Experimental Theology: The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes: Table of Contents

Not really theology so much as an existential meditation on C&H. Calvin's authentic self is constantly hemmed in by objective reality, rules, logic, and normative standards, while he is liberated through creativity, imagination, and the willingness to jump on his sled just to see what happens. Calvin teaches us to abandon our goal-orientation and just let things go.

Calvinball as a state of grace

Marc Maron’s Must-Hear Podcast for Comedians - NYTimes.com

I was going to mention at some point that Marc Maron's WTF podcast has quickly become my favorite. But the Times beat me to it. He is indeed raw and angry, and he understands the self-destructive impulse in human psychology that leads to comedy. It's interesting that so much art comes from this dark place and that the artistic journey is one where the wounded self seeks out imaginative engagement with the source of all inner turmoil. To what? To heal, to break with the past, to reengage, to go forth once more.

The brilliant thing about Maron's show is that comedians share all the same demons of artists and poets and they're good talkers. They turn all that anger outward, they express it with full voice, and inject humor as a way to say, look, I survived. I persist. Whereas most writers turn inward and are in danger of being eaten alive.

As he says of his ill-fated tenure at Air America:

“I really began to believe that the struggles of most people are existential, not political,” he said, “and my biggest struggles were existential.”

Which is to say, politics is fine if all you want is dialectic and the rigors of partisan logic. But if you really want to know what's going on, you need to engage with all the messy, unresolved, patently absurd aspects of life. You have to face up to the fact that you're here, alive today, and decide what you're going to do about it before you die.