Greetings in the name of the Holy Spirit!
We hope that all of you have had a blessed Pentecost.
This month, we thought we'd look back at a few articles we'd written over the years. As we have recently migrated the blog from Wordpress to Wix, we hope to bring attention to some articles that first went up on the old blog. For the month of June, we wish to showcase a group of articles which have ties to Japanese culture.
Last week, we actually had a fresh article - Digimon and Spiritual Growth. Digimon is an old and somewhat obscure franchise in the rest of the world, but the original show did have rather interesting spiritual lessons to teach us.
This week, we take a look at something a bit more popular - Pokemon! With the recent Detective Pikachu movie and the upcoming game Pokemon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch gaming console, Pokemon is definitely still more than relevant to the young (and the young at heart). While some Christian groups may look askance at the concept of the franchise, we choose to see it as an opportunity for learning, even as we enjoy playing with these cute little critters.
After that, we'll be looking at something a little different - Star Wars. Now hold up, we hear you say, Star Wars isn't Japanese! Well, you might be surprised. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa's samurai films. In fact, he derived the term 'Jedi' from the Japanese term for these films - Jidai Geki. Furthermore, you might feel that the character Obi Wan Kenobi, the subject of our article, has a vaguely Asian-sounding name. This is because Lucas' first choice to play the character was the legendary Toshiro Mifune, who starred in many of these samurai films. Accordingly, we will examine the character of Obi-Wan, the quintessential mentor figure, and what pastoral lessons we can learn from him when we are called to disciple others.
Finally, we will look at a more topical film - Silence, based on the book of the same name by Shusaku Endo. Those of us familiar with the story will know that it is a somewhat disturbing tale about the nature of Faith and the attempt to reach out to God in times of pain. We hope you find the article insightful.
Enjoy these articles, and God bless! Prayers for prayers always!
Photo Credit: Himeji Castle, taken by Nien Tranh Dinh. Accessed from Pexels.