Hope for a World on Fire - Avatar: The Last Airbender Review
Written by Jay Horton. Photo: Netflix
Last month, the long-anticipated, live-action series reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered on Netflix. Growing up, this was one of my favorite shows. An optimistic, outdoorsy child and self-proclaimed church nerd, the show offered something many others on television did not—deep spirituality and genuine hope for a world on fire.
For those not familiar with the show, it’s about four distinct realms: the Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. Each, as evidenced by their names, represents different elements in the natural world and members of each community can bend or manipulate the element they represent. For many years, these four communities lived together in harmony, but as the title sequence says, “everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked,” throwing the world out of balance.
The Avatar, the one person able to master all four elements, is the only one who can stop them. Reborn into a new community every generation, the next Avatar is a teenage Airbender named, Aang. Aang must master all four elements before he’s ready to restore balance to the world.
Yet, again, as the title sequence says, “When the world needed him most, he vanished.” Trapped in an iceberg for 100 years, it is only after young water tribe members discover him that he begins his journey to learn all four elements and eventually save their world.
The connections between the realm of Avatar: The Last Airbender, our planet, and the climate crisis are unmistakable. A small group is carelessly making decisions to destroy Sacred Earth and their neighbors, all for the sake of greed and power.
In one of my favorite scenes, Aang and his companions are traveling through the Earth Kingdom on the back of their flying bison (very cool, right?), when they see a large swath of scorched land. They decide to land in the village nearby and check it out. Villagers tell them that the Fire Nation burned the forest, but that is the least of their concerns. An angry spirit comes each evening and kidnaps members of their small town.
A very spiritual person himself, Aang decides he can help. He ventures into the spirit world and learns that Hei Bai, the spirit of the forest, is angry because of all the destruction of life, and is lashing out at the closest sign of civilization. Aang, after some effort, is able to show Hei Bai, through the acorns on the forest floor that new life is possible even in the most scorched of earth.
For Green Team leaders in Georgia, like myself, the lessons are plentiful.
As we come into a greater understanding of our own spiritual connections to Sacred Earth, we discover the points of pain and suffering for our planet and communities that call this place a Common Home. As we develop a stronger connection to the earth, we help our communities see the possibilities for new life and restored connection.
Cooperation is essential, though. We cannot do this work alone. Almost everything Georgia Interfaith Power and Light (GIPL) does is in coalition spaces, because we know that there is strength in both numbers and diverse perspectives. Aang would have died early on in the show if he had had to navigate and save the world by himself. He needed friends and fellow benders.
Partnerships between Green Teams, GIPL, and other environmental nonprofits in Georgia make the work of caring for Sacred Earth easier, but perseverance also matters. We cannot give up!
The journey for justice, for solar, for greener, more sustainable spaces is a long and arduous one. There are many different elements, beyond the natural ones, we must learn, like how we navigate personal bias and what it means to be an anti-racist environmentalist. With each step, though, we improve—we become stronger and more resilient.
While I still believe the original cartoon to best, the live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender offers the vital message more succinctly: Each of us has the power to change the world if we work together and never give up.
