Religion and the FOOBiverse

Religion is one of those topics that can be dangerous to discuss these days. I have a sense that Lynn Johnston in For Better or For Worse wants us to still have the impression that her characters consider their relationship with God from time to time, but she has gone a long way from endorsing any kind of organized religion. We saw crosses on gravestones during the visit to the cemetery by John and Elly, and those were the first religious artifacts I had seen in the strip in years. Even Mike and Dee’s fake wedding, although held in a church, was notoriously empty of religious imagery.

In the midst of all this comes praying April. She prayed on the prairie in Winnipeg last year, and she prayed today. Of different but not lesser interest was Elly’s participation in the sacred fire of the Ojibway pow-wow last fall, when she opted to think of her mother instead offering tobacco to Mother Earth, in that Ojibway religious ceremony. The similarity of associating prayer with thinking about deceased mother / stricken grandfather was probably a coincidence, but I jumped on it with my snarking. What you have is prayer without a God in it. Even the Ojibway prayer I had Constable Paul Wright quote mentioned the Gitchie-Manidoo (Great Spirit). Prayer without God mentioned, is essentially not prayer, by definition. So, why mention it at all?

The answer to that what aprilp_katje so clever mentioned in her Blog entry today---the cut-out moment. There are strips you look at for the art, strips you look at to laugh, and strips you look at to see if there is one you can cut out and show to other people. We have been hitting full stride on the cut-out moments this week, with the one the therapists would cut out yesterday, and the one on prayer today. The net effect is that Lynn has pulled some religion on her character out of the blue, in order to create an effect. For the average reader, who only has a passing familiarity with the characters, this strip would not bother them at all. For the obsessed reader, such as me, it bugs me to see this recurring theme of religion used for cut-out moments.

Tomorrow’s strip: My mom is older than Elly and I can honestly say I have never had this experience with her, nor have I have ever noticed an older woman playing with her facial hair. I must run with the wrong crowd of old ladies.