Love

Wonder Woman–2

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I am looking forward to this part more than the first.

Now I get to talk about the meaning of the movie.

(Let me preface it by saying I am not claiming this movie is christian. But I think they used Christian elements to tell the story. Maybe just because that was what they thought would work. I won’t assume more than that. And I think it’s good whether they did it on purpose or not.)

This is where I feel this movie did do something new.

And I also feel that the fans are entirely missing the point when they nitpick the plot for being like other films. The plot was never supposed to be what made this movie different.

It’s Diana herself.

I think I related to her more not because she’s a woman, but because I felt like her story was kind of like my story.

At least par to fit was.

She was homeschooled after all. And very, very sheltered.

So what happens when you stick that combination into the real world?

Diana’s reaction to the horrors of war really hit home with me. Her honest admission that it was horrible. And her demand that promises be kept. Her insistence that they help those who could not help themselves. And her shock when she learned that Steve, one of the good guys, was a liar, smuggler, thief, and that his people had mistreated other peoples of the world. Just as the Germans had.

Diana starts off believing that even Germans are good, truly, and that Ares is to blame for the evil they are doing, and all the evils of war. When she confronts him, she is ready to unleash justice on all their behalf. But to her astonishment, Ares, while under the rope of truth, tells her that he doesn’t make men do the evil they do. All he does is inspire certain parts of it, and manipulate them into doing more things to prolong their troubles.

I believe Ares was still mincing the truth somewhat, though not completely. He’s bound to have more resistance to the rope than a human could, and he only told part of the story.

But Are’s here is a pretty obvious representation of Satan. The tempter, the deceiver, the one who encourages man to sin. But who will say, “I didn’t make him do it.”

Well, no. Satan can’t make a person sin. As in, he can’t put a gun it their hand and make them pull the trigger. But God is pretty clear about tempters still having a major share of the guilt when someone listens to them.

But Diana and we ourselves can’t avoid the truth that man does sin, and he does it voluntarily.

I still remember when I felt the way Diana did when she saw the men still fighting, and she realized Professor Poison really was a psychopath, only getting helped by Ares, but not set on that path by him.

I remember that sick horror when I realized the evils of things like Abortion, or the holocaust, or abuse.

The look on her face was just the look I remember having. And I remember feeling the same doubt about people. In fact, I still struggle with wondering if people can change. If there is truly anything in most of us worth saving.

And by the way, Ares does not highlight anything except the evils of man and his blindness to his own folly. That’s because that’s all Ares cares about. That’s all the devil cares about. The goodness in humanity makes him look less successful.

And like Diana, I have wished I could help everyone who needs it. I don’t want you all to think I’m saintly or anything for feeling that way. If you ask me, it’s no more than decent to want to alleviate the suffering of fellow creatures.

But the truth is, even a superhero can never help them all.

And the smart thing the movie does is come to grips with that fact. It’s basically what Civil War tried and failed to do. And what every Spiderman movie has dealt with.

Diana realizes that she can’t do it all.

I loved the moment at the end when she says she can’t save the world. Though Steve told her she could, she realized the truth: A hero can’t save the world. “Only love can save the world,” she says.

Diana doesn’t mean that just being nice to everyone can save the world. She means that, though evil still rises and men still commit it willingly, the other men who give up everything to stop them and save their people are the ones who save the world.

Essentially, only the ultimate good is more powerful than the ultimate evil. And Diana means to promote that good, and if necessary, lay down her own life, until that good wins out.

And since I believe love is a Person, I know that love has saved the world, and continues to save it. And will triumph in the end. So Diana is completely right.

And Steve’s sacrifice is our example of that love in action. It’s not just a cliche that his last words were “I love you.”

One more thing:

Earlier on, Steve tells Diana that maybe saving people isn’t about what they deserve, but about what you believe. I didn’t get it and thought it was some cheesy one line moral, until Diana was in the final battle with Ares, and she chose to spare Professor Poison’s life, even though she could have justified killing her as an act of war.

But she didn’t, because int hat moment for Diana, it became aobut more than just ending the war. And she repeated what Steve said to Ares as she turned from taking revenge.

You see, what Steve meant was not that you believe in the good of humanity. That would be flimsy and the movie proves it false.

What he meant was, you save people because you believe that is the right thing to do. You believe that somehow, someway, it’s important. It means something. You believe that there’s a different solution than just eliminating them.

If that’s what you believe, and that’s who you are, then you won’t change that just because they don’t deserve it.

And wow, was that a powerful message for me.

Maybe defeating Ares isn’t about stopping war. Maybe it’s aobut winning the war inside yourself. Maybe it means throwing off your own lust for revenge, for power, for the ultimate solution.

Because you don’t have it. But you can be part of it.

Isn’t throwing off all that what truly ends a war anyway?

In that sense, I think Diana killing Ares was symbolic. That was her personal battle. But she recognized that is was not so for all of humanity. The battle is different for everyone.

Diana starts off the movie proud but unaware of her own power; she ends it knowing what she is capable of, but humbled.

And darn it, if that’s not an amazing character arc, then there is just no pleasing some people.

So, I recommend the movie.

–Natasha.

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The secret love of pets.

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So, I’ve considered writing about pets on here before, like every other blogger seems to do. But I never really decided to do it.

The reason I’m finally bringing up this noncontroversial topic is that my grandma has lost both her dogs in this past week.

They were 15 years old, and since they were good sized dogs, that’s a ripe old age.

Plus until the last couple years, they weren’t in too bad shape. But they were falling apart and she finally had to put both of them down within days of each other.

You know, I’ve never seen her so down as the past few days.

My family had to put our dog down a few years back, he was a young dog, especially for his size, and should have lived a good 8 years or more, but he had a liver problem.

The truth of the matter was, we later suspected that he had had a problem when we got him. He always had a weak stomach, and at first we didn’t realize he was worse until he wouldn’t eat for days and only lay around. And turned yellow.

Not a pretty sight. He was so miserable we just couldn’t bear to keep him suffering any longer.

It still hurts to think about that.

I am not one of those people who has to live with an animal before I get really fond of it. I don’t go animal crazy or anything. Now that we have three cats, I like cats, but before I was never what you would call a cat person.

So I understand people who can just take or leave animals pretty well. But what I Think is more interesting is what having a pet can teach you about love.

You may never realize it of course, but some people do, and I wont’ be the first to remark on it.

My dad says, rather drily, that we were more broken up when our dog died than when a family member of ours died.

In a way that might be true, at least I know I cried more. For some reason I don’t tend to cry when people pass away. My personal thought is that it’s too close and too real, and I just don’t process it through tears. Not yet anyway.

But I don’t think that it means I loved a dog more than my family. If I had to choose between the two, I’d pick my family. (Though it would be heartbreaking.)

But I notice I’m not the only one who seems to express grief more freely over a pet passing than over family passing. Maybe you know people like that, or maybe you are that person too.

And I think the reason for it is pretty profound.

The truth is, we feel the death of an animal more, or more purely, because we see it with unclouded vision.

Pets rely on us completely. Especially if you’ve raised kittens like I have, and they can’t even go to the bathroom without help (at least people are born knowing that much.) And the reason we love them so thoroughly is because they can’t give us anything in return for our saving their lives. The don’t feed us, or clothe us, and some of them couldn’t even protect us in a pinch. They cost us a lot of money and they don’t pay it back. We can’t even hope that when they grow up they will help us in turn, as some parents do with their children.

And those of us who have cranky, bratty, or strange pets know that our love for them doesn’t change just because they aren’t always loving us back.

Why, our cats are downright ungrateful about us feeding them high quality food. They like junk food better. (The nerve!)

Now I wouldn’t do what some would and use all this as proof that pets are complete wastes of time. On the contrary, I think we should have pets for this very reason.

It’s important to the human soul to be able to love something unconditionally, and even more important to be able to love something that can’t return you anything tangible.

I believe the reason that people’s passing on leaves a different ache in our hearts is becuase we rely on people too much.

It’s not bad to need each other, but we all know that we often need each other in the wrong ways, in the wrong amounts, and that’s why we fight and fail and have to begin again (and that’s in a healthy relationship.)

When you lose something you rely on, part of the grief is, as C. S. Lewis observed, selfish. It’s not concerned with what was best for the person, but what was better for you. Or at least what you think was better.

But when you don’t rely on a creature and you lose it, you mourn it for being what it was. For its own sake, and so you have a purer, less selfish grief.

I do not mean at all to say grieving for people is bad. Nor that admitting you wanted them is bad. I only meant hat it’s a different kind of love.

The beautiful thing about loving our pets is that we don’t think about it. We just do it. We don’t expect credit for it. It’s not about our ego.

And if it were to be, most of us would agree that it wasn’t really the pets we were thinking of.

So those are my thoughts, until next time–Natasha.

Bear the pain without breaking.

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Let me return to the past post today so that you may read it in the future.

Too much?

Sorry.

Anyway, I want to write about an interesting part of the X-men movie I mentioned in my previous post.

It’s when Old Charles tells Young Charles that “It is the greatest gift we have, to bear their (humanity’s) pain without breaking.”

I got to thinking about this idea. I’ve been rereading another old favorite book of mine, Rilla of Ingleside (the final Anne of Green Gables book.) Montgomery knew how to get emotion out of her readers. This book is one exhausting trip through WWI, but worth reading.

The people in this story perhaps feel the pain of the world too much. I get that the wars were terrible and people had a lot of strain, but I find it hard to believe it was quite as constant and terrorizing as this story portrays.

Not to disrespect what they suffered, I just think humanity naturally adapts and pushes away grim realities in order not to go insane.

But anyway, this book will make you feel the terrible things of war, and the grief and endurance also.

Also it draws together all the many types of people in that world. The imaginative and the dull; the clever and the simple; the devout and the reprobate; all of them are raised to a new level of importance. And the barriers between some of them are broken down.

Shared suffering can do more to make peace between individuals than any amount of good events would. Because people are stubborn, and pain tends to be the only thing that breaks us down.

How does this tie in to X-men of all things?

I mentioned before that Magneto is selfish, whereas Charles is selfless. And I also mentioned that Magneto’s selfishness lies in his ignorance of other people’s suffering.

Somewhere along the line, Charles decided to feel other people’s pain, and Erik decided to bar himself from it.

My question is, how many of us do the same thing?

It’s not hard for me to imagine how other people feel, I can put myself in their place. What is hard is wanting to, especially when it affects me personally.

We never want to be wrong after all.

Then again, some of us would rather be constantly apologizing for no clear wrongdoing than standing up for ourselves or others.

So maybe there’s no cut and dried human way of dealing with blame. But there are pretty basic ways of dealing with pain.

There is so much suffering out there now, one really couldn’t feel all of it deeply. At least, that’s what I’ve thought.

It doesn’t do to dwell on it.

Besides I know too many people who have broken under it, or if not broken, at least bent.

Bearing pain without breaking takes more strength than I have. The only way I can handle it it to lean on God.

I know there are some who might find that a cliche, easy way out sort of answer.

Or even wimpy. Like I’m not tough enough to bear pain  like other people so I need to imagine someone out there who can help me.

My personal opinion is that nayone who thinks they can bear the wieght of the world without breaking is deluded.

To me it would be far worse to think that pain and sin are just things we have to live with, and there is no escaping it.

There had better be an escape. Otherwise, why are we living at all?

Isn’t that what Charles concludes? destruction isn’t the course humanity has to take, only the course it tends to take because of the cruel acts people do against each other.

And Magneto’s selfishness feeds those acts. While the selflessness of the X-men is what finally turns the tide.

That’s all for now,until next time–Natasha.

P. S. (my rule is no posting on Sunday’s but I’m making an exception because this was mostly written days ago and I kept getting interrupted before I published it, so here it is.)

God is good.

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God is good.

That’s a favorite debate topic for Christian films. I guess it’s also a favorite DC topic since Lex Luthor makes that infamous statement “If God is all powerful, He cannot be all good.”

Because it’s been talked aobut so much, I’m not sure I have any new wisdom to add to the subject, but I’d like to discuss it for a minute.

I just reread “The Hiding Place,” which is a really good book, and I felt like toward the end the quesiton of God’s goodness comes up.

What ‘s funny about The ways of God is that just His power is not enough to convince us He’s right.

We’ve all apologized when we weren’t sorry or admited something we didn’t want to admit becuae we were afraid of someone in power over us. For very weak minded people, power seems to equal right, even though philosophically we would scorn hat idea.

But I notice that in the Bible, way back in the Old Testament, people often only obeyed God because of His power.

Actually, up until recently in our history, that was totally acceptable logic. We like to feel we have the moral high ground, but many of our ancestors would have thought it was just common sense to obey whatever god was most powerful. It’s led to some messed up religions.

To bring  it back to the point, everything that happens to the Ten Booms in the latter half of the book seems to be terrible. Corrie and Betsie escpecially suffer in three different prisons, one of them the hellish Ravensbruck.

Corrie speaks of wondering why such cruelty could happen, of having to trust God to carry the burden of what she saw and felt watching the atrocities that happened there.

Though we cannot all have witnessed such things firsthand, we have plenty of news examples nowadays to make us ask that same question. Why did God allow it? Is he really good.

In the movie version of the Hiding Place, one embittered prisoner mockingly tells Betsie and Corrie that God is either powerless, or He is cruel, they can’t have it both ways.

Betsie replies “When you know him, you don’t need to know why.”

This is the kind of thinking that makes skeptics believe religious people are crazy. AT least, I think if I were a skeptic I would think it was crazy.

Would you trust God if you were going through death warmed up? If you lost everything? Would you believe God was good if you were mistreated be everyone around you and all you saw was cruelty?

Perhaps, after a time, all of us would begin to falter, if we were left to ourselves/

But God didn’t leave Corrie and Betsie without some signs. The little miracles that happened. Corrie not being checked in line while she has hiding the Bible, the vitamins bottle that did not run dry, the mercy of an otherwise merciless guard or medical trustee, Betsie’s visions.

What I draw from the story is that if God truly meant for us to be miserable, He would no provide these little wonders, these signs of love.

You can’t make those fit in with the idea of a distant, cold God, unless you really stretch your imagination.

Terrible things happen to us that God does not stop, but if we know personally that HE is good to us, then logically, we know these things do not mean He is doing us an evil.

John Eldredge (author and speaker) says that we have doubs about God’s goodness, we might know how He acts in front of a lot of people, signs, wonders, etc. but what is He like when you get alone with Him?

Well, here my theology meets reality. As someone who claims to have a relationship with God, what is my experience of Him?

(Actually, it surprises me how little I talk about this. I’m not ashamed of it, but even at church the subject comes up way less than you would expect.)

In many ways, knowing God personally is a private thing, more so than even knowing your spouse; but it is also meant to be shared.

My knowledge of God is that He is caring, He is loving, He does meet the needs of His children.

Personally, I have had harsh things said to me by people, people have betrayed my trust, people have misjudged me, God has never done that.

Some might say that’s because He is not real, or He is not like I think He is, so how could He do any of those things?

But for my money, none of that matters, I know what I know.

The evil man kind does to itself is bad enough, that there should be any light at all in the sea of darkness is a flat out miracle.

Like how the studios that produced Batman vs Superman also produced Wonder Woman.

Or how the same company that gave us some of the stupidest shows on TV also gave us movies like Frozen, Cinderella, Big Hero 6, and other classics.

Jesus said that the condemnation of men is that lights has come into the world, but men loved darkness.

And to my amazement, and yet also not for I have been guilty of it too, the real reason people doubt God is good is because they themselves are not good and do not want to change.

Bitterness, hate, selfishness; we don’t like giving that up.

Anyway, I hope that made sense.

Until next time–Natasha.

Let old be forgot?

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A little celebration, I have now hit 50 followers.

Yea, it’s been a slow growing process, but I got here.

It’s also November, and Donald Trump’s been almost a year in office. (Which much of the media still hasn’t got over.)

A lot changes in a year. I’m not unemployed, in high school, or driving with a license. I guess somethings take longer to change.

I’m also turning nineteen before too long. Yikes.

I’ve done some cool things this year though. I went on another Mission’s trip. I drove to the beach. I got sun poisoning. You know, the little things in life that are important.

I know November might seem a little early to be doing reminiscing, but it’s a month of the year that’s generally important to me.

I’m a little upset that I probably won’t meet my reading goal for the year, but it’s my own fault.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I used to live in a home without a TV. I’v enow been a year in a home with two of them, and looking back, I would definitely say living without one was better.

I may have enjoyed finding new movies and shows I like. But those things are so small. so insignificant for the most part.

TV has left me more disillusioned with humanity than I was before. And more ready to criticize. I mean, I literally just looked up from the screen and saw a singing poo emoji in a commercial.

Just let that sink in for a second.

Oy vey, sometimes I wonder if our founding fathers would even recognize us as Americans. Can you imagine Jefferson watching what’s on our TV shows?

Still, I would not become a fatalist.

I’m not sorry for movies and shows. Some movies have changed my life. But I am sorry to be so saturated in them.

I know I can’t remove the thing from m life, so I cope. But I don’t plan on buying a television. Maybe never in my life will I do that.

I’d rather m children grow up with their noses in a real book than to a screen. I’d rather they ave a taste of the way things used to be.

The trouble with modern progress is not that it is new, but that it is excluding the next generations from even knowing about what was in the past.

It’s important for us to look back and not despise the more “primitive” means the people before us used to accomplish things. They deserve our respect for figuring out more on their own, for using elbow grease to do things. For putting their whole lives into their work and family instead of just the hours they had to do bare minimal.

So, to conclude, I’m looking back on what I actually did. Not what I watched, or thought about, or suggested.

I’m going to remember more what I had to work for. What I was uncomfortable doing but still did. And what took me more time than I wished.

So those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.

How to have a super relationship-4

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I hope I am not wearying anyone of this topic, I could probably go on about it for hours.

But I promise this is the last installment.

This last thing I want to look at about the two couples in question is what gives each of them the foundation they have/

I’ll start with Batman and Wonder Woman this time because they have the more common kind of relationship.

What attracted these two to each other?

Despite the flaws I’ve covered in the previous three posts, we can all agree both these superheroes are good people. we don’t hear much on Wonder Woman’ side, but we do hear Batman once explain some of his reasons for liking her. She’d a remarkable woman, he says; she’s a devoted friend, she’s…standing right behind him, isn’t she?

Awkward.

But there we have it, she’s loyal and devoted to her relationships. Just the opposite of him in some ways, and opposites attract.

But like also attracts like. They are both selfless when it comes to saving other people. they both care about the good of mankind, and they both enjoy being in the League.

This is where most relationships start from. Two people meet and find thy like the same things and so they spend time together  and eventually it may turn romantic. OR it may not. But I always found there to be plenty of chemistry between Bruce and Diana.

They both esteem each other. Just like most healthy couples at least start off as seeing only good in the other person.

So why is Batman afraid to move forward? Because of trust.

This is where we see that trust cannot really be built just on another person’s merits. You could be mother Teresa levels of kind and unselfish, and someone might refuse to really trust you because you are still human and they don’t trust people.

I have seen this in my own life and the people around me. Trust is earned but it is also a choice.

And the choice must be made even when we allow for the other person sometimes letting us down. Trusting human beings is in essence saying “I know you aren’t perfect, but I know you well enough to know you’ll be as good as you can be, so I will trust you because I trust you overall character, and not just by your individual actions.”

Clearly people sometimes trust the wrong person because of this, that’s where they mistake the overall character to be better than it is.

However, I submit to you that the obstacle in Batman’s case is different.

He doesn’t trust anyone (as superman fondly admits in episode one.) This is not their fault. It is because he has unresolved issues in his life.

Ladies and gents, you will not have a healthy relationship for long if you do not resolve your issues either before entering it, or at some point early on. (I do not mean you cannot fix it later, but it is better to do it sooner.)

The problem here is that Wonder Woman wants to move forward before either of them have really faced their deep issues with themselves and the world. She has made some steps forward in t he course of being in the League, but he has made baby steps, or none at all in some areas.

Ladies especially may want to do this. But plenty of men will do it to. Only they fear commitment because they know they aren’t ready and so the relationship often ends after appearing to be getting serious.

But is Batman right to use issues as an excuse not to be together?

Let’s return to Scott and Barda:

The important thing about both of them, and the path I admire Kirby for taking, is that both their journey’s start apart from each other.

In the Fourth world, people who still have a shred of conscience and self awareness are referred to as having the Divine Spark. We know Scott has it from the get go, but what is less obvious is that Barda had it too.

Barda’s journey to escaping Apokalips actually began with Auralie, the weakest of the girls in her force, but one she had a particular fondness for that she never showed to any of the others. Barda disobeyed the laws of Apokalips while trying to protect Auralie and was ready to disobey them again when she found out she had been tortured to death. That marked the first moment when she and Scott actually had one mind, and thought hey were not a team yet, they stopped being suspicious of each other.

Scott’s journey began with Himon, the e one free mind on Apokalips.

more importantly still, Scott went to Earth without Barda and continued learning about freedom and goodness until she arrived. Barda in tur mad her choice to complete her training, which came in handy later, and then broke free herself of its grip.

Barda began to hate the system because of her friend, not because of Scott. Though he was the reason she continued to move forward.

These two are not independent of each other, but the y are not codependent on each other either. Barda did not need Scott to leave Apokalips, and he did not need her. They only come together after both making several independent decisions.

My point here is to show that Barda and Scott both work to become the person that is right for each other, before they even know they’ll be together. Barda makes sure to please Scott even before she thinks of them as a couple, because she esteems him. Scott tries to keep Barda healthy and happy even just as his friend because he is grateful to her.

If they had not been committed to doing what they thought right before hand, they could not have suited each other so well.

To be honest, the principle of “Become the person who the person you want is looking for” is one I have yet to hear talked about outside of Church, but it applies just as much to people who are not religious as to people who are.

Like attracts like. Sluts attract whores, criminals attract criminals, nutjobs attract other nutjobs. And good people attract each other.

Very rarely will any of us be Scott and Barda in every way when we meet out spouse, but we can at least be them in this way. It’s not really about getting someone to fall in love with you. It’s about the kind of person you are.

Resolve your issues now, and when you meet the one for you, you’ll have a super good relationship on your side, and not a super dysfunctional one.

But one more thing:

I still ship Wonder Woman and Batman for this reason; broken, messed up people are the only people you’re ever going to meet. Though they may be very healthy, they will always have some weak points.

And we cannot let that stop us from loving deeply and trusting other people, because we share this earth with them, and we need each other.

I would tell Batman he needs to try, and I would tell Wonder Woman she needs to be humble about letting him work his way forward, and always be striving to be a better person herself.

But what I would tell all of you is that it is better still if you have a perfect God in you life who can never fail you. Because then, as the saying goes, you can let man be man, if you let God be God.

(And by the way, Barda and Scott have an equivalent of that known as the Source.)

All right, I’m finally done with this, until next time–Natasha.

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