Anime Lectio: Mirai

                                                             1. Why do Anime Lectio? 

Anime Lectio is a time for us to stop and take a breath. Between work, activities, family life, and social media, our minds are always moving. We rarely take time to contemplate and ask, why am I watching this anime? What’s the point of all this? And, how is this making me feel? 

2. Put away all distractions 

(phones, work, etc.)

We are so enslaved to things that stimulate our minds. Let this be a moment for us to free our minds, look inside of ourselves, and be at peace.

3. Deep Breathing

Take several deep breaths. Let your mind relax. If you’ve had any questions, desires, or struggles that you’ve been hiding or stuffing away, let them rise up to the surface. 

4. Open yourself to God’s Presence

Remember God places all our thoughts and desires inside of us, and He uses them to draw us closer to Himself. God gives us a community to help us understand who we are and what He is calling us to do. The faces of other people you know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence.  

5. Think About What’s on Your Mind in Relation to the Anime

Think about what’s been on your mind in relation to the anime.  The following is an example of such thoughts written by me.  

Adjusting to new experiences isn't easy for anyone, whether it be accepting a new person into your family, not getting enough attention as you used to as this new person, either real or imagined, a combination of these two things, or anything else that requires adjusting to a new experience. It takes other experiences in your life to help you adjust to a new experience. Like the possibility of not getting enough attention as someone else being real or imagined, the other experiences in your life to help you adjust to a new experience can also be real or imagined. Imagining these experiences is good and helpful, but making these experiences real is what will really help you adjust to a new experience by actually doing it.

6. Brief and written explanation of the anime

Pay attention to how the brief and written explanation of the anime seen on this blog, or seeing the anime for yourself since that's better than any explanation, might “speak” to you or shed light on the things that have been on your minds.

In the anime movie Mirai, a young boy gets a new addition to his family when his parents bring home his new baby sister (eventually named Mirai, which means future in Japanese). Not only does the young boy have to adjust to his new baby sister, but the parents have to as well. The young boy makes it more difficult for the parents by selfishly thinking about himself only and not liking his new baby sister for stealing attention away from him. To help the young boy with this problem, he has several imagined experiences with future and past members of his family, including his future baby sister. After all of these experiences, the young boy is willing to accept his new baby sister before leaving for a family vacation, which is what the movie ends with.

7.  Reflect on the anime

Has this brief and written explanation of the anime shed any light on what's been on your minds?  The following is an example of a reflection on the anime from me.

Imagining talking to people and having experiences with them is good and helpful. It's helpful for the young boy in the movie because it leads him to what he has to do, which is to accept his new sister. What helps with this acceptance is seeing past experiences in his family and realizing, with the help of his future baby sister, that if these past family experiences never happened, then they wouldn't have happened either. This is obviously different in a movie than in real life because you can't see it in the same way, but no matter how it happens, the message is important for everyone. And the message is this: that adjusting to a new experience requires appreciation of your past experiences. This needs to happen in order to accept the new experience and create future experiences with the new experience.

8. Final Prayer

Please voice any prayer intentions for friends, family, or people around the world that relate to this anime.  The following is an example written by me.

Let us pray that we can adjust to the new experiences in our lives, whatever they may be, by appreciating our past experiences in order to create future ones.