest, when I do cartoon and write about this, I know I'm helping a lot of people embrace their experiences, trust their guts, find their voices, muster their courage, and liberate their lives.
But it doesn't and can't stop there. I also want to help people find their happiness.
You might not realize this, but I laugh a lot. There have been seasons where I haven't. But I'm generally a happy person, in spite of what many people think. And I generally help other people laugh or at least smile every day, in spite of what many people think about that too.
One of the misconceptions about people who are deconstructing is that it is full of vindictive victims, a wailing wall of woe-is-me, a bath of bitterness, or a coven of complainers and whiners.
Not true!
I've seen it over and over again, not only in my own life but in the lives of others, that it is totally possible to achieve a place of joy again.
My desire is to turn this possibility into an inevitability.
So the answer is NO!
Recovering from religion does NOT always have to be so morose. You can be happy, even following the worst abuses, or even in the midst of the most burning questions and profound confusions.
