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Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron is a sweeping, startling orchestra of beauty, whimsy, and melancholic horror.
While The Wind Rises felt, ten years ago, like a gentle coda that left the audience with the sense of Miyazaki gently moving into retirement, The Boy and the Heron shares a drastically different tone that also explores death and the meaning of life. It seems that another retrospective of life was in order for Miyazaki, as he explores a story with more auto-biographical components. The Boy and the Heron follow Mahito, a young boy who loses his mother in a tragic hospital fire during the Pacific War. A few years later, he moves to the countryside to live with his father and pregnant stepmother/aunt, Natsuko. He struggles with this change and the memory of his mother, holding feelings of grief that are often wordlessly represented. The Boy and the Heron is a mix of the grotesque and beautiful. In search of Natsuko and his mother, Mahito wanders through a purgatorial landscape of imaginary and real creatures. Along the way, he uncovers family secrets and a stream-of-consciousness dreamscape unfolds. The background art in the movie was fascinating, at once whimsical and sophisticated. Joe Hisaishi’s music soared. It was evocative, thrilling, and rich with emotion. Perhaps his best score. The animated acting was superb. Mahito, the main character, spends most of his time crouched on all fours, silently escaping notice from his father and stepmother, or trying to enter a narrow crevice in a mysterious tower. The amount of detail put in it needed an attention to reality that most animated movies don’t give. It is details like this, though, along with beautiful scenery, that helps take a quiet moment into something of rapt viewing. After the movie, I talked with the others I watched it with. We agreed that it was a little long – or maybe the story felt a little longer than it should have. There was a rustling in the theater seats a little more than halfway through the movie. One of our party thought it was because it didn’t get us as invested in the emotional arc of the main characters. Even so, right off the bat, the story jumped into the action and swept you along with scenes rich in engaging detail. But somewhere along the way it started to go off in turns that set up newer and newer arcs that had no emotional connection until you might wonder whether the movie would be another hour or end suddenly and abruptly. I think, in the end, the thing that The Boy and the Heron left me with an unresolved aching from my desire to see a movie that explores death from the perspective of meeting a loving God at the end of a journey of life. It felt empty in that regard, but the way Miyazaki resolved Mahito’s journey to coming to terms with his mother’s death was still beautifully done. You can see how much Miyazaki loved his mother through this film and its female characters. So will this be Miyazaki’s “heron song”? To the joy of all Ghibli fans, it doesn’t sound like it. But perhaps a light-hearted Kiki’s Delivery Service is in order next.
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 Trusting God is a battle all believers will have to fight for, at some point in their faith journey. Alongside the Sacraments, here is a list of ideas on how to grow your trust in God:
1. Be desperate OK, so this one is not exactly a constructive action, but depending on your situation, this is a timeless tool God will use to draw you into His lap! You see, if you find yourself in a valley, you are in a moment in which God is giving you an opportunity to trust Him. Read the story of Hannah in the Book of Samuel for an example of desperate prayer and how God works through it. 2. Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with faith - that is why Jesus sent Him! This is the mission of the Holy Spirit – to empower you with the gifts of the spirit, including faith, which empowers you to trust God. Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit after He went to the Father. He did this to empower us to walk in all the gifts we need to be holy and happy. God delights in filling us with gifts when we ask. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the gift of faith! 3. Read stories of saints and listen to testimonies of faith-filled people Immerse yourself in stories of saints and modern testimonies that will bolster your faith and put you in the mindset of faithful people and how they think. You may find that it is very different from the way the world thinks. Faith-filled people don’t think from a perspective of lack but of abundance and possibilities. For faith-filled people, dead-ends are God’s way of showing a new way, and not the end of the road! 4. Read stories of God’s promises for His people in the Bible Trusting in God is an age-old story for His children. In the Bible, we see promises from the Old Testament, where Abraham is promised a son through Sarah, to the New Testament, where God promises Mary, through the angel Gabriel, that she will conceive the Son of God. A couple of my favorite (smaller) promise stories in the Bible include God’s promise to Simeon, and Jesus’s promise of heaven to the Good Thief on the Cross, who suffered on a cross alongside Him. As you read these interactions with God, note that in all of them, God has a good end in mind. He does not forget His children, and He finishes what He starts. He makes good on His promises. He does not leave things unfinished. The process may be different from what you imagined or take longer than you expect (like for Abraham), but it is not left unfinished. God works for completion. 5. Offer a sacrifice of praise. You can do this in Eucharistic Adoration, the quiet of your room, or anywhere you wish. Find a chapter in the Psalms that speaks to your current emotions and circumstances. Pray it aloud, and let the words speak to you. What verse in particular moves you and encourages you? Repeat it to yourself, and experience God's Heart for you, through it. 6. Pray for the grace to forgive – even if you don’t feel like it Did you know that forgiving someone is an act of trust in God? It is a declaration that God will have the final say in a situation and that His love will prevail. Ask God today to give you the grace to forgive those in your life who have wronged you, and if that is hard, add the little line: “Even if I don’t feel like it.” And see how the weight lifts off of you. 7. Ask God for the next step and make a movement of faith As you find yourself growing in love of God – a sign of faith and trust! - you might find yourself ready to take a step and ask God what He is asking of you next. Look at your situation and see how God might be using it. Are circumstances aligning in your life that might indicate a calling for you to change a situation or start a new project? Maybe to reach out to an old or new friend or make a move? If you have asked God, sat with the idea, and felt peace despite discomfort at the prospect, it is time to make a leap and know that God will catch you (and often in ways you could not have imagined!) A year from now, look back at the leap, see how God worked, and thank Him! |
Quis ut Deus?In search of the Face of God. Personal blog with musings, thoughts, and stories. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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