Month: April 2017

Do your worst. (Part 1.)

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Today I want to address something very important, and I’m going to do it with the help of yet another animated TV show example.

This one is really fitting, actually.

I’m going back to that show I used to watch every day, Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. (JLU.)

Until I started watching that show I had never heard of at least two of the members of the original league, that would be the Martian Man hunter, and Hawk Girl.

I like both of them, but I am focusing om Hawk Girl, also known as Shirira Hall.

To make a very long story short, Hawk Girl appeared on Earth, claiming it was a mistake, but in reality she was on a secret military mission, to learn about the planet and the people. This was unknown to all her friends and fans until out of the blue, an alien warship showed up with her fellow Thanagarians in it. It pretty much went downhill from there. Her friends felt hurt that she had never trusted them enough to tell them and suspicious of the new comers, but they agreed to help them set up a defense on earth against their mutual threat, the Gordanians. However it soon turned out that the Thanagarians really wished to use Earth to build a sort of shield against their enemy, and in the process earth would be turned into an hourglass shaped hunk of itself, destroying all life on the planet.

Needless to say, Hawk Girl was horrified when she learned this, and more so because she had helped her people to capture and neutralize the Justice League when they got too antsy. They had already escaped, so she found them and gave them the information hat she’d learned, none of them really wanted to trust her, but they took it.

Hawk Girl then returned to her people, only to be found guilty of treason, and locked away. There ensued a final battle between the League and the Thanagarians. Hawk Girl was reluctantly set free by Wonder Woman, and then helped Green Lantern to defeat her former fiancé, and shut down the bypass before it could activate.

The Thanagarians recognized their defeat and left, of course leaving hawk Girl behind, she was then voted on to stay or be kicked out of the League, but she left before hearing their decision. She told GL she was going to find a place where there were no more secrets, no more lies. And she left.

Hawk Girl later was readmitted to the league, they had voted in her favor, but it took a long time for the rest of the world to forgive her, if they ever did. And things got no easier for her in other areas.

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, I want you to understand the scope of the story. It involved a lot of deception, a lot of betrayal, and  a lot of bitterness, which is perhaps the worst, in my book at least.

My major complaint about the whole movie they made about this was that despite the outcome, Hawk Girl’s own friends did not let go of their anger for a long time. Well, I should say, not all of them did. (Flash is awesome.)

Also, when I watched a commentary on the movie, I learned that many of the real life fans of the show though Hawk Girl should have been left to her fate by Wonder Woman.

Since then I’ve run across other situations where the fans were the same, they had absolutely no mercy for the characters. And the characters aren’t even real. Nothing they did actually hurt these fans, or endangered our world.

What does endanger us, is their attitude.

Because I have to wonder, if you cannot forgive someone who is not even real, how can you forgive someone who is?

You may think, “Well, if the characters aren’t real, it can’t hurt to hold a grudge against them.” And I would have to politely disagree.

For two reasons: One being, many fans of superheroes consider the heroes to be quite real, to the point where they are irrational about it, and if they can think that way about them, they can think that way about anyone.

The other reason is that I have not missed the things people say about those in politics, or those who are just famous, or even those who are not but who have a small public voice. Horrible, terrible things are said of them.

It is a sad fact that humans beings can be very cruel to each other.

(I’m going to get more into Hawk Girl herself in part two, but for now I’m focusing on this problem.)

And I am sorry, but what a person will say about a fictional character, they will nine out of ten times say about a real human being. I have heard it many times.

The fact is, we are not aware of real or unreal when we pass judgement on people or their actions. That is a simple truth. Our brains will make no distinction, and neither will our feelings. All that changes is how personal it is.

Someone who cannot be merciful when it is not personal will have a hard time being merciful when it is; unless they are working from the inside out, but that is rare. Our attitudes do not switch on and off with our televisions or phones. (That is so a quote I want to remember.)

This goes for other things besides anger by the way, it goes for hate, sadness, exhilaration, envy, and host of other emotions.

I’ll be getting more into the first one in part two, until next time–Natasha.

Home Sweet Home

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You guys know I went to a foreign country last year and it changed my life. I suspect in way I won’t fully realize for years yet.

Well, today I was reading something by one of the other girls who went on that trip with me, and I marveled at how similar we were feeling in some ways, and how different in others.

It is for privacy’s sake I don’t post pictures of myself or any really personal information here, so I can’t show you what the trip was like, but I have talked about it.

You learn a lot from another culture, and in my case, you learn that different as it is, in many ways it is more comfortable for you than your own.

I really feel out of place in the Western World. I value my rights as an American, and I thank God I was born here, and had the freedom to learn about Him without being arrested, or fined, or laughed at. But that aside, I’ve never really felt I belonged in this country.

You ever get the feeling you were born for somewhere else?

I think everyone gets that feeling at one time or another, before we get old enough and cynical enough to be convinced we deserve what we’ve got and there’s nothing better available. Am I the only girl my age who still believes she’s going to live in a palace one day? Probably not, but in another ten years, who knows? I may very well be the only one who thinks so.

Is it normal to be seven years old and think you just don’t fit into the world around you?

Well, maybe the better question is, is it normal not to feel that way?

We all do, sooner or later, but we usually dismiss it. Or we blame it on the wrong thing. The truth is, we are not meant to be perfectly happy on this earth.

It would kind of be wrong if we were, given all the horrible things that happen daily, I’m not one to focus on them, but it’s like Reason tells Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth. “When you are sad, no one else in the world can be truly happy.” I wouldn’t go quite that far, but no one else can be totally happy while there is suffering in the world. And that is as it should be, we are meant to bear with one another, and if you will not do it willingly, your life will still be affected by the world enough for you to do it subconsciously.

But this begs the question, if we are not meant to be perfectly happy here, where are we meant to be happy?

See, wise people know that a perfect thing on earth will not last, and they do not hold onto to it too tightly, but the wisest of all know that though earth is not the place for perfection, there must be a place.

We all yearn for the perfect, the complete, the finished. There has to be a time when we will or are meant to have it.

Imagine what it would be like to feel in your bones that it was time for perfect joy. I don’t know how, personally, I could stand it; like the sweet water from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it might kill me, but it would be the death I would have chosen. (FYI, the water doesn’t kill, it actually heals, but that’s all in the book, you should read it if you haven’t.)

I believe that we are meant to have increasing joy in this life, because I believe that God gets better the more you know Him. I believe God may even give happiness to people who do not believe in Him, because He never leaves anyone without something of Himself, whether they choose to acknowledge it or not.

I believe that one of C. S. Lewis’s greatest achievements was how, in books Five and Seven, of the Narnia ones, and in “Till We Have Faces” and “The Great Divorce,” and also “Perelandra” in some ways, he managed to make the reader see a tiny glimpse of what heaven must be like. Only the tiniest glimpse, but even in that, it’s like Alice looking through the keyhole of the tiny door, into the garden, and already wanting to go there. (Alice’ Adventures in Wonderland.)

You want to go there, so badly, it scares you.

Whenever we want something with all our being, it is scary.

“My heart and Flesh cry out for the living God.” Psalm 84:2

Wow, this got deep.

What’s interesting is that you don’t have to be a Christian to get what I’m saying, you just have to know yourself.

Actually, plenty of Christians wouldn’t get this, because it is so easy to forget that first love and joy of being one.

If I may say so, one of the biggest problems we believer shave is forgetting what it was like to first be one. For me, it was as if I’d never seen anything before, or heard, or felt, it was all so much more vivid and vibrant. I mean even material things, not just the internal kind of sight.

That’s why I can’t be convinced it wasn’t for real. Nothing before it was as real as what came after it.

I’d like to end by going back to what I said about feeling out of place. I think once we accept that sorrow, it no longer is a sorrow. It is just a reminder of what we are to hope, it keeps us form getting too bogged down by stuff that is just not important. It brings to mind this other song I know, I’ll just quote the chorus here:

I’m going home, to the place where I belong, where Your love has always been enough or me.

I’m not running from, don’t think you got me all wrong, I don’t regret this life I chose for me.

But these places and these faces are getting old, so I’m going home.

Until next time–Natasha. 100_3137

A break from my norm.

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I just visited one blog that had a post about Christianity, Agnosticism, and Atheism. I must have read two dozen comments form non-Christians that were under this post.

I almost think it’s funny. Not funny like ridiculous, but funny like “Why do we get so upset? Someone must have struck a nerve.”

I think I get a couple of atheists and agnostics on this blog, and I have no wish to offend any of them, and even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t do it by being mean. That’s not how I think God rolls.

It’s funny too, that I’ve seen worse things said online from other believers than from atheists, often, but there are some very unkind things said by them too. And some nice things said. You can’t put everyone in a box.

People like to say that the burden of proof is on us Christians,  but it’s not that simple.

As Kent Hovind first pointed out to me, any belief system can use science to support it, if they look hard enough, and often they throw out something that doesn’t match their beliefs, this is what people do.

I firmly believe, that believing in God is more important than knowing science, because science is so very limited, we can barely understand material things, let alone immaterial. But I like science, and I have no objection to believing it also. I know there are people who simply cannot accept anything unless they can see how it makes sense scientifically, and there are people who couldn’t care less about all that high browed mumbo jumbo. And neither are exactly wrong. Most of us are in between those two extremes. Though my calling them extreme would offend the people right off I suppose.

After all, Science does explain everything right? Or is it just so flexible and changing that we can’t rely on it? Well, few of us hold that opinion anymore, so I’ll just leave it for now; but many of us do rely on science to guide our choices, or some of them.

Many intellectual people think we should test everything with reason, but the older I get, the more I realize, I cannot possibly understand everything. I know some folks who have worked themselves into a cage made of their own reason, and like the dwarves in “The Last Battle,” they are so afraid of being duped by blind faith, that they cannot actually be undeceived and see the truth. I hope they will be undeceived before they die, because I think afterward it will be of no use to them.

There’s another problem with relying on science alone, science allows for no afterlife. No hell, no heaven.

Many people are only to glad to not believe in Hell, but few of us like to think that after death we will be oblivious. That we just end and nothing can prevent that. I think that Atheists choose to ignore that because they have to ignore it, no one likes that idea, not even the most evil of people want to die and be in oblivion, in fact they want the opposite, they want to leave behind a legacy that will never be forgotten as long as this Earth if fallen, and Hitler; and Stalin; and Attila the Hun; and Caesar, and Ivan the Terrible; (to name a few,) have left such legacies that even their names evoke bad things in our minds, do you think they are happy now?

Indeed, oblivion seems merciful compared to the kind of torment they must have if they are in hell. But they themselves seemed to dislike the idea of oblivion.

But is it right that good people should just end, and not go on? Well, some would say that is just the way it is.

Personally, I have longed to be able to believe hell is not real. I am not joking. I used to wish I could. I even tried. But I couldn’t try very hard, because I just could not accept it.

It is true, I was raised to believe in the afterlife. But there is not a child born, that I have met, that will think the idea is odd, until they are taught to.

It ought to be of interest to people who think we evolved, that children are born with instinctive belief in wondrous things, in things unseen, and usually in God. I never have told a child under 8 about God and had them scoff at it. That’s because reason does not start to develop until after eight.

But I ask, why? Why are we born with that belief? If it is false, why is it natural? Furthermore, just reasoning skills don’t do it, Children do not stop believing in God till they are taught to.

It seems to me that if there was truly no God, that children would have to be convinced there was one. But they don’t. They have to be convinced there isn’t one. Adults now, we have to be convinced, and I am not even saying that is wrong in of itself.

But we should not disregard instinct. We use it too often in other things.

I may be laying a shaky foundation here, since we should not always follow our instincts. But I might add, our instincts are generally good, under the right circumstances, and it is our reason that tells us when we should follow them.

I will never argue people into my faith, and I don’ really want to; I had rather they met God for themselves. But one of the obstacles to that is the ridicule we get for believing in God. And even more if you are radical about it. People hate radical Christians more than they hate Christians period.

Because it’s the radical ones that defy their governments in other countries, and defy the socially acceptable in my own.

I know plenty of people who will not hate on me for being a Christian, but they will get angry if I try to talk to them about it, or they will simply be indifferent. Or they may write me off as overboard about it.

Who knows, devoting this whole post to it may even make some folks angry. But I think better of my followers than that, usually you guys are very forgiving.

I hope even if you are not a Christian you’ll take this in the way it was meant, as an effort to make my position more clear and understandable, and not as an effort to jam it down your throat, because if I wanted to do that, I would do it on purpose. Believe me, I am not an unintentional blogger.

Well, I am overtime on the word count, so until next post–Natasha.

 

 

 

 

 

Experiences.

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I am re-uploading this post because it’s been several months and I think I can say it better now.

I want to get more into why we have experiences in this reboot.

Brushing your teeth is an experience, but it is not really memorable; versus going to another country, which you will probably remember as long as you have a sharp mind.

Though experiences themselves are easily defined by the facts, what they do to us inside, that is not so easy.

It’s funny how a seemingly terrible experience can later in life prove to be a good thing. one you are even grateful for. Like having a bad tooth pulled. Or getting disciplined by your parents. Or it can be a far worse experience, traumatic even, yet later, it makes you stronger.

I want to share with you guys something I got into this week, it’s an old comic book story, by Jack Kirby, about Scott Free and Big Barda.

AS yo may know, I don’t read a lot of comic books, but here and there I have one I like. This actually was all a tory I read online and saw pieces of on Justice League Unlimited, I only rada little of it in an actual comic book. I am not endorsing the show, but id o recommend reading the comic book saga if you get the chance, it’s an amazing story.

Not just because it may be the most romantic one in the DC universe, and it has a functioning couple to boot, but because even individually the stories of these two characters are poignant and surprisingly real.

Raised on the hellish planted of Apocalips, Scott and Barda are very different. Scott is the adopted son of the ruler of the planet, Darkseid, while Barda is a selected child who is being groomed to be the head of the furies, horrible female warriors who have no mercy, no pity, no remorse. It’s not really their fault, they are all brainwashed, hypnotized, and severely punished for doing anything remotely good or beautiful that Darkseid doesn’t like.

To make a longs tory short, Scott and Barda both witness one injustice too many, and Scott decides to flee to Earth, Barda, for reasons she does not fully understand, decides to help him, but does not follow till later. When she does they are happily reunited, and after a lot of adventures together come to realize they have fallen in love, they get married, and continue to have adventures. Though the most memorable may be the one where they go back to their “home” and face their nightmares (almost literally.)

Now I bring this up because the amount of experiences both these characters have is huge, and most of the experiences, at least early on, were bad.

So, it’s just a comic book, right?

Never!

Something about this story rung true with me. I have not had such a horrible life thank goodness, but I recognized something about it.

see, though we don’t live on a world that has no hope, many of us live in a kind of personal misery where we feel no hope. And we are brainwashed by many sources, hypnotized by entertainment, and severely punished by circumstances or possibly other people if we dare go against the norm.

I’ll bet most of us would look at Scott and Barda and say “that would never happen in real life, two people raised like they were would never be able to live a healthy lifestyle.”

Come on, is our modern phycology so very different from the kind of messages I’m sure Scott and Barda both heard? “You are meant for this, you can never be anything else, hope is pointless.” And I do not mean the lack of self esteem, but the lack of awareness just of what life is really about.

You might say, and honestly I would have agreed with you, that Scott and Barda would both be really messed up. Haunted by their past. and for awhile, they were. It literally cam after them. But they protected each other.

Until the fateful moment when Scott decided he was through running. He would go back and face it. And Barda, though she believed they would die, went with him. And they didn’t die, though they came close.

And this is how I feel like I relate to this story. Facing your past, and the fears that go with it, can be terrifying. You can feel like you’re going to die. Pain hurts. That’s what pain does.

But here’s why I don’t find their story unbelievable and I do find it real: I have been on the same journey. I continue on it. I do not feel as fearless as Barda, or as clever and optimistic as Scott; but I have had to learn to be brave, wise, and hopeful. I love Barda because she tells Scott right before they go into a dangerous situation, which she compares to a shark. “We’re jumping down that shark’s mouth together–and then I’ll beat it to death from the inside.” Who doesn’t want to marry someone with that kind of devotion?

Having a rough life may suck while it is rough, but one thing is certain, you cannot become so tenacious as to beat a shark to death, unless you’ve had a rough time of it.

And it takes tenacity to love, take it from someone who once had the backbone of a jellyfish, at least when it came to facing my own demons.

Scott understands, as he tells Barda, that they are proof Apokalips can fall. Not because they have defeated Darkseid himself, but because they defeated the darkness that he tried to instill in them. They overcame it with love and justice.

Usually we think of love, but you need justice too. Justice is what tells you when it is time to face your fears, justice tell s you when it is not fair to other people to act the way you do. Justice tells you that you should have a better fate than what you’ve been assigned by your enemies. (Whatever form they take.)

I think we are apt to get tired of hearing about the inner battle, but it is the one we have the most active part in, and it affects more than you know. More than I know.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to fight, ladies and gentlemen, and if you find a person who will jump down that shark with you, keep them around.

Note to self: Marry somebody who has no problem beating a shark to death if  it should ever be necessary.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this unabridged post from DryBonesTruth. Until next time

–Natasha

Reviewing “This Changes Everything.”

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“This Changes Everything: How the Gospel transforms the teen years.” Is a book with a self explanatory title. It goes into the Christian Living category. It was written by Jaquelle Crowe.

I got to read this book early because of a writer’s group I’m in, the Young Writers Workshop. (No sign ups currently available but here will be eventually if you’re interested.)

I went into this a bit skeptical, despite what many of my own nonfiction writing is about, which is living and believing things that are true, I am not a hug fan of books written for teenagers specifically.  I got over that phase around 16 or 17. Which feels longer than it actually is.

My main problem with many Christian Teen, or just Christian Life books is that they are half baked. The writer firmly believe the have answers, but the content comes off as helpful only to a certain point, after which they don’t really understand their subject. I think Christians are especially susceptible to this because much of God is extremely difficult to explain, and very difficult to understand. As it should be. It’s be more likely to be made up if it made sense to man. But it does throw a kink in writing about it since an author want to explain things to their readers more clearly than they otherwise would be able to.

So, I’ve just had some negative experiences with these books. And this book was written by someone in her late teens.

All this to explain I was not biased in her favor, and I can happily say Jaquelle Crowe managed to earn my respect. Once I got into the second and third chapters of the book, I was figuratively nodding my head. (Usually I say “Amen”, yeah, I’m one of those people.) This book is really good.

Of course I may differ a bit in how I perceive my faith, but that is to be expected. Essentially, I agreed with everything she said. And what’s more, I think teens do need to hear it.

While I don’t favor talking down to young people, I do recognize that Millennials and Generation Y-ers have grown up in a very different culture than we’ve seen for centuries. More has been forgotten and neglected about us than perhaps any other generation for many decades. We do not have to be victims however, and that’s why this book’s message is so important. Jaquelle is giving the responsibility back to us.

Now, that may not be her intention. I think her intention was to remind young people of what the Gospel really means, or to explain it to them if they had never heard it before. But nevertheless, what she says is something that will challenge anyone who really listens to examine their life and, hopefully, to improve it.

The best thing in this books favor is that it is not watered down, or constantly addressed to teens, per sec. It is addressed to Christians. Because it is written for them, and though it is aimed at teenagers, any adult could easily apply it to their own life, and so could a preteen.

Truth is true. Whatever else you’ve been told. And something in us know that. If there is one thing I agree with the dystopian, teen fiction works on, it is that there are always a few young people who know in their hearts that what they see around them is not what they are meant for. And if a young teen feeling that reads this book, it may tell them just what they need to hear.

All in all, I will not say this is the best book ever. (That would be the Bible.) I do not even know if it is the best book on the subject I have read. But it is one of them. It is worth checking out. And it could potentially change some lives. But only if people are willing to accept the message, and that is why I cannot say it is a book that sucks you in, and doesn’t let you go. It is entirely your choice to heed it.

Which I think the author realizes and embraces.

I will not object to rereading this book and adding it to my personal library; and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject matter.