Anime Lectio: Negative Positive Angler

                                                            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. 

What would you do if you found out that you didn't have a lot of time left to live?  This is usually a question that people ask themselves in order to think more about their own lives and what's important to them.  This is usually not seen in media, but an example of this can be seen in the anime series Negative Positive Angler.

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.

A guy who's in a lot of debt due to a gambling problem finds out one day that he only has 2 years left to live.  The loan sharks who he owes money to find him while he's wasting his money again, thinking he might as well if he's going to die soon anyway, but while he's running away from them, he ends up falling into a body of water.  He ends up being saved by a group of fishermen and women that end up becoming his friends, teaching their new friend about fishing, which he really gets into, about where they work, and what else they like to do.  The guy ends up going off to live on his own, but he still keeps in touch with the friends he made that taught him that life is worth living.

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.

Something that Benedictine monks like myself have to think about daily is the fact that we are going to die someday (part of the tools of good works chapter in The Rule of St. Benedict). In addition to the question that I started the reflection given before the explanation of the anime with, which can be seen asked and answered in its own way in the anime example given here, this fact can also help us think about our own lives and what's important to us. The tools of good works aren't material tools, but are more like behaviors and ways of thinking and part of these tools involves thinking about death in a different way - as an inevitability that makes time, specifically what to do with it, more meaningful to us. How we use that time is up to us, like how it's up to the main character in this anime series.

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 understand what it means to think about our death and what relates to it, like how we use our time.