Musings on Babylon 5 and Questions of Living

Heavy References to Babylon 5 

I don't think you can call them spoilers for a show that ended 18 years ago

Babylon 5 has been on my mind this week because I finished a random B5 novel I picked up at a local used bookstore a while ago. If you don't know, Babylon 5, in a nut shell, was a space station which more or less was a city sized UN, but instead of countries you had planets represented. Below is the intro for season 1. (And which I was able to reference in one of my upcoming pieces for Portico Collective on the Psalms which makes me giggle):

I have been having many thoughts and feelings about life and faith and community and family and purpose. ( a) because the lead up to the season 11 SPN final b) thinking about how I want to structure my summer). But in being re-immersed in the B5 universe I have been reminded that B5 was one of my first substantive introductions to faith and spirituality.

I shall always remember the wise words of Delenn:

"Then I will tell you a great secret Captain, perhaps the greatest of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside, that is born in the stars themselves. We are starstuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. As we have both learned, sometimes the universe requires a change of perspective."
- Delenn

But like Jeffrey Sinclair was told "there is a hole in your mind", the "me" bit of the universe has a few holes of its own. And sometimes I am content with that, content knowing that I might just yet be the next Valen a Minbari not born of Minbari. And sometimes the holes are just holes blinding me to the life that is just outside the walls I create around myself. When I feel the emotions floating around me and start to drown. Where I have trouble imagining the next weeks story arch, let alone the next 5 year story arch of my life.

As I started walking down my memory lane of B5 (as such journeys aided by google and YouTube are prone to do) I found little jems like being reminded of the Ranger's pledge. Which I realized in its own way was an past echo of "Always Keep Fighting", "You Are Never Alone, and "Love Yourself first".

We are Rangers.
We walk in the dark places no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no one may pass.
We engage in battle, we do not retreat.
We live for the One, we die for the One.

In this moment the "me" bit of the universe is struggling to figure itself out. I am trying to figure out what change in perspective is needed and how to make it so. I hope to use this summer to walk in the dark places and stand on the bridge and engage in the battle and see what amazing hybrid is formed in the end.