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Claire Mainprize

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The Biblical Wisdom of Jane Fonda

The Biblical Wisdom of Jane Fonda

Last updated on: April 26, 2023 at 2:48 pm by Claire Mainprize

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The Biblical Wisdom of Jane Fonda 2023-04-26T14:48:38-06:00 Claire Mainprize

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Like the iconic character Moira Rose, my favorite season is “Awards,” so you’ll likely find me perched on my parents’ sofa during every notable award show (because, you know, cable).

That’s where I was two years ago on the night of the famed Golden Globes — that time of year when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association bestows accolades to shining stars of the previous year’s film and TV scene.

If you recall, it was a great year for entertainment and a weird year for award shows, as producers had to creatively navigate social distancing and intermittent lockdowns.

The late Chadwick Boseman was hailed best actor, and his wife accepted the award on his behalf; “Nomadland” continued its award season sweep, as did “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”; the actors who played Diana and Charles in “The Crown” both won their respective categories; and one of my all-time favorite shows, “Normal People,” experienced the snub of the century.

But for me, the most poignant moment of the broadcast came when Jane Fonda accepted the annual Cecil B. Demille Award, which honors Titans of the entertainment world.

Jane Fonda’s Eloquent, Interfaith Speech

Jane Fonda giving speech

Shutterstock

Fonda’s speech marked the first time I personally heard her mention faith, although she’s spoken about her evolving relationship with Christianity for over two decades now. In fact, in a 23-year-old interview in O Magazine, the actor and activist discussed remaining infinitely curious, even in her life’s “third act.” As she told Oprah:

“For 15 years, I have felt guided. I interpreted that in a secular way in the beginning, but then I heard Bill Moyers say, ‘Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous,’ and it unleashed my need to be spiritual. … I began to pray. I felt the hand of God on my shoulder. When I got on my knees and touched my fingers to my forehead and prayed — and I always have to do it aloud — I felt this incredible connection to God, or to what I call the Holy Spirit.”

However, her comments at the 78th Golden Globes encompassed much more than mere Christianity. Perhaps channeling her agnostic father, the old Hollywood actor Henry Fonda, she said:

“…all of the great conduits of perception — Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, Lao-Tzu — all of them spoke to us in stories and poetry and metaphor. Because the nonlinear, noncerebral forms that are art, speak on a different frequency. They generate a new energy that can jolt us open and penetrate our defenses, so that we can see and hear what we may have been afraid of seeing and hearing.”

As a theologian and fellow storyteller, I was immediately taken aback by how eloquent and true Fonda’s words were. In fact, they’ve stayed with me ever since.

The Time She Gave Podcasters a Bona-Fide Bible Lesson

YouTube

Fast forward a couple of years, and I once again heard Jane Fonda speak about faith in an uncommon yet refreshing way. This time, I was on the stair-stepper at the gym, and the revelations came in the form of my favorite podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things.”

In the episode, which is aptly named “JANE F-ING FONDA,” hosts Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle, and Abby Wambach ask our mutual idol about everything from her undemocratic marriages to her newfound passion for fighting climate change. She also discussed reintegrating herself after dissociating from her body for decades.

While the trio is on the latter topic, Jane brings up that aforementioned interview with Oprah. At the time, she had just split from her third and final husband and had moved into her daughter’s house.

“I remember I left so many properties, vast vistas, such a magnificent, huge life to move into my daughter’s house in a little room with no closet. I had my golden retriever with me. And there was such silence. And I remember standing in the middle of the room and I could feel myself moving back into myself. And I said, ‘This is God. I know that this is God.’”

Then, she mentions that oft-misunderstood sacred text we call the Bible.

“I was writing a book about aging and this notion of why I felt like it was God when I could feel myself becoming re-embodied. And so I started reading books about the Bible and it turns out in most books, Jesus is quoted as saying to his disciples, ‘You have to be perfect like our father in heaven is perfect,’ which I just felt that can’t be what he said.

And then I read a book that said no, in Aramaic, which is a language that Jesus spoke, what he said was, ‘You have to be whole like our Lord in heaven is whole.’ So Jesus knew that the goal of humanity is to become fully integrated, fully whole.”

What She Right, Though?

Bible flipped open to Matthew When I got home, I forwent my typical post-gym shower and instead grabbed my trusty CEB Study Bible, blowing the dust off its binding as I cracked it open for one of the first times since seminary. I flipped to the verse in question, Matthew 5:48. In this version, the text reads:

“Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so you also must be complete.”

The note below gave some helpful context: “The Greek term teleios, translated here as complete, is sometimes translated as “perfect.”

Checking the cross-references led me to Genesis 17:1, which includes the same term, but in Hebrew: tā·mîm. A quick search on BibleHub confirms that this adjective is translated as “complete,” “entire,” “full,” and “whole,” among other words.

Suffice it to say, Jane F-ing Fonda was right.

How Becoming Whole Can Change the World as We Know It

In the podcast, Jane explained how that heartbreaking time allowed her to find God — i.e., become whole again. Here are the poignant final comments from the episode:

Jane:

It was like, wow, it’s happening to me, I can feel it. … [Oprah] came to my daughter’s house and she said, “Good God. I mean, didn’t he get you a penthouse? I mean, what are you doing?” And I said, “No, I’m being reborn, and it’s appropriate that I get reborn in the home of my firstborn.” It was the most beautiful time in my life, I was 62.

Glennon:

Reborn at 62. When you told that story about the origin being whole and not perfect, I was thinking about my whole journey, my final frontier, all of it is this embodying again because I was gone too. I’m still gone-ish, but landing. And I always think about the most repeated phrases in the Bible, are do not be afraid and remember. And I always think of remember as the opposite of dismember, like remember can mean to recall an old idea, but remember is also to come back together, right?

Jane:

And the members of your body, yes.

Glennon:

Yes. Like body, mind, spirit in one and just live in this body that for so many of us, wasn’t safe and refusing to believe that. And living inside of it is I think what the whole thing’s about.

Jane:

It’s what the whole thing is about. That’s right. If we did that, if we lived authentically as embodied men and women, there would be no climate crisis. There would be no racism, there would be no patriarchy. It’s all part of a poison that’s been in our species for thousands of years.

But I’m hopeful, I believe that we can change it.

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