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January 26, 2008

Buechner: Giving doubt a voice

Filed under: Books,Faith Issues — Culture Beat @ 10:35 pm

Frederick Buechner is not a religious writer.

“The term … gives me the creeps,” the novelist-essayist-poet-theologian said this week from his home in Vermont. “It means to me obvious, preachy, unrealistic. I don’t think I’m a religious writer at all in that sense.”

Instead, he has aimed in a six-decade writing career “to see the world as it is, to be as honest as possible with the representation of life as I’ve known it all these years.” For Buechner, the world is all flesh and spirit, humanness and holiness he has richly portrayed in an assortment of characters.

There’s Leo Bebb, an unctuous preacher who turns out to be something of a redeeming figure, a surprising stage on which God performs.

There’s Godric, a pirate turned priest from the 11th century, a real-life monk who was eventually named a saint. As imagined by Buechner in a novel nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Godric is racked with lust and doubts, but no less longing for God.

“In everything I write, I try to give a doubt a voice,” Buechner said. “There’s always a question mark, a shadow. I never pretended faith was easy. It’s not so much a conscious effort to decide whether it’s true or not, but the task of living in this world raises the question.”

Saints and sinners are not opposites in Buechner’s stories, essays and memoirs. They are the same people. They are like real humans, that is, and Buechner is comfortable being human.

“Lucky is he who is flawed and recognizes he’s flawed,” he said. “There’s a better chance to see things the way things really are, including themselves. They’re not living on automatic pilot.”

Buechner, now 81, grew up in a family “without any religious sensibility,” but came to belief just as his writing star was rising in 1950s New York. He earned a degree from Union Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He never held a pulpit, but he taught religion at Philips Exeter Academy of New Hampshire before returning to full-time writing in the early 1960s. “Words are my ministry,” he has said.

Among his literary parishioners is Dale Brown, a professor of English at King College in Bristol, Tenn. Before moving there last year, Brown taught at Calvin College in Michigan for 20 years, where he directed the annual Festival of Faith and Writing. He had struck up a long-distance friendship with Buechner, and had come to regard Buechner as a mentor.

Three years ago, Brown visited King College for a year-long sabbatical, researching and writing a book about Buechner. Along the way, he planted a seed for what is now called the Buechner Institute.

The institute will be inaugurated on Monday at the college, with a program that includes three seminars, a concert by Christian singer-songwriter Michael Card, and an evening interview featuring Buechner and theologian Walter Brueggemann.

“I admire (Buechner’s) work … not just because he’s a really great artist, but has a deep understanding of faith,” Brown said this week. “He kind of fills the space between secularism and sectarianism. In our area, I hope the institute can be a place that invites people from a lot of different perspectives. We want to encourage a conversation that does not involve setting up walls.”

Brown is planning monthly events and a future research center where scholars and artists can explore “the intersection of faith and culture,” to echo Buechner’s work.

“I’m touched by the honor they do me,” Buechner said. This is his first contact with the college.

“I’d love to see (the institute) explore other writers who work the same territory I do,” the author said, naming the late Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, author of “No Country for Old Men,” among them.

This territory, as he calls it, “pays attention to the thin places,” those moments when the boundaries between heaven and earth, between physical and spiritual almost evaporate, when “an event that seems very unimportant becomes transparent to mystery, to holiness.”

Paying attention: that’s not only Buechner’s calling card. That’s his advice.

“Henry James said writers are those on whom nothing is lost,” he said. “Try to be someone on whom nothing is lost. Watch where you go, watch what memories see you through.”

For more information about Monday’s event, phone (423) 652-4709 or 652-4156, or go to www.buechnerinstitute.org.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 26 Jan 2008.

December 17, 2007

“Golden Compass” Fails to Glitter

Filed under: Books,Movies,The Church — Culture Beat @ 9:42 pm

Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) and Iorek Byrnison (voice of Ian McKellen) in The Golden Compass

I entered The Golden Compass with fairly low expectations. After all, the anti-Compass hype from Christian activists portrayed it as the worst threat to our faith since Nero fed believers to lions in the coliseum.

After surviving what seemed like an eternity but was merely the longest two hours I’ve spent in a theater lately, I realized we as Christians need to stop protesting movies we haven’t seen.

Americans vote with their wallets, and the precipitous 66% drop between the first two weekends of Golden Compass leads me to believe New Line Cinema will not greenlight any sequels unless international box office is extremely high.

To be frank, the movie is a snore, with apologies to most sleep aids.

The biggest problem? I couldn’t easily grasp what Lyra’s mission was. This, by the way, is crucial to young adult fantasy.

Dorothy wants to get home. Frodo wants to destroy the One Ring. The Pevensie children need to defeat the White Witch. Harry Potter must confront Voldemort—several times.

And Lyra?

Her mission has something to do with an alethiometer—the titular golden compass whose special effects are nowhere near as cool as the filmmakers must think; dust—which is either a metaphor for original sin or something like the spice from Dune ; battling polar bears—who evidently don’t bleed when their jaws are ripped off in a PG movie; and corrupt church officials, who last time I checked most conscientious Christians I know also oppose.

If I set out to design propaganda to lure children away from God, I would at least make it entertaining. And I would give the latest actor to play James Bond (Daniel Craig) more than a 10-minute, glorified, cameo appearance. And I’m not sure I would squander Academy-Award winner Nicole Kidman, who seems to be slumming for a paycheck, despite being shot through an extremely soft-focus lens.

I get the sneaking suspicion the only reason this movie made $26 million its opening weekend was because of the controversy. And even before that 2/3 drop-off for last weekend those numbers didn’t justify its $180 million budget, which the studio spent, hoping for a new tentpole.

This wouldn’t be the first time audiences went to see a movie vehemently opposed by Christian groups. Earlier examples include The Last Temptation of Christ and The DaVinci Code, which outgrossed The Passion of the Christ despite universally lackluster critical reviews.

Craig Detweiler, co-director of Fuller Seminary’s Reel Spirituality Institute, believes Christian activists have stirred up controversy surrounding the film for their own gain. He told Fox News, “In this era of the messy marriage of politics and religion, we desperately need more imaginative expressions of faith and doubt.”

Framed within the right context, Compass could actually be helpful. Detweiler explains, “It undoubtedly makes people question, but inspires them to look harder for more authentic religion. Pullman takes license in pointing out the scary, false gods and destructive idols we’ve created. In that sense, I think he’s doing a great service.”

As for me, here’s my recommendation: Don’t avoid Golden Compass because it’s thinly veiled, anti-Christian propaganda. Avoid it because it’s a bad film.

Besides, since Christianity has survived the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust, to name a few real threats, it will surely survive this—and any other—movie.

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December 1, 2007

“Golden Compass”: It’s only a movie — or not

Filed under: Books,General Pop Culture,Movies — Culture Beat @ 12:50 pm

Dire warnings about The Golden Compass started arriving by e-mail about a month ago. The film, based on the fantasy novel of the same name by Philip Pullman and due for release on Dec. 7, is anti-religious, the messages said. Sounding like so many previous panicky – and usually false – warnings, it was easy to ignore.

This time, however, the message was basically correct: This first story in Pullman’s best-selling “His Dark Materials” points a condemning finger at a “church” that dominates the parallel world where the stories play out.

Pullman has told several interviewers that while he “can’t get away” from his Christian upbringing and still appreciates its language and symbolism, he no longer believes it is literally true.

“It’s made me what I am,” he said in an interview available on the trilogy’s Web site. “I do attack some manifestations of religious power, but that’s a different thing. I am angry (about the power of religious institutions), and possibly that comes out in my books.”

Ironically, the film’s producers at New Line Cinema are hearing criticism from both Christians and atheists for toning down the religious themes of the story. Some Christian leaders, such as Catholic League president Bill Donohue, say that children who see the relatively benign movie will be drawn to the books, where they will find a more pronounced atheism.

But activist atheists, such as Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, fault the film for not hammering religious institutions as hard as the book does.

“This must be the only film attacked in the same week for being too religious and for being anti-religious — and by people who haven’t seen it,” Pullman told Fox News.

These are confounding times for filmmakers who have grown bolder and more creative in exploring spiritual themes than in the past. A sampling includes this year’s Amazing Grace and the 2004 blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ, as well as the recent crop of fantasy stories with spiritual undertones, such as the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Golden Compass, with its criticism of organized religion, may test the waters in a new way, as filmmakers ponder how much religion their productions can hold and how they can attract believers and nonbelievers without alienating either.

“I can see the problem,” said Linda Seger, a veteran screenwriter and script consultant who earned a doctorate of theology from the Graduate Theological Union. “I’m just guessing, but the movie probably is a product of the incredible division these days, when no one can satisfy anyone.”

Rather than offering any formulas, Seger, a Quaker who calls herself both a “born-again” and a “progressive” Christian, discussed the interplay she sees between film and faith.

“A lot of religious people who come to the film industry … have great intentions,” Seger said. “They have their theology and their talking points, but they don’t always realize drama is not about your belief system. It’s about your action. It must show faith in action.”

Words are important, but image is king.

“In a good movie, we can turn off the sound and still get the idea of what’s going on, because we see what people doing,” she said. “We see their value system because of how they treat each other.”

Seger also thinks movies work better when filmmakers know what they believe.

“I think some people work out their religious problems through the movies they make, but it’s better to work out your religious solutions in the movies,” she explained. “Your characters can be confused, but the better artists have a point of view that comes across.”

Then there’s the grittiness factor. In a compelling story, the conflicts are real and stakes are high.

“Some Christians doing movies or TV shy away from the grit,” according to Seger. “They want to be nice, but forget that to get to the nice place, you have to get through the grit. Even Jesus had to be crucified before the resurrection.”

While she’s not a fan of filmmakers who “wallow in the muck,” she thinks many Christians are too eager to get past the mess.

“If the filmmaker is not dealing with the hard things, they’re not dealing with the human experience,” Seger said. “True redemption shows that things are tough. If you skirt the issues, that’s cheap.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 1 Dec 2007.

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September 19, 2007

More on Madeleine L’Engle

Filed under: Books,Faith Issues,Uncategorized — Alex @ 9:54 pm

Thom’s great post of last week told me something of his experience reading Madeleine L’Engle that I had not heard before and now I’d like to add my two-cents worth of experience reading this great writer. Last week, the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal posted this piece about the author of A Wrinkle in Time and other mind-stretching fantasies. The writer, Meghan Cox Gurdon, raises some important questions about the long-term effects of reading fantasy steeped in L’engle’s Christian consciousness:

“For children raised in nonreligious households, as I was, Ms. L’Engle’s narrative grit could, it seems, produce years later a kind of pearl. Rereading the book recently, I was amazed at the familiar resonance of the passages whose religious import I had thought eluded me as a child. It will be interesting to see whether Harry Potter leaves a similar spiritual comet-trail in the millions of children who’ve read his story, now that, with the final book in the series, J.K. Rowling has revealed the wizarding world to be unquestionably Christian–though maybe it’s not possible to test the long-term effects of literature the way you can, say, fluoride.”

My own experience was one of reading the first three books as a young Christian and being thrown into a universe where physical and spiritual reality were almost indistinquishable. L’engle’s mingling of science and her Christianity into a cosmos-spanning experience was a literary experience I have found in no other writer.

Like all great fantasy, it takes us from our mundane existence out into a world in which our imagination is reordered into closer alignment with the true nature of the universe and then brings us home. I had been reading either A Wind in the Door or A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the familiar words to the Doxology spontaneously ran through my brain as if I had heard them for the first time and finally understood. I could almost see the word as they moved across my mind:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen.

September 15, 2007

Christian faith, Muslim culture

Filed under: Books,Faith Issues,The Church — Culture Beat @ 1:26 pm

It’s an intriguing question to consider, especially in a week that not only observed the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but also focused a laser beam of scrutiny on the four-plus-year-old Iraqi conflict: Is it possible for someone from a Muslim background to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and stay inside his Islamic culture?

The Rev. Paul-Gordon Chandler, an Episcopal priest who grew up and has lived most of his life in Muslim cultures, believes the answer is yes, even as peace between Christians and Muslims seems to grow ever more difficult and elusive.

“I profoundly believe that a peaceful approach to looking at and working in the Islamic world is Christ’s way forward,” Chandler wrote in an e-mail from Cairo, Egypt, where he serves as rector of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist. “Never before have I seen so many Christians in the West openly and genuinely interested in learning about Islam, seeking to understand Muslims. I have found this most encouraging.”

But at the same time, he wrote, he’s disturbed to see other Western Christians “demonize Islam … creating an Islamaphobia that results in many seeing Islam as an enemy and vice versa. There is a quickly growing discord between Christians and Muslims.”

Chandler, the author of the newly published “Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road: Exploring a New Path Between Two Faiths” (Cowley Publications), is visiting Milligan College, Tenn. (where I teach), on Sept. 18, the last stop of a two-week, coast-to-coast tour. Among other places, he spoke at the Desmond Tutu Education Center at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, where he discussed how Jesus – worshiped as Lord by Christians and revered as prophet by Muslims – can close the gap between the two religions.

Chandler’s book explores that idea by focusing on the spiritual pilgrimage and work of Mazhar Mallouhi, one of the most widely read authors in the Arab world, who calls himself a “Muslim follower of Christ.”

Mallouhi, a Syrian who now lives in Beirut, Lebanon, traces his lineage to the prophet Muhammad, but years ago decided to follow Christ. (Paradoxically, he came to Christ through reading Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu who found inspiration in the life and teachings of Jesus.)

But Mallouhi soon felt caught between two worlds: an outsider to mainstream, largely Westernized Christianity and ostracized from his own Muslim community. He concluded that following Christ does not require joining another religious culture. As he told Chandler, “When one follows Christ, one’s own culture and identity should be enriched. Light should be brought into that culture. That is why it is so important for me to stay and live within my Muslim cultural community.”

In telling Mallouhi’s story, Chandler explores the common heritage the two religions share and how they might not only co-exist but also enhance each other. The gulf isn’t as wide as it might seem. As Chandler points out, Christianity also began as a Middle Eastern faith, a fact most Western Christians have forgotten, which has cost them some sense of their own identity.

“There has never been a time,” he wrote, “when building upon any kinship and proximity between the Christians and Muslims has been so critically needed, rather than acting and speaking in ways that create further alienation.”

The great majority of Muslims do not see themselves in a holy war against the West, wrote Chandler, who was born in Muslim-dominated Senegal and has lived and worked throughout the Islamic world. “They are peace-loving, great friends, incredibly hospitable, gentle and kind. There never has been a greater need for us to realize what we have in common with Muslims and build on those commonalities.”

What Muslims need from Western Christians is love, Chandler says.

“We must be involved today in an effort to help them, not ‘conquer them,’ by good-will, appreciation and sympathy – in the spirit of Christ. Now is the time to ‘wage peace’ on Muslims. For they, like us, are made in God’s image.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 15 Sept. 2007.

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September 9, 2007

Madeleine L’Engle: A Remembrance

Filed under: Books,General Pop Culture — Culture Beat @ 8:39 pm

I was saddened to learn of Madeleine’s L’Engle’s passing. The award-winning author was one of my spiritual heroes.

The school librarian introduced me to Ms. L’Engle’s work when I was in third grade. Noticing the International Date Line on a globe, I saw the legend, “Add one day when traveling west of the line; subtract one day when traveling east of the line.” I asked, being an inquisitive kid, “If you got in a super-duper-fast jet and traveled across that line again and again and again, could you travel through time?”

She paused for a beat, then ran to a bookshelf, and thrust a copy of A Wrinkle in Time in my hands. “Read this,” she said.

I devoured the book, even though I was slightly disappointed that it didn’t answer my precise question. But what it did do was teach me about tesseracts, stimulate my imagination, and further hone my love for science fiction and fantasy.

Years later when I was in graduate school, I re-read Wrinkle and its first two sequels, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, along with her non-fiction book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. As an adult I continue to be impressed with L’Engle’s ability to organically integrate her spiritual themes within her children’s fiction.

After completing my research paper, I proceeded to do something I have rarely done in life: I wrote the author a fan letter, inquiring why there hadn’t been movies made from her books. Much to my surprise, she wrote back:

“Dear Mr. Parham,

The reason none of my works have been adapted for television or film is that I cannot sign the clause that is typical of Hollywood contracts giving the producer freedom to change character and theme, and I hope you wouldn’t want me to sign it. Right now there is a possibility that THE ARM OF STARFISH [sic] will make it to the screen, but Hollywood is a strange place.

Sincerely,
Madeleine”

Although there have been fairly faithful TV versions of A Ring of Endless Light and A Wrinkle in Time since then, they were television movies made on a television budget and (unfortunately) look like it. Perhaps one day, L’Engle’s books will get the lavish, cinematic treatment they deserve.

In the meantime, I continue to use Walking on Water as a textbook for my Christianity and the Creative Process class. Her words of wisdom will continue to impact future generations of artists, and no one articulated the relationship between faith and art better than she:

“To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. It is what makes me respond to the death of an apple tree, the birth of a puppy, northern lights shaking the sky, by writing stories.”

August 12, 2007

With Harry at the End

Filed under: Books,General Pop Culture,Uncategorized — Alex @ 8:36 pm

This may be the last you hear from me here about Harry Potter for a while. Now that the last book is out, the epic 7-volume story has been told and, as Jo Rowling has said of her work, history will judge whether it is a classic for the ages. I didn’t review Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because I figured anyone who hadn’t been keeping up with the series up to the end wouldn’t care or understand anything much I would say and those who had didn’t need to be convinced of the merits of the final book. I will instead comment here about the whole series as I see it. And this is a discussion of the books themselves, not the films which can only offer extended illustrations of the books’ general plots rather than the richly detailed and complex texts.

My earlier pre-publication commentary on the themes and Christian nature of the work was borne out in Hallows. Reading through each chapter, it was like a reunion tour of elements, characters and places from each of the preceding books–not in a forced way to bring them on stage for an encore appearance but seemingly because it had always been planned that way–every plot thread and many characters and places were being traced to their fulfillment in the last culminating volume. If, as Thomas Carlyle said, “genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” Rowling’s creation and execution of the Harry Potter series is at that level. Rowing had conceived of the story of the boy wizard in 1990 and spent over five years outlining the progression of the seven books–they weren’t sequels in the cinematic sense of being made up as she went along. Thus there is a marvelous and perhaps unique coherence and unity to the series that gives them enormous narrative force. Like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Rowing’s magical world is a true subcreation wherein she may explore her themes of sacrifice, courage and character. This world has internal validity, complexity and solid rules by which its characters must operate and it’s the consistency of these qualities that make the books so satisfying.

Thus there is a deep sense of contentment upon finishing the last book–she pulled it off, she knew from the start where she was headed and she took us there with no disappointing is-that-all-there-is-to-this? sense that some popular stories on film, television or print leave you with. That itself is a huge gift in a popular culture that hypes it’s tales beyond their achievement.

Rowling pulled off the very big challenge of spinning a tale of good and evil in which the good characters are actually more interesting that the evil ones. It’s said that a hero is only as good as his antagonist–this is true but we know how often bland heroes pale besides more compelling villains–they’re more interesting usually because writers follow the advice to “write what you know,” and we know our sinful side better than we know and love goodness. The Harry Potter books don’t shirk from showing shades of grey in their many characters; it’s one of the more fascinating aspects of the stories. As that exemplar of goodness, Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore reminds us, no matter what our proclivities to evil might be, it’s our choices that matter and that’s why Harry is good, loving and heroic. Although Voldemort and his Death Eaters are terrifying enemies to Harry and his friends and bring about horrific destruction to the world, they are not fascinating as so many “popular” bad guys are (think Hannibal Lecter). If for no other reason than it has heroes who are actually make goodness look good, the book series is a treasure.

Finally, as I’ve said elsewhere, the magic in the books is anything but a seductive ad for the occult–magic as a literary device shouldn’t be confused with a literal affirmation of witchcraft–it’s merely the imaginative hook that all fairy tales have which draw the reader in and frees the imagination to entertain Rowling’s great themes. There can be no doubt to any open-minded reader of the books that these are profoundly Christian books. The mainstream review that I’ve read which best points this out comes from the Wall Street Journal. The crucial paragraphs:

It has been widely observed that J.K. Rowling owes a creative debt to Christian fantasists J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (apart from their fondness for initials). It’s odd now to remember that, at the same time, some parents have objected to the magic depicted in the Harry Potter books as a glorification of satanic practices. For “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” confirms something else apart from the well-thought-out-ness of Ms. Rowling’s moral universe: It is subtly but unmistakably Christian.

The principal Hogwarts holidays have always been Christmas and Easter, but it took five books before Ms. Rowling really began tipping her hand. In Book Six, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” she addressed concepts of free will, the power of love, and the sanctity of the soul. But in the final volume she gently lays it all out. The preciousness of each human life; bodily resurrection after death; mercy, forgiveness and redemption; sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil — strip away the elves, goblins, broomsticks and magic wands and these are the concepts that underpin the marvelously intricate world of Harry Potter.

There are clues throughout. At one point, Harry is led to a weapon that will enable him to destroy the Horcruxes when he finds them: “The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross . . . “

Two unattributed New Testament quotations recur in the story after Harry sees each on a tombstone in the village where he was born and his mother and father died. He discovers on the Dumbledore family tomb “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” from I Corinthians. And on the grave of his own parents, he finds this, from Matthew: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” On seeing it, Harry feels momentary horror: Does it imply a link between his parents and Voldemort’s followers? Hermione gently sets him straight: “It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry. It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.”

Many readers may not even notice these intimations of Christian spirituality. There’s nothing finger-pointingly didactic here; the story is too well-made to insist on anything so obvious as a proselytizing message. (The same is famously true of Lewis and Tolkien.)

The epic tale of Harry Potter is, as my wife points out, a parable of Jesus’ words that he who tries to save his life will lose it and he who takes up his cross and loses his life will save it–the paradox of the Christian life and the deepest magic there is.

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July 20, 2007

The End of a Magical Decade

Filed under: Books,Uncategorized — Alex @ 1:16 pm

Tonight, thousands (millions?) of Harry Potter fans will gather at chain bookstores around the nation and yes, the world. Some dressing in robes and costumes, will be enjoying the last big event–waiting until midnight brings the release of the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is a bittersweet time for loyal readers, the books’ debuts have become special events, every several years where not just children but readers of all ages have joined in one of the rare cross-demographic common experiences–the next chapter in the life of the boy wizard.

When the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 1997, it became a surprise hit with young readers and grew wildly in popularity with subsequent volumes as author J. K. Rowling’s story about an orphan boy who discovers he’s a wizard, goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and discovers he’s a celebrity in the wizarding community. (Wizards and witches in the stories are born, not made–analogous to a separate race that uses magic the ways non-magical Muggles–ordinary humans– use technology, to cook, travel, create and repair things. No non-magical person can learn to be magical.) In Rowling’s made-up world, magic is the framing device that allows readers to explore such themes as sacrificial love, moral character and the pains of growing in purity of soul. Rowling dismisses claims that she is advocating real witchcraft and denies that she’s out to seduce youth into the occult–indeed the whimsical nature of most of the magic in the book–with magical creatures, flying cars and Whomping Willows– is so far from what Wiccans claim to do that an honest look at the books will reveal them far closer to the imaginative Christian fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis than to anything to do with the Dark Side.

Harry is a celebrity because, as a baby, he survived a deadly attack by the evil Voldemort, being left with the lightening shaped scar on his forehead. Voldemort has marked him as his enemy and the books have become one grand epic of Harry’s coming to grips with his eventual confrontation with Voldemort, which is the focus of the final book.

Once I realized that wizards and witches were literary devices for Rowling’s great themes, I returned to the childhood experience of reading a book so good I wished it would never end. Harry and his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are so richly drawn and interact so believably, that it’s like having virtual friends who are dependably themselves as they grow through the years at Hogwarts.

But some admirers of the books believe there’s more going on than just old-fashioned moral instruction. Author John Granger (Looking for God in Harry Potter) discovered that when he began reading the books to demonstrate their occult content to his curious daughter, he found profound Christian symbolism throughout the books. Christianity Today has posted an article based on one of his book’s chapters where he explains the recurring pattern of death and resurrection in each of the books. Granger believes Rowling in fact belongs in the company of the Inklings, like Tolkien and Lewis, Christian fantasists who weave imaginative stories soaked with profound theological truths. Lewis wrote fairy stories, he explained in an essay, to get around our over familiarity with religious concepts.

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past certain inhibitions which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?

I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

Thus, the “baptised imagination” can rediscover powerful ideas about redemption and even holiness through the imagery of fantasy stories. My good friend, journalist Terry Mattingly recently pointed out to me that the Hogwarts school motto, translated from the Latin reads:
“Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon.” Is that Rowling’s subtle and mirthful hint as to her strategy in the books?

Even non-readers know of the abundant speculation about whether the final volume will feature Harry’s death–Rowling has indicated that, yes, more deaths of major characters will occur, in keeping with her theme of knowing how to face death properly prepared for the unknown. I have been trying and will continue to try to avoid reading or overhearing any news leaked about the book, which won’t be easy as it’s summer, with slow news and enormous speculation about the end of the saga. I plan to be at my local Wal-Mart before midnight to be ready to get my copy and head home for a weekend of reading and try to finish next week before I bump into unwanted information.

Thus we will see whether it is accurate to ascribe such high motives to what has become the publishing event of a generation. If the bittersweet story of the Boy Who Lived turns out to be the redemptive tale it seems to be, then a whole generation of youth will have acquired a taste for what Lewis called joy, the aching longing for an eternal land, They will have learned that grace isn’t cheap, that we gain our lives when we lose them and that the hard-won character Harry is learning in the wizarding world is actually intended for us Muggles in our own. And that love is stronger than death.

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July 16, 2007

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Filed under: Books,Movies,Uncategorized — Alex @ 6:51 pm

The Harry Potter films have been a franchise distinguished by source novels that are telling one great big story. As such they have singular traits that a recent New York Times article discussed. In following its youthful wizard over a total of seven years, in films all but one of which are made a snug 18 months apart, we get a sense of Harry Potter’s growth from 11-year old into a young adult, in the very specific case of actor Daniel Radcliffe, as well as the other young actors who co-star with him. This was a chancy move by the studio to cast untried youngsters in a series of blockbuster films directed by a handful of different artists. As it turns out, the record-breaking books have become highly profitable film adaptations.

But as each successive book has expanded in length and author J. K. Rowling’s epic fantasy series grows in complexity and depth, the film adaptations can only stay the length of a feature film, at least two hours or more. The Order of the Phoenix was easily the longest of the tomes and, as had happened with earlier volumes, was sure to be chopped, compressed and, using the physics of film adaptation, converted from text to celluloid storytelling with its own conventions and strengths. I go into the Harry Potter films knowing I will get both more and less: more spectacle and the specific surface details that Hollywood production design can create and less of the actual imaginative incidents, character interactions and plot complexity that have made the books unique in publishing history.

But I must say that I was surprised at my response to the Phoenix the film–the plot rolled along at a nice pace, neither too fast nor slow (it’s never too slow in these movies–too much plot to cover), and with scenes that were as good or better than I had imagined as I read the book. Harry in the fifth book is a mess–the teenager has been witness to his mortal enemy Voldemort’s return but the wizarding world’s governing body, the Ministry of Magic, officially denies any such thing, living in such dread of another confrontation with the dark lord that it has willed itself into a state of denial. Harry is publically branded a liar or lunatic and his own headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, seems strangely aloof from the boy who needs his wisdom and council more than ever. So the darkness that setteled over the end of the previous film, Goblet of Fire, only grows with Phoenix and the film’s visual palette is mostly quite dark, to match the emotional tone of the story.

Yes, there are the series’ trademark moments of whimsy and hijinks to break up the gloom but since this is a story about a gathering storm, there is simply no room for much mirth. As the story grows to a climax, I began to recall more and more of the books’ rich details, plot mechanics, characters and motivations and it became harder to overlook the film’s race through the book’s 870 pages. The film’s audience must simply guess at varous implications of and reasons for plot turns. I will admit that though some of the eliminations weren’t missed as even Rowling has admitted that she could have perhaps indulged herself less in the telling.

At the end, instead of the usual necessary concluding explanation by Dumbledore as to what and why things have transpired as they have–a very long passage in the book as there is so much crucial information that needs expositing–we get a very brief scene of the mentor and boy together that barely covers the events that have just rushed by.

So, yes, even though I know in my head that a book is a book with its own virtues and strengths and a movie adapation cannot be a cinematic transcription of it, such marvelous and carefully plotted storytelling as Rowling’s suffers under even the best attempts at adaptation. You simply have to take the films for what they are, not for what they cannot be, (short of careful adaptation into a well-funded television miniseries.) And for those of you who haven’t read the books, stop reading this and get started! You’ve got to catch up before the final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is released this Saturday, July 21.

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July 7, 2007

More than a vacation day

Filed under: Books,Faith Issues,Politics,The Church — Culture Beat @ 12:10 pm

It’s summer, which means vacations and thinking about vacations – and thinking about needing vacations from all the hours we work.

And we do work a lot of hours – almost 44 per week on average, a number that has only grown for the last 30 years. We spend more time on the job than almost any other nation – 25 percent more hours than the Dutch or Norwegians, for example.

Depending on whom you consult, all this work-work-work means either we’re a nation of robotic drones being systematically drained of our humanity, or we’re the engine of an economic juggernaut and even, according to financial historian Niall Ferguson, the last bastion of the Protestant work ethic. (It’s not just good business, he suggests; it’s also good religion.)

Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month that “most Americans don’t feel particularly shackled … an amazingly high percentage of us like our jobs. Among adults who worked 10 hours a week or more in 2002, the General Social Survey found that 89% said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.” A valid point, but it makes me wonder whether we’re so happy because we define ourselves so much by how we earn a living.

In contrast, editor Mark Ames wrote in Alternet that average American reaction to our relatively long hours is “a kind of sick pride in their own wretchedness.”

Work is good, but there are limits. Overwork can be hazardous, literally. Research published last August by the Journal of the American Heart Association found that long work hours correlate with higher blood pressure, just as earlier studies linked long hours with other ailments. Even Forbes magazine – no slouch in pumping corporate interests – noted this year that the 70-hour work week is “in danger” of becoming the new standard for ambitious professionals.

That might help explain why several recent books have tackled the subject of Sabbath, of all things. The word, familiar from the Ten Commandments, has often been redefined as – or reduced to – some blend of church-going, boredom and wasted time. But those misconceptions don’t capture its real meaning. This is an issue, these authors say, more profound than whether it’s OK to toss a football on Sunday or whether Sunday should even be called a Sabbath. (The Jewish Sabbath is the last day of the week, Saturday.)

Among the more thoughtful and wide-ranging books is Norman Wirzba’s “Living the Sabbath” (Brazos Press, 2006). Wirzba, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown College in Kentucky, makes a case for viewing the Sabbath a central concern rather than a marginal afterthought. The biblically prescribed cycle of work and rest, he argues, expresses real life, and it’s an integral pattern we ignore at our peril.

By making us pause in our routines, the Sabbath puts us in our place, to remind us we’re not independent beings, but that we rely on a creator God (who himself took a day to rest in the creation story). We’re also part of a natural order intended to work with harmony and gratitude every day of the week. For example, Wirzba recalls his childhood on a farm, watching his father care for their chickens, regarding them as “gifts” to be treated with kindness and mercy, even when it was time to fix a chicken dinner.

That scene might sound quaint, but Wirzba presents it in condemning contrast to today’s efficiently sterile and inhumane methods of food production, one byproduct of a society out of balance, sans Sabbath. Food production is just one of several social issues – environmentalism, economics, family stability and education among them – that Wirzba links to the Sabbath, or rather to attitudes that the Sabbath can foster.

Wirzba isn’t an idealist. He knows we all can’t raise chickens. But we can do more, he says, in a quest to live in greater harmony with the world, whether it’s in how we treat our neighbors or the environment, or in how we spend our time.

That agenda doesn’t make the Sabbath doesn’t sound boring or marginal at all. It could even sound radical in a land of workaholics.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 7 July 2007.
Sabbath banner by Wayne Forte.