Zombies and Life!

Zombies seem to be everywhere these days. The latest buzz is the recently issued movie, World War Z, which I recently saw and thought it was a very good movie and would highly recommend. However, I was even more fascinated with Warm Bodies, a novel by Isaac Marion which was also been made into a movie which was released last winter. The movie is good, but the book is great. An interesting take on the end of the world, the Zombie craze, but where zombies actually become human again and provides a great examination of the human condition. There is a some dialogue in the novel between the main characters R and Julie, where they are trying to explain the reason for the plague and the "changing" to zombies and goes like this, quoting below;

" This plague... I don't think it's from any spell or virus or nuclear rays. I think it's from a deeper place. I think we brought it here. “I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... darker place.” We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. ― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

I think the author hit it on the head and I fear we are headed in this downward spiraling direction the way our current culture is headed. However, there is hope, and Warm Bodies ends in hope for the world, the reversal to becoming human. To bring ourselves out of the pit of hell. How is that achieved? Here are some awesome quotes in the transformation back to human...

"We're fumbling in the dark, but at least we're in motion."

"We smile, because this is how we save the world. We will not let Earth become a tomb, a mass grave spinning through space. We will exhume ourselves. We will fight the curse and break it."

The below quote is from the main zombie character,R, who is becoming human again. 

“I look down at myself, but I don't need to. I can feel it. My hot blood is pounding through my body, flooding capillaries and lighting up cells like Fourth of July fireworks. I can feel the elation of every atom in my flesh, brimming with gratitude for the second chance they never expected to get. The chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud."

 "There's a shiver in our legs, a tremor like the Earth speeding up, spinning off into uncharted orbits. Scary, isn't it? But what wonderful thing didn't start out scary? I don't know what the next page is for you, but whatever it is for me I swear I'm not going to f@#$ it up. I'm not going to yawn off in the middle of a sentence and hide it in a drawer. Not this time. Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.

"Okay."

"Okay, R."

Here it comes.”  Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

Are we ready to take it on? How much do we want life in its fullness or will we go through the motions as dictated by the culture? Our choice, always has been. God gave us the freedom to choose. So often we don't choose God. We are always brought down by sin and evil but Jesus offers us hope through grace to overcome.  How will we respond to our current culture?

In the book he provides another powerful quote.

“There's no benchmark for how life's "supposed" to happen. There is no ideal world for you to wait around for. The world is always just what it is now, it's up to you how you respond to it” 

Where is Theology of the Body in this novel? Check out this quote and have a look at Genesis 2: 23-24...

“I crush her against me. I want to be part of her. Not just inside her but all around her. I want our rib cages to crack open and our hearts to migrate and merge. I want our cells to braid together like living thread.” 

I highly recommend reading Warm Bodies by Isacc Marion and take a look at the movie as well. The movie does not go as deep as the novel but still an interesting twist that you do not see in Hollywood movies. 

Without rituals, death will follow!

Here is a link to an article by Marc Barnes (the guy from Bad Catholic blog). This guy has the pulse of humanity where we can choose rituals or death. So many times we choose death.  Check out his article below. 

http://steubenville.org/burningcatholics/?p=20

 This is so true in my life. I struggle to keep rituals and routines going in my life, and hence it becomes death instead of ritual.  This means my relationships with my wife and family suffer,  as well as my relationship with God.  This is why I like Lent so much, as there is so much day to day, and weekly rituals that keeps me grounded. Sometimes after Lent, it is easy to get out of your routine and stray from God. Lately with all the summer time activities, I haven't made time to read the Bible and pray. Sometimes I wish Lent lasted all year. 

Check out blog; Bad Catholic

I was steered to this blog from Christopher West.There are some great posts here on a blog called Bad Catholic. This blogger seems to be in touch with entire theme of Theology of the Body.  Check it out. Below are a few of the more interesting articles. Don't worry,  these articles are not porn related!

 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2013/06/the-amazing-ghost-and-his-erection.html

Worthwhile quotes from the article above...

"Without a working integration of body and soul there is no humanity, no language, no art, and ultimately no knowledge in the universe."

"The experience of beauty destroys our barriers and ushers a person into an encounter with the truth. Art, music, poetry, and even architecture need to express the beauty of the integration of body and soul, not out of some desire to make a point — for political art is lame — but out of our own, authentic, artistic encounter with the human person as neither a ghost, nor a corpse, but relation."   

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/06/naked-men.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2013/04/death-as-orgasm.html

Stephen King's Dark Tower Reflections

I have always been a Stephen King fan and The Dark Tower has always been high on my list, maybe just under The Stand. I had finished the entire series many years ago, but thoughts from earlier this year drove me to re-read or in this case listen to the last volume (read by George Guidall).   As with many readers, I was disappointed with the ending but after a re-read, the ending sits a bit better with me as I relate it to the tremendous amount of biblical imagery in the story and how to relate it to our own lives.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't read the books and plan to read them you may not want to continue. 

Roland's quest to reach the Dark Tower ultimately ends when he reaches the  Tower and climbs to the top where he opens one last door (or so we think). Once he opens the door, he realizes in horror that he has been replaying his life and journeys over and over in a sort of infinite loop. From the characters in Roland's life we hear the following dialogue to Roland;


"It'll be your damnation boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell.

"Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it"

I believe Roland is in a sort of purgatory until he figures out how to set things right. In his quest for the tower, it was always about him and his quest to reach the tower. His family, friends, and his "ka-tet" had mostly all died, sacrificed for his tower and were ultimately discarded. In our end game it is how we live our lives and how much time we may have to spend in our own purgatory before we "get it right". There was some hope at the end of the story when Stephen Kings writes in a whispering voice to Roland;

"This is your promise that things may be different, Roland-that there may yet be rest. Even salavation." A pause, and then: "If you stand. If you are true."  

Through the volumes of the Dark Tower there are these beams which serve the tower which are being broken by what are called "breakers." In our world, sinners mayhaps?  There is a sequence of dialogue that the beams are speaking to Roland and his friends through a dream sequence and goes like this...

"why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days. Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose...Even if the torture stops, I'll die. And you'll die too, for when love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love, and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask."

This is the dialogue that I kept coming back to, and for me here is the clincher line; "when love leaves the world, all hearts are still"  In some ways love seems to be leaving our world. In Stephen Kings world there seems to be less hope. However, through Jesus Christ, there is hope and redemption but we must take that step towards him and not away from him. Sometimes easier said than done.

It is all about love, isn't it?. Te belong, to love and be loved. God is love as we read in John's Gospel.
To me, there is a lot of Catholic theology through the Dark Tower as the beams seem like the the Holy Spirit and some of the references above from the beam (sounded like Jesus to me-scar me with nails). 

Then there was the imagery of the rose throughout the Dark Tower. I'll write more about the rose in my next blog installment.