Love

You become what you hate.

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On the same note as my previous post, I have more inspiration from my most recent anime obsession.

I didn’t have time for it and it was off topic anyway, but it was something I just had to write about.

On My Hero Academia there is a character called Shouto (Shoto?) Todoroki, not sure I spelt either of those right.

He has a pretty tragic backstory, as even the main character of the show, Deku, admits. Purposely more like a traditional superhero’s backstory instead of the more conventional ones most of the others have.

I’ll just sum it up, abusive father, mom went off deep end because of it, and he has a permanent scar on his face from where she burned it.

Yeah, most of the fandom hates his dad’s guts.

Anyway, Todoroki starts off as a cool and composed guy, not really friendly or nice, just kind of there. And stays that way up until the tournament when Deku successfully pushes him to break down his walls and come to terms with himself. But Todoroki ends up still needing to revisit that, and as of now, is still dealing with his resentment and hate for his father, and his issues with not wanting to become him.

All too familiar to many of us with parents who made us miserable.

Of course, it’s a little rougher when half your body is literally reminding you of said parent every day. Ouch.

Yeah, your heart breaks a little for the poor guy.

But watching it, I realized something about hate, and about forgiveness, that wasn’t really clear to me before.

I’ve grown up hearing that we should forgive. That our salvation actually depends on it. But sometimes the reasons behind this are passed over.

Hate, resentment, and bitterness tend to blind us to their own effects. It’s sad, but most of us have people we resent, even if we think we are well-adjusted and have moved on.

True forgiveness is rare because it is really, really hard.

People will say unforgiveness will put you in a prison. That forgiving really frees you.

Todoroki made this clear in a new way.

Another student accuses him of having his father’s eyes, eyes filled with hate at something. This horrifies him, as you can imagine.

And yikes, how many of us have been told we’re like our parent whom we feel is so unkind to us?

I have. I always hated it.

The thing is, I am like that parent in many ways. Not necessarily bad ways. But that last thing we want is to turn into the kind of person who hurt us.

But the kicker is, hate, it does that.

Hate made Todoroki more like his father than he realized. He treated people the same way. Maybe his was born out of his pain more than his pride, yet it ended up having the same effect, and unfortunately, pain often turns into pride.

We can be so good as convincing ourselves we’re okay without love. And okay shutting off a part of our lives.

I do that more than I admit, I think. I don’t realize I’m doing it. But I prefer to forget all the pain and crap happened to me.

Especially when it borders on abuse, or some kind of unfair treatment, you want to deny it really happened to you.

In Todoroki’s case, the evidence is right there on his face for all to see. Many people have scars like that, maybe not  on their face, but things they can’t remove that remind them of what happened.

Often, like him, they choose to withdraw emotionally. To become cold, hard like rock, and determined to prove they can survive on their own.

But if we think about it honestly (hard to do) we’ll have to recognize that parents and other perpetrators, they probably made that same choice back when they went wrong. They chose to withdraw, and then they became abusive, or cruel, or bitter.

And since sin always springs form similar sources, it’s in repeating their emotional sin that we start to repeat their actions.

That’s why not forgiving is so very dangerous. You will become what you do not forgive.

Racism goes both ways. One race abuses another, then the abused race starts to hate them, then when the odds shift to their favor they often do the same thing.

People who obsess over what was done to them start to neglect their own responsibilities. They end up hurting other people.

“Hurting people hurt people,” is a saying that is true. The only way to not hurt people is to heal the hurt in yourself. To seek healing really, since we can’t heal ourselves.

It’s in forgiving my parent that I’ve started to see why they are the way they are, why it’s wrong, and how I tend to do the same thing out of my own insecurity.

It takes strength to say the cycle ends here. To decide you will pursue healing until you no longer have forgiveness.

But in the end, if you want to be better than them, you have to do that.

Strangely, grace is not only what saves us from our own sins, but giving it is what saves us from other people’s.

Sin is contagious just as much for the pain it cause as for the pleasure. Much like untreated wounds can spread infection.

We should not blame ourselves for what people did to us, we only need to realize it’s up to us to seek healing. We can’t wait for someone else to force it on us.

Deku is a rare find. Most of us will have to make that choice without someone hammering away at our walls until we snap. Though if you have someone like that, good for you.

I still get angry, but I spend so much less time angry than I used to because I’ve begun to realize the real freedom lies in letting it go. It took me over 6 years to get to where I understood this at all, though I mentally accepted it before then, but at last I am starting to feel it.

When you are angry, this is really hard to accept, we have so many excuses to hold onto our hate.

Which is why it takes character to decide to forgive anyway.

You won’t feel it, you’ll feel like your anger is justified, but if you’re honest enough to accept that you need to let it go anyway, then I’m confident you’ll succeed.

It’s not impossible. It just takes patience.

Until next time–Natasha.

 

Holiday Meanings.

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I did a post on new Year’s Day and did not talk about New Year’s resolutions…that would make me weird. I notice that bloggers usually talk about popular things around the holidays, like Christmas Spirit, being thankful, and changing your life.

You know, it’s interesting if you put those holidays in order, the order everyone thinks of, (technically New Year’s is both the first and last holiday of the year, since it starts on December 31st and ends January 1st), you get the Day for Thankfulness, the Day for Giving and Receiving, and the Day for New Beginnings.

I don’t want to say it was done on purpose, but there could be some symbolism there if you’re the type to look for it.

Often a step toward change is being thankful for what you have to start with, to take the ingredients of your life and start seeing them as assets, and not annoyances.

Then you might realize you need to be contribute something to the people around you, and if you’re like me, you realize you need to let them give something back to you. People like to be needed.

Finally, this may all amount to some serious life changes.

People complain a lot that New Year’s resolutions are a waste of time and lead only to broken promises, but holiday traditions are not necessarily completely literal.

In the Church when we take Communion, we are not literally eating the body of Christ and drinking the blood, he gave us communion so we could remember that we have done this in the spiritual realm, that eating and drinking mean something different there then they do in the physical. It reminds us of our need for Him, and Him fulfilling it.

In the same way, at Thanksgiving, we aren’t starving (hopefully) and we aren’t always people who are unhappy with this life and need to revolutionize how we think, it is simply reminding us to be thankful. That we are blessed.

Christmas is not the day we can give each other the most important gift of all, New Life, Hope, Christ, but we give gifts to remind each other of that gift. IT’s our way of honoring it.

And New Year’s resolutions aren’t necessarily a call to change everything in one day, they remind us that change is possible and we can make that choice. They remind us we aren’t perfect. But we can keep dreaming, and improving.

While it’s true many people have lost sight of the meaning of all three of these holidays, it doesn’t mean the meaning is not there.

I like the reminder on January first that I have a new year ahead, and a new chance.

I make a dream list every year instead of resolutions. I have things I want changed, but I prefer to dream, and not necessarily have a time limit on it. I’ve put some of the same things on my list for years, you learn patience.

I mentioned in my post about fan fiction that one thing I’ve learned form it is that I am not able to fix everything. I am not that smart. All I have to go on is the truth.

I’ve learned in twenty years of living that there’s alto I can’t control. But I’m at peace with that most of the time. I do get frustrated now and then, but I’ve come to see that God is the one who should be in control, not me.

The thing about writing, and often other art forms, is that you have total creative control, and yet you don’t. You are limited by your own limitations of character, intelligence, and knowledge. Many great writers wrote their best stuff without knowing they were doing it.

Leonardo Da Vinci is famous for his Mona Lisa, and we are not sure who she was, it’s likely he thought he would sell it, but he chose not to. It could be he didn’t plan on it being one of his greatest works, yet it ended up being so.

The same thing with holidays. They remind us of important things, but they won’t substitute for those things, it’s just a day to remember. And remember that we have room to grow.

Anyway, to the New Year!–Natasha.

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The effect of LGBT and Darkness in fiction.

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Hello everyone! School is OVER! Yay…maybe now I can post more often.

Thanks for hanging in there, now, for the nitty gritty:

Let’s talk about storytelling again. In my mind the two biggest problems with modern storytelling, particularly fiction, are it’s obsession with darkness, and the homosexuality progressive push.

As controversial as the second one sounds, it’s not just about not liking homosexuality, it’s about what effect the subject has on a story. I’ll explain this one first.

Okay, so you’re cruising along, watching your favorite show or movie, and then boom! Someone on it is gay. It happens with book series too. There’s one book series I really liked, The Heroes of OLYMPUS (it was a phase) and up till book 4, it was pretty good, and then book 4 came along and a kid who’d been normal, even heterosexual up till that point, up and comes out…ugh…

But okay, fine, it’s something real people deal with right? I can’t say it’s wrong to put that in your story, right? However, the catch is, this character already had a lot of emotional issues, ones that desperately needed to be resolved; and guess how they all were resolved? He gets a lust interest at the end of the last book…and that’s it. He’s FINE. Abandonment issues? Grief? Antisocial behavior? Not a problem, not now that he’s embraced being gay…???

I wish I could say that was an isolated example, but it happens all the time. Whether it’s the producers, publishers, or public opinion, a writer feels pressured to be “progressive” so they pick whatever character they think can afford it, and sacrifice them on the altar of LGBT. And that is it, that is the last of their character development. Never mind if they were complex before that, and had a way more interesting emotional arc, it’s all gone. Guess what, it won’t even be talked about anymore. Not in the material, and not by the fans, all anyone cares about is they are LGBT. People worship that label, as if it’s the most important thing about the character, and somehow legitimizes the whole story. Never mind whether it was any good or not.

And can I just say, having an LGBT character does not automatically make your story good…Disney, and Hollywood.

AS I’ve shated before, I personally believe homosexuality is wrong, and unnatural, but even if I didn’t, this is still very bad storytelling. It’s on par with trashy romance novels where the climax of the story is the characters having sex. They rarely get much development or depth outside of that. And most people agree that that is trash, you read it recognizing that, if you read it at all, and you admit your motives are less than pure.

But with LGBT stuff, sex is somehow treated like an honor, even when it is moral-less. The characters often are not any more good than anyone else, and their sexuality shouldn’t earn them the title of brave just because it used to be looked down on. I’m sick of Hollywood waiting till something becomes popular and then riding the wave while marketing it as doing something daring, if it was a real risk, very few studios would do it. Unless we think they actually care about social justice.

The sad thing is, independent enterprises now feel, thanks to very shortsighted fans, that they must include these characters to do their part. It’s like how you can’t make anything without black characters now. It would probably be acceptable to make something without white characters, but you know…equality.

Anyone else get tired of this hypocrisy?

If homosexuals want to find someone who really cares about them, don’t turn to people who are using their lifestyle for a cash grab…just saying.

And speaking of cash grabs, what about obsession with darkness? Storytime:

For a year I was part of an online writers workshop for Christian teens, and I got to read some other people’s works, and I can tell you 8 out of 10 times, it was dystopian, or some kind of personal angst story. From Christians…they were all the same. They sounded like clones of each other.

Of course that is popular, and what kids read now. Today I watched the second Hunger Games movie for the first time ever…and I looked away at some moments. I still can’t bear to see some stuff played out in front of me. There are those who eat it up. And those who don’t care. I was just amazed anyone could come up with something that sadistic and twisted. For fiction.

Usually when I hear about stuff that terrible, it really happened, and you an put it down to people being sick enough not to feel it was wrong. But to put it up for moral consideration implies you know it was twisted…and what gives?

I have to ask the ever unpopular question, do we need stories like the Hunger Games? It has some social commentary, but by the second movie, the layer of belief that this could happen starts to war real thin. I know that historically, such things have happened, so we could get to that point again, but if you’re comparing to our society, we have many issues, but we’re not that far gone yet. You expect me to believe people would see this kind of torture, and cheer for it, if they cared about the people playing even in the slightest?…maybe. But we are not quite there yet.

And the question also is, are these violent movies pushing us toward that frame of mind? Even if they are  doing it to supposedly point out the problem, these ideas are left in people’s heads.

And horror has an unfortunate effect on people, they try to inoculate themselves. That’s why people read and watch Horror, many of them are riddled with fears of their own, the fear they find in the stories they feel they are in control of, and they want to be inoculated to their horrors. To become unmoved by it. Because then they feel tougher. They can shrug and say “I’ve seen way scarier stuff…”

When I’m horrified, I also have a tenancy to try to find a way to think of it that makes it less terrible. But apathy, and indifference, they won’t drive away fear. Only love can cast out fear.

Beyond fear, hate, rage, PTSD, and jealously feature greatly in our fiction. Brokenness, revenge, justice that is not justice, it all plays in. People justify it in the name of that being the more realistic reaction. Not the RIGHT reaction, just the realistic, one, because producers and writers know, the real reaction could never be the right one! Who’d believe that?

Funny how with parables, proverbs, and fables, the conclusion always turns on doing the right thing or failing to do it. No one found those stories too unreal at the time they were told. In fact, I’d argue that Jesus’ parables can be all too real for comfort.

I am not hear to discourage people from writing stories, but I think we need to reach higher than this crap.

I know many people will defend it to the very end, and I’m not likely to unconvince them, which is kind of unhealthy in of itself. I have stories I believe firmly are good, but if someone argues, I’m not going to attack them for it, I’d probably drop the conversation.

The point is, do we want to write well? Do we want to write stories that can change people, that can give them hope, and that can represent the best of us, our hopes, our dreams, and do we want that to be more than darkness and cheap nods to a movement most writers aren’t even actively part of? Do we want this to be what we tell our audience we think humanity is made of? Is it all about our angst? Is it about sex? Or is there more to life than all that?

Can we write about higher things? Beautiful things? If you cannot write about those as well as the darkness, you’ve got no business writing. You have to have an answer if you intend to raise a rhetorical question.

That said, until next time–Natasha.

Ships: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly–2

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I talked about the bad and the ugly ships (see previous post), but what about good?

Glad you asked (and if you didn’t, stick around, I might surprise you.)

Okay, I’ve talked about fictional relationships before, if you’ve read my Justice League posts, about Batman and Wonder Woman, and Mr. Miracle and Barda.

I talked in those posts about how Scott and Barda have an extremely functional relationship, while Batman and Wonder Woman, on the JLU show, has a potentially good one, but kept getting in their own way, and how I thought we could learn from both.

I’m risking losing some of you here, but I will say that I think shipping characters can be a healthy use of time. It can be innocent at the very least, and women usually can’t help it, honestly. But even for men it might be  good tool for gauging where your own expectations for a relationship are.

I’m often confronted with what my own standards are when I find some fans shipping characters I either really like, or really hate the idea of being together. 

Abusive relationships and homosexual ones are at the top of my list of “NEVER EVER EVER” along with incest, obviously (eww.)

But what about the ones I like? Asking myself why I like it has proven very useful to me in deciding what makes a good relationship.

The nice thing about fiction ships is that you get so much variety. There could be many reasons it works, and they can be specific to the characters as much as real life is. You learn to broaden your view of a good relationship. With that in mind, I’d like to talk about some of my favorite kinds of ships. 

  1. I do love the pure, unadulterated, they just fall for each other upfront ship. It’s pretty rare now, and even mroe rarely is it intersting, but when it is, it’s really beautiful. In my mind it’s the most realistice kind of relationship. Most people marry someone they intitially liked and grew to love. A lack of tension can make a relationship boring, but when it’s well written and you see how well they suit each other, you wont’ find it so. Pure love is simple, but it’s never boring.
  2. I like the healing kinds of ships. Ones that are based around one character helping another through a very hard place in their life, and they develop those feelings along the way. The ship is cool because it feels earned, and you can definitively understand why the characters trust each other. This kind of relationship also happens in real life quite a bit.
  3. Perhaps the funniest ship I like is the one that starts off with them not liking each other. It’s overused in romantic comedies. But it’s not a bad idea functionally.  It provides more comedy then the other two, and often the most character growth out of the three. It involves very different people having to learn not just to understand, but to love and appreciate each other through their differences. Though how these relationships resolve is often unrealistic, the concept it not, because most married couples find  out that living together is that exact experience. Learning to love. In that way, the animosity-to-love ship is the most real of all.

So, that said, how does seeing this in fiction really help me?

For the first kind of ship, I’d like to use the classic example of “The Princess Bride.” That’s not technically shipped, because there was never any doubt of it, but these kinds usually are established early on in the story anyway. In the movie/book Wesley and Buttercup fall in love, and stay in love. It’s pure, real, and powerful. But it’s opposed. What makes the story great is that at no point do either of them tear each other apart, split up over some stupid fight, or waver in their affections for each other. They know their own mind, and yet they still have to fight for what they want. (Wesley does anyway.)

The power int his is the very constancy. Love never fails.

I think Scott and Barda fit this example well too, but I already wrote about them so I won’t rehash it all here.

Often the healing ship can happen just through characters supporting each other, not always with a traumatic experience having to happened first. I think Jamie and Landon fro “A Walk to Remember” are a good example of this. Older films tend to have it more. People sharing each other’s burdens is a powerful thing.

For the last ship, I could name dozens of examples if I had an hour to think about it. But that won’t be necessary. My current favorite ship of the animosity sort is the Qrow and Winter ship from RWBY. I have a lot of other ones I like, and they are all different, which makes the description hard. I’ll stick to the one for now.

More than for the other two, you have to fundamentally understand both characters for this ship to really be good. I am not about watching people fight and then like each other without any really good reason for the change. (Sorry Quest for Camelot, I like you, but it was clumsy at best.)

I like this ship because both characters have certain traits in common. They care about their family, believe that people have to learn how to fight for themselves, and are loyal, perhaps too loyal at times.

They are also widely different. Qrow is open about his opinions and not one to care much for delicacy. He has a rough and tumble approach to family togetherness, and to telling the truth.

Winter by contrast tends to keep her opinions in reserve unless she feels superior to the person she’s talking to, she’s more willing to submit to authority, and though she’s not very gentle, her approach is more cool and severe than rough. It’s hard to imagine her ever playing a game with anyone.

They hate each other–ostensibly, but they aren’t so different in essentials as they think.

That’s why I like it. If two people share core values, then initial disliking of each other can be a good catalyst for growth. And not such a bad foundation for a relationship. The other kinds may be easier, and heartwarming, but in the end, most of us will have fights with our spouse, and have to be willing to change, or compromise. We’ll have to learn to be more humble in how we approach disagreement.

Again, many fictional couples could fit into this category.

 the cool thing is how diverse it can be. When you realize why people suit each other, it can give you a better understanding of love.

Love is not all hearts and roses, though that’s fine, but in the end love is about growing with someone. Any ship can give you that picture. And the more different they are, the clearer it becomes that love isn’t really about type. It’s not about a formula.

Whether people are alike, or different, they will still grow together, and that’s why it can work either way. Maybe it’s a bit of a reality check to us, not to think we know exactly what kind of person will suit us. In “Anne of the Island” L. M. Montgomery shows the foolishness of thinking you’re fancies are what would be best for you.

A little honesty: If you got exactly what you wanted, the chances are it would be bad for you because they person would let you get away with too much crap.

Unless you think that you don’t dream of them tolerating a lot more of your quirks then most self respecting people would…yeah, I know. Brutal. I’m working on not thinking that way myself, but I know marriage will stills hock me by showing  much of a fantasy that really is.

Jane Austen’s books are more realistic, people have faults,  but are they ones that you can grow with, or ones what will make you worse? That’s the real question.

Toxic relationships often are more about people being ill suited for each other’s faults then intentionally harming each other.

Anyway, that’s about all  I have for now, until next time–Natasha.

 

Ships: The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly–1

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Today I want to talk about the internet phenomenon known as SHIPS.

At least, if you watch YouTube.

So, for those of you who don’t know, ship is modern slang for “Thinking two characters on any given show/movie/ or book series, should be together in a romantic relationship, thought the rare person may use the term for friendships also.” (Personal definition.) It’s relationship  mayhem in some places

Usually shows are the worst for shipping. Too many diverse characters who may have a heartfelt moment or two per season, and it can get pretty annoying trying to figure out if the show actually intends for them to be together. Even harder when often show writers are swayed by fan reactions.

Shipping is the bane of some internet surfer’s existence online. And with good reason, I’m not against shipping, but there are huge problems with it.

You might ask why I’d even bother writing about something so stupid. And my answer would be, shipping can be stupid, but it also tells you a lot about what people take seriously, what they look for in relationships, what’s on their mind 24/7, and what kind of standards they might have, particularly in their viewing pleasures.

You cant ell some people who watch porn are the ones leaving shipping comments.

Also, gay and lesbian ships have become unavoidable. Even when each character in question is confirmed to be straight, in a different relationship, and perfectly happy. Shipping is not rational for many people.

The problem is, we can all laugh when it’s a show (or roll our eyes) but unfortunately, people often are irrational in real life as they are online. Many people date with about as much discretion as they ship. So I think shipping may tell us plenty about what passes for romance nowadays.

Lewd humor and jokes and porny comments are hardly a new form of substituting for romantic love. IT’s as old as the hills. (Read any Shakespeare Romantic Comedy if you don’t believe me.) However, thanks to the internet, you can now find people like that mixed in evenly with people who are just genuinely having fun and enjoying the content. I’m starting to think some shippers just don’t enjoy anything till they sexualize it.

Aside from being gross, it often disrespects and minimizes the message a show may be trying to communicate. It often saddens and disgusts me to see a heartfelt scene between friendly characters, and to find it reduced to sexual subtext by fans. Fans, who quite frankly, couldn’t care less if they ruin the video for anyone else.

Now, the simplest solution is not to read the comments, but many people read comments to ask questions, and see some interesting feedback or innocent humor. Also to communicate with the channel host, which there may be some good reasons for. Yet they’ll see this other stuff too, and some of it is hard to forget.

I won’t give any examples here for that very reason, I’m sure you can fill in the blank form experience.

Some people just don’t give a rip whether you want  certain ideas in your mind or not, and they can be the most infuriating to encounter, that’s in real life too. It’s like how some people don’t care if you want them to cuss in front of you or your kids. An attitude of consideration for other people would, if adopted by everyone in the world, wipe cursing and inappropriate humor off the face of the earth.

Shipping can reveal the worst in humanity, and how shallow we can be. And how corrupt. It’s not all that uncommon to see people shipping siblings with each other…or people and animals…yeah….

I really don’t know what more to say on that, except that if this is becoming acceptable, even in fiction, what have we lost?

I really think as far the porn part of this goes, anyone using fictional characters for that is taking them way too seriously. And yet, not seriously enough.

If all someone’s honest art means to you is a sex object…why even watch it? And I have a hard time believing anyone who justifies that kind of attitude really treats real people with much more respect.

What you think, and what you imagine, it is not separated from your character. You are what you think, and what you dream, as much as if not more than you are what you do for a living and school.

One might wonder why I don’t talk about how unrealistic shipping can be, since fictional relationships are famously portrayed as better than real life. My answer would be: Not in this case.

In the case of YouTube shipping, no, it’s never better than real life when it’s what I’ve been talking of. In fact it’s much, much worse, than many people’s reality would be. I’ve seen people endorse a sadistic, abusive relationship…I guess they get a kind of pleasure out of it.

The problem worsens because the more of that you see, the more you find it enjoyable, and not horrifying. The whole trap of using art to change minds is in what it makes look appealing, even if the real life experience would not be so.

And guess what, it’s not usually the victims whose minds are influenced by this, it’s the perpetrators. It’s far easier to be deluded into thinking something is natural and pleasurable when you’r the one doing it to someone else, not when it’s done to you. Isn’t that just the way with human beings?

Stealing might look admirable until you get stolen from. Punching looks cool until you get punched.That’s not the worse of it either.

And I couldn’t close this article without saying something about the HATE wars.

I don’t take what people say to be online to be particularly serious. Good or bad, they know nothing about me. But some people do take it seriously, and others will still let out a lot of venom and aggression toward people that seems unhealthy at best…and out of control at worst. 

It’s pretty dumb to tear someone down over a fictional relationship. To have a “one true pairing” that you will not give up on, even after all’s been written and done. As much as I hate some ships, I don’t want to destroy the people who support them.

I find it odd that anyone takes it seriously enough to do so. However, I do really like some ships, And I even think they can be beneficial, for reasons I’ll expound upon in part 2

Until next post–Natasha.

We don’t understand Death.

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My cheerful topic of discussion in class yesterday was Death. What is it? Why do we avoid it?

I’m starting to think the curriculum was designed to hit close to home for me since I’ve lost some people recently and been pondering the subject of death. As I wrote about in my last post I am a fan of Resurrection.

However if we go by what my classmates seemed to think, it doesn’t look like most people see much sense it the idea of resurrection. Many people embrace the idea that death is the end, and we should just accept that.

Everywhere from real deaths to fictional ones, I find this. Some folks are still holding out for their favorite character to come back to life, the soul crushing response by some other fans? “They’re dead and gone, deal with it.”

Well, ouch.

Seriously, is that really the most sensitive thing to say? Don’t stomp on my hopes.

Characters dying never bothered me too much as a kid, usually they were the evil characters. Of course I didn’t like Obi Wan Ken-obi, but then he comes back. And it’s sad in other stories too. Not a lot of examples come to mind. There’s Beth from Little Women, but I stayed away from sad books as a kid.

As for real life, I’ve only known four people who’ve died. Known them well. I remember my first brush with losing someone was a nice woman at my church who died. I didn’t know her very well, I just remember her always smiling at me. My mom told me she went to heaven. I believed it, and I still do, so I wasn’t bothered.

However since then the people I’ve lost have all been ambiguous at best, I’m not sure if they went to heaven. A few I really doubt.

It’s the worst part of being a christian, having to believe that not everyone gets to live happily ever after, and worse, that they could have if they’d opened their hearts. Rejecting God is a choice.

Yet Death is one of the things that makes it hardest to accept God. Especially a loving God. Though we all intellectually know death happens and the world goes on, when it happens to us it’s still a fresh shock. We are suddenly unsure f ourselves, and that makes us unsure of what we believe. This doesn’t happen to everyone. Some people handle death with peace. But they are the exception, not the rule. Most of us are left feeling uncertain. Some never recover from that, most of us do, but we never feel the same.

That’s not to say we are the worse for it. Death, like other ills, is a matter of how you handle it. It can make you stronger or weaker.

In my class my teacher brought up the idea found in some poetry on the subject, that love ends with death. There is no love between the dead and us. We love them, but it’s not a living, growing thing.

I’m not sure that’s true. Many people continued to feel connected to their dead family or friends. I don’t really myself, except at certain moments. The interesting thing about love is that it preserves your memory and therefore a little bit of yourself. When you’re gone, you’re not entirely, if someone loves you. A part of you, not your own consciousness, but your memory, stays with them.

It’s something science hasn’t been able to explain. Loving our lost ones is not biologically helpful to most people. yet we still do.

I am not sure that the dead no longer love. I believe that those who go to heaven love even more, but from afar. We can’t hang onto them, because they have no need of us anymore.

Most of grief isn’t really coming to terms with the dead, but with yourself. Asking how you can deal with this, how you can go on. Some decide hey can’t, but that’s not the right choice.

I think because we’ve removed the comfort of religion and core values, death has become too much for many people. Now  they have nothing to make it seem less terrible.

And the answer most come to is “We don’t know.”

There is no faith in saying “I don’t know.”

I’ll admit, I don’t know what happens to every person everywhere who dies. OR even to the ones I know. That’s my uncertainty, and that’s my grief. Not knowing.

But what I do know that I know that I know, is that Jesus is real. And that he is love. And though God does things I don’t understand, there’s a reason He holds the keys to life and death. I  know that I’m alive now in a way I never was before knowing Him. I know that He changes lives. I know that He enables people to die with courage.

You might wonder, why does God let people die at all if He really conquered death? The Bible says in 1 Corinthians that Death will be the last enemy to be overthrown at the end of time.  Why is this?

A couple of reasons might present themselves. If we never died our bodies would be pretty useless. At old age, death is a mercy if you will be transformed.

More than that, if death was overthrown now, all the evil people in the world would never die either. Can you imagine that?

Even more than that, God wants us to trust Him with our lives. It’s what sets us apart form nonbelievers. If we didn’t die, there would be no need of trusting Him.

We are promised the fruit of the tree of life when the new heaven and new earth are made. We will be eternal then, in fact we already are, in our spirits.

That sounds nutty to many people. The things of God are foolishness to the world. What else would you expect?

My conclusion: Either I believe the Bible, or I believe nothing…and that doesn’t seem to work out too well.

Until next time–Natasha.