Anime Lectio: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

                                                            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. The only device you need is the one you use for this blog.

3. Deep Breathing - Open yourself to God’s Presence

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. 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 people you

know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence. 

4. 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. 

I think the best way to define a word is to use it in some kind of context, whether that be something in writing, like in a sentence, or something you can see, like in an animated.  A good example of such a word is one that's used for an emotion like anger or sadness.  While there are other ways to understand such emotions, like seeing faces that express anger or sadness, other emotions are more complicated.  An example of such an emotion is melancholy since it's a more complicated kind of sadness, which can be seen, as well as dealt with, in the series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

5. Brief and written explanation of the anime

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

A seemingly average high school girl ends up becoming friends with a guy who actually is just an average high school guy due to being interested in her in terms of what she does, which isn't what people usually do.  They end up forming some weird club with three of their other peers that's about doing things together for the sake of doing them.  The seemingly average high school girl only tells the actually average high school guy why she wants to do all of this, which is because of her feelings of melancholy, or reflective sadness, but their three other peers don't need to know this because they know these things need to happen for the sake of the world not ending.  This is because they happen to know that this seemingly average high school girl is actually God (or something like that), which they tell the actually average guy, as well as who they really are (a time traveler, an alien, and someone which psychic powers) and can end the world if she wanted to.  In order to prevent that from happening, they do whatever the seemingly average high school girl wants to do, no matter how crazy it gets.

6.  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.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a series where you can see the melancholy of the title character happening, even though for the most part, the series focuses on what she does about her melancholy and why that's important.  Even though a person's melancholy usually wouldn't be enough to almost end the world (it almost happens in the series, but is resolved in an interesting way - the youtube content creator Philosotaku has a video about this that I really like: I like it for other reasons too), resolving any person's melancholy is still important.  What's also important is why I think defining it, as well as anything else, should be based on the context of it.  Words have definite meanings in terms of figuring out what they mean in a general way, but they can also mean different things to different people, meaning melancholy can be defined for everyone in terms of how it's used in a sentence or something, but what does it mean for you and what can you do about it?

7. 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 our melancholy is and what we can do about it.