cues?promote lavishing.menaced backer assay …

Julie H

Do your choices really “define” who you are, or do they just “show” who you are? I need to go back to all those DD summing-up scenes and look at the language again. The latter interp would of course be a lot more Calvinist than the former interp.

After a couple readings and several weeks of pondering, I remain convinced that JKR’s Christian path has strongly influenced her work — but also that her Calvinist flavor of Christianity has had a pretty strong influence. For sure, “hooray, good guys whomp the bad guys” seems to be a stronger thread than “even bad guys can repent & reform.” Even among some of us who always believed Snape was Dumbledore’s man, the “ick factor” of the “Prince’s Tale” chapter seems pretty high. The memories presented do depict him as a nasty piece of work, with the one saving grace of having devotedly loved Lily P. Certainly one could argue that his choices to serve the good side were more motivated by obsessive love than by a true conviction that the good side is better, intrinsically. There IS some ambiguity in this in the text, so you can argue the other way too. (Ambiguity I mean in the portrayal of Snape, not in the question of whether good is better than dark!) But in interviews JKR did repeatedly refer to Snape as “horrible” — is this obfuscation/misdirection, or is the reader really to see him as “horrible?” As someone who might do some good, but for all the wrong reasons? Is Harry’s ultimate honoring of him justified, or is it just more evidence of Harry’s own magnamity/goodness? Did Snape ever actually make it onto a train at King’s Cross? (Lewis, I’m sure, would’ve let him get on — JKR, I’m not so sure!)

It is interesting to ponder, at any rate, since a Calvinist interp would certainly illustrate a different flavor of Christianity (and thus a different world view) than Tolkien’s ardent Catholicism or Lewis’ evangelical Anglicanism (which sometimes got too close to universalism for the tastes of more conservative Christians….)

Julie H, chicago

I attended all 3 of your talks at Prophecy. Great job! I enjoyed the last one the most. I still say you shouldn’t have cut it short for Steve. And multiple friends that I talked to afterward (including one who is a priest) agreed that they would have liked to have heard more.

Take care,
Debbie

Thanks so much for posting the Spencer essay. It was really helpful to me and I immediately emailed it to several other doubting/longing Christians I know.

I empathize with Jo for hanging in there in her desire to be faithful, even in the face of death of her dearest loved one. I think her experience is testimony to the fact that no amount of earthly success or wealth can provide answers to the biggest questions about our mortal/immortal fate. The fact that she is still struggling to work this out — that she has emphatically not walked away from the need to do so — indicates to me that she’s on the same page with many, many Christians in whom the need to believe and the plague of doubt are in daily coexistence. It is true that for many of us the struggle to keep believing is a primary aspect of our Christian walk — worse on some days than others. What I like about the Spencer essay is that he manages to convey that the doubt, for many of us, is inseparable from the journey, given our state as fallen/mortal beings on an immortal path.

Harry’s ability to see past mortality into the life of immortality — and a specific kind of immortality where souls/personalities continue to exist, and love also continues — is a huge Christian theme, and anyone who can’t see it for that just can’t be looking very closely or honestly, imo….

Julie H, chicago

1. There’s already a presentation on “Love’s Victory Over Death” by John Granger. Mine got accepted first, but he’s a keynote speaker.

2. The talk focuses on the phoenix symbolism, and there’s a presentation right before mine in the exact same room that is almost the exact same presentation description.

3. It’s the one I’m least prepared for. I’ve got much more research done on the other two.

4. It’s the most relevant to the human experience, and a bit harder to get my mind around for some reason – probably because I can’t possibly get away with anything trite or cliche. I’ll be up late Friday night getting this one ready for Saturday!

5. It’s the very last presentation in the last time slot of the conference. It better be a good closer!

Or is that you chose wisely, going for the heart of things: the nature of evil and love’s victory over death?

Good choices. Go out there and wring some heartstrings.

Chapter 34 is precisely why this series will be a classic. The inner logic of Lewis’ Narnia series is often quite flawed, but it’ll always be a classic for the Stone Table scene. Rowling’s series, while far more detailed, contains fewer flaws (at least proportionally, if not literally), and I agree – Harry’s walk to his “death” resonates deeper than Aslan’s.