Most people don’t know that I love comics. For a long time, I was scared to tell people. How can anyone be a serious scholar when they fill their minds with illustrated boxes and word bubbles? I don’t care about the questions of dumbasses anymore. I’ve learned to just be. Furthermore, I’ve learned to find God in the magic of those flimsy little books. Truthfully, I find few things more intellectually stimulating than sitting in our backyard surrounded by chickens, reading a classic edition of X-Men and scribbling in my little black notebook the thoughts that come to mind.
I love X-Men above all others. The clash between mutants and humans reveals much about the nature of life. No one seems to have the ability to just stop and accept the fact that difference is the only way to make a difference. The constant battles for civil rights that take place in the pages of X-Men have always informed my work. The X-Men have helped me to understand death as well. When Jean Grey (Phoenix) died in The Uncanny X-Men #136, I realized that heroes die.
The death of heroes causes us to martyrize them as quickly as possible. I think that we’re scared that our dead heroes will be forgotten. Do you think that Jesus would have been remembered if Jesus had never died? I doubt it. We are never able to leave our heroes dead. We have to resurrect them. The problem with such thinking is that we forget that there is life in death.
There is no such thing as heroes. There is only us and the life we are able to find in death. I follow the X-Men because they constantly remind me that there is life in death. The story always continues.
In the end, there is only death. In the end, there is only life. In death is life. In life is death. What’s the difference? There is no difference of category. There is only each of us. We are life and death. We are the difference of person.
The X-Men taught me about the futility of life and the divinity of difference. The X-Men always draw me back to God.
Amen.
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