interview by Mike Madrid.
We all essentially want the same things—being kind to one another, making the world a better place. If we find a way to get there, it doesn’t matter how we got there.
I’m a pretty average kind of guy. I was born in Syracuse, New York. I’ve spent my whole life here. I’ve had pretty much an average sort of existence. I have my friends. I go out. I work for a living. Just average, everyday stuff.
I have a large Italian family. We’re all very close. They are pretty spiritual, for the most part. I can’t really pinpoint when you start believing in God as a concept. Maybe when I was around four years old. I had an uncle die. And that would be around that point where I realized there was more to this than Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
I did start going to church fairly early. Baptism, Communion, and all that good stuff. I took Sunday school classes and things like that. I’ve always felt like I was a spiritual kind of person. But as for what Catholicism was actually telling me, I don’t think I really ever got into that. None of it ever really stuck to me. I just didn’t believe in those Bible tales, [or] stories of Jesus. I just don’t think they happened. And as I got older, I was pretty sure of it.
I’ve always thought of myself as an agnostic kind of person. There’s “something”, but it’s just really hard to define what. I still believe that there is “something”. But I also believe that the meaning of life is searching for the meaning of life. It’s one of those things where the journey beats the destination. I think a lot of organized religions try to give you “their” meaning of life, and take the journey away from you.
I’ve always been a science-oriented person. I’m the kind of guy that thinks there’s a place for science and religion. The history of evolution and the creation of man.
When I was a little, little kid, my father took me to see Star Wars for the first time. I was three or four years old. He sat me in front of the TV, he put these movies on, and I was completely blown away. I watched those things every weekend. And it wasn’t just the movies. While other children’s parents were reading them nursery rhymes and Dr. Seuss, my father was reading me the Timothy Zahn [Star Wars] novels. I started reading them myself when I got old enough. I started reading the comic books when I was old enough. Just everything I could get my hands on. Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars.
Did you see any of the original Star Wars movies when they were re-released in theaters in the 1990’s?
I can tell you, that was a monumental experience for me. My father took me and it was just…everything. Wow.
I would say I started believing in the whole philosophy of the Jedi and the Force even before I knew I was doing it. I read all these stories about the Jedi, and the way they live. A lot of it is just really good ideas and whatnot. Throughout young adulthood and adolescence I started applying a lot of these things to my own life. It’s all just really good advice when you get right down to it.
When did you first learn about the Church of the Jedi?
It was some time in high school. I think that’s when you really start questioning religion in your teenager years. I think someone told it to me as a joke, and I just wanted to see if it was real. And it occurred to me, “These are the things I’ve been doing my whole life.” And that’s when I started following all these things.
People connect with spirituality on different ways. What makes anyone else’s more valid than theirs? If it works for you, why not? Religion on paper is a pretty good idea—let’s get everybody together, teach them to respect each other, teach then to love each other. It’s all good things. But some people try to take it farther than that. And that’s where all the hatred and bigotry and superiority complexes come in. I think it would just be a little bit easier if somebody could point to somebody waving the Bible and say, “Dude, it’s just a book.”
The Church of the Jedi has a very broad perspective on spirituality. These aren’t people who are crazy for following a religion based on a movie. It kind of has [on other religions] an edge in that we know Star Wars is a fiction. That can bring you back down to reality, where some people might get too carried away with everything. It can bring you back to Earth.
In the Star Wars books there’s a Jedi Code. The Code is five lines-
There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is The Force.
In the Star Wars universe, they are the tenets a Jedi has to live by. Any other religion on the earth gives you a set of tenets to live by. If you can’t follow them, you’re really going to anger the powers that be. What the Jedi Code teaches you is—here’s some advice to live by. Everything just really works out for the best. If you don’t follow it you’re only going to punish yourself in the end.
“There is no emotion, there is peace.” Emotions should be understood. They’re a natural part of living, but you can’t give in to them. You have to explore them and go with them. If your emotions control you, control your emotions.
“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.” There is ignorance in the world. But ignoring facts that don’t fit with everyone’s viewpoint? That’s not a way to go. You can learn something from everyone. It’s knowledge that will serve you for your whole life.
“There is no passion, there is serenity.” That’s kind of what the whole “light side/dark side” thing is about. Passion can lead to anger, which can lead to suffering, and so forth. When you do bad things, when you hurt the people around you, when you succumb to greed. They will eventually come back to you, and you’ll punish yourself. I don’t know if you’ll get punished when you die. I think life will have a way of punishing you while you’re living it.
“There is no chaos, there is harmony.” That’s really about accepting that there’s a balance to life. Life has terrible things and tragedies. You really just have to accept them. Not too long, maybe three years ago, I was in a car accident with a friend. We got hit by another car, head on. In that particular moment, and in other stressful, tragic events like it throughout my life, I try to center my being and accept what’s about to happen. I just focus inward and say, “Whatever’s going to happen right now is what’s going to happen.” It’s what the whole Jedi thing is all about.
And then the final code—“There is no death, there is The Force.” When I was about fifteen years old, we lost our mother to a brain aneurysm. And if you can imagine, that was a terrible time for the family. I got through that by reciting [that tenet]. Death happens. Terrible things happen. You have to learn to accept them. Death is a state of transgression. It happens. You have to celebrate a person’s life, and you have to move on. They’re not really gone, they’re one with the Force, you could say. You just have to accept it, give it a respectable amount of grief, and go on with your life.
Everyone’s got a concept of the afterlife. Nobody wants to really think “this is it”.
That’s what the Force is. There’s a mystical thing around us. It’s there, it affects you, but why try to define it more than that. If it wants you to know, it will tell you. It doesn’t have a face. I like to think of the “deity” as a…force. That was really a good word for George Lucas to use. It’s a force. It’s a thing that’s there and flows through us and connects us all.
I personally feel like something is moving me in a direction and safeguarding me. But I can only speak for myself on that. It’s one of the more well known beliefs that [when] you believe in the Force, you don’t really believe in luck. And I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty “lucky” person, in quotation marks. I’m the kind of guy who just always seemed to land on his feet. And when I start to feel like something really bad is going to happen to me, I get this confident sense in me like it’s all going to work out OK. And it usually does. Sometimes I do feel like something is pushing me in one direction or another. But I can’t answer for everyone.
One of the tenets [says] that tragedy and terrible things happen in life. And you have to accept them. That can be kind of a tricky one, in a lot of ways. Are those things the “will” of the Force? Do they have a purpose? Who’s really to say? Sometimes when very bad things happen, you can’t really give yourself a reason. If someone loses a child, I can’t tell them it was the will of the Force. I don’t know that.
When you go by the Jedi Code, it teaches you to accept life as it comes. Don’t let your emotions control you. Trust in your feelings and you’ll always come out on top. Bad things happen, accept them. Good things happen, good for you. That’s my take on it. A lot of people say that these ideas cam from Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism. I can see how several other religions and Star Wars coalesce, but really good advice is just good advice.
I think religion and spirituality don’t always necessarily have to be the same thing. Spirituality should be a very personal thing. You shouldn’t really try to add uniformity to spirituality. Which is kind of what religion is, in a sense. I have a lot of friends of varying religions. [Laughs] I know Catholics. I know born again Christians—you know, the really zealous ones. We’ve never actually come into any kind of conflict. If you’re just yourself, accept those things about them, and they accept things about you. No reason we can’t all get along.
A person’s idea of “God” is very personal. And no one else should try should tell someone else what it should be. And I think that’s something we can all agree on, for the most part. These are the kinds of ideas that are supposed to be shared amongst people. Everyone should be talking about these kinds of things in an open atmosphere. If they are willing to listen, I’m willing to talk.
Of course everyone is entitled to their own religious views and their morality. But you shouldn’t try to impose them on people. I think there are very few religions, if you look through their commandments, [that] actually say, “You should impose these on people who aren’t a member of it, as harshly as you can.” It’s really a troubling issue in a lot of ways, and not one that anyone can really do something about, right now. I like to think, in this country, that it won’t last forever.
What gives you inspiration in life?
Making myself a better person and the people around me better people—I think of that as a good reason to keep going. Life is a great thing that’s worth living.