Today I was being a good Catholic, I went to mass. There I was reminded of my short temper with critiques of the H Potter series. I suspect a significant number of these critics have not read the books. And then my temper comes from a bias of a love for a fictional world. The intricacies of Rowling's world are engaging. It's also what I like about the Pendragon series.
So from one enamoured with the romance of fictional worlds and having first read the Potter series as an adult (so I just don't perceive the threat to one's sanity/spirituality)I think maligning the series is a waste of energy, especially pulpit energy. I admit that I can see how an impressionable 'child' can be seduced by the 'magic.' But then you can dissect every single novel ever written and see the subversive subliminal messages. Well, let me not get into all the things that a young child can be seduced by. It's so easy to latch on to any one thing and blame it. It's so easy to forget the things we take for granted. If something is bad and dangerous, then explain why to adults and children. You blindly say DON'T and expect compliance? When did that ever work?
As an adult I don't feel threatened by the 'magic' of the novels. The themes are classic: the struggle of good versus evil and the triumph of good. My enjoyment of the romance of the fictional world, comes from the same place that is enamoured with the elaborate intricacies of Catholicism. And that comes from having had my doubts and questions and miscellaneous explorations. After all my journeys I returned more Catholic than I ever thought I could be. And I realized that all my journeys and explorations brought me to a new kind of understanding which I will not explain or defend. So why do I even bother to explain the attachment to Harry Potter? I am so bored with the criticisms.
Which takes me to Eliot, whose Waste Land images came to me in the middle of that sermon, "Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images."
When one misses the intricacies or mystery of the elaborate Catholic world, it becomes rote, blind adherence without conviction, a heap of broken images. It does not even reach out to a Harry Potter world(or any) because it missed out on its basic tenets, to turn back for that last leper. I looked at the rituals and when you really think about the meaning attached to them, they really are quite compelling. But has it become so rote that we forget? Eliot's Fisher King takes from the image of the messiah dying to redeem that waste land. It has been done, salvation has been offered. I don't know what I want the pulpit to say. I just don't want it to destroy the beauty of the intricate world. I don't want it to become a heap of broken images.
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