Speech given by Dr.Linda Seger upon receiving the Candlelight Award from Regents University,
for being a "light to the entertainment industry."
March 15, 2001
Thank you. I thought that we had to wait for heaven before we got one of these. When Regent University called and told me that I was to be honored with this award, I felt like the father in the film, THE CHRISTMAS STORY, who wins a major award and goes prancing and dancing around the room. You might remember his award is also about light, but it looks quite different from this one.
I was surprised to be chosen. First of all, because it never occurred to me I would ever receive an award since I don't fit into any categories. Secondly, because it never occurred to me that Regent University would even know who I was. And thirdly, because I expect that this award is not just about the works, but about the spiritual work behind the works. And this always surprises me because spiritual work is quiet. It's solitary. It's private. Most of the time no one notices. They see the externals but not necessarily the work that creates the outward expression.
As I've reflected upon my professional life, I realize that every major decision in my professional life has been motivated, guided, pushed, shoved or forced by my relationship with God. Like a plot and a subplot, my life in drama and my spiritual life have been integrally intertwined.
We might say that the catalyst of this journey began when I was 19 years old. I loved drama. I was passionate about drama. But I wasn't very good at it. I wasn't very good in acting. I definitely was not the brightest kid in any of my other drama classes. I thought, "how can I major in drama when I'm not the best?" I remember standing in the middle of my college dorm room, thinking about this, praying about it, when I heard a voice inside my head. It was quiet, but clear, and it said: "your job is to keep the dream of drama alive." I knew immediately what that meant. I sensed that drama had the ability to illuminate the human condition. To introduce us to worlds and characters we would never meet. To teach us tolerance and compassion. To introduce us to the breadth and the depth of humanity.
By the time I was a senior in college, I had a spiritual crisis. I had grown up Lutheran, but felt that my religion simply was not personal. In fact, I wasn't even sure if God existed. I decided I needed to resolve this, so I made several choices to deal with this issue: First I decided that I would become an agnostic for 6 months and search. At first, I read about the religions of the world in order to decide if I wanted to remain a Christian. Since I felt no pull into other religions, I then turned my attention to Christianity. I decided that part of my search would be to attend a variety of churches, to see whether there were answers elsewhere. I asked an acquaintance of mine, who I understood was attending a Unitarian Church, whether I could go with her. She said, "Well, I'm not attending a Unitarian Church anymore. I'm going to a Bible Church. But you can come if you want." I didn't care where I started, so I went with her. The Bible Church introduced me to a deeper connection to the Bible and showed me people who clearly had a personal relationship with God. It also further pushed me into resolving my crisis. During this time I was desperate to know whether God really existed. I realized that I had few personal experiences of God, and that my religion was very intellectual, not personal. I decided to create a test for God. I had been writing to a man in Vietnam, and hadn't heard from him for a while. So I created a test: "God,If you exist, THEN you'll get a letter to me from this person by next Friday." When I was praying on Thursday night - with a great zeal and fervour, knowing that if I did get the letter I might consider it answered prayer, if I didn't, I would be back to square one, I heard an inner voice which said, 'Go read Matthew 4:7'. Since I knew very little about the Bible, I had no idea what that meant, but I went to see what it had to say. "Thou shalt not test the Lord your God!" I'd call that an answer. Some months later I made a commitment to God and to Christ, and began my spiritual journey.
I followed this calling - got an M.A. in Drama, and started teaching Drama at a Southern Baptist College in Phoenix. I had been attending a variety of churches during these years, and although, by this time, I felt solidly at home within the Christian religion, I did not feel that I had found a church home. I decided to visit churches again - no matter how far out - and look at the older people in the church. I wanted to see what I would become after 30-50 years in that denomination. I met women who said that if their husband told them to kill someone they would - because the Bible told them to be submissive to their husbands. I met one man who held himself up as a deeply religious person, but criticized his wife the entire evening and made it clear that anyone who didn't agree with him was Satanic. I then decided to look in some other directions. I had heard of Quakers, but knew little about them. I walked into Phoenix Quaker Meeting one Sunday in 1969, sat down, and knew I was home. I joined within a year, and have been a Quaker for over 30 years.
Quakerism taught me not just to pray, but to listen, to tune in. It taught me to center, to quiet down, to bask in the presence of God. It taught me tolerance which quieted down my self-righteousness, and centering which balanced my energetic, extroverted nature. It also served my work well. Many of the techniques that I use as a script consultant are borrowed from Quaker practice - techniques such as listening for the creative third solution which takes us beyond either/or, reaching consensus, being non-judgmental and allowing the spirit to move the client, and working as a guide not a guru.
By this time, my Christian and Quaker part, which really were of course very much the same, started pushing at me, taking me in some new directions. I knew I needed to learn more about drama, but there were few doctoral programs available and I did not want a repeat of my Northwestern University experience. I began thinking of attending seminary for a short time, and taking time to think. But I had no clarity about this, until I went forward at an altar call at Grand Canyon College where I was teaching. I didn't see this experience so much as a re-commitment but as a way to get my ego out of the way. Two days later, while turning left on the freeway, I suddenly knew that I was going to seminary. Just in case, I went to Berkeley to visit Pacific School of Religion, one of the few schools that had a Religion and the Arts program, and while there, as I was reading the Book of Acts, I came across the passage, 'go into the city and I will tell you what to do.' To me, the city meant the University. I decided to test it. I went over to the University Library, and sat down. Soon, a male student came up to me and said, 'do you want to go outside and talk?' 'Sure' said naive me, seeing this as angelic behavior rather than a pick-up line. I told him about my questions about coming to Berkeley and he said, 'come, you're ready.' O.K. I never saw him again, but I did come.
The decision to study drama and theology came about as a result of seeing Christianity as a particularly dramatic religion. It was about the Word made Flesh, and it seemed that this is what we did in drama. It was a humanities - which meant to me that this was supposed to nurture the humanity within us. I felt the way to learn to do this was not by taking more drama classes, but by learning more about the human condition by studying theology.
I went to seminary, intending to stay 9 months and I stayed 5 years. I went to seminary with 3 questions in mind: First, how was I to think about the Bible? I had an answer to this question within 2-3 months. Secondly, what was the relationship of drama and theology in secular drama? This took me about 4 years to find an answer. And thirdly, what was the nature of prayer? That took me about 10-15 years to find an answer that seemed right to me.
In 1976 I received a ThD in Drama and Theology, which is a rare degree in a field that may be the least marketable, but perhaps one of the most useful, degrees one could get.
At the end of my period at seminary, a new strand of my spiritual life began. During the late 1960's and 1970's a new form of theology called Liberation Theology was becoming prominent, particularly in the Catholic Church. This theology put the focus on social action as an expression of our relationship to God, and took Jesus' quote from the Book of Isaiah very seriously - "I came to give release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
Although this theology began by focusing on the poor, the abused, and the oppressed in society, it began to spread to other areas. In the 1970's, it began to impact the women's movement through feminist liberation theology.
Now, when I first heard that hot little word, I wanted nothing to do with it. Feminist. No way! I thought if you were feminist you could never get married, or at least, no one would want you. During my years in seminary I had a roomate who was a feminist, and believe me, I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I made a concerted effort never to ask Muriel anything about it... which probably robbed me of some important growth. But when I was ready to graduate, I met a friend in the bookstore who was taking a class in feminist liberation theology. My friend, Judy, asked me if I had read any of these books, "Of course not!" I said. "Oh, I wonder what you'd think of it!" Well, I'm always happy to tell people what I think, so I asked her what I should read and she recommended I buy 3 books, which I did. It was a very liberating experience for me, and I look back at the decision I made to read those books, and realized that I could not be where I am now without having gone down that road.
For all of us, finding our true identity and learning to use our God-given gifts is a difficult process. But for women, and minorities, it has a double problem because our culture tells us that we are less worthy or important than white men. And if we're to become empowered and liberated and bold, we need to figure out how we're going to do it. As a spiritual person, I decided to look back to my religion to see how liberating it could be for me, as a woman. After reading these books, I decided to look in two different places - the life of Jesus through the Gospels, and the Adam and Eve story.
I read and studied the Gospels from this different perspective, and cannot find anything in the life of Jesus that gives any sense that he saw women as less than men. I find him an extraordinary man in his attitudes, his care, his acceptance, and his motivation. In the character of Jesus I can find nothing but liberation.
I then turned to the Adam and Eve story, and read various theological analyses of it, as well as my own study of it. It became clear - domination was part of the Fall, not before the fall where there was harmony and partnership.
By 1976, all three of these spiritual strands had been set in my life and I would need all of them. In 1979, I entered the film industry, although I soon realized that nobody cared. No one was eagerly awaiting my presence, nor did they want to give me a job. After scraping by as a reader and working as a secretary, I saw many scripts that simply didn't work. I dusted off my doctoral dissertation about 'what makes a script work' and wondered if I could apply it to film. Yes, I could, but that didn't mean that anyone wanted to hire me to do it.
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich talks about the leap of faith. That metaphor helped me take the leap when I started my business in 1981. There's a strange line between hearing a call and just being stupid. Sometimes one is being called to do something that makes little sense. I had no reason to think that script consulting would work. I had no money, no one had ever heard of the job of script consultant, no one had ever paid any one for this, and they didn't know who I was. I felt like God was asking me to walk down a road that didn't exist, which, of course, was true. I said, "Excuse me God, there's no road here." "There will be!" I looked into the abyss and took the plunge.
This doesn't mean that I was an overnight success. I squeaked by, but not a great deal was happening to make this job work although I felt passionate, committed to it, and good at it. I began to have long arguments with God over the situation. From my study of Job, I became convinced that arguing with God was quite all right, so I did a lot of 'that's not fair' - which happens to be a line from STAND BY ME, and 'why would you bring me this far and then not let me do anything?!" Finally, I started making little deals with God. I recognized that my relationship with God had been created on the idea that God was there to get me through the struggle. So I was highly dependent upon God just to make it through the day. I realized that when I was successful, I might decide that I didn't need God anymore, and it was in God's best interests not to let me get to that point. I also recognized that I was afraid of success - afraid that others might be jealous of me, afraid that I might not know how to act if successful. So I made two deals. The first was that whatever was between me and success I would be willing to look at it, and try to overcome it. If that meant seeing a therapist, I trusted that God would lead me to a good one, who was also very cheap. If that meant looking at some negatives inside myself, I was willing to do that as well. I wanted to break down any barriers that were of my own making, and I was willing to courageously deal with what that meant.
Secondly, I promised God that if I were given opportunities, and found success within my field, I wouldn't desert God. I would continue to go to Quaker meeting, I would continue in prayer and Bible reading and meditation, trusting that it was possible to create a new relationship with God as a successful person, rather than someone who was always whining. Within a few months, my business started to grow, and in 1983 I met a career consultant who helped me create it as a full-time business. I kept my promise, but it probably took another 10 years before I felt my relationship with God was reconstituted and that I began to see God's guidance through my success, not just through my need.
I still have no idea how all this was done! But it was. I think this is what they mean 'by the grace of God!"
Without my relationship to God, even though it was often rocky, I don't see how I could have dealt with the immense amount of anxiety and just plain being petrified that comes with becoming an entrepreneur.
Without a relationship with God, I don't know how one deals with all the difficulties in the film industry: disappointment, being dismissed, discounted, disparaged, and sometimes degraded, being rejected, ignored and neglected. We usually have no idea of what will happen next and many times we realize there's not a thing we can do to make something happen. Along this rocky road, I also encountered most of the 7 Deadly Sins and needed the help of Spirit to move through these encounters. Envy and Covetousness are there from the beginning. Plus a Lust for possessions. Anger at what others had that I didn't have. And, of course, Pride and Gluttony. Gluttony is the only really fun one, except for the after-effects, but I do know where the best desserts are in Los Angeles. The only one I didn't encounter was Sloth - Sloth isn't terribly active in our industry although some of my friends think that a little sloth might do me good.
As I began to be more active in the industry, I became interested in what I could do to help the way that women were portrayed in the media. Most of the time they were limited, sometimes they were degraded. I decided I'd like to do something about that. When I left theatre and entered the film industry, this was one of the motivators. It wasn't an easy task since there needed to be some kind of a platform. During the 1980's, I helped Women in Film create an award for the positive depiction of women in the media called the Luminas Award. Unfortunately, it only lasted one year, which was a big disappointment to me. I then wrote a chapter on stereotyping in CREATING UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS, and began to incorporate many of these ideas into my consulting and seminars.
In September, 1993, I had a dream about going back to study theology. Deciding that there's no reason to wait until the hint becomes a roar, I decided to follow it immediately. I knew where I wanted to go - Immaculate Heart College Center, a Catholic graduate school, which had a degree in Feminist Liberation Theology. I felt that it would help me write the book, and I felt that it would help me develop a stronger social conscience, something I knew was lacking. It was lacking partly because I simply felt overwhelmed by the world's problems. Every solicitation for funds, or letters about horrible conditions simply immobilized me. I didn't know how to get involved, so I did nothing - or next to nothing. As I studied black women's liberation theology, called Womanist theology, and Latina women's theology - called mujerista theology, and Asian women's theology, I realized that I couldn't work for the cause of overcoming sexism without recognizing I also had to work on the other isms - racism, classicism and ageism. In my professional work, I began to do seminars on CREATING UNFORGETTABLE FEMALE CHARACTERS, showing that ethnic women and older women do sell and can make money. I began to do seminars on the Female Hero, recognizing that female heroes are less apt to blow things up in order to resolve an issue, and looking at the heroic journey for women. I attended the United Nations Beijing Women's Conference in China in 1995, which marginally upped my social conscience. I began to think about what I could do for my female colleagues, particularly other screenwriting teachers. I realized that I was the only woman from Hollywood consistently doing seminars abroad. In 1996, I counted the number of my male colleagues who were giving seminars abroad, and found there were about 8. I decided to see what I could do to balance this, by giving the names of my female colleagues to the people I had worked for in Europe. It took 2 years, but 2 years later, 8 women that had taught internationally. Most of them are not yet teaching as much as our male counterparts, but just within this audience, Kathie has been to Germany and Austria, Pam to Denmark, Rachel to Italy and Spain, and Lorraine to Spain, Germany, and Sweden. I was helpful with a few of these.
Through this work, finally, I began to develop a social conscience. And I began to see how this work in feminist theology led back to my work in storytelling. Feminist theology recognizes that our stories are important - each of us has stories of struggle and liberation and transformation - and when we share our stories, we potentially can further transform ourselves and others. When we tell stories, we are potentially doing a holy and sacred act. We are working in the service of truth. We are revealing meaning in our lives.
In A ROOM WITH A VIEW, Mr. Emerson talks about this search, recognizing that his son is searching for meaning. He says to Lucy Honeychurch, "tell my boy that behind the everlasting why is a yes and a yes and a yes!"
We too seek meaning in our work. What is drama really about? It's about the seeking for integrity. It's about involvement in life, illuminating the human condition. It's about the passion for justice, it's about the expression of our identity and our goodness and our concerns and our struggles. It's about learning compassion, it's about our yearnings and our dreams, about our hopes and our visions. It's about the journey toward Goodness, through the conflict and the struggle and the problems and the resistances - and the movement toward resolution.
So this award is a testament to the struggles and our visions of all of us who try to be a light to the entertainment industry, and to that which keeps us going because we believe in the importance and transforming possibilities of story telling. We believe in the possibility of role modeling through Characters. We believe that we can be touched and changed and transformed by film. We believe above all things, in hope.
Why do we do this? Because we know that beside all these difficult Why's, there is a Yes, and a Yes, and the Everlasting Yes that lights our way.
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