March 3, 2007,
Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2007)
My friend, John Schaffer, tells me when many Catholics hear the line “May the force be with you” in “Star Wars,” they want to respond, “and also with you.” It comes from listening to the Catholic Mass. The priest says “The Lord be with you” and the congregation replies, “and also with you.”
It’s an example of how often religious notions seep into our daily lives.
I thought of John’s comment again this week when I read where the Utah legislature had approved the phrase “Life elevated” for the state license plates. I, for one, like the slogan. And I think most people will see the double meaning — we live “a higher-quality life” here, but we also “live in the mountains.”
Yet I hear something else as well. I hear: “Life Elevated, where spirituality gives us a lift.”
Whether a person is Catholic, Buddhist, LDS or Hindu, their spiritual feelings are often associated with buoyancy. Think of soaring angels, the power of levitation, the Rapture or being “carried away” in vision. These things are more than metaphors. They express how spirituality actually feels inside. Spirituality “elevates” us.
An old Christian legend claims St. James sailed from the Holy Land and eventually arrived on the coast of Spain in a boat made of stone. The story has been told for two thousand years now. Where does its staying power come from?
I think it’s because the image sums up the essence of religion itself. Our mortal lives grow heavy and burdensome. We slump under the weight of our bodies. The world weighs us down. But spirituality “lifts” us, raises our eyes and gives wings to thought.
Prayer, like the smoke from candles, always ascends. It’s why Native Americans smoke tobacco in their ceremonies. The smoke carries their longings up to heaven.
It’s also why Jesus walking on the water was more than a pointless trick, as some scholars claim. It was a lesson. It shows people what he was about. He could take our mortal heaviness and make it float. He could “raise” folks from the dead and “lift” their sins. “My burden is light,” he said. It sounds like a contradiction. It isn’t. It was his message. Almost every spiritual leader eventually tells us, “You may be boats made of stone. But I can help you float.”
A few years ago, while doodling in a meeting, I concocted a little rhyme I later called “Heavy Things that Fly.”
My list read in part:
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Bumblebees, bullets, a 707 A heart like an anvil When hoisted by heaven. |
In the end, if you think my wringing all this from a simple license-plate slogan is the work of an overactive imagination, i would probably agree. But I also think in a world filled with self-indulgent slogans such as “Pamper yourself” and “You deserve a break today,” people can use a spiritual pick-me-up wherever they can get one. And if one shows up while they’re watching “Star Wars” — or gazing at someone’s license plate while commuting to work — well, all the better.