I Will Rise Up

I love True Blood. I'm the youngest in my family (and I'm 20 now) so, somehow, and I think it's because I've trained my family to have decent taste in television, our "family shows" are HBO shows. (Our new favorite is Game of Thrones) We have watched almost every episode (excluding some of season 2), and almost every one we watched together. It's weird, I know, but it's my family and I love them for it.

One of my favorite scenes is in episode 2x09, I Will Rise Up. It's the last scene of the episode, and sorry, spoiler alert, it's the scene where Godric dies (and Sookie stays with him). Godric is about two thousand years old. And even for a vampire, (True Blood vampires specifically) that's old. I mean, OLD. I think we only meet one other vampire that's older than him, and there's a lot of vampires. One thing he says, as he's dying, (he chooses to wait for the sun to rise and burn, depressing, but beautiful) he asks Sookie, "If there is a god, how will he punish me?" And in her infinite, although sometimes painfully frustrating, wisdom, she says, "God doesn't punish. He forgives." (There are more things I love about this scene, but I'll get to them in time.)
I don't know about you, but that's the God I believe in. I don't care what I call him, or what any one else calls him, or how strongly you believe, or don't. To be honest, I don't care if any one believes in any kind of God or not. I think, and I know from my own experiences, that we all find God in our own time, and no amount of Bible thumping, intolerant, preachy Christians can make that happen any faster than it should. (If you can't tell from that, I don't deal well with intolerance...) Back to the point: "God doesn't punish. He forgives." I thought that was the best way to talk about God, the best way to believe in God. And because I love this scene so much (maybe too much...) I watch it on YouTube... a lot. And one time, I scrolled down to look through the comments. Someone had posted saying that wasn't how God was, and that Sookie is being the wrong kind of Christian saying that. I got rather frustrated with this: Why go around watching a scene on YouTube that you don't agree with, then start picking fights with people in comments on your views on God and religion? I still don't know the answer to this, but it made me wonder about their faith. Was it their own, or was it someone else's views they were spouting? I thought about this for a while, but my main thought was: Why would you want to believe in a God that wouldn't always love you, wouldn't always forgive you, support you? I don't know the answer to that either, but just having the thought made me think about my own faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, both my parents are, and their parents, and pretty much every family member I've ever met... But I don't know if a single one of them had ever shared this thought with me. This faith I had, it was all my own. (How I got there though, that's a different story.)

The last beautiful aspect of this scene? Another quote. Sookie asks if Godric is afraid. He tells her he wants to burn. She tells him she's afraid for him, then starts to cry (she does a lot of that, rather emotional girl). Godric replies: "A human with me at the end? And human tears?" A pause. "Two thousand years, and I can still be surprised?" He smiles to himself. "In this I see God." Then Sookie cries some more, and Godric burns in the light of the rising sun. The idea that you can see God in surprises, in new experiences, in unexpected ways? It's the simplest one, I mean really, it's what they teach you in Bible School. But it's the most beautiful.

If you don't like God, don't hate on those who do.
If you do like God, don't hate on those who don't. And don't preach. Ever. You found your God, let everyone find their own, in their own time.

Until next time,
Alissa