Wrinkle in Time, More Mysteries to Put behind Doors, Biblical Resonances in OotP

[Mike & Susan Gray]

As usual, I'm behind the times and scrambling to catch up.

Joywitch enjoined,

> I guess what I'm arguing pretty much the same thing that Mike 
> speculated -- that Dumbledore doesn't actually use the word love 
> because use of the word somehow cheapens it by making it into 
> sentimental smush, but that in doing so she is making a literary 
> allusion to A Wrinkle In Time (or just stealing a plot device, 
> depending on how you look at it).

Funny.

I've been thinking about AWiT a lot lately, though not in that context.
I agree completely with Joy's take on it. The one thing I would add is
that, in comparison to L'Engel în AWiT, Jo gives the power behind the
door (i.e., love) a more mysterious, supernatural or even theological
touch in OotP. And that's saying something, since L'Engle is
consistently identified as a Christian writer with a theological bent.
(Though I'm not entirely sure why.)

* * * * *

Then going back a *really* long way, I thought I'd mention that I find
Kneasy's theory (the power behind the door is life itself) fascinating.
I don't think it's at all likely to be what Jo has in mind - I think
Jo's tastes run more to the ethical than the ontological. But I would
like to read the book Kneasy wants her to write. 

However, what I thought was really weird, was that Kneasy's theory
sounded more mystical and spiritual to me than my own. Love as the
greatest hidden force in the universe *is* a pretty standard idea. I
think it has Judeo-Christian roots, but just about every common garden
variety of contemporary humanism has inherited a strain of it. 

The life force as the hidden power behind the universe is a little
farther off the beaten path of Western values. It seems like a more
mystical thing - a sort of biological epiphany or an experience of the
numinous in carbon. It would be ethically shifty - maybe the life force
is good and loving and nice, but then again, maybe it isn't. 

Also sounds like the sort of thing that could go in more of a Star Warsy
kind of direction ... As in, "May the [life] force be with you, Harry."
(Just to say that it could end up sounding every bit as silly as the
love-line, if you did it the wrong way ...) It could also be cool. Usula
LeGuin might like it, or maybe that Dark is Rising lady.

* * * * *

However - and thinking about life 'n all - I'm not sure what I think
about the following, by Kneasy: 

> A force of nature and a natural phenomenon are cause and effect IMO.
> The moon exerts gravitational pull on the earth - a force of 
> nature.  This
> produces oceanic tides - a natural phenomenon. It is entirely 
> predictable
> once the physical laws are known. Can you say the same about 
> life? Is it
> predictable, both advent and progression/diversity, the 
> result of as yet 
> unelucidated universal imperatives? Or is it something of an entirely
> different order? Nice question.

I dunno about that one. Seems like you can hit it with both ends of the
same stick. 

On one side: what's so much more mysterious about carbon based chemistry
as opposed to any other kind of chemistry? Electrons scurry here and
there, atoms bash their way into molecules, amino acids muck about in
central nervous systems, and behold, stuff happens. It's complicated (or
"chaotic"), but people in the biology business assume that the whole is,
basically, no less mysterious than what happens when you drop a brick
out of a window. 

And yet, on the other hand, what the hell are "natural laws" anyway?
Since Hume put on his thinking cap, we've had no reason to go on taking
even the idea of cause-and effect as a given truth - let alone something
as abstruse as "the laws of nature." (In passing: how much more
anthropomorphic and bourgeois does it get, fer cryin out loud?). The
best Kant could do was to make cause-and-effect into a transcendental
thingy - i.e., we can't prove it's true, but we'd sure as "*%& better
keep on assuming it is, cause otherwise we can't talk about anything
anymore. 

Just to say that I find existence itself even more mysterious than life.
If it were my book, it would be existence on the other side of the door
- although I would like to think that all true existence is imbued with
love. (How's that for a whopper?) Anway, I don't think even I would line
up at midnight to pay good money for that book.

* * * * *

One other thing: When I think there's something Christian (and something
that trascends daytime TV) about Jo's take on (what I'm assuming to be)
love at the end of OotP, I think it's because of the biblical resonances
that shoot through my mind as I read the relevant segments of the book. 

Off the top of my head: 

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" ... "Whoever
finds his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake,
shall win it" ... "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's
wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" ...
"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge,
it will pass away" ... "Above all, love each other deeply, because love
covers over a multitude of sins."

I'm not saying that Jo had all - or even any - of these verses in mind,
let alone that she was doing some kind of biblical allegory. And yeah,
I've pulled all ofthem out of context. (Which is why I didn't even
bother to put in the verse references. Besides being lazy.) 

But this set of themes about a paradoxical relationship between weakness
and strength, stupidity and wisdom, mistakes and success, all held in
insoluble tension by love - it seems to me to get very close to what
Christianity is all about - and (if my reading is correct), what the HP
series is all about. Not because Harry is a perfect exemplification of
this - Harry is more of an Everyman than a Hero is my books - but
because Harry is gradually coming to an experiential understanding of
it.

Even assuming this is what Jo thinks, I certainly can't proove that it
isn't trite. (Nor tripe, either, which I must admit to not liking very
well - tastes like meat flavored bubble gum.) But it *is* something
important to me, and I think it's true, and when I encounter it in a
story, I find myself encouraged to go on trying to live as though it
were true.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray) 
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, 
so that may not have been bravery...."