the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Things I have been learning about Yahweh, others, and myself. Been reflecting on the 2nd season of Loki, too, so those reflections will be seen throughout this post today (spoilers included):

Yahweh:

• The people God has placed in my life lately do something quite insightful that I haven’t always grown up doing – reading Scripture through the eyes of the characters in the Bible stories. I feel like doing so opens our eyes to the pressures, faithfulness, and humanity of ourselves and others. One of my favorite recent insights was from a Bible study led by my head pastor. We were reading through Mary’s Magnificat, and my pastor noted how faithful Mary must have been to praise God for calling her favored, while socially and culturally, Mary was in an incredibly unfavorable state – unwed and pregnant. It really puts into perspective the level of trust into the unknown that God can invite us into, and that that is what faith really is – not certainty, not lack of doubt, but trusting God in the midst of the unknown.

Other people:

• “Most purpose is more burden than glory” – Mobius from Loki 2 . I have been thinking about this quote a lot since watching the Loki 2 season finale. I would go even further and say that sometimes the burden is the glory. From a Christian perspective, Jesus’ story shows this, too. For Jesus to submit to sin’s power and death through selflessness and sacrificial love for those who considered Him an enemy – that is His glory. That’s not to say we all need to lose our boundaries and have people trample over us. But for Jesus, He knew that fighting fire with fire was not the way to glory, as was hoped for by so many of His people. He knew that rolling with the punches of those who murdered Him would get turned on His head, even asking the Father to forgive them when they didn’t even want to ask for forgiveness.
  
  Moreover, this quote makes me think of the purposes we try to pursue in our own lives. It’s almost as if the purpose doesn’t have a level of burden to it, we’re probably not pursuing the right purposes. Going back to scripture for a bit… Jesus says that His yolk is easy and His burden is light, implying that life will have burdens. However, as we are not Asgardian gods, our burdens as humans are meant to be shared in healthy ways – with Jesus and with others.
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• I have also been thinking about how one of Loki’s fears ended up coming true – being alone. Granted, at this point, it probably was not something he feared so much anymore. For most of his life, per his conversation with Sylvie at a bar, he equated being alone with not knowing where he belonged. As the time loom comes to the end of its existence, Loki knew that at that point in ‘time’, he was the only one who could and was willing to be the solution to contain all the time strands (I say ‘willing’ because Sylvie is a Loki, too). With everything he learns from his journey at the TVA – from his encounter with He who Remains to his insightful talks with Sylvie and Mobius, Loki starts to understand what the true meaning of ‘glorious purpose’ is, and that while there is much glory, there is also much burden. Consequently, this shifts his fears. He fears more his friends and the universes not being okay – because if his friends are not okay, then he doesn’t know if he will be and where he belongs. If he can do whatever he can to have this friends and the universes be okay, then he knows he belongs there – which is at the end of time, using his Asgardian divinity to empower and give life to all the time strands, letting them grow freely. That all being said, fear can be a good thing, as it shows us what really matters to us.

Myself:

• In terms of academics, I am a better writer than test taker at this point in my life
• In terms of academics, and in terms of learning anything new in general, I learn best through examples and storytelling.
• I have been trying to reflect on why Loki has always been my favorite Marvel character. In all honesty, he became my favorite in the first Avengers film (although he was the villain) in 2012 because I thought he was the best looking of everyone (frankly, Tom Hiddleston was a celebrity crush of mine for a while). However, as I continued to watch the movies and witness Loki’s chaotically confusing journey, I still noticed that aside from looks, he remained my favorite character.
  
  Firstly, he’s quite fun to watch. Some of his tricks are entertaining, and it’s fun to watch a powerful being use their abilities – such as him cloning himself, or morphing into other people.
  
  Secondly, he is an interesting subject in terms of psychology. Knowing a bit about how families work (i.e., parental affirmation and guidance, sibling order and all), I think he was more nurtured into being the “God of Mischief” than it was his nature. I’m not exactly blaming his parents or family for the atrocities he committed, but they did have an tremendous impact on Loki. At the end of it all, all Loki wanted was to belong and not feel alone (as confirmed in the Loki series), which, unfortunately, his adoptive family was never really able to give that to him.
  
  Thirdly, something is appealing and maybe relatable to how he tries to do the right thing. He definitely gets things wrong very badly, but we see him try in various ways to try and be a better god throughout the Marvel films. A lot of the Marvel characters go through similar journeys, too, but Loki’s journey just seems so angsty to me. Even through his villainous acts through the Marvel films, his relatability makes it easy to still hope for the best for him, and his motivations are understandable – fearing not being seen and fearing being alone. A few times in the Marvel films and ultimately in the Loki series, at the most dire times, he shows he can do the right thing.
  
  Fourthly, and I didn’t mean to make this the 4th point ironically, is that even before I was aware of enneagram types, as an enneagram 4, I have always been drawn to enneagram 4-like characters and people: Coco Chanel, Cruella, and Loki (plus my boyfriend hehe but he is far from villainous like these people listed). Loki stands out not exactly as a villain nor hero; he is definitely on some kind of spectrum of antihero. The vagueness of where he is supposed to ‘fit in’ stands out to me solely because Loki doesn’t fit in to anywhere, and that what’s what makes him unique. In Loki season 1, he and his variants are labelled as the ‘God of Outcasts’. At the end of season 2, he still holds that title, as where he ends up being for the greater good is away from people, an outcast – but the most important one that Loki probably holds with sadness but with duty and relief for those he cares about (ps. Jesus is also the God of Outcasts – God of the outcasts, and the God that was outcast and ultimately crucified… this could have been another point somewhere but I will stop for now.)

That was a lot. Thank you for reading this far if you have !