Mad Props for The Secret of Kells

I had never heard of The Secret of Kells until it was nominated for an Academy Award a few months ago, but I have been eagerly waiting for it to play here in town ever since. I just can’t recommend this film highly enough. Everyone in my group, ages 10 – 67, loved it.

It is so beautiful.

The hand drawn animation is based on Irish art, but also manages to remind me of Samurai Jack, of blessed memory. All I can say is vive la 2-D! I am pretty sure that if I saw this film in Greek without subtitles I still would have loved watching the images. It is fluid and graceful: no portion of the screen is boring and it is 100 times more entertaining than Avatar.

The film is about a boy named Brenden living in the monastery of Kells in the Middle Ages and the creation and preservation of the famous Book of Kells, but really, plot is not what compels this movie. In fact, a few of the plot points towards the end of the film felt a little rushed and I wished they had been developed a little more. This film, full of beautiful imagery, is about imagery and its power. It stresses the importance of beauty and imagination and faith in the most dreary and dangerous of worlds.

If you are at all interested in Irish history, celtic myth, the history of the medieval church, the role of art and faith, syncreticism, or pretty pictures than this film is for you. Maybe if you are a big fan of Vikings, not so much.

The portrayal of the rival religions in Ireland was balanced: neither one was the bad or the good faith. Both religious systems were given a point of view and both had sympathetic and scary/dictatorial aspects. Pagan magic is delightfully represented by the fey girl Aisling and is treated as no less real than anything else in the film, but Cromm Cruach shows a dark and scary aspect of the same pagan belief system. The Christian monks are shown as trying to hold onto the light of their civilization against a violent force who wants to wipe them out, but the Abbot is rigid and has forgotten the art and joy of his youth and tries to block out the outside world. Brother Aidan is an example of the Irish style of Christianity that stressed reverence of nature more than the fear of God.

My girls loved this movie enough to insist we buy the soundtrack as soon as we got home. They have never done that before. Though it chagrins their mother and grandmother, they are not in general fans of traditional Irish music, and yet we will be listening to the soundtrack tonight while I cook dinner.

The Secret of Kells would be a great film to show in RE, but it might be too scary for very little children. It could be a great spring board for discussing how religions effect and influence each other, when and why should be listen to authority, how to we respond to outside dangers while still preserving what is important about ourselves, the relative importance of symbols , what is worth dying for, and I’m sure other great topics that haven’t occurred to me.

I almost never buy DVD’s anymore, preferring to keep my collection in the Netflix cloud, but this one I will buy as soon as it available. Maybe we will make it our new St. Patrick’s Day tradition as it is much more thought provoking than Darby O’Gill. Slainte.

The Anxiety of Motherhood

Is there anything in our culture more anxiety producing than motherhood?

I saw this over and over on blogs and Twitter leading up to Mother’s Day, intelligent and dedicated women torn up over whether or not they are good mothers. A SAHM who left her career behind to raise her two young children feels like she is not doing it right, working moms who probably spend more time with their children that the average 1050’s housewife who feel guilty about shortchanging their children. Has it always been like this?

Is this how motherhood has always been or if there something really toxic going on? Why do so many mothers feel like total failures at the most important job we will ever have?
I don’t have any answers about this, but I am really disturbed by the question. I am not immune to this anxiety so this is not in any way a criticism of women who question their mothering skills. But if motherhood is supposed to be the greatest joy in our lives, why do so many of us feel like shit about it?

I have sometimes thought that I love my girls so much that I wish they had a better mother than me. I wish they had someone who wouldn’t yell at them or be selfish or be depressed. Someone who could raise them to be the awesome women they are. I hope I haven’t raised them to live with this same sense of self-doubt if and when it is their turn to be mothers.

Next year, instead of the rainbow and orchids and other Hallmark-designated trappings of Mother’s Day, let a mother know she is doing a good job. Tell her that you know mothering is not easy and that she isn’t the only one why worries about not being any good at it. In fact, why not do it today?

For UU Salon - Soulfully Agnostic

So the question of the month at UU Salon is What is a soul? And here is my attempt to answer.

Short version: ye gods, I have no idea.

Longer version:
I think I can say that I am truly agnostic on the subject of the soul. Central to the question of the existence of the soul is the idea of life after death. It’s sort of the big granddaddy of religious questions. I can’t say without a shadow of a doubt that I do not believe in life after death, but I see no compelling reason to believe in it either. I find the idea of reincarnation to be really beautiful and compelling. I hope it’s true, but hoping never made something so, especially in metaphysics.

In favor of the soul, most western and many eastern religious and philosophical traditions posit a belief in souls. Is there something in human nature that makes so many different points of view converge on the idea of the soul, or are we all just sharing a need to believe we don’t end when we die?

I don’t know about the soul, but I sure feel like a have a self, a meness that separates me from everyone else. Buddhism tells us that this is an illusion*, that we are the convergence of a multitude of connections and happenings in the universe and create our selves for a brief moment. I also find this to be a beautiful idea and much easier to swallow than reincarnation. Not to get all Our Town or anything, but if this brief flickering life is all we get each moment of it becomes so much more precious. Elements of the universe come together in just such a way as to make each of us possible for just a moment before they recombine to make something else. Each and every one of us, then, is a miracle self, a conscious and improbable little piece of self-awareness. Each person seems so much more precious and irreplaceable when I view them through this lens. It makes me feel grateful for my life that I get to experience it and realize how lucky I am to even be.

To some extent, I think the question of the soul puts the emphasis in the wrong place. To me, the most sacred moments are not about the individual, but about connection. Connecting to another person, to Nature, to a sense of the divine, these are the moments that give us meaning. Giving birth, falling in love, prayer and meditation, helping others, all of these make our lives better and richer in a way that focusing on my soul never has.

I know this is pretty scattered and all over the place, but it is a big question.

*Buddhists can feel free to correct me if I have gotten this wrong. I’m still learning.

One Hungry Vegetarian

I’ve hit a bumpy patch in my meatless 40/40/40 challenge. I am hungry ALL THE TIME. I have been making sure to keep plenty of protein and fats in my diet; it’s not like I have been living on carrot sticks. I am really not liking this trend. Any advice from you vegetarians out there?