Tag: love

The Yoga of Despair

This was a sermon or homily I recently gave at Beverly Unitarian Church, in Illinois, and First Unitarian Church of Hobart, in Indiana, on two consecutive Sundays. I began by showing the clip below, from the HBO series, The Newsroom. In the scene, a deputy director of the EPA is being interviewed by a news anchor.

I love that video. It’s funny, but it’s also accurate.  Except for the part about permanent darkness, everything the EPA director says in that video is true.

I especially get a kick out of the reaction of the producer, when the EPA director says, “The person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet.” And she says “What did he just say?!”

I had my own “what did he just say?” moment a few years ago. …

TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE.

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You wanted justice, but there is none … only love.

This morning, I knelt down in the snow
in my favorite place to pray,
a little garden off the side of my porch,
now bare and stark,
where My Lady of Tears keeps her vigil.
And these were the words which came
to me like a prayer … or an answer to one:

You wanted justice, but there isn’t any.
There’s the world.
Cry for justice, and the stars
will stare until your eyes
sting.
Weep, and enormous winds
will thrash the water.
Cry in your sleep for your lost children, and snow
will fall … snow will fall.
You wanted justice, but there is none … only love.
God does not love. God is.
But we do. We love.
That’s the wonder.*

Wise words, I think, for one contemplating the end
of his world.

*paraphrased from Archibald MacLeish’s play, “J.B.”, a modern retelling of the story of Job

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How Wonder Woman Both Perpetuates and Challenges Christian Dualism

I went to see Wonder Woman last night … for the second time.  It’s not what I would call a “great movie”, but it is great fun.  (And I have a bit of a crush on Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman.)  If you want to a read a good review of the film from a Pagan perspective, check out Heather Greene’s article at The Wild Hunt, “Of gods and love: a discussion of DC’s new film Wonder Woman.”

Christian Revisionism in Wonder Woman

I have very few criticisms of the film, but one thing that jumped out at me was the characterization of the villain, Ares, the god of war.  Ares’ backstory comes near the beginning of the film.  We are told that Zeus created mankind righteous and good. But Ares, the God of War, grew envious of his father’s new creation and “poisoned their hearts with jealousy and suspicion,” encouraging them to war. That’s when Zeus created the Amazon women to influence men’s hearts with love and restore peace on earth. It worked, but only for a time, and Ares waged a war against the gods, killing them one by one, until Zeus used the last of his power to defeat Ares.

This might not be obvious to someone who is still steeped in a Christian paradigm, but to a Pagan like me, this is obviously a Christianization of Greek myth, with Zeus taking the role of the Christian God and Ares taking the role of Satan — making Wonder Woman a female Jesus.  Similar Christian revisionism can be seen in the movie Clash of the Titans and the animated movie Hercules, in which Zeus and Hades (god of the underworld) take on parallel roles. Continue reading “How Wonder Woman Both Perpetuates and Challenges Christian Dualism” →

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