Although I have yet to see the much-touted film Avatar, I was taken with this NPR Blog response to another writer’s reflections on the movie’s treatments of nature and death.
In particular…I am surprised to find that the perspective offered in the blog, rather than emphasizing the tragedy of multi-cellular life, and therefore the necessity of death, made me feel as if we ought, somehow, to try harder to live in ways that does such a situation justice. Rather than lamenting and seeking, always, to escape death…we should spend more time and effort focusing on how to make the lives we do have worthy of their brevity.
These are, somehow, appropriate thoughts as I stand on the cusp of a new year which is guaranteed (in the next four weeks, at least) to bring many changes to my life. Too often, I take my life for granted. I don’t fear death, but nor do I really seek to make the days and hours and years of my life as rich and colorful and far-reaching as I might.
Perhaps, then, that is the change I will seek to embrace this new year. Not a change for my personal self…but a change in how that self interacts with Life.
Hi Rev. Ellen,
I have come across your website and I found the sermon on whether or not “God is a white racist”
to be quite thought provoking. I am a canadian
citizen and it seems to be that issues concerning
social discrimination on grounds such as race, gender,
sexual orientation, religious, age etc. are not that much different in the US or in Canada. As a believer
in Christ, I have also struggled with the harsh realities of life where bad things do indeed happen to good people and that even within racial/ethnic communities,
there are those who are treated better by the dominant group in society (the whites, let us say) than those who are not. This does maintain an in group/out
group dichotomy in society and where it enters in to my faith life certainly is whether or not God himself is
partially to blame for this obvious unfair disparity in society but also in individual lives. The question of whether God himself may or may not be malevolent has also crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
I realize that it is the responsibility and moral duty of every believer to try to work towards justice and reconnciliation in a world that is inherently non-just.
If you could comment on what I have to say, that would be appreciated.
Regards,
Henry Quon
Posted by Henry Quon | August 15, 2010, 7:58 pm