It's True, All of It

What's there not to like about Star Wars VII? When I booked the tickets, I was muttering that it better be worth the hefty price for our family of 4. Well, it was indeed a delightful 2 1/2 hours romp, right from the word go.  I am not exactly a die-hard fan, but I do remember  the dashing Jedi Luke and the famous line..."May the force be with you." What with all the hype about the latest, of course I had to catch The Force Awakens.

In my mind, Han Solo was still the swash-buckling hero and Princess Leia was still wearing the white flowy gown with 2 tightly wound-up hair-blobs at the sides of her head. Well, that's really space-aeons ago... how they have aged, with white hair, eye-bags, wrinkles and expanded bodies. That's reality check, whether it's happening in a Hollywood movie or in the humdrum routine of time passing us all by. Even now, we are counting down to the end of 2015 already. Where did all my years go? I don't feel any older. But as the saying goes, so much water has passed under the bridge of life, even for the Star Wars team.

Now it's a whole new generation taking over. So there are new heroes and new heroines. All very 'politically correct' if I may add.  You can't go wrong with a strong female lead - even her name "Rey" is so  neutral-sounding - and a black bad-guy-turned-good hero. It helps also that the former is pretty and the latter funny. Throw in a cutesy ball of a robot with its musical squeeks, tons of thick, fast action with awesome looking flying machines and explosive space battles....like I said, what's there not to like!

Even the landscapes were great; the sweep of vistas from yellow sand dunes to green forests and white snow was a feast for the eyes.  I can relate immediately to Rey's poignant comment as she flies over a vast expanse of forest "I didn't think there was so much green in the whole galaxy." How sad we often take things for granted in our world, forgetting that there is actually still a lot of beauty around us. We have become so blase because we see so much (too much) ugliness around us, which really is very much our own doing, if we stop to think what we, as the human race, have done to this earth and to each other.

Just the other day, I noticed dew drops glistening on the grass during my early morning walk. I stopped to examine them... Some were single drops, some 'sat' in rows upon each blade of grass, all perfectly balanced. All so tiny yet perfectly formed solid circles of water. The next morning I wanted to take a snap-shot but there were none though the grass was wet. Maybe because the temperature was different,  maybe I was 3 minutes too late, or too early.  I guess that's life;  so many of us just never pause long enough often enough to notice the miraculous in the ordinary.  It made me wonder anew at the work of a Creator who designed life so beautifully for us to enjoy.  Unfortunately nowadays we don't even think there is a Creator, since we have got something called science. And tragically, we don't even know what we are missing when our 'antennas' are tuned only to 1 (ie our own) 'channel.'

I like how Han Solo puts it, "There are a lot of rumors, stories... I thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo: a magical power in the battle between good and evil, the dark side". He was talking about the Force. And there is the heroine, gawky-eyed, because she too had heard stories of  long ago, of a 'life-power' that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together.  She had heard exploits of  savior-knights who used the power for good to fight against those who would use it for evil and destruction. But she had never seen them. They must be ...just  myths spun by imaginative story-tellers.

The unseen is always hard to believe, especially for independent, totally capable people like our kick-ass heroine who can hold her own in a man's world of fighter planes and a villain who tries to literally pick her mind apart. Even when she is standing face-to-face with  her legendary real-life hero who states explicity, "The crazy thing is - it's true..all of it..It's all true." Even when she 'hears' a voice leading her to discover Luke's light saber and against all logic, she experiences a trip into the unknown. In spite of being told by an eye-witness, in spite of a personal encounter, she still rejects the call of 'the Force', choosing to run away instead.

That's exactly how many are apt to treat God in this day and age...just the 'spinning' of over-loaded imaginations. After all, who in their 'right' mind would believe a virgin could give birth or a crucified dead and buried Jesus could resurrect and physically ascend into the clouds? 'Logically', how can Jesus' death wipe out the sin of all mankind? No book, no matter how holy, no eye-witness no matter how independent, will convince the human skeptic of the obvious impossibilities of such outrageous claims. Spiritual  things - the stuff termed religion - is dismissed as a crutch for the weak, an opiate for the masses. After all, there really is no need for a mysterious God to create man or woman; it's so much easier and less messy to believe our ancestors 'just happen' to evolve out of ...whatever.  Life is so much less complicated  if we don't have to consider whether there is heaven or hell. It's all up to us, it doesn't matter anyway.

But it does matter. As Rey finds out ultimately when she sees the one she loves hurt and seemingly dead, when she realizes there are bigger things than herself, her desires, her rights or her independence at stake, when 'the force' awakens something inside her, that's when she 'knows' it really is true. The unproven unseen has become reality. Nothing can be the same for her again. Finally she walks away from her old life as a scavenger, free to cross over into a future where she is destined to be more, much more. I suspect there's going to be a new Jedi knight born in the next Star Wars.

Actually it's an ancient story being replayed time and again through the history of human civilization. Light over darkness, good over evil. Heaven and hell. God and the devil. They aren't some magical mumbo-jumbo superstition or intellectual puzzles to be solved. Does it make any difference what we believe about them? Of course it does, truth always matters, whether known or unknown, acknowledged or rejected. Choices always matter, because they lead to consequences, one way or another.  In the words of the classic poem by Robert Frost...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Even as Jesus Himself said to a doubting Thomas, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen  and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)