The second career of SNL alum Julia Sweeney has been that of solo artist. Her bittersweet one-woman show about her family’s battles with cancer, God Said, “Ha!,” set her apart from woe-is-me memoirists. Now she’s back with Letting Go of God.
You were raised Catholic, and now you’re a committed atheist. How’d that happen?
People want it to be, like, “You were really devout and then you became an atheist.” And it’s, like, no, I was raised Catholic and I liked it, but I always had doubts about it. So it wasn’t going from one extreme to another extreme.
People want to polarize your experience more than it was?
That is exactly the word. Polarize.
You tend to use titles that are cast in negatives: My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story and Letting Go of God. Do you see yourself as defined by loss?
I don’t see it as a loss. To me it’s just funny, you know? I like My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story because that just really sums it up. Because it was a loss of faith, and you normally think that’s bad, and yet, it was really the most beautiful thing that ever happened.
What was beautiful about your loss of faith?
Oh, my God, it was such an enormous enhancement to my life—and my life was not bad before. I had this feeling of profound gratitude to the universe that I got to exist because of millions of fortunate circumstances that led to my existence, that the whole species of Homo sapiens evolved, that humans made their way out of the African Pliocene. I felt so lucky. It changed every single thing about every single thing I thought about everything.
You’ve noted that there are things you like about religion—community, rituals—but you’ve been very critical of New Age philosophies, such as the Secret and Deepak Chopra.
Those are worse than religion. I feel if someone is a Catholic, that’s a cultural thing, it’s a community-building thing. The Catholic Church in my hometown works so well. It’s a community center, a place where you find out who’s getting married. And you have a community experience where you’re quiet in a room trying to have a solemn spiritual moment. But the Secret? And Deepak Chopra? They let people think they’re using science and, of course, they’re not using science at all. And then they’ll go, “Weeelll, the idea is positive thinking is good,” like they’ll back you into this corner that you could never disagree with. And then you’ll say, “Yes, positive thinking is good,” and they’ll say “Well, that’s all I’m saying,” and it’s like No, it isn’t, it isn’t all you’re saying. And then they’ll say, “All I know is, I’m calm right now, and you’re upset.” And it’s like, Oh, so now I’m an idiot. Because you’re sitting there calm in your ignorance and I’m angry in my knowledge.
What do you make of the trend in Hollywood and the U.S. more generally toward more religiosity?
People are really spiritually hungry. People want something, because the human condition is a predicament. We have all this knowledge and awareness, and there really isn’t any meaning in life, except for the meaning we make. I mean, I have enormous meaning in my life, but it’s because I feel that meaning, not because the universe is imposing meaning on me. And humans want meaning, and religion is a cheap way to get it. I mean, it’s a quick, cheap fix for meaning. I think Hollywood just responds to what the market is.
How do you create meaning?
You know, it’s so funny, because I recently realized there’s a parallel thing that’s gone on in my life, because I was always searching for where home was. L.A. never seemed like home. I’m always thinking I’m going to move back to Spokane, or I’m going to move somewhere else that feels like a little town where I can feel like this is my home. And in the last six months, I’m realizing I was home all along.
Like Dorothy.
I know! Like Dorothy. And I just feel in such shock about it. And in a way, on the meaning issue, I was looking for this big thing to “be” meaning—and meaning is that God wants me to do X, or that I should serve people in this way. And I realized, you know what meaning is? Meaning is feeding yourself and walking the dog and behaving decently to others and being someone that other people can rely on. Before, I was always looking up to the heavens for my meaning and connection, and now I’m looking at eye level to other people. That is meaning to me.
