This animated short tells a beautiful story without any of its characters ever speaking a word. After watching it, I’m pretty speechless, too.
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…All right. It’s time to talk about the video.
From the studio that brought you that Pixar-quality superhero animation comes another glorious animated short. This one stars Bastion, a war machine who realizes that war is kinda overrated. He joins the robots from The Iron Giant and Castle in the Sky as a machine that overrides its programming in order to love peace, appreciate nature, and stop blowing up everything it sees.
The Iron Giant is an excellent movie.
I love the premise of a machine built for violence refusing to be violent. It’s sadly ironic when machines have more humanity than actual humans.
Castle in the Sky is probably my favorite movie of all time.
It’s nice to know that when the robot apocalypse happens, some of the machines may not want to fight.
Incidentally, the animated short above is a promotional video for a game called Overwatch, which I’ll never play. I wish all promotional videos were so amazing.
For years and years, I’ve been waiting for something.
Don’t ask me for what, because I have no idea. I can’t shake a subconscious conviction that I’m fighting to get somewhere, somewhere, and I’m not yet there.
I’m waiting for… something.
When I was in college, I thought it was a career as an English teacher. After those plans crashed and burned, I assumed it was the publication of my book series. Those plans eventually wound up in the crash-and-burn category along with my ambitions of teaching English. At that point, I was waiting for a better job situation, or for my religious skepticism to go away, or for something beyond the grind of my day-to-day existence.
Still waiting? Still waiting.
My job situation is much improved, thank God. I’ve come to terms with my decision not to pursue a career in education. I’m resurrecting my failed book series as a project for fun, and have decided not to pursue professional writing… for the moment, at any rate. My faith survives. I’ve faced my doubts, acknowledged them openly, and persisted in spite of them.
I feel fairly stable, settled, and contented, yet can’t shake a vague dissatisfaction. It’s a feeling of waiting for I know not what.
In other news, I’ve been watching a lot of Steven Universe lately.
Steven Universe is a television series about a boy who loves pizza, wears flip-flops, and protects the world from monsters and hostile invaders. He lives in a seaside town with the Crystal Gems: three survivors of an ancient, ill-fated attempt by an intergalactic civilization to conquer Planet Earth. When Steven isn’t helping the Gems clean up the lingering threats of the alien invasion, he’s probably watching cartoons or hanging out at his dad’s car wash.
“We’re good and evil never beats us. We’ll win the fight and then go out for pizzas!”
Steven Universe is an amazing show. I could spend an entire post explaining why, but I have other things to discuss today, so I’ll keep it fairly short.
Steven Universe balances adventure with slice-of-life stories. It’s infused with magical realism, sincere positivity, and hints of geeky nostalgia. (When Steven is baffled by a VHS tape, his friend explains, “It’s like a DVD shaped like a box.”) An intricate narrative and compelling characterizations slowly emerge from the show’s charm and humor. Steven Universe has a gift for tackling serious subjects (grief! war! trauma!) without ever veering into the extremes of gloominess or false cheeriness. I could say a lot more, but will leave the rest to smarter writers than I.
Oh, and Steven Universe is just fun to watch. I shouldn’t forget to mention that part.
At this point, the show has become one of my all-time favorites. (It probably ties with Gravity Fallsas my second-favorite, surpassed only by Avatar: The Last Airbender.) It has been incredibly fun and satisfying to revisit the world of Steven Universe over the past five or six weeks, and the show has often made me think.
Truth and wisdom turn up in unexpected places. There is truth in Batmanand Doctor Who, and apparently in Steven Universe. Who knew-niverse?
At one point, Steven finds himself stranded on a deserted island with a pair of acquaintances, Lars and Sadie. Lars, understandably, freaks out. He can’t get cell phone reception. He doesn’t belong on the island. He needs to get home now.
Steven doesn’t panic. Instead, he finds the good in his situation, and asks his companions an important question: “Why don’t you let yourself just be wherever you are?”
I’d vacation there.
It takes a little while (and a chipper musical number) for Lars to realize it, but the island actually ain’t so bad. Being stranded is basically an extended vacation. He might not be in control. He might not be able to move on quite as soon as he wants. However, if he accepts his situation instead of fighting it, he can enjoy it while it lasts—and it doesn’t last forever. In the end, of course, Lars and Sadie and Steven make it safely home.
There’s a lesson there.
Instead of waiting for something to happen, living in faint unease and dissatisfaction… why don’t I just let myself just be wherever I am?
I had planned to share this beautiful cover of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” at some point, but quixotically decided to record my own cover of the hymn instead. You see, kids, this is why we don’t let Adam near microphones.
My wobbly vocals are propped up by a dynamic piano arrangement from Silas Rosenskjold, who made it freely available on his YouTube channel. The photo in the video, snapped by my dad quite a number of years ago, shows the Basílica del Voto Nacional: a cathedral in Quito renowned for its architecture and hideous gargoyles.
Around the time I shared of how I almost left my faith last year, I found myself often listening to this hymn. Some of its questions seem to be aimed squarely at wavering skeptics like me.
There are loved ones in the glory whose dear forms you often miss; when you close your earthly story, will you join them in their bliss?
You remember songs of heaven, which you sang with childish voice; do you love the hymns they taught you, or are songs of earth your choice?
One by one their seats were emptied, one by one they went away; now the family is parted—will it be complete one day?
One question, the question, stands above the rest: Will the circle be unbroken? Will that legacy of faith, cherished by your loved ones, upheld by generations past, live on in you—or will you break the circle? Will you be the one to shatter this legacy of religious faith?
I know people who’ve broken the circle. I know people who’ve kept it whole. For my part, the circle remains unbroken.
As I work with the elderly, I face regular reminders of the transience and frailty of human life. As James Thurber flatly expressed it, “Even a well-ordered life can not lead anybody safely around the inevitable doom that waits in the skies. As F. Hopkinson Smith long ago pointed out, the claw of the sea-puss gets us all in the end.”
While the skeptical part of me can’t help but question the notion of an afterlife, I rejoice that death is a temporary separation, not a permanent one. I can hardly bear the thought of losing loved ones forever.
When my family is parted, it will yet be reunited one day—thank God.
This post was originally published on June 3, 2016. TMTF shall return with new posts on Monday, September 5!
Typewriter Monkey Task Force 