Do. Or do not! There is no try: Part 1
Instead of quoting Bible passages, my family quoted Star Wars.
The X-wing fighter has sunk, and only the tip of its nose shows above the lake's surface.
LUKE: Oh, no. We'll never get it out now.
Yoda stamps his foot in irritation.
YODA: So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?
Luke looks uncertainly out at the ship.
LUKE: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.
YODA: No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
LUKE: (focusing, quietly) All right, I'll give it a try.
YODA: No! Try not. Do. Or do not!! There is no try....
The lines above are from the screenplay to The Empire Strikes Back, the second of the first trilogy of Star Wars movies, aka Episode V. Many of us who originally saw the 1980 film back in the theater fondly remember this scene in the swamps of Dagobah featuring the grumpy and whiny student, Luke Skywalker, and his impatient, diminutive, Kermit the Frog-like teacher, Yoda.
Now, insert brother and sister into their roles and you have some idea of my childhood fantasy life. Instead of quoting Bible passages for spiritual guidance, sometimes my family quoted Star Wars.
Recall the wonder of the Force, this arcane and powerful energy field that filmmaker George Lucas proposed as a kind of religious rubber cement that held together his universe. In the words of Yoda, the Force "surrounds us and binds us. ... Here, between you...me...the tree...the rock...everywhere!" For a skeptic like me, neither raised in a religious home nor educated about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or anything else even marginally spiritual, the Force seemed like a cool and even plausible explanation for not only what might bind together a galaxy far, far away, but my small and mundane world in rural New Hampshire. To heathens like me, the Force made a lot more sense than the Holy Trinity.
It's easy to dismiss science fiction and other genre movies (and books, and games) as mindless entertainment. But the reason for the popularity of Star Wars, Twilight and Lord of the Rings can't simply be that our culture craves vapid adventure stories to while away the idle hours. I think we consume these modern epics because, for many of us, traditional institutions don't cut it anymore. Church, family and government once handed over fairly rigid instructions on "how to live": how to be a good citizen, neighbor, spouse or parent. The cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s changed all that. Vietnam, political assassinations, government corruption, and the rise of the corporate state left us suspicious of conventional authority and religion. We got jaded.
Is it no wonder, then, that many now seek moral guidance and spiritual example not in mosques and chapels, but huddled in darkened movie theaters or bathed in the holy glow of our Blu-rays? Our new gods and priests might be writers, movie directors and actors. When, in Lord of the Rings, Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wise intones to Frodo, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us," it's hard not to prick up our hobbity ears and nod our heads in agreement. Yes, that's damned good advice. And for many of us, it's guidance much easier to swallow than the kind shouted from the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.