\t\t\t\tAugust is a month of birthdays. Both of our sisters named Mary celebrate one, as well as my daughter Mary. My sons Dan and Paul also have birthdays along with a niece, Win Allen, June\u2019s nephew, Bryan MacDonald, my grandniece Denise Bugey and June\u2019s grandson, Paul Berger. But to top that off, if it is at all possible, is the celebration of our marriage, which has reached 24 years on August 15th. They certainly all make August an august month. In March Jottings of 2003 I wrote the following: \u201c American armed forces are attacking Iraq. The protests are loud and many. The pros and cons of the action fill pages of newsprint and email forwards. The attempt to unravel the reasons for the action leads only to frustration. The most difficult thing for me is to accept is the lack of open provocation– such as the invasion by Iraq of Kuwait in 1991. We have been asked to trust our President’s belief that we are in danger but we are not shown clearly where that exist. It has the ring of Vietnam and its domino theory of preventing the spread of communism. It would be so much easier if we had had a provoking action to show our need to defend. Without it we must fall back on the belief that our President really is acting in our behalf and not some hidden motive. We have noted before that our confidence in our leaders so acting has been misplaced in the past, so it makes doing so now even tougher. So we pray that we are not so disillusioned this time and until proven otherwise we will support our President. Faith in someone is often an unreasonable act but it is also sometimes necessary for sane living.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now two years and a few months later I find that it appears we have no proof that we are or were ever in \u201cdanger\u201d from Saddam Hussein or Iraq. No \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d have been found, and no connection between Iraq and the terrorist organization that destroyed the World Trade Center have been demonstrated. As we said, \u201cuntil proven otherwise we will support our President\u201d, that proof has come. He has never shown how we had a right to the preemptive striking of the country. He appears more now to employ the concept of \u201cPax Americana\u201d as the Romans did with their \u201cPax Romana\u201d, i.e., attack and subdue those who fail to follow the direction we believe they should take. The President often reminds us that he is a Christian, or his image makers do so, but he has never made any attempt to show how his preemptive attack qualifies under Christian practice and belief of a \u201cjust war\u201d. Once again \u201cour confidence in our leader\u201d has apparently been misplaced. We only pray that somehow soon we will withdraw and stop the killing of so many American boys.<\/p>\n
I read the new Harry Potter book, \u201cHalf-Blood Prince\u201d. I think I have read them all but wouldn\u2019t swear to it. I\u2019ll not soon forget however my mentioning reading the first one among some reunion brethren. All good Christians and retreat goers who as part of the VDC experience meet to encourage each other in our Faith walk. One of the members was quite surprised by my statement since he had been advised by his Pastor not to read it. Later in the same week I had a similar comment from the woman cleaning my teeth, i.e., that her church too had forbidden the reading of it. It was quite a revelation to me that such prohibitions were being promulgated in some Protestant denominations. It reminded me of \u201cIndex of Forbidden Books\u201d created by Pope Pius the Ninth. He was the same Pope who decided his pronouncements should be considered infallible. Vatican I, that he controlled, was organized to create such a dogma. It finally did agree to the infallibility concept but limited it to matters of \u2018faith or morals\u2019. It was a shocker to me a former Catholic to see the doctrine being espoused by some Protestants who had separated partially due to the mandating authority of the magisterium (Teaching part of the church) rather than Scripture. I asked both the objectors if they had disobeyed and read the book. Neither had. I asked if any reason was given for the prohibition and it was vaguely stated to be because of the Evil actions in the book not being met by Christian beliefs to overcome it. My reading would confirm the opposite; it does carry the Christian belief into the winner\u2019s circle. It is that love conquers evil. \u201c\u2026God whether I get anything else done to day, I want to make sure that I spend time loving you and other people because that\u2019s what life is all about.\u201d This is a prayer from the \u201cPurpose Driven Life\u201d by Warren and succinctly set forth what the Christian\u2019s should be seeking. Harry\u2019s journey is to build up his ability to love so he can conquer evil.<\/p>\n
The book, and the series referred to as \u2018cliffhanger chronicles\u2019, received a full-page review in the NY Times Book Review. In the same magazine there is a section devoted to \u201cChildren\u2019s Books\u201d, so Harry\u2019s stories are beyond being just Children\u2019s stories according to these editors. In the review the writer asks, \u201cIs there a book loving child on this planet who isn\u2019t obsessed with Harry Potter?\u201d The first five volumes have sold 207 million copies! The reviewer observes that JK Rowling\u2019s gift is not so much language as for her \u2018characterization and plotting\u2019. She makes it easy to believe that the \u201cgood\u201d wizard will vanquish the great evildoers.<\/p>\n
In another issue of the New York Times in the \u201cWeek in Review\u201d session there was a half page essay written by a young lady a college sophomore who tells how she became enamored and eventually overwhelmed with the series. It was entitled \u201cGrowing Up With a Dose of Magic\u201d By her name, Kaavya Viswanathan, she appears to be of Indian descent but it is immaterial and never really an issue. She is an American girl going through school who finds Harry Potter\u2019s stories, \u201c\u2026as my favorite through adolescence and into adulthood in a world that doesn\u2019t feel so safe anymore\u2026\u201d She found Harry\u2019s development followed her own. She learned that \u201clife isn\u2019t always fair\u201d, that parents, friends and mentors couldn\u2019t always be a shield, some things you had to experience yourself\u201d In simple words she learned that not everything was perfect and the stories reflected that reality to her. She saw that good did triumph over evil by the acts of an ordinary boy acting in an extraordinary manner. Most of all she learned \u201cthe importance of love, friendship, and loyalty\u201d The writer of this opinion essay, by the way, is now a sophomore at Harvard University and will have her own novel published next spring!<\/p>\n
The Harry Potter series is often compared to the \u201cChronicles of Narnia\u201d written by C.S. Lewis. They are considered Christian stories. Why? More to the point is that important to the quality of the stories? Walter Hooper, Lewis\u2019 literary executor and author of a commentary on all of Lewis\u2019 works (\u201cC.S. Lewis: Companion & Guide\u201d) asks these questions. Further he notes, \u201cHow have the Bible and Christian theology \u2018influenced\u2019 the Narnian books?\u201d He warns, as does Lewis \u201cto talk about \u2018influence\u2019\u201d is dangerous for readers who are under the mistaken notion that if you have found a biblical or literary \u2018influence\u2019 behind a work there is no more to be said about it\u201d. Likewise if you don\u2019t find such \u2018influence\u2019 you dismiss it as not \u2018worthy\u2019, as some apparently have done. Hooper goes on to point out that Lewis objects to regarding \u201cinfluences\u201d in a literary work and in particular of fiction. [He was a teacher of Literature at Oxford and Cambridge.] By definition fiction is \u2018an imaginative creation or pretense that does not represent actuality, but what has been invented\u201d (The American Heritage Dictionary). So reading it to ascertain its \u201cinfluences\u201d is turning it into \u2018non-fiction\u201d where an analysis of where this writer is coming from or such, his influences, is a reasonable approach. Now unfortunately some fiction writers, such as Brown in the \u201cDa Vinci\u201d code advertise their fiction as fact, history, and other non-fiction attributes. The facts asserted in that book are not as they occurred and it is truly fiction throughout.<\/p>\n
So looking at the Potter series and deciding to read it or not based on its \u2018influences\u2019 is really treating it as non-fiction. The written work of fiction is a work of art, a new creation. C. S. Lewis quotes a Wordsworth poem \u201cThe Table Turned\u201d to show how our intellect can destroy a work of art. It reads, \u201cOur meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things:\u00a0We murder to dissect<\/em>\u201d (Italic added)<\/p>\n The bottom line is read fiction to enjoy the imagination and \u2018characterization\u2019 the writer creates, not as something else.<\/p>\n The columnist George F. Will is not one of my favorites. We might say this is due to the conservative \u201cinfluences\u201d in his essays. However recently he had me agreeing with him and smiling at his illustrations. He was writing from the National Constitution Center located in Philadelphia at the other end of the mall from Independence Hall where the Constitution was drafted. He writes, \u201cThroughout, the center illustrates what (then) Professor Felix Frankfurter was tying to express more than 70 years ago when he said, \u2018If the Thames is \u2018liquid history\u2019 the Constitution of United States is most significantly not a document but a stream of history\u2019 But it is first and always a document that is to be understood, as John Marshall said\u2026 \u2018chiefly from its words\u2019\u201d Will then creates history as he believes would be written by contemporary liberals with respect to the confirmation of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court. \u201cThe Articles of Confederation, ratified near the end of the Revolutionary War to Defend Abortion Rights, proved unsatisfactory, so in the summer of 1787, 55 framers gathered here to draft a Constitution. Even though this city was sweltering, the framers kept the windows of Independence Hall closed. Some say that was to keep out the horseflies. Actually, it was to preserve secrecy conducive to calm deliberation about how to craft a more perfect abortion right\u2026.\u201d He likewise reminds conservatives of the fact that the Constitution was written to correct the defects of the Articles of Confederation, namely to strengthen the federal government. As Wordsworth noted \u201cour meddling intellect\u201d can even read things into a document! Pax Tecum!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" August is a month of birthdays. Both of our sisters named Mary celebrate one, as well as my daughter Mary. My sons Dan and Paul also have birthdays along with a niece, Win Allen, June\u2019s nephew, Bryan MacDonald, my grandniece Denise Bugey and June\u2019s grandson, Paul Berger. But to top that off, if it is … <\/p>\n