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The
Maplewoods Mirror #19 (November 2007 )
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for back issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
October went so fast, it’s November. Between teaching, working
on my new short story collection that will be published next June, and
flying to the Mayo Clinic to see my mother on weekends, I worked on a draft
of this newsletter, but didn’t get it out until today. There were a
couple other items, including new fiction, that just aren’t polished
enough, so I’ll have a “Part Two” later this month—which will make up for
missing October.
I hope this finds you well. Here are the goodies for this
month:
In This Issue
The Deathly Hallows
“Hallow”
the Word
At
the Mayo Clinic
Later This Month
THE DEATHLY HALLOWS
Toward the end of the summer, just as the newest Harry Potter movie
came out, I decided to finish reading the Harry Potter series, books five,
six, and seven. I’ve now completed the last, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Beneath it all,
the book explores greed, death, love, knowledge, friendship, the fight
between good and evil, and an exploration of the stages of life.
Having been a psychology major as an undergrad, I even recognized Lawrence
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. In the end, the
series is a spiritual journey where Harry comes to understand love and his
life’s meaning.
Over the last ten years, fundamentalist Christians have decried the
series because it featured witchcraft. In Time magazine
recently, Lev Grossman argued: "If you want to know who dies in Harry
Potter, the answer is easy: God. ... Rowling has more in
common with celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens than
she has with Tolkein and Lewis."
I’m surprised by Grossman’s remark because the last book in
particular is spiritual by the choices Harry makes. There are many
Christian allegories, too, including what’s written on a few
headstones. Then again, do you really need a religion to be
spiritual? The secular
humanists and the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre
didn’t feel one needed God to be spiritual. Two of my friends, one
secular, one Jewish, found sustenance in the Harry Potter series after they
each had been feeling depressed. They came out stronger. That’s
a good thing no matter how you define it.
Interestingly, Christopher Hitchens reviewed the last Harry Potter
book for the New York Times. I found his review, “The Boy Who
Lived,” both fascinating and missing the mark. Hitchens writes of
Harry Potter, “For all this apparently staunch secularism, it is ontology
that ultimately slackens the tension that ought to have kept these tales
vivid and alive. Theologians have never been able to answer the challenge
that contrasts God's claims to simultaneous omnipotence and benevolence:
whence then cometh evil? The question is the same if inverted in a
Manichean form: how can Voldemort and his wicked forces have such power and
yet be unable to destroy a mild-mannered and rather disorganized schoolboy?
… In this culminating episode, the enterprise actually becomes tedious. Is
there really no Death Eater or dementor who is able to grasp the simple
advantage of surprise?”
Hitchens has a fabulous mind, but who’s he writing the review
for? William F. Buckley? His sentences also suggest he’s not a
person to whom “fun” springs. While I’ve enjoyed watching Hitchens on
Bill Maher’s HBO show for keeping both liberals and conservatives off
balance, he never smiles. Poor guy.
Someone named John Atkinson wrote a letter in response to Hitchens.
The letter printed in the New York Times read, “Harry Potter
fans everywhere will recognize your review of J. K. Rowling's latest book
as the work of someone from the House of Slytherin -- disgruntled, envious
of someone else's success -- and also probably as the work of someone with
several close relatives who are Dementors, cold, ghostly figures who live
to suck the life force out of normal people. Alternatively, the review
could have been written by a Squib, the dull offspring of a magical family
who, alas, has no magical abilities at all. Fortunately, that undesirable
defect has not been passed on to the reviewer's young daughter, who
thoroughly enjoyed and laughed out loud, as I did many times, while reading
all the Harry Potter books.”
If you haven’t dared approach the Harry Potter books because of the
media storm, you might be surprised. I use the first book in my
Children’s literature classes and one of my animation classes, and
inevitably someone who had doubts about the series is so captivated, he or
she consumes the whole series before the end of the semester. I love
to see people read.
“HALLOW”
After I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was
curious about the word “hallow.” It’s usually a verb or adjective, as
in All Hallow Even, which evolved into All Hallows' Eve and
then into Halloween. In the Harry Potter book, it’s a
noun. Harry needs three particular hallows. Had there been
hallows before Harry Potter? From Wikipedia, I learned the following:
“Some important and powerful objects in legends could be referred to
as ‘hallows’ because of their function and symbolism. The Tuatha de Danann
in Ireland possessed six ‘hallows’: Manannan’s house, Goibniu’s shirt and
tools, Lochlan’s helmet, Alba’s shears, a fishskin belt and Asal’s pig
bones. These were guarded by the four ‘Guardians of the Hallows’: Manannan
the god of the sea, Lugh, Cumhal, and Fionn.
“As the legend evolved through the centuries, these objects became
the Four Treasures of Ireland: the Spear of Lugh, the Stone of Fal, the
Sword of Light of Nuada, and the Dagda’s Cauldron. In the modern
period, these were adapted to become the four suits in the Rider-Waite
Tarot cards deck (swords, wands, pentacles and cups), and also took on the
representation of the four classical elements of air, fire, earth and
water.
“Similar objects also appear in Arthurian legends, where the Fisher
King is the guardian of four ‘hallows’ representing the four elements: a
dish (earth), Arthur's sword Exalibur (air), the Holy Lance or spear,
baton, or a magic wand (fire), and the Holy Grail (water).”
This shows, as I learned from the first Harry Potter book, Harry
Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, that author JK Rowling has a good
sense of history. A Sorceror’s Stone didn’t mean anything to me in
particular until I happened to read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist
last year, where the protagonist learns about alchemy, in particular that
something called the Philosopher’s Stone, an object that alchemists through
the ages had sought, along with the Elixir of Life. The Philosopher’s
Stone can act as a catalyst to turn other metals into gold.
The World
Mysteries website explains the Philosopher’s Stone this way: “Alchemy
is generally defined as an art which aims to change impure metals into
silver or gold. The goal of the Great Work of alchemy, called also the Art,
is the "Philosopher's Stone". The Stone was viewed as a magical
touchstone that could immediately perfect any substance or situation. The
Philosopher's Stone has been associated with the Salt of the World,
the Astral Body, the Elixir, and even Jesus Christ. The
Elixir of the alchemists has essentially the same ability to perfect
any substance. When applied to the human body, the Elixir cures
diseases and restores youth.”
The first Harry Potter book had a different title in England: Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The book's U.S. editor, Arthur
Levine, who was also responsible for Americanizing words, spellings, and
grammar characteristic of British English, felt that Philosopher's Stone
conveyed an incorrect idea of the subject matter, and that a title change
was necessary. Hence “Sorceror’s Stone.” The book sold well, so
maybe he was right. Nonetheless, it misses the real history and idea
of a Philosopher’s Stone.
In The Alchemist, by the way, the Philosopher’s Stone and the
Elixir of Life, too, aid people to find their own Personal Legend—a way to
actualize. While I found the book mostly mumbo jumbo, I was open
enough to offer it in one of my English classes, and some of the students
fell in love with the book. Others felt like me and because of that,
we always had lively discussions.
The World Mysteries website, by the way, also explains the
Philospher’s Stone for today’s world: “In modern language the Stone
is a symbol of incorruptible wisdom achieved by uniting both rational,
intellectual thinking (masculine, rational, right brain activity) with our
intuitive knowing of the heart (feminine, intuitive left brain
activity).”
Maybe that’s why Harry Potter needed Hermione—and why the series had
to be written by a woman. You can get a lot from Potter’s world.
AT THE MAYO CLINIC
My mother, Sidney Wear, found herself this summer with hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy, a congenital disease of the heart. It meant her inner
heart had too much muscle and was putting out too little volume of
blood. If left alone, she would have had less and less oxygen in her
blood. She found a specialist in this at St. Mary's Hospital, part of
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and she submitted to open-heart
surgery in September. Her heart was stopped, a slice of her inner
heart was cut out, and her heart was sewn up and restarted. Doesn’t
that sound like science fiction?
The good news was that it worked. However, we’re not
salamanders—people don’t regenerate quickly. She was in ICU for 31
days, and being so bedridden left her muscles atrophing. Now she has
been in the recovery room for two weeks and lately she’s been focused on
moving again. At first, she had to work on moving her arms enough to
hold food. Then she’s slowly, painfully, learning how to walk
again. After my fabulous brothers Stuart, Laur, and Elihu had spent
much time with her, my cousin Elisabeth and I flew in last weekend. I’m
happy to say that despite bouts of depression (who wouldn’t be depressed
after that?), my mother is rallying. I’ll be seeing her again this
weekend.
While I was there, I found myself outside at sunset, a time that
always fascinates me because it lasts about as long as a few waves of a
candle’s flame. Every minute is different. I happened to have
my camera and took a few shots, those below. In one of them, I only
noticed a V of birds once I was back home and looking at the shot on a
large screen. Magic happens there in Rochester.
IN THE NEXT ISSUE
I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert this week. People obsessed
about any artist or musician have always seemed strange to me—until I
realized I’m one of those people with Springsteen. For over thirty
years, he’s taken the pulse of our culture and written his observations
lyrically. His drive and passion inspire me. More on that next
time.
Also, too, with the recent fires in California, I was reminded
deeply of how a friend of mine, playwright Jerome Lawrence, lost his house
in a fire shortly before the Northridge earthquake. That inspired a
new story.
See
you next time,
--Chris
For
reviews or more information on either of my two books below, click on the
cover.
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