Star Wars and Spirituality

From the Book of Common Prayer

2012-01-26T21:29:00.000-05:00

Been thinking about the Benediction in the BCP:

"And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord."

I have loved thinking of the idea of "the work you have given us to do" as writing for me, but whatever thing you feel a healthy inclination towards. And though this may be true, I think really the full sentence carries the full meaning:

As in, "sending us out to do the work you have given us to do" and that work is, actually, "to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord."

Sure that can mean uncovering and sharing where I see Jesus in the Star Wars movies, or writing stories, but the core work is really loving and serving him, and much of that is just plain being.

The Jedi at their best are good at being calm. Like how many times in the book, on this blog, on twitter and in person have I ever said that? Hundreds of times, it seems, but life in the Western world begs the repetition of it.

Busy busy busy. This is not right, that is not right. This is incomplete, that is incomplete.

Sometimes I think loving and serving God means going and sitting on my porch.

And with that being said...

A Star Wars retelling of the Story of Jesus

2011-12-24T12:49:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, in this galaxy right here there was a woman, and her name was Mary. She was engaged to Joe Citizen, who was a descendant of King David, the most famous King of Israel ever.

Mary was a very straight-up gal. She told folks that a Jedi Ghost had appeared to her and told her that God chose her to have a baby who would be a convergence of the Force. She did not know much about the Force but had faith that God would work true, light Force through her. She was very trustworthy, and people believed her, even though it was quite a wild story. Her fiance, Joe Citizen, was an extremely honorable sort, and he decided not to make a spectacle out of her, but thought he would be very quiet about divorcing her. Then a Jedi Ghost appeared to him, too, and told him that this whole thing was God's doing, and to name the baby Jesus. Joe Citizen obeyed.

Around that time Darth Caesar Augustus wanted to count every person in the Roman Empire so he sent people back to their hometown to be organized about the whole thing.

Joe Citizen had to trek all the way to Bethlehem because that was where King David was from. His very pregnant fiance had to go with him. The town was so full that there were no vacancies in any of the hotels, but one innkeeper let them stay in his garage. Mary had the baby in the garage and they named him Jesus, just like the Jedi Ghost had instructed them.

As if this was not a weird enough story, Joe Citizen, Mary and Jesus, who had a split open garbage can for a crib, got visited by these sheep farmers. They were an odd bunch with a bizarre story that a Jedi Ghost had also appeared to them, telling them all about this convergence of the Force who had been born in the garage of a hotel and that he would save them all. The sheep farmers worshiped the Creator of the Force for showing them this baby and told everyone about what happened to them and that they had seen baby Jesus.

A month later Joe Citizen and Mary took Jesus to the big church in Jerusalem to make a sacrifice for him, just like everyone with a firstborn son was supposed to do. This old guy, Simeon, came up to them and told them that God would not let him die until he saw the convergence of the Force as a person, and that God just told him their baby was it. Mary and Joe Citizen were like, no way, how did you know? Simeon gave them a blessing and prophesied that Jesus would be the Holy Jedi, and that he was going to seriously stir things up.

After Simeon this old widow named Anna came up to them. She was a prophetess and she also recognized the convergence of the Force in baby Jesus. She told everyone who wanted Jerusalem to be free and out of the control of the Empire about this baby.

There is a whole rest of the story, but that is for another day.

Merry Christmas

Note: This retelling is just a bit of fun to help imagine what the birth of Jesus the Christ must have been like. But it is a real mind trip to actually think there is a real, supernatural being who many call "God." And this being we can't see, we can't touch or even know for certain that this being even exists. Then to think that this being, this super powerful everything, this "God," actually and truly really did work in an actual woman around 2,011 years ago to have a baby that was both God and a human at the same time seems absolutely insane. If you like Star Wars, you have imagination, but you know that Star Wars is not real. Not even remotely. The spiritual ideas and metaphors Star Wars plays with might be real, I certainly think they are, but to think, to believe, to trust your life on that fact that this historical person Jesus was both super being "God" and man, that he came to forgive us of all the things we do that are not right, that he was murdered then came back to life, that he still lives and will someday come back a rule on Earth? I think many, perhaps even most people, might think that a person who believes this is actually mentally ill. I encourage those people as much as I encourage those who blindly think Jesus is a good chance to play, to look at historical facts, to look at philosophical arguments, to question how you know what is true from what is not true. If Jesus is true, everything changes; even, and especially, this holiday. God be with you. -Caleb

Saber Advent-ures, Holly & Holocrons, Mos Christi Cantina

2011-12-14T22:04:00.000-05:00

Thanks to UnrefutedSpirit on Twitter for the blog title. He won the contest!

Think of these blog postings and tweets as an advent calendar: you open them up and they are little pieces of Star Wars and Advent thoughts to get you one step closer to feeling getting into the Christmas spirit.

Mary was pure, and found favor with God. She was also engaged to be married to a descendant of David. Both the spiritual and the practical were needed for her election to be the mother of Jesus.

She is a lesson to all Jedi. We may speculate if here Midichlorians were high, but there is no question about her humility, innocence and willingness to hear God and obey him.

If the angel Gabriel, in real life - right, an actual angel, one of the major ones too, completely powerful like a superhero, but let me emphasize, A REAL ANGEL, came to you and said "God has blessed you" I do believe you'd flip out. I would, at least.

Mary did believe, though. This is pretty amazing. I don't do drugs, but I'd be thinking that I was tripping if an angel appeared to me. I've heard people say that the Western world does not see much of the spirit realm, perhaps because we are not tuned in to it, or maybe because super natural type phenomenon does not happen here as much as third world nations, but to see an angel would be crazy, I think, even if you lived in those parts of the globe. Then to have the angel talk to you and say, "Dude, chill" and then tell you that you are going to have a baby, and that that baby is going to be God incarnate, come down to save us. This is the kind of wild stuff that science fiction is made of.

Looking into this a bit, it seems Mary then goes and walks 60 miles to go see her cousin Elizabeth, who Gabriel tells her is having a baby too (John the Baptist).

How many millions of people before (and after) Mary believed in the messiah coming, and she gets to see, the Word, true God from true God, light from light, come into being as a baby.

My youngest son is 7 months old, and so I see babyness all the time. To cradle baby Jesus must have been bizarre to say the least.

How does this effect Star Wars? In my book Star Wars Jesus I ask how it was people in the Star Wars universe first heard of the Force in the first place. The idea I speculate on (though I am not an extended universe fan at all) is that in the same way in our world God knew that he would have to become flesh, that his words would have to become flesh, so too the Force might have to have become flesh to be the fulfillment of the Force.

Now you can make the obvious parallels of Anakin the father, Luke the son and Obi-wan or even the Force itself as Holy Spirit, and that at Christmas time you might in a Star Wars universe think of Anakin being born from apparent father. Though these are most certainly true, I think the Force goes back much farther, and the son, Luke, does not end up with a message of how to live the Force that changes the world inextricably. Hmm, maybe I am convincing myself of this, but in this advent season I am reminded of the Force itself becoming man - and though I love Anakin and Luke, I am looking for a more sinless character. And less violent.

That's all for now. Use the Force for knowledge and defense.

Quick reminder about bulk purchases for Star Wars Jesus

2011-12-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

If you are ordering a bulk amount (3 or more copies) of my book, Star Wars Jesus, please contact me at calebgrimes@gmail.com. Amazon has good prices for individual copies, but they are not able to lower the price to a bulk rate, especially to overseas locations. If you are thinking of buying for multiple friends or relatives, a youth group, study group or other class, please contact me and I will sign the books and have them delivered to you.

Merry Christmas
Caleb

Taking requests for Advent Series

2011-11-29T22:13:00.002-05:00

I think I will tweet and blog a series about Advent, Christmas and Star Wars. I am taking suggestions for titles, and have one really good one already from a follower on Twitter. The winner will receive a copy of Star Wars Jesus, signed and inscribed. Stay tuned.

ebook

2011-10-19T20:40:00.002-04:00

When Star Wars and Faith Collide

2011-05-30T23:00:00.001-04:00

Click on the title to a link to an interesting blog re: Star Wars and faith.

Repost of the aged Star Wars movies

2011-05-30T22:30:00.001-04:00

Check it out: http://blogs.starwars.com/rebel-ramblings1977-1983/426

The New Way of Doing Things

2010-12-14T20:57:00.005-05:00

There are so many new ways of getting the idea of your book out that it is sometimes hard to keep up with them all.

I did this blog for a while and it was great. I got to post Star Wars and Spirituality emails that I used to send out to a couple people, I got to post new ideas about Star Wars and Spirituality that did not get into the book, and it was all great. This blog has come to its likely end, though fans of the book will email me from time to time asking for more, or asking for ideas if they lead a group and want to do a thing on Star Wars. I send them here for some quick discussion ideas.

But new modes to say the same words blossom everyday. It can turn you around.

I was just turned around by my profile on Amazon. I generally thought this was where author's go to tell people a little bit about themselves. But there is a similar page to the profile page, and it is the Amazon Author Central profile. This is a bit like Facebook. You know how the profile page and your news feed look so similar? Like that. I get confused. But now that I am straightening things out, I'd like to leave tracks.

So if you find me here, on this blog, know that I am over on Amazon, and also on Twitter. I'll try to leave links back and forth as much as I can. Like here: http://twitter.com/favorites/96900208.rss, and click the title of this post to go to the Amazon pages.

It is a crazy interweb of the internet. The website, blog, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc., etc. all link to each other and back and forth.

I hope you can find me in all these places, and that your faith is encouraged by the truths hidden in the Star Wars movies.

Peace, Caleb

Happy Birthday, Empire Strikes Back!

2010-05-27T09:25:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday, Luke Skywalker

2010-03-10T15:38:00.002-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 070808 (last one)

Today is Luke Skywalker's birthday. Or so my brother tells me. Now, how he would know that when Luke lived a long time ago in a land far, far away is beyond me. But, maybe it was in some extended universe book I never got to.

It serves to remind me that I am very latent on the next Star Wars and Spirituality email. So here goes. Confessional time. I actually watched Episode I with my son the other night. And I hate to say it is growing on me, but certain parts are growing on me.

One totally redeeming, and unique, element of The Phantom Menace (what?) was Qui Gon Gin, played very well to my estimation by Liam Neeson. He was good at patience. Patience is not just your cliched virtue, nor one of the oft overlooked fruits of the spirit, it is a Jedi skill. And one I need to practice.

Novel not getting done, still not making a living off of writing, purchase of house on the brink of falling through? The answer must be patience, because what else could be harder than going through a trial than going through a trial with poise and style and not complaining about it. Having patience, in other words. Not that I have copious amounts of patience, mind you.

So I am looking in the Bible (what?) for verses about patience and I came across this mysteriously interesting verse in Luke (21:19). Jesus is asked about the end times (or the destruction of Jerusalem, or both) by his apostles and he tells them that folk will hate them for loving him, but that he will keep them safe. Then he says this:

"19 By your patience possess your souls."

So profound nothing more needs to be said.

By your patience, possess your souls.

Caleb

Gen Con - part 2

2009-08-22T17:53:00.001-04:00

Did I mention the Hall was enormous? 24 rows filled on both sides of each row, 5 colums deep. We walked forever to the back corner of the space to where the Author's Alley was tucked. Most everyone had set up, but Dylan Birtolo (The Bringer of War)stuck out a friendly hand and welcomed us, told us very good to know things and that his booth was just around the corner.

Next day we got in place with 1/2 an hour to spare before the VIGs came in. The VIGs, whoever they were, did not get back to where we were and as the minutes ticked we could hear an occasional shout from outside the entrance doors closest to us, which were the most remote doors from the main entrance into the convention center. Even with the remote distance, the guards opened the doors once or twice and swarming behind them was a mass of humanity, crowding to get first glimpses. At the hour doors opened and people ran in, most turning down aisles way before they could get to us, but we could see them across the open space where the cashier booth was set up for artists and authors.

During the show thousands pointed down the aisle at our glossy oversized bookcover of Star Wars Jesus hung on the back panel. Hundreds came back over the 4 days and most of them said, "Ok, I just have to ask: What is this book about?"

I did say in part 1 that I would write about crazy con coincidences. Next post. Promise.

Gen Con 09 - part 1

2009-08-22T17:38:00.003-04:00

Gen Con 09

As soon as we rolled into Indy we checked into the hotel, but did not even go up to the room. It was 7 p.m. on Wednesday and we had one hour before the Exhibit Hall closed to the vendors, artists and authors all setting up their booths for the next day's crazy. The hotel (keyword Hustle) can be a subject of future blogging. The hotel is directly across the street from the Indianapolis Convention Center, so we decided to try to sign in there so that the next day would not be a rush to get things set up in time.

We were only setting up books on a table and mounting posters on the panels behind the table, but you want to get the lay of the land, want to find if there are any things you need to get last minute to hang posters or whatever. Best to be prepared, we thought. And that was pretty good thinking. We have a hand-truck for my wife's art supply store and brought it along, which turned out to be a great idea. We did the transformer move on the hand-truck to make it a 4-wheeled contraption, loaded a couple boxes of books, the pretty, and the posters.

The pretty consisted of shiny post-cards and business cards with the cover of my book on it. Those were to give away to potential clients. The pretty is essential, especially in the Con world not only because it reminds people who look at dozens of books, hundreds of pieces of art and untold thousands of t-shirts, leather-ware, games and all kinds of material madness about your book, but it also constitutes SWAG, which are the doodads folks hand out that can become collectible things that con goers like to hunt for. Even if you don't like the idea behind the book, Star Wars Jesus cards can be great swag - and did I mention they are shiny?

We wheeled the stuff across the busy street, which was really a four-lane highway in the middle of down-town Indianapolis, and into the convention center. The first thing we note was lots of registration booths off to the left. These booths stretched for a football field's length and were all packed with folks getting their passes for the next day. I asked Leslie to stay in the quiet corner we picked and wait for me to get our badges. I did remember something about receiving an email saying authors could go to some other location to get their badges, but I could not remember where it said to go. And, of course, I had not printed out the email.

So I ask at the volunteer desk, and they say go over to this other booth right next door. I'm thinking, "Great, I know how this goes." But no, I did not get perpetually handed off. In the next line some one came up to me before I could get to the desk, and asked what I needed, and confirmed that this desk could help me out. After a very short wait I found that no, I could not get my badge there, but they found out where I could go, which was right before you go into the Exhibit Hall itself. Whew. We chugged down there, Leslie watching the back of the ship for any of our load that might fall off, and I pulled. The line there was shorter than short, they gave me the badges and we waltzed into the Exhibit Hall with the guards giving the nod to us. We felt special.

And that was the beginning of a well-organized con. Thanks to all the con staff, especially Jaimie, for quite an experience.

Next post: Crazy Con Coincidences.

Anxiety

2009-04-22T01:08:00.000-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality email from 052508:

One of our readings for the day, at church, was Matthew 6:24-34. Because Jesus says we cannot serve both God and Money (v24) we therefore are not to worry about your life, what you will eat and drink, wear, etc. This is a little confusing to me. I am not sure I see the direct correlation about not serving God and Money so don't worry. However, I take it that if we serve God we do not need to worry about anything.

In the BBC radio version of A New Hope Obi Wan Kenobi asks Han Solo if he has ever seen a credit enter or leave his hand, and yet he wants for nothing and is even getting a trip to Alderaan.

The active pursuit of not being anxious about things, not getting wrapped up in them, is an important truth. Old Obi Wan is the best example of this in the SW series Yoda a close second.

Verse 33 is a big verse that even those who have not had more than one time in Sunday School might recognize. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given you as well." Very Jedi. And also the reason why I have a palace with a Porsche in the driveway.

That was a joke.

A Jedi does seek the truth of the universe and allow that truth to govern her, come what may. And very plainly I would say righteousness and God's kingdom is what a Jedi not only seeks, but also what a Jedi finds. At the end of Return of the Jedi Luke comes to understand that even Darth Vader has a good side, that even the power of the dark side is in truth alluring and very powerful, and at the same time a power to be avoided at all costs. He seeks to do what is right, "I am a Jedi, like my Father before me," he says in the face of impossible odds and guaranteed failure. And all these things were added to him.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb
ps-you may have noticed that these emails are not so weekly any more. For those junkies out there, I am sorry. It was too much to keep doing one every week, though an excellent discipline at the same time. These emails will be more like every two weeks from here on, and I do not anticipate doing them for forever. If you are tired of them, shoot me an email and I will take you off of the list.

Gen Con

2009-04-21T23:52:00.002-04:00

Another quick note. I am going to Gen Con to sell and sign my book! Check out the link to the incredible convention in Indy this, and every, August. I hope to see you there!

YouTubing

2008-12-14T13:23:00.001-05:00

Just a short FYI that I am going to post a YouTube video in the next week or so about Star Wars and spirituality.

Peace,
Caleb

Authority, Jesus style

2008-12-05T20:59:00.001-05:00

- Star Wars and Spirituality email of 050708

Even he who was all did not act proud and egotistical. I think for most of us that is pretty unfathomable. If we had mad jedi skills many of us, I certainly would feel this temptation, would flaunt it and show it off every chance we got. Kind of like Anakin.

As Anakin grew he became full of himself, trusted in his own power instead of relying on the force to flow through him and to guide him even with he felt guided in a different direction than he himself wanted to go. Very Lucifer, I imagine.

It is mind blowing to think of Jesus with all this power that he did not use, opting instead for restraint and humility. And I do not think this was because God is such a great guy. Well, maybe partly. Jesus was the character we read about, I suspect, because he was tipping us off to the best way to tap into the incredible power that he can give us. And I know this gets a lot of air play from me, as the Jedi do embody this attitude so very much, but it is astounding because, if you accept that the Jedi way, the Jesus way, is the right way, then the impact of the wisdom of that truth seems to sink down deep, deep into the fabric of what is true in this world, our world, and what is right and just.

I titled this meditation, “Authority, Jesus style,” because the quiet nature of who Jesus was, and the emulation of that style in the Jedi, results in a sort of default authority. It is not authority for power’s sake (unlike the duplicitous mass of pudu (aka the Emperor)’s statement in front of the Senate, “I will lay this power down”), it is the power of God that has authority as a side effect.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

There's no place like home

2008-11-19T22:12:00.001-05:00

There's no place like home (from Star Wars and Spirituality email 4/22)

In the stories of our world, spanning the course of history, heros have homes.

Seems like they are always being taken away from their homes, or on their way to home, or their mission causes them to leave home. The super friends had the hall of justice, super man had his ice palace the "Fortress of Solitude," Batman had his bat cave, Odysseus had Ithaca, etc. The Jedi have the Jedi Temple. It is at once a spiritual and a physical place.

Lately I've been missing home. For humans, earth is our home, and yet there is something missing here, something is not right, something off kilter. It is like we are home, but in a different place entirely. You may expect that I am going to say Jesus is our home and we can be settled with him. Perhaps.

What is on my mind more than that, is the tension of longing for home – of wanting it really badly, but not being home that brings our human condition to myth.

Luke stares out at the binary sunset, Yoda walks with a cane, and Obi-Wan's quiet energy are respective, and I would argue unconscious except for Yoda, expressions of the longing each of those characters have for the Force. They are not fully part of the Force, and they are not fully separate from the Force. Heaven to a Jedi is to be united with the Force in the same way we long to be set free from our current hard times and get to the place of great rest and care. At the same time, the idea of being united with the Force in a non-physical manner seems a little unsettling.

I find myself longing for Jesus to come back. I am impatient for his return. I wonder what this current life, this current earth would be like with him ruling us and being present with us in a greater capacity than his spirit can be now. Would it be different, fuller than now? Again as always it is difficult not to think of a Jedi slowing down, breathing, being quiet – at peace and asking the Force to be with him or her. In that endowment of the presence of the Force soothing, guiding, making a Jedi powerful they are also given a relief from the tension of being apart from the Force. In this way we long for the home the Messiah has promised us, and take respite by his spirit and his words.

John 14:23, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

Good Shepherd Sunday

2008-10-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday we celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday. Well, “celebrated” might not be the right word. It was more of a theme, you could say. No presents, no trees, no bunnies, no endless candy, no tight spandex…oh, wait, uh, nevermind.

It is a time to reflect on Jesus calling us, as he is like a good shepherd to us, and the idea here is that sheep respond to a shepherd’s voice because they know him and they trust him.

Just as a Jedi senses the Force, feels it flowing through him and around and in and through everything , so we “hear” his voice and follow him. The trinity of God allows us to “hear” him in different ways.

It is gorgeous out today and I got to come home early from work (and now I can catch up on this late email indoors? – I better make this short). That is part of God’s speaking to us indirectly. The Bible, how many years old and still not needless to say, is his most direct speaking to us, his Direct Revelation. The Holy Spirit working in and through us, is that direct or indirect? Jury might still be out on that one – and praise God that there are all these different ways for us to experience him – and not to mention the spiritual disciplines.

In these ways all we like sheep (Isaiah 53:6) who have gone astray (and we rather tend to, don’t we) are brought back not only by the sacrifice of God In Person which the Isaiah passage prophesies to, but by all who Jesus is. He is our Jedi Christ and we learn to hear his voice inside us and respond to it.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

The Force of Jesus

2008-10-04T18:52:00.001-04:00

Some of us see Jesus as mostly a strong, conquistador kind of saviour. Others of us see Jesus as mostly an accepting sort of fellow who loves us all no matter what we do or who we say or think we are. We are the fundamentalists and the universalists and all points in between. It seems to be a rare thing, however, when an opinion about Jesus is formed based on an actual reading of his book.

In this book he tells us about his Jedi code and about the kind of Force he uses. And it is an odd thing because at times Jesus kills people who just lie, and other times he lets real bastards, tyrants even, win and thrive and be seen by the masses as a great guy. What, then, ought we to expect he would be to us? Funny how we are always thinking from a “we” perspective.

Jesus reversed the “eye for an eye” and turned it into, “turn the other cheek.” He said love your enemy, and also said he is coming back to judge the world. He said believe in him and be saved, but also indicated that your eternal soul is in danger if you don’t.

So what kind of power does he use? Is it a little Dark Side and a little Light Side? The contrasts above certainly get us thinking that way. It seems he is talking opposites. A distinction however, exists between an opposite and a paradox, that which at first seems opposite. In a paradox the justice of eye for an eye is balanced by the grace and forgiveness of turning the other cheek. In a paradox loving your enemy means giving sacrificially something overwhelmingly good to those you might tend to hate balanced by our being his agents of punishment to the evil, and then ultimately his destroying that which is bad and evil. In a paradox Jesus gives every person a chance to choose him before he judges us individually and permanently.

So how do we deal with these paradoxes, and apply them to our Force understanding? How do we wield power, and how do we lay power down? How do we do what we do and end up serving love? How do we use the Force of Jesus?

As Tevia says in Fiddler on the Roof, “I’ll tell you – I don’t know.”

I will, however, put all my money on betting that the Bible is the only book that helps us get close.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

I got your 1138 right here

2008-09-30T20:45:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 033008:

1138 is the SW number. Here is a number I came across this Sabbath: 1597. That is how old today’s sermon in church was. Can you imagine its author, St. Augustine, giving it now? Talk about a Ben-Kenobi-ghost – oy!

A link to the sermon is at the bottom of this email. The gist of it is this: Mankind throughout history has determined we are luminous beings (we have a soul) because our physical parts are not the defining characteristics of their function. So, we see with our eyes, but it is not our eyes doing the “seeing” or, rather, the interpretation of what comes through the windows. Our tongue is used to speak, but does not itself compose the words. Etcetera. Simplistic? Yes. Still valid. Not as a scientific treatise, no, and I do not believe it was ever meant to be that, but as an insight into our human condition, yes. Further, St. Augustine points out that our changeable bodies and our changeable souls point to an unchangeable creator.

I think you can see the clear connections to SW. And here you are thinking, “Can Caleb get another topic, please? He always talks about the luminous beings thing.”

Well, and so I shall. In this season of new life (Easter), I want to focus on death. Or, not so death as the case may be.

Remember the scene where Luke comes out of his X-wing after blowing the DS? All those folks are praising him and rushing up to him and it is such a relief that the impossible happened at the very last second and that they are still alive. What about the fighters that died, though? Now I think of what I believe to be true in this world, and I do not think it is true because I want to, or because it makes sense to me. No, the following is a SW image on what the Bible says is real in our world.

Back to those fighters. Remember Porkins who flames out into the Death Star, and Red Leader who buys it, too, causing a big explosion? Even Biggs takes one for the team. Then, last night, I’m watching Luke get out of the cockpit all victorious like and it hits me; in our world, according to the Bible, if we believe in Jesus (that is the hard part, I confess), every one of us who gets blown up by a Tie Fighter will be greeted just like Luke after sending proton torpedoes down the Death Star’s exhaust port. We all have our Death Stars. In fact, we have many of them, likely, in our lives. At the end of our physical lives, this is what we get, we get the host of heaven cheering us, “You did it!” “You fought the fight and won!”

“But we didn’t win” you might say. Or, “I doubted and lost my faith,” or “I sinned a lot” and they all say, “say what?” because Jesus’ sacrifice erases all that, if we confess that he is the Christ.

Princess Bride translation: “What about the wedding” Buttercup says. “Did you say I do?” responds Wesley. “No, we sort of skipped that part.” “Then it didn’t happen.”

Gladiator translation: What we do in this life resonates in the next.

Life is not just about getting past “Go” and collecting our eternal Monopoly’s 200 dollars. There are resonances of eternity in our mundane life.

It comes to this: Enter into the “next life” and believe that Jesus has for us a reception the likes Luke Skywalker received. A cheering crowd, a kiss from a princess, pals that helped save you, comic relief droids (wait, robots in heaven, que va!).

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

Click here to read the sermon: http://www.vatican.va/spirit/documents/spirit_20000721_agostino_en.html

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

Star Wars and Spirituality, 032308

2008-09-08T21:44:00.001-04:00

Resurrection Sunday:

All we like Jesus will be raised up, resurrected, by Jesus’ death and coming back to life, setting us free from sin.

I wonder if, after we are fully sinless, our lives will be somewhat super jedi. Fully capable to do things we only dream of now.

Still, it seems an odd thing that during this reverse chronology of a middle time between the “battle being won” against all evil and Christ’s return we still live in a “shroud of darkness” as they say in Episode II. And during this dark time we have certain powers, not full powers to be sure, but if we are here, now, with exactly the power God Almighty has deemed necessary for us to help him win the world, then it is somewhat disappointing in a cool SW super-power aspect, that those powers do not include light saber skills, force jumping skills, and other force powers like pushing and running fast, psychic and intuitive knowledge, etc.

It must be that love, and the ability to show the love in self-sacrificial ways, like the one-two victory punch by Jesus on the cross, that is the most important power available.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

Star Wars and Spirituality, 031708

2008-07-28T18:04:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 031708:

Palm Sunday, the beach and the revelation of the Jedi:

This Sunday we waved palm branches, walked around outside before the service then did the Anglican Palm Sunday service. This is to remember Jesus returning to Jerusalem in a new Kia instead of a tank or limo. Despite wanting a General Patton / Rambo kind of saviour, his followers dropped palms in the road of the never-riden donkey (aka new Kia) to show how much they loved him and wanted him to be the king. He turned about to be different sort of king the way the Jedi are a different sort of warrior.

Jesus’ return to Jerusalem started the final week before he was taken, beaten, whipped, falsely charged and crucified. Satan was, of course, totally cool with this because he always wants a chance to kill the Creator of All Things that are Good (even Bailey’s). Problem is, Jesus was not just a good man, he was the All Powerful, and you can’t kill God. Complicated math, huh?

AT ANY RATE, keeping all that in mind, on Palm Sunday Jesus was headed towards this most important moment in the existence of everything and the full revelation of himself to man. The tension reminds me of the beach. The sand is humanity, dust to dust and all that, and the ocean is the overwhelming, cleansing water of Christ’s love. Holy week is the celebration of the tidal wave of Jesus.

So what does this have to do with the revelation of the Jedi?

The return of the Jedi in the Original Trilogy, as in the return of the good Jedi to the evil world through Episodes IV to VI, contain somewhat of the idea of the impending restoration, but this week is more like the reverse of the Prequel Trilogy films. In these movies there is a constant, encrouching, about to crash over the SW universe tension. The Jedi feel it, the people feel it. No one knows exactly where the darkness is coming from, or who the power brokers are behind it all, but even spectators have the premonition that great evil is about to crash over the world.

This week we celebrate the greatest good, holiness incarnate, the wave that had begun 33 years earlier with the tiny swell of a poor family driving a used Kia to barn in Bethlehem, swell to the white, frothy crest before the pounding surf of Christ’s redemption of the universe.

Amen, and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

Star Wars and Spirituality email, 030908

2008-07-08T21:45:00.001-04:00

Lazarus and the Jedi view of death:

The Jedi value balance. They seek to create a harmony of balance between their thought and emotions, action and inaction, waiting for the moment and quickly responding to the moment. Life requires balance and the Jedi seek the balance that promotes life. They do not seek extremes. The Sith seek extremes and they do not support life, they support death and deceive themselves into thinking that their bringing on death promotes life.

Anakin has dreams (or implanted images from the Emperor) of Padme dying in childbirth. He goes to Yoda who spouts Buddhist dogma, not even thinly guised:

YODA: Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.

I tend to react to this because I feel it is a bit extreme. Of course we miss them and we do mourn for them to a certain way of thinking. Yet I would agree that extreme attachment does lead to jealousy, among other things. Even further I would agree that our obsession over the dead might be a shadow of greed. In missing my grandmother, it is mostly because I want to see her and spend time with her and share life with her. The balance comes in that I would not begrudge her heaven, that would be greedy.

Enter this week’s lesson in the Anglican prayer book, being the last week before Palm Sunday, about Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life. This is one of his last reported miracles before his own death and resurrection and the theme is the same, building to the great crescendo.

In the hearing of the story I was struck not just at Jesus weeping, but also at the cause of his weeping. This is from John 11. Jesus did not weep because Lazarus was dead, but at Mary and company’s invitation to come to the tomb. He is broken hearted at the sadness caused by death.

In this I find Jesus sounding closer to Yoda than I had previously thought. His weeping now, and his anger before and after this passage, shows his emotion towards the theme of death. For one it is a given to Jesus that death is not the way life was supposed to be. Jesus knows the physical death of Lazarus is “a natural part of life” only in that all people die due to original sin. He also knows it is not the whole story, and that the person of Lazarus, his soul, is not dead like his body. Which, after all, is the more important? The eternal soul, obviously. But he is angry that death is part of our experience because it is not the way things ought to go, and this was the very reason that he was present in human form on earth and, at the moment of this story, so close to defeating death.

What is so similar to Yoda’s words is that he was not mourning and wailing like the rest of the crowd. He had no reason for extreme sadness, for sadness without hope because he knew hope did exist, and that particularly in this case, that the death of Lazarus was specifically meant for the glory of God. The resurrection of Lazarus became a part, a taste, a foreshadowing, of Jesus’ whole resurrection story. In that sense he is saying not to mourn the dead.

Outside of a being who has the authority to kill death, who is supremely more powerful than the Dark Side, we would need to mourn and carry on in all manner of insanity over the death of someone we love.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

Addendum for the “Honors Class:”

Yoda’s speaking of “transforming into the Force” is perhaps a little underdeveloped as a theory because it does not deal with what keeps a Jedi from being strong in the Force in life and in death – namely a Jedi’s failure to follow the way of the Force and an attempt to have more and more, as Anakin tried to do. In our world’s equivalent think sin and our separation from God.

Yoda acts almost as if we should be happy because everyone becomes an energy beam. A case might be brought up that says, “SW is fiction and therefore is free to make up its own rules for who goes where and why when they die.” Fair enough, then it has a responsibility to itself, to what it says is true. In the SW universe good and evil do exist and do vie for people’s lives. There is no logic in the death of a person suddenly making good and evil null and void to that being. Quite the opposite. If the Force is supernatural and eternal, as we are given every indication it is, then the decision toward life and good is of utmost importance to the eternity of that SW character. Can Darth Vader share in the light side of the Force as a ghost in the final scene of Return of the Jedi without confessing, repenting and turning to the light side? No. In the same way can Padme join the Force after death just by being a good person? What about her crimes of omission in allowing the advent of Palpatine by calling for a vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Vellorum’s leadership? What about her denial of the evil growing in Anakin and her refusal to confront them? In Anakin’s dream he sees her dying, and it is very possible that her lack of confession and repentance could lead to death in more than just her body.

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 030208

2008-07-02T17:56:00.000-04:00

Tony Jones, the pre-famous poet, great thinker-at-large, and my friend sent this reply to last week’s email about grace:

“You mention the Jedi taking the force for granted. I hadn't really thought about this before in terms of grace with Christian theology, but it seems that the prequel Jedi are, not only taking the force for granted, but really relying on their own works in a sense rather than being connected to the grace source itself - the force. They are aware to some extent of the mounting power of the dark side - "our ability to use the force has diminished" - but nonetheless take a business-as-usual approach and lack the sense of vision necessary to do what is required to keep the Republic from falling apart. Nowhere do they say, "okay the situation is bad enough that we need to pull out all the stops in our reliance on the force to get this thing done," though perhaps even that wouldn't have done the trick. But my point is that the Jedi are almost stuck in Romans 7 during the prequel era; they really don't get to the freedom of Romans 8 until Luke reestablishes the Jedi order on the ruins of the old institution, and it strikes me as never before what a good analogy to Old Covenant/New Covenant this part of the Star Wars universe provides.”

Beautifully and brilliantly put, Tony. I’d like to dig into his observations in this week’s meditation: The Spirit of the Law versus No Law: True Jedi versus True Sith.

In short, the Jedi die to themselves, trusting in the Force to save them. The Sith live for themselves, trusting themselves to use the Force to save them.

Or, if you like, “You got yourself stuck in the moment, and you can’t get out of it.” – U2.

The prequel Jedi, Anakin most of all, were trying to do it themselves. Anakin told Padme he thought people should be made to be peaceful and come to resolution. Then, with the fear of Padme’s dying he tries to use his own strength to save her. Anakin could have spoken the words of Romans 7:9-13:

“9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.” Anakin as a boy used the Force freely and acted freely, though he was unaware that much of his doings were wrong.
“ 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me?” For Anakin, yes, for Paul, no.
Paul continues, “By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” Anakin’s deviation from Paul’s was that he deceived others and ultimately himself into thinking what was wrong was right in order to produce life in him and his surroundings. The dark side in both SW and our own world would have us believe that there is no such thing as sin. If this were true, I’d thank those who say this very much. As it isn’t, the idea is as wrong as, well, hell.

Contrast Anakin’s striving by forcing the Force with Romans 8: 9-11, which to an extent characterizes Yoda, Ben and Luke in the Old Trilogy,

Romans 8 - “9 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.”

BEN - Remember, a Jedi can feel the
Force flowing through him.

LUKE -You mean it controls your actions?

BEN - Partially. But it also obeys your
commands.

(I’d personally equate this with our obeying the Spirit of the law as given in the Bible, and our working out our faith with fear and trembling and being co-creators with Christ)

Romans 8:9 continues, “And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”

BEN – He’s more machine, now, than man, twisted and evil.

Romans 8, “10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

Equate this to the “resurrection” of Ben, Yoda and Anakin ghost (hey, where’s Qui-Gon? – don’t get me started)

Romans 7 and 8: Talk about a Jedi centering to get perspective.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
http://starwarsjesus.blogspot.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 022408

2008-06-02T19:28:00.002-04:00

Grace

I can imagine that when a Jedi gets into the thick of a battle, or any stressful situation, they are given grace. Of course, who it is that gives them this grace is an interesting subject all its own.

There are times that all we like Jedi receive this grace out of the blue. It is not deserved or many times even asked for. If we do good deeds we don’t qualify ourselves for it any more than if we don’t. There have been some of those times in the past few weeks with myself and members of my family. In a time when it might be logical to be tense, stressed-out, off your game, in the minus column, etc. a relaxing peace comes over you. And for no apparent reason.

I get a sense that Anakin experienced this, though I’m not sure why I think this. I cannot point to a scene where grace is manifested in him. Perhaps the podraces. Or perhaps I get this feeling about him because he is graceful in the other definition of the term, the “simple elegance or refinement of movement” definition. Interesting that this definition almost clashes with the spiritual definition. If you need the God kind of grace, you might very well lack a little of the finese kind of grace. I know I do. Maybe Anakin’s having a bit of both is what made him so special.

The unmerited aspect is one we overlook in thinking of the Jedi. Of course they merit, they deserve, the favor of the Force. I believe the OT (original SW trilogy) resonates with us much more than the prequels for this very reason. We all know we don’t deserve God’s favor, and we recognize and identify with Luke’s response in desiring it, in wanting it more. Otherwise how does he blow the Death Star? Otherwise how can Obi-Wan come back as a ghost? The prequel Jedi lived in a more established world where they knew how great they were. They took the Force for granted, I think.

Most everyone is familiar with the intentional similarity of the blessing “May God be with you” and the Star Wars equivalent “May the Force be with you.” This grace thing is not as quickly connected to Star Wars, forgotten even; yet as blessings go, it comes in second. Priests echo the apostles in their “Grace and Peace to you from our Lord Jesus Christ.” Translated we might get a “May the Grace and Peace from the Force dwell in you.”

May the living Force, Christ himself, grant us that thing we do not deserve and cannot work harder to get. Grace.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars and Spirituality email, 021008

2008-05-27T21:56:00.001-04:00

The Paradox of Star Wars Escapism:

When Yoda criticized Luke for never having his mind on where he was, what he was doing, I think he was pointing out Luke’s extreme escapist tendencies. Just like Luke, all we who love Star Wars could also go too far. We may love dressing up like SW characters, but we know we are not a SW character for real. We may long for the Force to be real in the same way we see it in the movies, but hopefully most of us understand that the telekinetics, the psychic phenomenon and the sci fi gadgets do not even in their wildest reported cases come close to a Jedi’s skills, to Anakin’s foresightful reflexes and to the trusty lightsaber.

But it was Luke’s extreme escapism to which Yoda referred. That he looked to the stars and dreamed of better was healthy. At the core of his longing, and at the core of our love of Star Wars, is the acknowledgement that things in this world are just not right.

Little Ani’s (Anakin) maturity as a child far surpassed Luke’s in that he accepted the rotten nature of his position in life and worked with those things that gave him joy (racing and fixing machines). He was unconsciously a good steward of what he was given. The Force engineered the world of the Jedi to bump into him.

You could argue that Luke became wiser than his Dad later during the time of their meeting, to reach through his parental wounding to show the incredible amount of balanced love that brought the dark Sith Lord back from the dead, so to speak, in order that he may know life even as he was dying. That is a paradox. But not the one I aim for here.

The paradox I want to bring out is that Luke’s looking to the horizon is symbolic of his desire for more life, for a different life, for a better life. The paradox reveals itself in what Luke decides to do, and who he becomes as a result. It is seeing the wrong in the world and hoping for better that causes Luke and Anakin’s wills to be resolute when tested. Luke’s desire for escape made him open to learn about the Force, which taught him skills and powers that he used not to escape more, but to help change the world around him for the better. He learned to give of himself in the Death Star’s trench, in leading troops, in seeking to rescue his friends on Cloud City, in giving himself to Darth Vader. His faith and hope in the Force caused him to use the supernatural to change the natural.

May God take our love of Star Wars as the kernel he needs to teach us his ways in changing our reality.

This first week of Lent our Gospel reading is Mark 1: 9-13, where a similar reaction to the world is going on with Jesus. He is baptized and the Spirit descends upon him after John brings him out of the water. A voice booms from the sky, “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Then Jesus is lead by the Spirit in him into the desert, where Satan tempts him for forty days.

Jesus loves the world and is baptized by John (instead of vice versa) to be part of our human experience, part of our goings on, affected by his own creation. He has dreamed of a better world, more like the one he created, ever since Adam committed the original sin. This moment in Jesus’ life is his how he started turning the dream into – not escaping - but engaging and changing the world.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality, 020308

2008-05-12T22:15:00.001-04:00

Death and Life, old and new

This week my dog died. My dear Sophia who was 10 and a half and barely old enough to be old, and certainly not old enough to die. It is a big blow to my wife and I especially. Sophia was a very dear friend who sensed our emotions and comforted us. She was cute and pathetic, fierce and wimpy. She was always an old dog, and yet constantly a puppy.

Her death must pale in comparison to this: I have only one sibling, and this week his wife gave birth to their first child. Elijah has a head full of hair and he is cuter than my son when he was born – which is saying quite a lot. I have only seen pictures and already know he is great and that his life is beautiful and meaningful and that I love him totally. I can’t wait to see him this next weekend.

Then there are other stark contrasts to this week: My “Christian” publisher owes me money and is in no hurry to even admit they owe, much less pay up. Contrast that with this week’s second interview for a paralegal job that seems very interesting.

Who knows how much God’s hand is in all this? From what I’ve read of the Bible, it seems he has all and nothing to do with it. This week I have had much taken from me, and much given to me.

A New Hope plays so quickly, that we don’t often ponder the movie’s chronicling of Luke’s sudden life changing experiences happening within the space of days. He is a teen aged dreamer who can’t even keep droids corralled one minute, then the next he learns odd things about his father and some universal power he can learn to tap into, then the next his aunt and uncle are slaughtered, then the next he – well, you don’t need me to tell you the story.

This week has been one of those Luke in ANH weeks. In this time a proper prayer might be that God save us and stay with us so that the Death Stars ahead of us might be slayed. “Take up your cross and follow me,” seems an accurate interpretation.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars and Spirituality, 012708

2008-05-07T21:54:00.001-04:00

Hoth

I thought the subject matter fitting, considering the frozen terrain.

In the opening scenes of Empire Strikes Back Luke is not present and not aware of his surroundings. He is mauled by the Wampa Ice Creature and brought into his cave. He uses the Force to kinetically bring his fallen lightsaber into his hand from a nearby snowbank. He slices himself free, then cuts off the arm of the approaching Wampa and high-tails it out of the cave, only to collapse in the snow and almost freeze to death.

As Yoda tells him once he gets to Dagobah, his mind is never, “on where he was, what he was doing.” This exactly summarizes his failure to be present in the moment on Hoth. I’ve written about this to a small extent in Entry 28 of the book.

Part of being present in the moment has much to do with education and training. Luke was an unconscious incompetent. He was aware of only the barest history of the Jedi and of the Force. And he hardly knew how to use his lightsaber, or that he could easily have killed the Wampa and stayed warm in his cave – not to mention sensing its presence in the first place.

At this stage of Luke’s development, that is to say un-development, he is a symbol of the rebel force. They are not well funded, not well organized, not well trained and must be ever-vigilant of the endless pursuit of the Empire. They have no time to learn from the past and to train for the future. As soon as they have the snow speeders up and running they have to engage the enemy and retreat, scampering off to another remote planet.

This is often like our lives. We accept Jesus as God and man, we believe in his life and death and resurrection, then how much farther do we go?

Luke needed to learn about the history of the Jedi and the workings of the Force and the practice of the Force like we need to know about the history of God working with his creation and the issues that previous generations have encountered. It is for all people to seek truth by study, by dialogue, by reason, and by listening to our hearts.

Unfortunately, it is possible for us to be like Luke on Hoth our whole lives. That’s scary. We want to believe a Ben-ghost will tell us to go to Dagobah, but there is no guarantee an old, wise sage will show.

A Jedi learns, a Jedi trains. A Jedi does not want to remain like Luke before Dagobah. Neither does a person seeking truth.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

Star Wars and Spirituality email, 012008

2008-04-22T17:48:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 012008:

How long to sing this song?

Sorry that I am a day late in writing this. On this Martin Luther King day instead of quoting U2’s song Pride (In the name of love) I am quoting from 40, and thus from Psalm 40. Not exactly appropriate, but the theme came up in church yesterday, and its where I’m at.

The store is going a little slow, my erstwhile warehouse job borders on the absurd and my novel did not get into the semi-finals of a competition.

The line, “How long to sing this song” is not featured in the Bible’s version of the U2 psalm (ha), but the idea goes like this: We long for the presence of Christ on this Earth again. We long for the One who hears our cry and pulls us out of the miry clay, and sets our life going in the right direction to glorify him.

Jews long for the Messiah, Christians long for the Messiah, and all who seek truth long for that which (who?) is true to save us from ourselves in the greater sense of ultimate redemption as well as the everyday redemption that is God’s continuing work in us. It is no less marvelous, but in the small things of life I yearn for the larger myth to be true and for the tension of the song to be resolved. Without the resolution the tension is meaningless.

I cling to this: that the Jedi seek to be small and not great because the truth in our world that God lifts the head of the lowly to give them worth, that he gives Grace to the humble, that he makes the last to be first, that the way to using much power is to not use our own power.

Listening to 40 right now puts me in the same place as the first entry in Star Wars Jesus; the image of Luke with his foot on the mound watching the binary sunset. He is longing for his life to get going as I am. Maybe as you are.

“How long, Lord Christ, till your servant succeeds in what you are doing in him?”

A Jedi’s power flows from the Force, even when we do not feel things are flowing. How do I know? I don’t. But I have faith. Unless the Force guide us, we have nothing.

Bono quotes Verse 3 - I will sing, sing a new song. This is as much a lament as a new song of beckoning our savior to come. I am sad he is not here, but joyful in my pangs of expectation of his coming. In my present soul weariness I stand on tippy toes to sing, sing a new song.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 011308

2008-04-07T21:59:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 011308:

What do Frederick Buechner, the Force and the 08 Election have in common?

If we have, at the very least, a passing interest in the spiritual aspects of the Star Wars movies – and we do – the Force means a great deal to us.

We seek after real versions of the energy field that is created by all living things that surrounds us and penetrates us and that binds the galaxy together. We long for the power that partially controls us and that partially obeys our commands. There is a relationship we feel with the person behind it all, that causes the midiclorians to work for good.

In what way do we connect with it, though?

Time and time again we are reminded that we gain skills and power and plunge ourselves further into the Force by the practice of being calm, still, at peace – passive. This is how we know the dark side from the light, this is how we center ourselves, and this is how we come to a posture of receiving from the Force.

Enter Buechner.

From his popular devotional Listening to Your Life, to his books Whistling in the Dark and Now and Then, shoot, just about everything he writes, deals with the themes of hearing God calling to you in all manners great and small.

It is important to be calm, still and at peace in order to hear God’s calling. Our busy-ness often blocks out God’s calling. The things he wants us to see, and the ways he wants us to see himself, are that exact thing we are after when loving the Force, wanting that power to be our own.

Enter the 08 Election in the US. This is the first and last time I’ll say anything about this issue here.

“But how will I know the best candidate for me?”
“When you are calm, at peace.”

I think we can trust that most things the candidates say from a year ago until forever will be spin, whether or not there are any truths to them.

We all know that we must research the issues, the candidates, the moment, etc, ad nauseum. Let us not forget, however, to listen to God’s voice calling to us, especially this election season.

“Will the Almighty tell us who to vote for, or who he is picking?” Seeking the answer to this is missing the point entirely.

If we learn to hear God in our lives, feel his leading us to holier lives, then we are using the Force to become Jedi-like in all the tasks of life.

I Kings 19 puts it very well:

“11 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
13 So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.”

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 010608

2008-03-24T20:52:00.003-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 010608:

Epiphany

The purpose of these emails is to uncover and celebrate that “aha” moment, where Christ reveals himself to us in the Star Wars movies.

In the church calendar, today we celebrate the Magi’s, AKA “The Wise Men’s,” Epiphany in following the star and finding the Christ – God come to Earth. They knew him upon discovery, they worshipped him, and gave him gifts.

So today is like the celebration of Star Wars Jesus in that to me, like many of you, I see Christ – the Holy Lord, God, Creator, Messiah reflected and revealed in many Jedi beliefs and even in the very concept of the Force. Today is a momentous occasion and a great day to celebrate.

God does come to man. Our stories tell about that, even when they aren’t meaning to. Our universe cries out in worship and longing to its maker. Sometimes we see it, like the wise men, we follow the star and we get the sense that God is in the moment and right in front of us, and we are not too weirded out to understand it. Everything seems so perfectly in order. Other times those very same moments elude us and we think it is just a star, or we don’t see God, or think he is something other than he is. I grieve for those of us, myself sometimes, who do not see God when he is right in front of us.

In many ways we understand God’s spiritual truths through the context of Star Wars. Self sacrifice we understand through Luke Skywalker, perseverance and patience through Obi-Wan, the transcendance and glowyness of our spirits through Yoda. These are all concepts the Bible teaches, and that Christ came to show us more fully. They are easy and yet hard, simple and yet complex, in the open and yet hidden.

Let us not get so caught up in Star Wars, or any other thing, that we forget this wonderment:

“9After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east[e] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”

Matthew 2:9-11

Wow, like Amen!
and thanks for reading,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 122307

2008-03-17T19:17:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 122307:

Good Christmas Eve’s Eve

In our world the Christian sub-culture can often seem very fake, and Atheism or materialism or any other –ism that perverts or ignores the reasonable argument for a God of love can seem all too real. Into this world came a movie 30 years ago that showed a world very unlike our own, but one in which there were small and insignificant good guys fighting against terrible and overwhelmingly powerful bad guys.

As much as the maker of that film neither did nor does believe in absolute good or absolute evil, the legend goes that he nonetheless wanted to make a moral film in an age of immorality; one that would describe a world where the spiritual forces of good and evil raged against each other. He wanted to create a myth that pointed towards truth in our own world. Now we call the movie Episode IV, or A New Hope, or ANH for short. When it came out we just called it Star Wars.

I do not point to the popularity of A New Hope to defend the spiritual truths it speaks of – masses make right is fallible. Instead I point to the spiritual truths of A New Hope to defend the hunger of the masses for something that echoes as real truth to us.

Last night I saw the movie Star Dust, from a Neil Gaiman novel. It had all the trappings of an excellent fantasy, but failed in that we cannot believe the characters have hit the core drama, the core truth about their situations or the world around them. There was something not quite real in their struggle. It did not have the harsh beauty of the reality we suspect exists in our world when we see Star Wars. Luke practices with the remote on the Millennium Falcon with the blast shield down, and parries with the remote and when Obi Wan tells him he has taken his first step into a larger world we believe there is a larger world. And for some reason the fight to belong in that larger, spiritual world of good and evil takes place in this smaller, mundane, confusing and temporal world. Maybe this world is not so unlike our own after all. The change from mere person to Jedi has to take place in every individual. Luke does not just capture some crystal or some such and suddenly he is king. Obi Wan Kenobi dies, most of the rebel fighters die, and Luke is not able to destroy the Death Star on his own.

I suspect the difference in the two movie’s success (or lack of) is not that Star Dust is fantasy and Star Wars is science fiction/space western.

The difference is that Star Wars demonstrates a morality closer to that which resonates with all of us as true, and not coincidentally that of the Bible as well. We do not just feel the truth and it is so. In fact, just the opposite. Moral absolutes exist, and all reason and myth testify to them, and because of this our desires gravitate toward those stories that get it right.

A New Hope got it right.

May your celebration of the advent of The Christ be excellent,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality, 121607

2008-03-09T23:14:00.001-04:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 121607: “Hello, Mimi”

My grandmother died three days ago.

When I was an infant and just learning to speak I called her Mimi and it just stuck. Mimi had rheumatoid arthritis so badly that the swollen joints of her hands caused her fingers to curl in on her palms. At the dinner table she would have one of us help her, “put me some of that.” I would kid her about her southernisms. She also knew how much I loved them.

The medicine she had to take weakened her bones so that her vertebrae were collapsing on themselves. At the end she had to wear a brace around her neck and a brace around her torso; she hated to wear them, and wouldn’t as much as she could get away with. The pain she experienced over the last year, though she was not one to complain so who knows how long it had been going on, was so excruciating as to seem like torture. She is an independent spirit and she tried to make her body as independent as she possibly could. She never – ever – asked for more help than she needed, always less help than she needed.

She wanted to go home to Jesus in the worst way. We are all so glad that her pain is over and her dream has come true. We also miss her very much. But would we have wanted her to stay in such pain just so we could be with her?

Mimi lived around my family for twenty some years, and in an apartment in my parent’s house for the last five. She liked to make biscuits from a box. And as much pain as she was in, it was one of her final joys to wait on my 5-year old son (her only grandchild at the moment) hand and foot when we would visit – feeding him snacks and watching Christian TV cartoons with him. They would also hang out and talk for hours, which is something for an age difference of almost 80 years. She encouraged me, served me, joked with me and talked about deep and personal issues with me. She loved God very passionately, and always talked about him, and how we must keep the faith. Her love to everyone was evident from the start, and yet she told me this past year that she feels she was just beginning to learn about God’s love and how to love people.

She was shriveled like Yoda, old like Yoda (ok, she was 84, which is like 900 SW years), had a walker like Yoda’s cane (though I played with it on visits much more than she ever used it) and she had a concept of the larger world of the spirit just like Yoda. She was extremely poor like Yoda. She does not have a posture of wisdom like Yoda, however, and I think that makes her wiser than Yoda – not to mention she is real, and Yoda is not. She is full of a consciousness of what she did not know which came from her upbringing in the boondocks of Georgia; I think this is the most honest way to be. I use the present tense here to affirm the greater life she now has.

My wife and I were thinking together last night about Mimi. It is not the memory or the hope or the “banking” on future events that creates our relationship with Mimi. It is the fullness of experiences had, of Mimi known up to the present. None of that can ever be taken away by her death. She longed for the life she has now so much that her death is an augmentation, an addition, to her complete life. Knowing Mimi in the body she had is to know her incompletely. For all of us who are still “alive,” none of who she is has diminished in these last days, though as Lord Celeborn in The Lord of the Rings said about Gandalf I have to say about Mimi, “I much long to speak with her.”

Where or when or how her soul and spirit are right now I have no idea. It is a wonder, though, that such a big leap of faith, such a big belief in life after death seems so easy, so natural, so fitting. It is much more realistic than a paltry “she does not exist any longer.” It seems much harder to believe Mimi was wrong, and that Jesus and heaven and enhanced life are all in our imaginations.

I don’t think of Mimi like a Ben-ghost or a Yoda-ghost talking to Luke Skywalker after their deaths. I have not seen a hazy image of her and she has not told me new things or new information we never shared in life. Instead I think of her as I have always thought of her when I was not with her – the presentness of her personality, of who she is. She is much more now than she ever was three days ago, or ever in her life before. She is still living. Just not in the same form as three days ago.

Mimi did not know or care for Star Wars all that much. It moved too fast for her, she said. I will tell you one thing, though; Mimi could use the Force of God’s love in such small ways as to echo across galaxies and through generations. Hello, Mimi.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality, 120907

2008-03-02T21:55:00.002-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 120907

“May the Force be with You”

My son and I just watched ANH. “The original one,” he calls it. It seems that so many times Obi-wan or Luke or the Flight Commander or Han Solo is saying, “May the Force be with you.”

Can we make the Force be with us? It’s always “may,” as in it is not up to us to bestow, even upon ourselves. Yet, in ANH, Obi-Wan’s voice comes to Luke in the cockpit “The Force will be with you, always.”

Maybe the bestowal of the Force upon others, as in the group of rebels saying it before they mount their fighters to face the Death Star in ANH and between friends (Han and Luke), is like this our own world’s age old question of salvation – which is God’s presence with us, and our’s with him.

We can ask God to bless people we love and those we hate and all those in the middle. God’s love to us all is sometimes welcome, if want it to be evidenced in good things happening to us, and sometimes not, if we want him to let us keep doing what we want.

But can we ever say, God’s presence will be with you, always, and know it for a fact? I personally don’t think so. I’d say Obi-wan bestowing that blessing on Luke was not a carte blanche blessing of overwhelming power and luck for whatever he would like to do for the rest of his life. He still goes on to make blunders (see Empire Strikes back for a dose of that).

Characters in SW cannot make the Force be with them any more than we can make God’s presence be with us. There are times when we do not meet God’s will, there are times when he brings us to low places to glorify himself, and there is all his wisdom that we know nothing about. So we have to believe God will be with us, always (not that God = the Force, I make that abundantly clear in the book), even when we do not think he is, or feel he is. The life of faith is the life of trust, of being willing and open to failure.

I must say, though, after this week of play rehersals and performances, difficult work situations and our art supply store opening, I do feel that I asked for God’s presence to be with us, and that in ways known and unknown, expected and not expected, he honored that request.

Amen, and thanks for reading. This year has been a celebration of “the original” movie’s 30th year. Stay tuned for next week’s meditation on the entire movie. If you have friends who might enjoy this email (Amanda), get them to sign up.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 120207

2008-02-21T23:14:00.002-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Good Sabbath to you, and here is the Star Wars meditation for this week: Christmas Star Wars

Now we are in the rush of the Christmas season, and my wife and I are in the middle of opening an art supply store. Double rush. Triple rush.

We wanted to open it months ago, but the planning, the executing and all the other people and factors involved caused things to go in directions I did not want them to go. Usually the change means something going slower. Now we are 6 days from opening. Quadruple rush.

In things going slower with all the thises and the thats that go on, I am feeling like Anakin. If I can just make it go my way, then everything will go better, faster, etc, etc.

But Anakin went wrong in this exact way, he did not trust the Force, or whatever was behind the Force, to work things out with him. The everyday details of life are the very substances of working out our pre-death salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). I believe Jesus can be the Christ of our daily salvation, but trusting him to help us open this store? Wouldn’t a stress attack be much more helpful, therapeutic, even? I must control things.

With a week to go in this experience of the opening of an art supply store I can tell you that it seems there is a thing behind the scenes pushing things in ways other than I expect or desire. Could it be that we were supposed to open now and not a couple months ago? I have no idea, but I believe, I have faith, based on what I’ve seen, that things are coming together in a way that is Good (purposeful capitalization). And, again, I am having to ask God to help this circumstance and be in it, and trust that he is. There have been numerous situations that cause me to think there is a power behind the who, the what, the when, the where, the why and the how of the store’s coming together to make it work out for good. Here are just a few things I’ve noticed: if we were open earlier we would not have been able to spend as much time last week at my parent’s place with family and with my cousin who got married last Sunday. We would have gone up for the wedding and quickly come back down, tied to the store. Also, one of our suppliers has just offered to let us sell holiday gifts on consignment. Would they have given this deal to us a couple months earlier? Who is to say? If we had decided to rent the place we wanted to be in, and found the asbestos only after signing the lease, would we now have to be closing? There are too many variables to know what success would have looked like to know if we had or had not reached it.

Still, it is hard for me to breathe easy and work with the situations that arise instead of against them.

I often remember Mr. Miaggi from the old movie The Karate Kid, “remember to breathe, very important.” And so I have started do this. Just taking deep breaths and letting them fully out. With “a lot to do” this becomes more and more important. I realize in doing this that I had been taking very short, quick breaths and not letting go, Luke.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality 112507

2008-01-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Happy Sunday. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week: The Mud and the Muck

Traveling this week I heard a thing on the radio about the Masowe Apostles, in Zimbabwe, Africa. They are a sect that meets in the muddy and mucky outskirts of towns, in the least likely of places. As some people go into town to church, to the sophistication of a church building, these folks head out of town to sewery swamps and boggy fields wearing white cloaks, hoods up.

This religious tradition seeks to revere nature, to find God in the lowly places.

There is mystery and myth in the locale of their worship. And they are conscious of this. We SW buffs think of Dagobah, and placing deep spiritual truths in this kind of a place was a conscious choice of Lucas’ as well. He got it from Joseph Campbell, who pointed out the importance of mud, the primordial ooze and all that what. If I had been made to guess where the line, “luminous beings are we” would have been spoken, I would have imagined a place more like cloud city or Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, or maybe a nod to the Greek way of life in that galaxy far, far away and oh so long ago. Instead it comes from mucky, swampy, smelly, boggy, totally icky Dagobah. Maybe we have to get in touch with the lowest, most basic places of our carbon world to understand the highest peaks.

I can’t help but think of the Army bases I was stationed on in my short time “in the service.” You will not find a more wretched hive of mud and wallowing than an Army base. They all have mud. After my time, though, I wonder if commanders don’t actually understand that mud is important for training and for perspective. A soldier has to understand that he or she will be dirty in war-time and so must train to be used to it and therefore must not look to be exalted, but must look to be in the earth, and part of it. The best soldier understands this and has no expectations of clean glory or easy victory.

So it is with us, spiritually and physically and practically. Luke learned some important things in the mud. Was it essential that he learn it in the mud? I’m not sure. The Masowe Apostle’s seem to actively seek out the muck. With all the talk lately of recession and America’s overspending and over consuming and wasting and living above our means I wonder if this is not a very important point for us - that there is blessing in the lowness of life and that it is time to live close to the mud.

Jesus even healed with mud, from time to time.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

Star Wars & Spirituality email 111807

2008-01-14T20:19:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Welcome to new friends and Good Sabbath to you all. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week: The non-hero’s journey.

Luke gets mauled by a Wampa Ice Creature on Hoth, then fails at tasks Yoda gives him to do, even disobeying him by going into the dark cave with his weapons. In A New Hope he gets caught by the creature in the garbage compactor and pulled under and even in the last film (I hope) he knowingly endangers the mission by his very presence in the command shuttle and falls into the meat and net trap with the rest of his friends.

Luke is an everyman’s hero. He was not self-sufficient, you could make the argument that this hero had to be helped along…perhaps even by the Force. In his moments of success he depended on the Force, asking for help even, to the point where his attitude seemed to be, “if the Force does not help me, I will fail.”

Most of us are not heroes. Maybe we are even non-heroes. But is our journey much different? I think we focus on one main character and his success, and therefore make a hero or celebrity out of him or her because of the simple Ego effect. Psychologists have written extensively on this subject but the basic point is this: we all come from our own, single, point of view, and thus to see this in stories is both natural and desired.

Odd, then, that we also love the way Luke finds success. Now that the second trilogy is finished this point becomes one of the major spiritual truths of the six films. Anakin did not trust the Force, he trusted himself, Luke let go of the Ego to let the Great Ego, the Great Singular point of view, the Force - God himself if that argument could be made - do his work in the world, and in him. Applied to ourselves this truth that allows us to focus on the work, and not put ourselves ahead of the work, or the one who gave us the work. He gives us this work to be part of his greater work. I think once we do this, however, it is often easy to assume the doing of the work and the succeeding at the work is the end of it. There is an experience of communion and learning about what God is doing in our lives that is important to growing in the Force.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 111107

2007-12-30T21:22:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Good Sabbath to you, and welcome to new friends. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week:

“Good against a remote is one thing. Good against a living – that’s something else.” – Han Solo

Han Solo says this to Luke in Episode IV – A New Hope. You know, the movie that still has influence in 2007, its 30th year in existence? In case you did not watch it last night, not that I did or did not so such a thing – or even that I watch them repeatedly, and often. Me, no, not me – I mean, really, what kind of geek does that?

But if I did watch it last night, then I might have been inspired by Luke’s outrageous, and early, success at parrying with the remote, blast shield down over his eyes. But homey did stretch out with his feelings and did anticipate the beams coming out of the remote – using the Force, Luke – and this was his first step into a larger world. Hmm, I’m using a lot of quotables in this text – maybe I did watch it last night.

Han Solo saw him, and still was not convinced, causing the above bolded quote, and this meditation. How could he see Luke use the Force and not think that there was something to it? Like, he did not even have the smallest inkling that this power could be used for other things than training games? Solo needs any kind of break he can get with the life he leads, and he remains unconvinced this is anything more than a parlor trick.

I’ll likely receive some kind of feedback from this meditation saying he really was, but that his swashbuckling pride would not let him let on that he was impressed. Whatever the case, as much as I’d like to be like Luke, even when I have success “using the Force,” or rather, being the person God wants me to be, doing the thing God wants me to do and following his lead in my everyday life, I tend to say, “good against a living, that is an entirely different thing.” When I say, “using the Force,” I mean comprehending his words to me personally in the Bible (not literally, exactly, mind you, more like what do I need to learn from what I am reading), or hearing him call me one way or another, advising me, counseling me with his Holy Spirit. Even in having past successes like Luke with the shield down, I still doubt. What’s up with that? I see Luke and think, “well, if he did this, then surely he would have confidence to at least try this and this and that.” Like, if you can use the Force to target the shaft in the death star that triggers its massive explosion wouldn’t you be able to lift a measly X-wing out of the muck? That is child’s play, right?

Or, for me, I had faith that God was whispering to my wife and I to quite our job and sell our house and move to the country and start our new careers – so when it comes time for more changes like a new job or the beginnings of a new church I ought to be easily able to handle these stresses. Right?

Sure, and Jedi don’t backslide either. Not that I am backsliding. Not that I’m not. Just that there are variables in life. Lots of ins, lots of outs, lots of what have yous.

So the truth, as obvious as it is, is that chronology of time does not assure progression in the Force, in the Faith. That so sucks.

Generally as years go by I do think study, meditation, logical thought, living with spiritual truths - I am understanding more of the true and real trinity-God, of who he is and what he wants from me; but there are times when I have doubts that this faith is good against a living.

And really, that is all I have to say. I wanted to have a more profound “message” for today, as we’ve added more personages to the list this week, and I’d really like to impress you new subscribers. But you go where you are led, I suppose, and Han Solo’s words strike me as particularly true.

One thing that has rung true to me over the years is that answers are not always immediate, and answers are not all they’re cracked up to be, and thus not all that complete. Sometimes it is important, very, very important, to live with the question, to sit and mull it over, to not rush into words of answers, thought of answers. So I leave you with this (rhetorical) question:

Is faith in God good against a living?

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com

Star Wars & Spirituality email, 110407

2007-12-26T22:20:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Good Sabbath to you, and welcome to new friends. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week:

Why Christians need another myth.

I do not know if it is a coincidence that Joseph Campbell has the same initials as my savior, but it is bizarre at the least. Good ole Joe was a proponent of engaging in myths, which is to say, being a fan of other myths than the religious tradition you belong to.

I’ve written about this mainly because my love of Star Wars and the writing of the book is that same practice, though it happened before I read Joe telling me that I should, or that it was good for me in some psychological fashion that connected me to the mythology of ages.

As it is Sunday, a good day for confessing, I will confess to all of you that I never really paid the theory of having fun with a secondary myth much conscious, and therefore serious attention. And when I say serious attention I mean the serious business of fun. This serious business of fun is the exact reason why it is good that we enjoy another myth.

I was reminded of this by the TV interview I had this week. As I sat in the huge cavern of a building that housed three separate studios just in the one partition where my interview was being held, I watched the intro to the show, “off-stage” as it were. The TV show is called Harvest (www.harvest-tv.com) and the hosts played around with lightsabers and a darth cape to introduce the show, and let people know I would be on.

But I never asked for this, and not until the 4, 3, 2, 1 coming back on the air to interview me did the hosts and myself even discuss what would be said.

The Star Wars myth is good for Christians because it is fun, and because we don’t have to be stogy about it, it is to a great extent disposable. So we can take it or leave it. It is like a vacation. There are no “shoulds.” “You really should open the show with lightsabers.” That’s ridiculous, of course, and exactly the spiritual point for this week.

There is a time for everything under the sun, and that includes a time to celebrate a myth, but not have to have any real connection to it as far as defending the faith is concerned. We can play with the philosophy of Star Wars, the supernatural powers of the Jedi and the Sith using the Force in somewhat of a controlled environment. Star Wars is not real, as in it did not historically actually happen, so we can just have fun with it.

For Christians this is darn near vital. You can’t play around with Jesus like that. Not really. You can’t pretend, for example, he is coming back to smite the enemy without realizing that not only is this most people on earth, but it might be you, too. This does not make for a light-hearted intro to a Christian TV show. And I imagine it would not cause people to keep watching, as true as it might, in fact, be.

I was struck by the hosts having fun. They were excited to do a show where they could relax a bit. And even in the face of great tragedy, as the news part of the show reported on the people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and the damage and floods from the hurricane. Most of life, most of news, is serious, deals with real life struggles and death and life. To sometimes have a pressure release valve (playing with Star Wars stuff) helps to balance life a bit, and it certainly did so for the hosts, and I imagine it did so for their viewers as well.

But lest we be overly flippant about this, I do think this topic is worth a meditation, because Christians do tend to get bogged down in the realness of Christ, the son of God and God himself actually coming down to earth and actually dying for our sins and actually being the one, true God. This is extremely important. Getting it wrong or being frivolous about our faith causes all kinds of damage.

So I think God allows us, helps us, and encourages us to create myths other than the myth that is true, so that we can play and have fun and experiment and not worry about defending our faith for a moment.

Sunday is, after all, a day of rest. Maybe it is a day to rest in the fun of a myth, too; a day to play with your Star Wars Lego video game, to spar with your lightsabers, to make those AT-AT walker’s legs walk. Maybe even to watch an episode, or even a few of your favorite scenes.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
to opt out of this email click here.

P.S. – I will miss the international Star Wars moment of 11:38, so I am sending this early. Remember to set your clocks back.
P.P.S. – I share with you what I think is important, but we all have ideas about Star Wars and Spirituality. If anyone would like to contribute to these weekly emails, please send me the text and I’ll review, edit and send out.
P.P.P.S – If anyone would like to give an autographed copy of my book to someone, or themselves, for Christmas, you can buy the book securely on my website, and send me an email letting me know how you’d like it to read.

Star Wars & Spirituality email 102807

2007-12-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Good Sabbath to you. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week:

Frederick Buechner, the Force...and you.

My wife pointed out yesterday’s reading from, “Listening to Your Life” by Frederick Buechner. I will quote it here for you.

“Myth October 27

The raw material of myth, like the raw material of a dream, may be something that actually happened once. But myths, like dreams, do not tell us much about that kind of actuality. The creation of man, Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Oedipus – they do not tell us primarily about events. They tell us about ourselves.
In popular usage, a myth as come to mean a story that is not true. Historically speaking that may well be so. Humanly speaking, a myth is a story that is always true.”

At a book signing yesterday, a fellow author and I were talking about this very thing. The truth of myth. I am also reminded of a TV interview I had this summer in Binghamton, NY. I was asked about the truth of myth, and it is this exact idea that you hear Christians talk about, and you read Tolkien, Lewis, Buechner, Grimes ☺, saying again and again. If our faith is anything other than ridiculous, it is true. And if myth stories are the spiritual truth of the heart, as theology is the spiritual truth of the mind, then our faith has much in common with other “faiths” or “belief systems” regardless of whether theirs or ours is actual and historical. I’ve certainly mentioned these ideas in previous emails.

Myth being a thing that is “always true” does not mean a journalist has chronicled an event that actually happened. Myth being true, and hence Star Wars being true, does not mean that a long time ago in a galaxy far far away these things really happened. It does mean that there are truths that Star Wars talks about that are just as true in our world as they are in their world.

Today I want to meditate on the truth of myth stories around the world. So many of the stories that come out of worlds that we think of as completely unrelated and isolated from each other, but that end up being so common and similar to each other points to two main things. First, it points to those stories being similar inside each of us individually, and collectively as part of a community, a culture. Second, it points to our not being isolated at some point.

And I think Star Wars is popular all over the world because of this. The truth of myth reaches through cultural and geographical and chronological barriers precisely because we are one as a human race and, more importantly, children of the living God who is speaking to us through these stories. Is he even saying something to us through the Oedipus myth? Topic for conversation in your circles, certainly. At least it gets people of differing faith traditions talking about the commonalities between us. Let me be clear as to my purpose here: I really want dialogue, and think the truth of Christ (the myth maker, the Word, the Light of the World) can shine through in this dialogue. I do not believe in a pan-religion where we all just get along. Jesus demands and deserves to be worshipped and glorified. If he is not true, then of course he doesn’t, but really if Jesus is true, then many of our myth stories point to him.

That is what I wanted to say for today. I will leave you with a wondering of mine. If myth is true, as in myth stories tell us truths about our lives and our identities, is it possible that “in the next life,” which is really a continuation of this life, Star Wars powers might be ours?

Might we levitate, fly even in the new Heaven and new Earth? Could we sink below the ground? What will be the quality of our new bodies? Will we be able to harness energy in the way the Jedi do? That energy that is all around us that God has instilled into creation, as part of its, and our, innate nature must be able to be harnessed in some way. I’d argue that our un-sinful selves are even meant to harness it, as in God purposed us to use it in this life, and will redeem this world so that we will be able to in “the next life.”

These thoughts cause me to think eagerly about that time, long for it, even, just like Luke longs for the “other” as he watches the binary sunset with his foot up on the burm of his sunken desert home in the Episode IV. That place is our true home, and myth stories call to me, to us, to engage now in the practice of becoming that person who is fully ready for that world.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
to opt out of this email click here.

P.S. – Sorry I missed 11:38 yet, yet, yet again.
P.P.S. – I share with you what I think is important, but we all have ideas about Star Wars and Spirituality. If anyone would like to contribute to these weekly emails, please send me the text and I’ll review, edit and send out.

Star Wars & Spirituality email 102107

2007-12-11T20:04:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality, 102107

Good Sabbath to you. Here is the Star Wars meditation for this week:

Feel the flowing of the Force.

In this world feeling the Force flow starts with a very simple concept that is forever difficult to perfect. Matthew 16:25 sums it up pretty succinctly:

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

We start here. We get out of the way of ourselves. Sure, we are still the main character in our own lives. We eat, we sleep, we go to work, and we make decisions to do this or don’t do that. It is a paradox that getting out of the way of ourselves, of losing our life, of giving it up, of saying we do not want to be self-centered any longer is the actual way to increase who we are in a spiritual sense, in an eternal sense.

And let’s not forget the reason why we do it. If we do it for ourselves, we are a “clanging symbol” (I Corinthians 13). If the Jedi work for themselves, they cease to be Jedi, they become Sith. Once there was a boy named Anakin…and I think we all know where his trying to devote himself to his own power got him.

You might well argue with me that there was no Jesus in the Star Wars films. But let me ask you this: was there a Jesus in the Old Testament? Well, if God in three persons is and was and will always be, then your darn tootin’ he existed in the OT (Old Testament and Original Trilogy if you as me). Was he an historical figure? Not in the movies. Not in the OT, though the idea of the Messiah was and is vitally important. The source of all love, for God is love he tells us, is why we lose our lives for his sake. “His” means losing our lives for the creator and embodiment of love’s sake. This action makes straight our paths, unclogs our “Force pores” so to speak.

Losing ourselves is a continual process. You can’t just go lose yourself, be connected to the Force, then always have the same level of connection. Time and practice deepen our abilities in the Force, and, like Mother Teresa, letting go allows the Holy Spirit to work in us, through us, around us. Letting go for his sake increases the power we are able to use by letting go of our own power. We then tap into a higher power, and our tapping into this higher power, this use of a higher power is the flowing of the Force. It decreases when we want it for ourselves and increases when we want to use it for his sake.

Here is a hugely important case in point: My wife and I are in a bit of a money jam right now. The experiment of quitting my job and selling our house and moving to Staunton, VA so that she could paint and so that I could write has come to an end in that it is time for me, and likely her as well, to get a job. She has been painting and I have been writing. Now it is time to do a lot less of that so that we can afford to pay rent and eat and pay off credit cards, etc., etc. But we had the chance this past week to give some money that my wife had made at an art show to a friend that needed it. Did our friend need it more than we do? I have no idea and it doesn’t even matter. Jesus says he wants us to love our enemies in this same way, and though I don’t particularly have any enemies, I am still working on this Jedi skill.

Back to the point: my wife gave it freely and within a few hours we both were given news of a little more money coming in to us, and a job opportunity for me. Now, I don’t want to be superstitious, but God does say test him in this, and so I think giving is an important discipline in living like I think the Jedi must live. We never see them walking along like the disciples, saying, “we don’t have any money, but in the name of Jesus be healed, get up and walk,” but I do imagine that if we saw more of their down time it is not too far fetched to imagine something Star Wars similar to the disciples.

I hate to sound so Sunday school about it, but the giving felt so good, so luxurious, like we could afford to give things. Our tendency is to think we have to have to at least be making it financially before we can give generously. That old widow in the Bible who gave her last bit of money, though, she was living luxuriously.

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

Star Wars translation:
Whoever wants to gain more Jedi Force skills will give up his or her personal power (and anything else God is nagging us to give up, let go of, give away, etc) for the sake of the Messiah, the true God, and he will multiply your mad Jedi Force skills more than you can possibly imagine.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

P.S. – Sorry I missed 11:38 yet again.
P.P.S. – I share with you what I think is important, but we all have ideas about Star Wars and Spirituality. If anyone would like to contribute to these weekly emails, please send me the text and I’ll review, edit and send out.

Star Wars & Spirituality email 101407

2007-12-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

Star Wars and Spirituality

Good Sabbath to you. Here is the Star Wars and Spirituality point for the week:

What is the deal with spirituality in the Star Wars films? And here I am talking big perspective. It is just one of the things in the world that I don’t get. Why is Stars Wars fandom so into the toys, and so not into the spiritual aspects of the movies?

I think many of us really are into the world of the “other” that we get a glimpse of in the SW myth. I have been to a few cons selling the book, and people will willingly dress in all sorts of costumes to imitate their favorite characters. They will spend endless hours in role playing games delving into fantasy worlds. That is cool, and all, and I want to add to that world. I want to reach out with my feelings, this being a real exercise to which I add stretching out with our reason, our logic, our science to know our world better.

A Jedi uses all faculties available, because the fight is on all fronts too. What fight is that? The spiritual one. It even goes on in the fighting for our desire to buy toys and games at sci fi and fantasy conventions. How do we express our love of these “other” worlds that show us fabulous powers and stories and abilities that we only wish we had?

I know I certainly wrote Star Wars Jesus because there is more to it than the toys and the games and the movies. The material universe is not the big pull towards Star Wars. And I am not content to just say there is more, but not dig into it. Love is digging into things, being a part of things, even as we are called to be as separate from our world as the Jedi were from theirs.

My handy-dandy computer dictionary defines spirituality as “of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to physical, material things. Odd then, ironic even, that the love of this spiritual world of the Jedi so frequently finds its expression in the physical, material universe of toys and dress up.

Spirituality is, of course, what is behind the concepts we love about the Jedi: selflessness, generosity, love, compassion and exactly the love of the

“other.” The “other” is the unknown Force out there that can grant us magical powers like good fairy tales always have.

Dang it, aren’t those powers real though? Joseph Campbell says yes, as in real in our own minds and constructs, but real like actual, no.

Well, it is a matter of faith to some extent, yes. But I am always amazed at the amount of faith con-goers have in whatever supernatural powers they believe to be real in this world. To ask them why do you believe what you believe you will often get a “because I do” or “because that makes sense.” In fact, they are a few short questions away from non-sense. Jesus, on the other hand is in all ways given a much stricter code to be judged by. I had a cool guy at a con tell me he thought Jesus was a good teacher. I find that to be a common misconception. Jesus’ words are rarely just that. If you’ve read C.S.Lewis’ Mere Christianity, he puts it much better than I could. He surmises that really if you look at this man’s words you could reasonably surmise that he was luny, or he was actually God incarnate, but tagging him with “a good teacher” is quite illogical based on what he was reported to have said. “A good teacher” does not say, “repent for the Kingdom of Heaven” is near, or “your sins are forgiven” or “get up and walk.” “A good teacher” does not claim himself to be God and man, either.

I like calling it the “persistence of myth.” Myth and reason come together uniquely in the person of Jesus. The “other” that we long for is true if Jesus is true. If he made the world, if he came to the world, if he died and rose again for the world, if the account of his doings in the Bible is in some way accurate. Myth stories like SW are powerful for dreaming of things that might be true, but that are rarely scientifically “proven.” If Joseph Campbell is right, that myth is essentially a construct of our individual and collective imaginations and experiences made fantastical over time, then we live in a sad world indeed, and I will stop hoping and go back to my pointless toys.

“Other” must be real. Why else do we see Yoda saying, “luminous beings are we” and we believe him? We agree! And tears well up in our eyes, maybe mine, because I don’t just long for it to be true like I long for a dream to come true or long for a goal to be accomplished. I yearn for the reality of my actually being a luminous being. It is all to easy for me to forget during the day that my being is, right now, luminous. Of course I am also a physical being, but I am a spiritual being and there is eternal truth to my spirit. Someday my spirit will persist even past my body. I will be given a new body, and that new body will be able to lift X-wing fighters out of the swamp. Then I will realize that my believing in Jesus now is/was harder than that simple task. And instead of Yoda telling me that I fail because I do not believe, I will this day strive to believe, and together with the training of the Holy Spirit I will work out my salvation (both temporal and eternal) with fear and trembling, believing that is working and will work in me and act according to his good purpose (like the will of the Force) – Philippians 2:12 and 13.

Amen, and thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

www.starwarsjesus.com
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Star Wars & Spirituality email of 100707

2007-12-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

For the last couple months I've been sending out emails to those interested in the spiritual aspects of the Star Wars movies. I have decided to archive them hear, at least for a while. These posts will be significantly behind the emails, so if you would like to receive the emails, send a request to calebgrimes@gmail.com.

Star Wars and Spirituality, 100707

It is interesting how many times spiritual truths are also practical truths.

In the AOTC (Attack of the Clones) there are double-crosses upon double-crosses. To remind you, if you haven’t watched the prequels with the same devotion of the original trilogy, the Sith Lord Sidious masquerades as the benevolent Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. His pupil is Darth Tyranus, aka Count Dooku, who defected from the Jedi. Together they dupe the oh-so-dupable Trade Federation, among others, into starting a faction (“the separatists”) to fight the Republic. Please, as if they actually had it bad in the Republic. But, in the interest of seeing the Alliance in the Firefly TV series as having inevitable similarities to the Star Wars Republic, I’ll give the situation the benefit of the doubt that there were some constricting policies and troublesome beaurocracies.

So, in order to counter “the separatists” the Jedi meddle, many die and the sneaky, insidious some might say, trick of it all is that they play right into the hands of Lord Sidious, who in his day job has succeeded in gaining emergency powers to counter this evil.

On a side note, how is it that Padme and Jar Jar – the two most prominently filmed characters from Naboo – are so naïve when Sidious has not been struck by this malady? He is from Naboo too, but acts as wiley as a spice smuggler out of Tatooine.

Has the plot lost you? It does me, every time. Even five minutes ago. Let me sum up: The good guys fight the bad guys, only the good guys are unknowingly working for the really bad guys. This is how the really bad guys introduce the clone army to control the bad guys. They, of course, end up oppressing the good guys in the next four films.

Snafu. God bless you.

The clever Sith makes me think of Luke 16. What? Yeah, I know, I have a random mind, but I pray God is behind this trait.

Check it out: Jesus was kicking dust in the disciple’s faces about how they were being more like the prequel Jedi about the truth of Jesus than like Palpatine and Dooku. He tells them the parable of the manager who is about to be fired because he is wasting the owner’s stuff. The manager snaps out of it and, trying to curry favor with the owner’s debtors, goes to them and knocks some off their debt if they pay up right then. This schmuck rightly hopes that after he is fired all the debtors will do him some favors (like hire him). Even his master, the owner, is pleased at this shrewd display. Jesus tells the disciples to be shrewd in the same way the manager was, but instead of acting out of self-motivation, do it with heaven’s motivation, so that those people you deal with will understand what God’s love is like.

Trippy, I know.

The Sith were being perspicacious, keen even. Where is the Jedi being all smart like? I would like to have seen the Jedi proving themselves a more worthy adversary than simply spun around in circles and endlessly confused. They had the outward appearance of using their powers to serve the Republic, but because they were not listening to the will of the Force, the Force was not with them. For this reason Darth Tyranus rightly says at the end of AOTC, “the Force is with us.” If you’ve read my book, you know I take issue with some of the finer points and possible meanings of such a statement. The truth is, though, that he is right. The sway of power, the juice, the indescribable something behind the machinations of us all is with the Sith, due in no small part to the Jedi not being like the manager, not being shrewd with the power given them.

I just had an experience that illustrates exactly my point, as well as my prequel Jedi-like failure. Just before I walked down the hill, on my way to a small office where I write, I had a premonition that I would see the Episcopal bishop of this diocese at the local parish for his yearly visit. This was no clairvoyance; this was my wife hearing last night that the Bishop was to be here today. Naturally, I thought that since I was walking down in the morning, slightly before services, there was a distinct possibility I might see him going in the building. The premonition, the Force, or the Holy Spirit if you want to be precise, said that if I should see him, I should pray with him and there was something specific I believe I was to say to him. This was all in my head, I convinced myself, walking down. Then, there he was, walking around in the tiny courtyard, as if waiting for me. I chickened out. I said hello, but walked on. Maybe my spirit was not in the right place, but I was not ready for him. I was even given a heads-up that I might see him and I believe, differences aside, that we serve the same God. What I was supposed to say would have served to encourage him, I hope. I was not shrewd or responsible with the power given me.

Thanks for reading.

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

Star Wars & Spirituality email

2007-10-26T20:04:00.000-04:00

If any of you would like to receive a free weekly email on Star Wars & Spirituality, please go to starwarsjesus.com or email me at calebgrimes@gmail.com and I'll put you on the list. I'll likely put my thoughts of Star Wars and Spirituality on it instead of this blog.

Hope to see you there.

Caleb

Writer's Digest, Book 'Em and Harvest TV

2007-10-10T09:10:00.000-04:00

I won an award! Crazy. The book won, actually, an honorable mentioned for the Writer's Digest's Best Self-Published Book award. I am in the Inspirational category, which is true, and humorous, all at the same time.

Next Saturday (10/20) I'll be at a book show with 64 other authors in Waynesboro, Virginia. Here is the link: http://www.bookemfoundation.org.

The following Saturday I'll be in Clarendon's Barnes and Noble, signing books with 15 other authors for their first Arlington Writes. That link is here: http://storelocator.barnesandnoble.com/results.do?action=3&ls=rO0ABXcwzmLBmQIAAgAAAAEhAAEhAAEhAABaAAEhAAEhCBQAASEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Then the next week, on November 1st, I'll be at Harvest TV (http://www.harvest-tv.com) for a short interview.

Busy.

Also, if anyone would like a free weekly email on Star Wars and Spirituality, please email me at calebgrimes@gmail.com and I'll put you on the list. I send them out at 11:38 on Sunday mornings.

Peace,
Caleb

Here is a bigger picture

2007-09-28T20:29:00.000-04:00

Big Picture

2007-09-28T15:45:00.001-04:00

Fantasci

2007-09-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

Going to Fantasci this weekend, in Hampton, Virginia, to sell Star Wars Jesus. There will be Battlestar Galactica celeb Richard Hatch, who plays Tom Zerrick (sp?) the Vice President and who played Apollo in the first Galatica.

My son will be dressed up as a storm trooper, and if there are Jedi robes being sold there, I might buy one.

I can't wait, it will be a great time, but the biggest reason for being there is that I want SW fans to get that there is more than just toys and movies and extended universes. There is spiritual depth in the stories on account of it being a myth. That something more is what brings us back to SW, more than the toys, the otherworldliness or the cool stuff Jedi and Sith can do. SW can change how we live, in this world.

Can you really watch the movies and not see this going on? I doubt it. This is why it is so amazing that the SW fanbase tends to be so materialistic. Perhaps it is a default with us. Perhaps spiritual depth is not very marketable. You can ponder, but who gets paid when you ponder? Your soul, but can Lucasfilm profit from that? Can people who sell things profit from that?

One could argue I am wanting to profit from that, though no one could argue that the sales of the book equal anything close to profit. And since I'm not, why don't I give them away? Maybe a lack of faith. It is also a strange human condition that free things we tend not to respect as much. If we have to work for it, part with something we cherish (time) or at least value (money) then we give part of ourselves to the receiving of that thing, that toy, or that book.

Maybe it is too hard to believe that those spiritual issues we see in Star Wars can be real in our world. It takes untangling, interpreting, thinking, reading, analysis.

The Force being real would be like a dream beyond a dream coming true.

If Jesus were a Jedi, would he kill people?

2007-08-18T10:49:00.000-04:00

Given that Jesus is God, he of course has been (and is?) involved in lots of killing. God instructed the Israelites to kill many in the pursuit of his promise of giving them a place of their own. The flood killed many people. Even in the new testament you have Ananais and Saphira killed for lying. Then you have Revelation. If even a smiget of the end times as prophesied in Revelation are literal, there will be a whole lot of killing going on.

Then, of course and of course, there is the Big One. Big One, as it, the Big Issue of what's to be done with us all. Despite a natural death of our body, there is the accounting for our soul, and if he is the judge...mass execution of evil.

So, yes, if Jesus were a Jedi, he would kill people.

This may seem a random question, as if Jesus were actually God and man is a matter of faith to be sure. Not even some archbishops are convinced of this. And Star Wars is fiction, so putting the two together hardly amounts to blogworthy speculation.

Well, for fans, I think it is a fun bit of wondering, so I'll continue.

The opposite side of the spectrum is that Jesus came to earth to die. 'We' all thought he was going to be a conquistador of a schwarzaneggerian proportion. Then it turns out he is poorer than anything, has no influence, and is not particularly violent. Though he does talk tough and his words are challenging in the extreme, he did not kill even one bad guy, much less all of them.

He said that he was conquering death, though, and so in that respect his sacrifice was a paradox of power. He wielded great power through the demonstration of no power. I guess we could think of it like this: if he was powerful enough to be killed and rise from the dead, with no demonstration of outward force, think of what his outward force must be like?! Or perhaps the whole paradox of it all was his straightening us out, and saying that we show love to our enemy the best by giving ourselves to them.

I tend to suspect his radical nature is along this last line of thought. If this is true, then he would not kill people as a Jedi. So, is this a call for pacifism?

I wonder these things because I wonder how we are to be. Jesus is my example, and the Jedi are my example too. In trying to figure out how to be, how to live, what to think of the world and my part in it, I think it easy to get confused between warrior and pacifist. I understand how the Jedi work for peace, and their selflessness is inextricably tied to their pure motive for using violence. However, Jesus talked about turning the other cheek and allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of in order to show his power more perfectly. I don't think he wanted us to confuse meek with weak, though.

I often hear the argument, "if Jesus wanted us all to be pacifists he would have told the Centurian not to be in the army any longer." I say, "presumption, minus ten points." He spoke about the issue behind the daily issues. Take up your cross and follow me, believe in me to have eternal life, take care of the lowest among you, if you want to be great be small, enjoy giving, if you want to be free be like a slave.

Based on all this from his showing of himself, I wonder if Jesus' coming again and ruling this earth might not be the kind of battle we envision. Maybe love does conquer and the great armagedon will be a bunch of followers of Jesus dying, or being killed, or allowing ourselves to be killed, only to be resurrected immediately thereafter. But it is perhaps the giving of oneself to that person who would kill you that makes the difference of love. Like Obi Wan allowing himself to be killed. There is something to this.

Should we have allowed the Nazis to take over the world, and would Christ's love been shown to a greater extent if the entire globe belonged to Hitler?

I am not sure if Jesus were a Jedi that he would kill people or not. Perhaps because there is a time for everything at times he would and at times he would not. I think we all want Jesus the ferrocious terminator to inflict justice on the world, as long as we are not the ones having justice inflicted upon us.

Peace,
Caleb

Feeling the Force Flow...like Proverbs

2007-08-08T12:45:00.000-04:00

To a certain way of thinking, yes. You'll find that many of the truths we cling to in Star Wars do not depend on our point of view at all. Many of them have everything to do with absolute truth that does not change and is not relative to societies shifting preferences.

Take the wisdom of Proverbs. Very much like a gritty old jedi master, it is. Proverbs gives us many hard truths about life. And some of them are spectacularly encouraging, even to the point of teaching us how to feel the Spirit flow through us.

Proverbs has good words, soothing words, true words, wise words. Check out P 3:5 and 6.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."  That right there is like Luke, concentrating on the Force, allowing it to flow through him. I see him with his lightsaber at the ready, feet planted, focused. Or maybe he is flying down the trench of the death star with his targeting controls off, the whole rebel alliance about to be obliterated.  In my head, I know, it is a little whacky, I don't hear, 'use the force, luke,' and, 'let go Luke.' I hear, 'trust in the Lord with all your heart, Caleb, and don't trust your own power, your own whatever. Acknowledge Christ and he will work it out.' Really I don't want to say too much, because the verses say it all.  I wonder about other religions or belief systems or ideologies. What can they say about Proverbs? Well, if you don't believe in God, or a personal one at that, you could have trouble finding common ground, but still, how much of that book is good advice to everyone, no matter what tradition? Ok, maybe I am being a little naive here, but I think it much better for someone to read Proverbs and be like, "What the -" instead of not read it at all. And I'm not saying that because "I want THEM to become Christians." Whatever. Let it be. As if there is an actual us and them anyway. I am saying that Proverbs has some cool stuff in it that we all benefit from.

P 1:7 - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and knowledge.

A Jedi must respect the power of the Force, and the source of that power (which is not the Force itself). The Force has power over the weak-minded. It is the Jedi pursuit of truth that, like the Apostles, seemed wiser beyond their education and social status.

P 2:11-15 - Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you.

12 Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men,
from men whose words are perverse,

13 who leave the straight paths
to walk in dark ways,

14 who delight in doing wrong
and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,

15 whose paths are crooked
and who are devious in their ways.

From the Jedi Temple training manual, this could have come.

Makes me want to post the whole of Proverbs. But you look in it if you want more. So much that applies to the Jedi.

The John 1 of Star Wars, with evolution to boot

2007-08-03T15:04:00.000-04:00

In the movies the Jedi always learn about the Force through the teachings of another Jedi.

So how did the first Jedi learn about the Force?

Didn't someone have to bring this unseen, spiritual knowledge and power to the Jedi to begin with?

Likewise, how did we first learn about spiritual truths in our world?

I wonder if there are similarities.

John 1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood it."

Here is my attempt at a Star Wars translation:

In the beginning was the Force, and the Force was with God and the Force was God. The Force was with God in the beginning. Through him (star wars jesus - or the Force in human form) all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of Jedi. The Force shines in the dark side (not part of the Force I argue in my book) but the dark side has not understood it.

I know what you are thinking, "there is no concept of God in the SW movies." Well, all I have to say to that is, "I myself am surprised at life's little quirks." (Wesley, The Princess Bride). I want the movies to be the movies, and I don't want to read more into them than is there, but the philosophy of SW just makes no conceivable sense without an all powerful, all knowing identity whose core is love. In that way, the SW universe and our own is the same.

The Jedi way is just stupid if not for love. They do love, they are about love. When love goes wrong, the Jedi go wrong (like in the prequels).

Back there in the past somewhere the Force must have become flesh so that we could learn about him. I'm not saying that experiential knowledge isn't important and isn't valid. If the Bible is right about the way God has dwelt with us, then he has been with us the whole way, fulling intervening and fully hands off. Don't ask me how that is, we can't imagine how that possibly is, but we are reasonable certain that if God is who he says he is, and has been who he says he has been, then his love for us must by nature take both forms simulaneously.

Now, apart from this relating to SW I will get a lot of flack from those existential theo-evolutionists who think that just because we are reasonably certain about how some things in this world got to be the way they are that it by nature precludes God's intervention from daily life/miracles and the like. In essence they say he has hamstrung himself in his involvement. That is "not at all attractive to my way of thinking" (Mary Poppins) and lacks imagination to the extreme. Imagination is, after all, very much of the assumptions we are dealing with in talking about how things got to be the way they are. Like, for real, can we not at least have the foresight that if in all the history of scientific knowledge the future has included knowing more about the world than we previously did than it is conceivable that even the almighty theory of evolution might someday be thought of as sophomoric and really just a springboard to the next thing? It already is, hello!?

Back to good ol' SW. I imagine (see, I'm not saying it has to be this way) that the Jedi learn about the Force constantly through experience, through the mitichlorians (think of the way Jesus described the Holy Spirit/Holy Counselor), but a text (the Word) that is required to keep us from going all Count Duku. Right, remember him? The Jedi that believed his own thoughts and imaginations higher than the learning of the Force? That is why Lucas placed him on a planet called Geonosis (gnostic). He took his thoughts to a place that warped the idea of the Force in his mind so that he deluded himself into thinking bad was good, good was bad. The Gnostics did that, and still do. Nice thoughts, but warped into darkness.

In order for the Jedi to understand the unchanging focus of the Force, the constant love, the Word had to come to them. In the SW universe the Word is not written down, it is passed on by Masters to their Padawan.

At this point you extended universe fans will likely tell me that there is some such in the books. However convenient that might be, this discussion is the reason why I am not a EU fan. The purity of the fims is intrinsically related to how Lucas sees the world. The EU is not Lucas' vision for the most part. The films are like the Word coming to us from the creator. Different creators create different worlds. I would say thank God we only have one creator but look at the world we live in, God allows mini-gods called rulers and philosophies, and lusts and demons and Satan to be involved in the worlds created inside his universe and it plays f-ing havoc on us.

Was there a Star Wars Jesus in the SW past that was both God and Man and brought the power, knowledge and teaching to the Jedi?

Peace, Love and Force,

Caleb

I forgive you, Geoffrey Kruse-Safford

2007-08-02T13:46:00.000-04:00

I would like to extend a very special welcome to Geoffrey.

He has written scathing words about my book (whatsleftinthechurch.blogspot.com/2007/03/stupid-like-poor-will-always-be-with-us.html) without having read it.

I forgive you Geoffrey Kruse-Safford.

Caleb

Welcome

2007-08-02T12:40:00.000-04:00

Welcome to all lovers of Star Wars.

So what is the deal with Star Wars and spirituality?

If something in Star Wars inspires me, what exacly am I inspired about? But it seems a little silly to be inspired about something that does not really exist in our world, doesn't it?

Or is the Force real?

Yoda says to Luke, "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

And I am thinking, "yes, I agree with that, we are spirits." But we are also crude matter.

We don't get inspired about things that have no basis in something true. There is a nugget of truth in every inspiration. Most of the time, I imagine, there is more than a nugget.

But they are not always the easiest things to understand, grab hold of, and see as something real in our world. The Jedi being able to jump/levitate away from danger, for example. I'd love to be able to, and I may or may not have practiced this once or twice and might or might not have been severely injured by such disrespect shown towards the law of gravity. Let's call that an experiment in that "crude matter" department.

That is what this blog is about, though, finding spiritual truths in Star Wars. Some things I will take from my book, Star Wars Jesus, some things I will take from thoughts in my head that never got to the book, and somethings will be from conversations, etc.

I welcome your comments. If you have something bugging you or interesting you in the SW movies and you want me to comment on them here, I'd be glad to.

Welcome to all. 