Mad Men and Covenant

I didn’t have time to watch Mad Men last night (though of course I taped it).  Like millions of people I have avidly watched the show with both fascination and disgust.  It’s a little like watching home movies of your parents doing things you really shouldn’t see.

On the one hand, it gives us evidence of how things have changed, particularly for women.  In an interview with Susan Stamberg on Sunday morning, Eleanor Clift, the prize winning journalist talks about starting her career as a typist at Newsweek.  As she said, “frankly, I was not unhappy with that. I have said many times over the years, I just wanted to be where what I typed was interesting.”  How thankful I am that she is now the one producing what is interesting, not just recording it.

What keeps appalling me in the series is how lonely everyone seems to be.  So much hidden, so much undercover, so much unexpressed.  No wonder this generation exploded into a volcano of self-expression.

For those rebelling against the Mad Men world, it wasn’t just about the self.  It was also about civil rights, women’s rights, exposing of prejudices and hates.  But how quickly that seems to have devolved into something just about the self again.

Is humankind doomed to only be able to focus on a larger web in sporadic bursts?  What helps us stay in that space of common commitment to a larger good?  Religious community, surely, would be the answer to that.  But how are we doing at it?  Many people, the “Nones” (those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious) in particular, would say that institutional religion has failed.  They want to make connections in radical kinds of ways, and find most religious communities stultifying rather than inspiring.

My prayer is that Unitarian Universalism can answer this need.  How are we doing?