Do All Roads Lead Home?

I love books. Ever since I was little, I would get captivated in stories imagining my life through the plots of great heroines. I learned a lot from the likes of Anne Shirley’s Green Gabled indignation, the Lilly Maid’s longing for bold Sir Lancelot, brash and brazen Becky in Vanity Fair. From the sister’s Bronte to the Bovary, the heroines of literature’s past have predicated much of my lens today, and why not? In the immortal words of Lady Macbeth, “What is done can not be undone!”

This could be a story about a boy who spends his days lost in the pages of books, seeking the answers to life’s great questions. But the question, “Do All Roads Lead Home” is only partly answered on the pages of books. There are few instances when I think a movie usurps a book, but the Wizard of Oz is one such movie… and I think it has to do with the singing. Last week, my colleague, Mark DeCorval shared with us the Wisdom of OZ through the eyes of the Scarecrow, a character who on the surface may seem unwise, but as we learned is a Zen Master in the making!

Today however I confess that I am not a big fan of the Wizard of Oz, or Dorothy’s redemptive quest back to Kansas…if anything, I find it all rather schmaltzy and a bit mealy mouth. Maybe the scarecrow is wise, but let’s face it, Dotty Gale is no Scarlet O’Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler. However, Oz has does have the Wicked Witch, who has become the heir apparent in a delightfully tragic and long line of the wickedly condemned.

It all begins for me Somewhere, Over the Rainbow, is OZ really a heaven-like parallel that Dorothy sings about? Can "wishing upon a star and waking where the clouds are far behind" be the same as prayer? I mean, if it’s good enough for a blue bird, beyond the rainbow, could it be good enough for me? Technicolor no doubt made the grass greener, but Dorothy still had to follow the rules… I mean the yellow brick road.

Our heroine’s plot only thickens when this tale is dealt a healthy dose of 70’s soul in The WIZ. During “Home” the “Over the Rainbow” power ballad Dorothy is asking yet again to be delivered, this time back to the memory of home. "When I think of home I think of a place where there is love overflowing, I wish I were home, I wish I were back there, with the things I’ve been knowing…”

Dorothy was asking a question that even in my most wild imagination, I could not come to ask myself. My childhood home was not a place where love over flowed. Where was my Glinda? Evidently to busy coming and going by bubble to land on my shoulder and offer me some dead woman’s robbed shoes. But, just like Dorothy, I too hoped that the Great and Powerful would fix everything. However, Dorothy ends up back in Kansas with three clicks and I did not want that! That is where the book, the movies and music, ran stale for me.

It wasn’t until Wicked, The Untold Story of the Wicked Witch of the West, that I finally surrendered Dorothy. Suddenly, I understood whose truth I was after and it was the witch, the Wicked Witch, Elphaba as she is known in Wicked. Just like the heroine’s of my afore mentioned literary cabaret, each bringing a piece to help shape my identity, here was Elphaba. The book is good, but let’s face it, the musical is better.

And so it goes, through a series of incidents in the musical, Elphaba finds out she gets to meet the Wizard with a poptastic ballad, The Wizard and I. "And one day he’ll say to me Elphaba the girl who is so superior, would it be alright by you, if I degreenify you." Yes, that’s it…It seemed all I wanted to be fixed, too! Not because I was green, and not even because I’m gay, but because I felt different. Hmm, interested in a little word play in the vernacular of Stephen Swartz?” Would if be alright by you if I, dequeerfy you? If I deblackify you, If I depoorify you.” Not so poptastic now is it?

Oh to be perfect! The perfect son, the perfect boy friend, the perfect teacher, to have a perfect body, perfect voice, perfect… perfect… perfect… What I have not done to be perfect.

But, I am not perfect, and I was not popular, and as a child, truly none of my deeds went unpunished! Get the book and the boom, cause like Elphaba, I have felt that for much of my life people were coming after me with a bucket of water!

Have you felt that way too? Who here has felt chased by a bucket? Some even might have been taught a very different Oz? Maybe an Oz that forces you to conform, make you walk a certain road, wear someone elses shoes, or risk a bucket of water? Nothing like “I’m melting” to remind you whose boss! In Wicked, the Wizard expected Elphaba to be something she was not, to turn her back on her personal truth and proclaim the teachings of some megalomaniac. How many have asked the same of you? Elphaba became the conduit the Wizard used to spread fear, just like many have used the “sins of the flesh” to preach fear and damnation.

In my quest for perfect, I had spent my life jumping through the Wizard’s hoop, just like Dorothy, following a road that leads back to Kansas. Then one day I finally got it, and like Elphaba, I had to choose. Stick with the Wizard, or Defy Gravity and "fly solo, fly free, and proclaim, that no Wizard that there is or was would ever bring me down!"

The Wizard of Oz’s heroines taught me, through varied interpretations and musical numbers, that Oz is in many ways flawed like our society and that what the Wizard offered was not emerald green! Moreover, what made the witch oh so wicked and what kept Dorothy from returning home was the same. Fear! Fear is what thrust the bucket of water and fear kept Dorothy from seeing that she could always go back home. She didn’t need faith in ruby slippers, a waving wand behind her head, or the need for a Wizard.

Instead of following the rules of someone else’s game, like Elphaba, I chose to take a stand! That stance, has become my life’s mission. Call me faggot, call me fat, call my religion fraudulent. You can even call me wicked. Like Elphaba, that’s my new creed. My road of good intentions lead where such roads always lead… and it is the wizard who should be afraid, of me!

Every Sunday, our children are taught how to take a stand for what they believe in. We take a stand when we affirm inherent worth, when we are kind in all we do, when we help each other to learn. We take a stand when we search for what is true, when we give a vote, when we work for peace and justice, and when we stand up for our sacred Earth. Just like Elphaba, the lesson is all about the road.

So what about that road? It just so happens that instead of the Emerald City, my road lead to a new city. No, not the city of brotherly love, though I am so glad it did, but a bigger city, one overflowing with love. The journey I was on, actually the journey I am still on continues to lead me to here, to Unitarian Universalism. Here waiting for me is a community that empowers a greater lesson. Here I don’t need a wizard!

Welcome to a place where children are taught that some people believe in God the Father, and some people don’t, and that is ok. That Jesus is a wonderful friend and teacher, but not the messiah, and that salvation does not come from a bucket of water being thrust upon us, but from looking deeply at how we love, and discovering that we are called to affirm and promote the good in those whom are deemed by some as wicked. Maybe some people make wicked choices, but we all are worthy of universal love.

My beloved seekers of faith, come out of the woods, come out of the dark, and step into the light. This is a place of light, and truth, and love.

Now is the time, a time to look past the Wizard, and affirm that something has changed within you. Believe in a Love immanent. I invite you to affirm your journey home, regardless of whether you find it in books, movies, or music. Home is Unitarianism’s One Love, and Universalism’s One Heart. Home is when you stop chasing rainbows and start "easing on down the road." Welcome home, to a road paved in a new yellow, the glowing light of a flaming chalice that shines so bright, that nothing can melt us! Welcome Home.