I recently watched the newest X-Men movie: X-Men: Days of
Future Past.
To Set the Scene
We recently moved across the country from Indiana to Oregon.
We’re closer to family than we were, but still sixteen hours away. We were in
Indiana for seven years. It didn’t feel like home right away, and it continued
to feel different and midwesterny, but we’d made many good friends and found
many connections and familiarities. It had become home. Now everything is new
again. Though we’ve met good people, in many ways, we’re strangers in a strange
land.
Not only that, the night that I watched the movie was in the
midst of a week in which I was alone at home. My wife had taken our sons to
visit family for the week of Thanksgiving, but I was on call for work so I
stayed home. I live on campus at a university. There’s usually plenty of noise
and activity, but most students had left for Thanksgiving break so it was a bit
of a Ghost Town.
This is the context in which I watched the latest X-Men
movie.
My Realization: Cerebro is about Tribalism
If you’re familiar at all with the X-Men mythos, then you
know of Cerebro. Professor X, the leader and founder of the X-Men, is a
telepath and Cerebro is a machine that magnifies his mutant powers.
In Days of Future Past, Cerebro is used to locate
one particular mutant. Perhaps because of my current life circumstances, the
scene hit me in a particularly interesting way.
As I watched Cerebro being utilized in this movie, and
thought back to similar scenes in the past movies, I thought,
“On the surface Cerebro fulfills a political, or social, or
strategic function, in these stories, but at it’s core, Cerebro is about
tribalism.”
Today was the second day that our son rode the bus to
school. He walked Candice and me outside
to wait really early. He yelled and
laughed at a squirrel in a tree. He
pointed happily to where the bus would be arriving. Then he screamed in terror when it was time
to get on and leave. Mama and Papa
discussed whether or not he’s ready for this as we walked back in the
apartment. 
While in my MA program I learned about Bernard of Clairvaux
and his work On Loving God. It
seems that we start our journey in the faith loving God for our own sake, then
we grow a little and maybe we learn to love God for God’s sake. According to Bernard of Clairvaux, the final
stage is loving self for the sake of God.
I have a long way to go on that journey.
