Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go Of God"

I had the great pleasure of seeing Julia Sweeney's One-Woman show tonight, "Letting Go Of God". I saw parts of it last year at the Paramount and instantly loved it. The extended version was amazing. I think the shorter version was a concentration of the funny bits, and the longer version had a lot more socks to the gut.

When I was abandoning the Mormon faith, I belonged to a group called "Recovery from Mormonism." It was a sort of an online therapy group. They collected stories former members told of their experiences (often AWFUL experiences) in leaving the Mormon church. I always wanted to post my story there, but I never felt like I had a "finished" version. And by the time it was finished, I couldn't remember anymore how it felt like when I was actually there.

Julia Sweeney has no such problem. She elegantly carries the audience through her entire journey, in the moment, with no hints of what is to come. It was funny and satirical, of course, but it was also devastating and embarrassing and filled with all the grief of lost fairy tales. I can't say that I've read as much on the many, many topics that led her to atheism, but her conclusions resonated very strongly with me. Especially the conversation she has with her mother, where she says she is more at peace now than she was before. And that it really sucks to re-evaluate one's own impending demise, especially given the better understanding of one's own significance (or lack thereof) in the universe at large (cv. Douglas Adams and fairy cake).

As soon as the movie is released, I will be buying it for myself and all my friends. But in the meantime, you can enjoy this amusing clip of Julia Sweeney's encounter with the Mormon Missionaries.