Orr and the jetsam of my mind

There has not been a better defenceman in hockey than Bobby Orr. This is an important truth to bear in mind if you are a canuck. Our homeland raised up the closest thing to the platonic form of defenceman; we have every reason to be glad and delight in his prodigious achievements! Orr makes me want to stand up and sing O Canada; Orr makes me want to eat nuts; Orr is a warrior and a humble manly man. Enough about Orr for the time being, suffice it to write that Bobby Orr was a poet with a hockey stick!

300 is not for little kids, but it is for manly men and women. On a number of different levels the film was so very fine. First it deals with spiritual challenges and warfare. My favourite line was spoken by King Leonidas when he explained to his fellow warriors "...there will be no surrender or going back." For we who battle together against the enemies of our souls this is no less true. However much the goal of our walk is peace and joy, the reality now is that we are at war; and this war requires men and women to battle even to the death. 300 teaches us that we ought never to shirk this duty; it goes further indeed: the story implies that it is a honour to fight for what we do, that it brings glory. Now admittedly the glories we tend toward are different than in the story, but the principle is easily transposed to our type of glory and warfare. It is indeed a hard lesson many do shirk all too easily in our age, and thus it is good to have the idea stressed in this story. Toward the powers of this age: no retreat, no giving in. Orthodox mothers should teach this notion to their babies from the beginning; in the next point we will see why.

Secondly the battle mocks death. Mocking death is highly underrated in movies and amongst those who watch them. This has to do with a death-denial attitude quite prevalent in our secular environs; but this is not for us, we should smile and make cracks at death. Of course the Spartans under Leonidas had less reason than we to do so, which of course makes it all the more impressive that, when the 300 warriors are told by 5000 Persians to put down their weapons, we hear Leonidas mockingly reply, "Come and get them!" When death is mocked, such a thing makes the manly man in me delight.

Thirdly it tells of manliness. This was my best friend's favourite line in the show. While a Persian messenger is offended because the Spartan Queen had the nerve to address him, she defends herself by stating that "only Spartan women give birth to men." We can transpose this too. Just as the implication in the script is that other women merely give birth to males or females, not manly humans; we also can and should claim that only Orthodox women give birth to christ-bearing men who will fight against the principalities -- other women give birth to merely engendered humans. This gives us a fresh take on raising spiritual warriors, martyrs and defenders of the faith.

There are numerous other good lessons to take from 300 that could be helpful, especially about the nature of evil in the world, of our passions and the perversity possible in human nature. But these will suffice for now.