Desperately need inspiration!

My deadline is looming for my parish magazine, and I have no idea about what to write for my piece.

I write a column based on something B5 every month, but I have no inspiration this month.

Help please. Any quotes from the show, or anything that has stuck with you. As this will be for the new year, then something about new beginnings would be good, but anything please.

If you want to see what I have written recently, then it can be found here.

"You're wrong, Mollari. Whether it was me or my world, whether it was a total stranger or your worst enemy, you were a witness! It doesn't matter if they stopped. It doesn't matter if they'd listen. You had an obligation to speak out!"

-- G'Kar to Londo in Babylon 5:"The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari"

Off the top of my head I can only think of Romans 12:21 as a tie-in.

I've preached on Lorien's regeneration of Sheridan before. On the basis that he has to be prepared to let go of his life and trust in lorien's ability to restore him. He can stay where he is but it's not really life. I think i might have used U2's Drowning Man in the same context.

All I can think of is Forgiveness, the one where G'Kar forgives Londo or something about the Declaration of Principles (Either 'we are one' or 'be kind to one another') and the Golden Rule.

Jan

Well, with your use of the words "new beginnings", Ivanova's ending naration in "Sleeping In Light" came to mind as she there uses those words. The way Claudia Christian delivered that line always seems to make me wistful and hopeful when I hear it.

For reference, here's the text of what Ivanova says at the end of SiL (excluding the last bit about Delenn).

Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another because if we don't, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope... that there could always be new beginnings... even for people like us.

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The line about us having to care for each other is also quite powerful, I think, especially with it being juxtaposed in the episode with Franklin and a medical team trying desperately to save a pak'ma'ra.

Perhaps you could in some way draw the connection between helping others being a means through which one can find hope for themselves. That in the new year, one can resolve to help others in ways they haven't before, and in doing so begin to create a new, refreshed direction in their lives.

Such thought leads me to remember a quote I found online from Mark Twain: "The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up." Give of yourself and get in return. I think there's even some Taoism in there: only by being empty can you become full.

I haven't looked through your previous articles, so forgive me if you've already written on this quote before. Anyway, it's a thought.

Oh, and I just decided to take a look at what you have for January '06 (I guess I was thinking that I'd look at last January and see what you began the last new year with), and I wanna say, "How interesting" that I'd run upon that as it's quite applicable to something my best friend told me about the other day. She's on the vestry for her church, and they're in the midst of trying to find a new minister, and there was something presented at one of the recent vestry meetings in regards to that pursuit that she felt didn't live up to its purpose. She said she was hesitant to speak up about it and voice her dissatisfaction over it but that she just couldn't not speak her conscience. Your Dukhat quote from January '06 is most apt to her recent situation. Though she won't understand the context as I haven't been able to get her anywhere near the point of seeing any of Dukhat's scenes in Babylon 5 in my attempts to get her to watch the show, I think that I'm going to email her what you wrote. Thanks for posting the link to that page (I just find it fun that the one previous article I decided to look at is so applicable to what she was most recently talking to me about experiencing at her church.)

I haven't looked through your previous articles, so forgive me if you've already written on this quote before. Anyway, it's a thought.

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February 1999

Sometimes it's really hard to find a quote as I've used all the obvious ones.

The G'Kar quote is good. Shame the script books haven't got that far yet, I'll have to dig out the DVDs to watch that bit again.

Thanks for the replies and keep them coming.

I would think that perhaps the Downbelow Sound Archive might be a helpful resource as it usually contains the more impressive statements spoken in the series. Maybe something as simple as browsing through some of its listings could spark an idea.

It's been on my favourites for years.

Have you ever tried to transcribe from a video tape? Even a short piece of dialouge takes ages.

Yes, actually, I have on several occations tried to transcribe stuff off of a tape. Play pause write rewind play pause rewrite play curse rewind play write pause write repeat. In the end, I'd look at the total amount I had written down and wonder how in the world only three sentences could take so long.

Have you ever tried to transcribe from a video tape? Even a short piece of dialouge takes ages.

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Can you tell me which quote you're interested in? I can transcribe it from the script for you.

Jan

No doubt you've used it before, but Turhan's speech to Sheridan is possibly the most concise and profound explanation of the human condition, and how to rise above it, that I have ever heard of:

"So much pain, so much lost, and for what, I wonder? The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us..."

You know the rest.

Actually I'm not sure if I have. I shall have to check.

How about Susan's quote from her Grandfather, "Good news can wait, bad news will refuse to go away".

Well, since we're at the time of the Winter Solstice, and the birth of the sun/son (the Solstice marks the turning from the dark side of the year to the light, thus "sun"; and the Christian implications of "son" are obvious, I'd guess), I wonder if you couldn't find something about the Army of Light bringing hope to the galaxy at its seemingly darkest moment (and how it's always darkest before the dawn, that sort of thing). Just a thought from the alternative perspective.

Or how about for people who are feeling naff because Christmas and New Year are so full of human expectation and things don't come to pass, using Sinclair's speech to G'Kar in By Any Means Necessary. Sometimes we get so lost in the importance of dates that we forget the really important things. In BEMN G'Kar misses the date of his celebration, but Sinclair reveals a deeper more spiritual truth.

The same can be said with the things of God. We look to him to fulfill our promises and hopes... and we see new year as a time of expectation, a time when the slate is wiped clean and the things we hope for... the new season comes to pass.

Naturally that doesn't always happen and we have to remind ourselves that things work to God's plan and not our calendar.

A scripture that has been very pertinent to me and matches the scene from BEMN is from Proverbs:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the longing is fulfilled it becomes a tree of life."

Thinking about this issues has led me to develop a new lesson plan for my students, revolving in part around Turhan's speech that I recommended.

Ressurecting this thread as I have another deadline looming.

I really want to write about the ruling here in the UK that says adoption agencies have to allow gay couples to adopt. Now I've nothing against that, it's the fact that this ruling is being given as an order, not as a recommendation and Catholic agencies are not being given exemption.

I just find it a bit unfair that the Catholic agencies are saying that they will close down rather than let Gay couples adopt their children, because it is against their principles. If the only adoption agencies were Catholic ones, then I can see the point of the ruling. As there are other agencies, why not allow the Catholic ones to keep their principles, and gay couples adopt from elsewhere.

It doesn't seem fair to me.

I don't want to start a discussion on this here. I need a quote, from B5 or elsewhere, about the difference between allowing and forcing. Maybe deciding where one person's rights stops and another begins. I can't think of anything at the moment apart from Ivanova in 'Survivors' and that one about honey and vinegar.

I know I'm being no help at all, but I just wanted to mention that I threw Turhan's speech at some of my students. Some of them got it, some of them didn't.

I can't pull a quote out of my head at the moment, but maybe "Believers" -- the episode with the family who wouldn't let Franklin operate on their son -- can offer something useful in the realm of allowing vs. forcing.