Anime Lectio: Wolf Children

                                                             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.

Raising a family and/or being part of one is difficult for everyone.  It's also different for everyone based on the family that you are in, how that family works, and what else that involves, but these differences that everyone experiences in raising a family and/or being part of one are what make raising a family and/or being part of one difficult for everyone.  In the anime movie Wolf Children, this is seen in a certain way, but the point is what it represents, which is the difficulties of raising a family and/or being part of one.

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.

The anime movie Wolf Children starts off with a young woman living her life of going to school and living on her own. When she's at school one day, she sees another student, a young man who actually isn't a student at the school, but is interested in learning, so she decides to help him. Despite the fact that he can turn into a wolf, they fall in love, get married, and have kids together. Unfortunately, the young man dies in some sort of hunting accident when he's still in his complete wolf form and while the kids are still infants, so the young woman has to raise them on her own. What also makes this difficult is that the kids also have the ability to turn into wolves, which is something that the young woman knows nothing about as she never asked her husband while he was still alive how he was raised so she could know what to do with their children. Despite the difficulties of being a single parent, with the additional difficulty of raising children who can turn into wolves, the young woman finds ways to make it work, like finding a place for them to live that's isolated, as well as in the middle of nature, but still close enough to civilization.

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.

One of the things that makes raising a family and/or being part of one difficult is the differences in who makes up the family being raised. There's a person in charge of raising this family and it can be difficult to tell who this person is depending on the family. In a family that's more of a community, there's usually a clearly defined leader of said community, what this leader does, or is supposed to do, how this leader is chosen, and other important things about this leader, like how he deals with others in the community. In biological families, the leader of such families are the parents and their children are their responsibilities. Other responsibilities depend on what these families do, but an easier way to structure them would be to make it more like a community with children in mind, like the children in the anime movie Wolf Children.

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 for how we can see our families as a community or part of one depending on how you see it.