Anime Lectio: A Whisker Away

                                                              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.  

It can be difficult to tell someone how you feel about them, what you are thinking, and other feelings. Expressing these feelings in other ways can be helpful depending on what these other ways are, but these other ways should be helpful in getting you to express your feelings by telling someone, and the right someone at that, about them. If people think it isn't difficult for you to do this, then they are most likely thinking this way because of what they can see. Letting people see and know everything about you is important. It's up to you, with the help of family and friends, to let others see and know what you want them to see and know.

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 A Whisker Away, a young girl tries to get close to a boy she likes. She tries to do this as a human, but thanks to a deal she made with a talking cat known as the Mask Seller, she gets a mask that gives her the ability to turn into a cat whenever she wants to. As a cat, getting closer to the boy she likes is easier. It also helps her avoid her other problems involving her family. She becomes a cat so much that the Mask Seller thinks she would rather be a cat than a human, but the girl doesn't actually want this since she would rather be with the boy she likes as a human girl than a cat. This leads to the girl, as a cat, getting her humanity back from the Mask Seller with the help of old and new friends in order to get closer to the boy she likes as a human. One of these friends helping her is the boy she gets closer to as a cat than as a human because he now realizes that she was the cat all along, what she was trying to do, and why she was trying to do it.

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.

What do you do in order to express your feelings, either for someone, about them, or about something else, or any other feelings? Writing about them, specifically writing how I feel in a journal every day, which I started doing again recently, is what helps me with this. What helps you with this could be different based on who you are, what you are feeling based on what you are dealing with, and why you do what you do, as well as other factors that influence your feelings and how you deal with them. Examples of these other factors are who helps you understand your feelings and/or express them, why they do that, and what you are dealing with and how you feel about these things since different things can make you feel different ways. Becoming a cat while still being able to go back to being a human isn't something we can do to deal with our feelings, but we can do things like that.

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 figure out how to express, and deal with, our feelings in constructive, or helpful, and not destructive, or non-helpful, ways.