We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat” is one of the most famous lines in movie history. It’s also a pretty good statement of the global crisis we face in this Year of Pandemic 2020, one especially worth considering during Christian Holy Week.

Roy Scheider in Jaws.

As Police Chief Martin Brody, Roy Scheider deadpans the line with a palpable sense of shock and dread as he backs into the Orca's cabin, lit cigarette still dangling from his open mouth. The line gets a huge laugh because it is such a clear & human understatement of a massive crisis: we simply do not have a large enough structure to meet this challenge.

Now the structure I’m talking about isn’t a boat, or a government, or a plan of action to curb disease. It’s a god. Or the God, if you prefer. Because the great crisis facing humanity isn’t any form of virus, as such things come and go. It’s that we don’t have a big enough God. To paraphrase Anne Lamott, we can tell our God is too small when he hates all the same people that we do. We haven’t created a mythology broad enough to include and sustain us all.

---

Myths define what it means to be human, and provide structure & solace during life’s most difficult transitions. These archetypal stories place us in the center of our own lives, and give us a clear path to follow through our darkest days. Faith in our preferred myth allows us to transcend suffering (which as humans we seek above all) in ways that nothing else can. It is not about observable reality. It is about spiritual fortitude. Those who create a false rivalry between religion and science do tremendous damage, no matter which side they support.

Joseph Campbell used the metaphor of a beautiful songbird to describe the natural world, and described mythology as “the song of the imagination, inspired by the energies of the body.” Certain religious types—particularly fundamentalists of all stripes—believe they have this bird caged, so they alone can connect with it and hear the true song of nature. Scientists believe that dissecting the bird to understand its vocal mechanics is a suitable replacement for experiencing the song, itself. This is an interesting problem to discuss another day, but it’s still not the main God problem we're facing right now.

In his famous discussion with Bill Moyers (the transcript of which became the book, The Power of Myth), Campbell said that conservative religions were “making a terrible mistake. They are going back to something that is vestigial, that doesn’t serve life.” All of the great religions sprang up in smaller societies which had no awareness of the larger world, and little to no scientific understanding. This is the crisis, because as Joseph Campbell said back in the 1980’s, “when the world changes, then the religion has to be transformed.” The old structures aren’t sufficient to weather the current storms. We are going to need a bigger boat.

---

Luke Skywalker watching his final sunsets in The Last Jedi.

Star Wars featured prominently in their discussion-- not only because it captured the zeitgeist of the era, but because Lucas patterned the Skywalker saga on Campbell’s concept of the Hero’s Adventure, the archetypal story at the heart of all great mythologies. Star Wars also addressed notions of good and evil, of maturation and rites of passage, in ways that resonated deeply with kids like me (and kids like my kids, for that matter). For many the Force is a far more potent mythology than the Holy Spirit as espoused in the vestigial Abrahamic religions. (A brief digression; I was even more hopeful for Star Wars’ potential mythological impact after seeing The Last Jedi, in which all barriers to entering the world of the Force based on lineage or class seem to be destroyed. Alas, J.J. Abrams effed it all up by returning us to the stale, vestigial archetype of the white patriarchy as represented by the appearance of a reanimated and stodgy Emperor Palpatine.)

---

Campbell cited the need for a new planetary mythology—a planetary religion-- one that can transcend vestigial rites and traditions and incorporate all of humanity into one single family, united on a path to salvation. The concept of Gaia, in which all of the world is viewed as a single organism, is a step in the right direction. It has a clear and helpful moral imperative (preserve and sustain all life as a single, healthy organism) but it doesn’t rise to the level of a transcendent mythology because it offers no rites, no customs or rules, that speak to the song of the imagination. It lacks a clearly defined path through the darkness.

Similarly, Buddhist ideology and practice might be up to the challenge, but even without a defined godhead it is still mired in centuries of tradition, and so trails its own vestigial tail. However-- like the Force and the Holy Spirit-- Bodhi is a concept we can all get behind. And there are no real barriers to practicing meditation, for anyone inclined to try.

This reveals my own bias, but I believe Jesus is up to the task… but only if we can free him from the rot and stagnation of western Christianity. To do so we might rely more on the Gnostics, who believed that all of us have the potential to become the Christ, and lean heavily into the Gospel of John, in which Jesus says, “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” It's an awfully high standard, but that's kind of the point.

---

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity."

-- William Butler Yeats

The Second Coming

---

We are currently witnessing the death of the American mythology, or at least part of it. Coronavirus has stripped away the fallacy of the self-made man, as well as any idea that rugged individualism leads to more contentment and security for all. We are in this together, and whether or not we take it as a commandment we must be our brothers’ & sisters’ keepers-- for our own sakes as much as theirs.

This is an inflection point in human history: the death of our old way of living, while we wait in hope (and fear) for the birth of something new. It’s especially fitting to reflect on this tonight, on what we Christians call Maundy Thursday, while we remember the Last Supper and the final acts and words of Jesus among his disciples. It was on this night that he gave them a new commandment; “...that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.

I don’t think our new global religion needs to be based on Jesus or Christianity-- there might already be too much damage done in the world for that. But it most certainly should be based on the idea— the necessity— that we must all love and care for one another. We desperately need a new mythology, one where all of us are on the inside, with no one left outside looking in. The world is so connected, so heavily populated, and in such peril that we simply cannot afford to have outsiders. We will sink or swim together. But one thing is crystal clear.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.