denominations on list (Was: Book Burners of Doom)

[lunalovegoodrules]

Not sure replying to this thread is OT, in most cases... For myself, 
at any rate, what I take most fundamentally from Rowling (and that is 
how we, as critics, should probably refer to the canon, the same way 
we would refer to Merton, or Murakami, or Musil, or any other writer -
 that is, using the author's name, not a characters' name) is a 
peculiar, particular parsing of what I have referred to in a number 
of posts now as an ethical imperative, framed in a dialogue that 
strikes me as rather like secular Calvinism. Since that is how I 
frame my own so-called spiritual registers, it is not surprising much 
of what Rowling writes resonates with me. Whether this effect, which 
I am assuming is not operating in myself alone, but in the responses 
of some others, perhaps many others, as well, is a preach or a breach 
is hardly the point, I think.

Some of the points regarding the so-called spiritual that I take from 
Rowling are

- one can think what needs to be done, but doing what needs to be 
done is something else altogether (Hermione and the house elves, e.g.)
- one can do what needs to be done without philosophizing, without 
thinking about it (Harry at the second task, Harry at the dementors 
and Dudley e.g.)
- knowledge might be neutral, somewhere, but we rarely approach it or 
have it without it being, in some significant way, compromised by how 
we use it, mean to use it, or what it means to us - that is to say, 
by our desires (all the pensieve scenes, Dumbledore's abstemiousness 
with truth, the prophecy orb, Vernon and Petunia's lies regarding 
James and Lily, and others too numerous to mention)
- stepping out of societal roles is an essential gesture, at some 
point (Dobby, Firenze, Muggle parents, Arthur etc.) for there to be 
the right circumstances - that is, a measure of equality - for 
knowledge to be shared (partly why I think Harry will run away, for a 
time, in book six, and be brought or forced by circumstance back to 
Hogwarts)
- fate, an under-appreciated concept, is something rather like the 
vector of desire (momentum) within the nexus of what obtains 
(inertia) (pretty much every character in the book)
- that which does not exist has weight (Harry's parents, Riddle of 
the diary, Crumple-horn Snorkacks (lol) etc.)

Oh, time to go to work. Will reply to the hundreds of responses later.

dan (of BIC LIGHTER and ANOTHER HARRY)