Harry Potter, My Daughter, and Me

It may seem a little late to write about this, but well, see the previous post. I’d like to bid a fond farewell full of gratitude to Harry Potter and the rest of the Hogwarts gang. I actually took the day off from work to go see the final Harry Potter movie with Tall Daughter E on opening day and I am glad I did. I don’t know how she felt, but the whole event was tinged with bittersweetness (if that is a word). Some moments are heavy with all the other moments that led to them and this was one of them for me. At this point, either you are a Potter fan or you aren’t, so I am not going to write here about the movie itself. I loved it and wept like a baby. Either you cried your eyes out, or you don’t care; that’s fine.

Much has been written about the “Harry Potter Generation” and E falls right into this category. This series neatly brackets her childhood. I read the first book to her when she was in kindergarten on the advice of her teacher, and we watched the final film together on the verge of her senior year in high school. She and I have attended all eight HP movies together on the opening day. No one else in the family likes the series – no, I don’t know why not either. It is Our Thing.

So I was really emotional heading into this movie. I took the day off, made arrangements for Tiny Daughter M, and splurged on IMAX tickets. So. Worth. It. I was eager for this movie since I had loved the final HP book, but I was also just so grateful. Thanks to J.K. Rowling, E and I have this Thing to share. While we talk alike, we have really different interests and personalities. Ever since she took her first steps towards independence in school we have had this Thing to bond over. It is hard to find activities that we both want to do, but this was something we could share. This was not just a film for me, but the culmination of all of the moments we spent together reading, and watching, and wondering what would happen next.

So thank you Ms. Rowling for Hermione Granger, and Molly and Ginny Weasley. Thank you for Professors MacGonagall and Snape. Thank you for the last twelve years of magic.

On Reading Dennis Prager

I am doing something that I should probably do a lot more often – reading something with which I am pretty sure I will disagree. Since reading only works by people with whom you agree leads to a closed mind and groupthink, I am reading Happiness is a Serious Matter by Dennis Prager. A friend of mine, The Artist, loves Dennis Prager and is always recommending this book to me and until now, I have always politely declined. The Artist and I don’t agree about much of anything political so I blew off his recommendation as an attempt to show me the glories of libertarianism. Sorry, been there, done that. He got a mutual friend to read it and she loved it so much that she actually bought me a copy. At this point, I felt obligated to read it. Prager is a libertarian type conservative and a staunch advocate that the basis of our society is traditional judeo-christian values. I did not expect to agree with him about much, but so far I actually like some aspects of his book. We are never going to agree religiously, but we may not end up too far apart on the nature of happiness. I did not expect that. Feel free to remind me that I need to keep an open mind the next time I tell you I am not going to waste my time reading something written by a conservative. Unless it is Ann Coulter - some sacrifices are just too much.

RIP Merlin Stone

Merlin Stone passed away this weekend. As usual Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt has an excellent write up on her impact in goddess studies. I try not to engage in hyperbole, but I can honestly say her book, When God Was a Woman changed my life. That book started a process that totally changed the way I think about religion and spirituality, their place in human history, and what all of that could mean to me.

I came across her book by accident. I was shopping in the college bookstore my senior year and it was on the clearance rack, marked down to some ridiculously low price. It looked intriguing so I bought it and promptly put it in the books-I-am-going-to-get-around-to-reading stack. When I finally worked my way around to it, I was totally absorbed. I had learned about the Venus of Willendorf, and Crete, and Catal Huyuk, but the idea that deeply matriarchal and spiritually vibrant culture was not an aberration was earth-shaking for me.

It didn’t convince me to believe in a literal goddess anymore than I believe in a literal god, but those archetypal images and symbols stuck with me, as well as a desire to connect with what they mean. Reading Stone helped me to understand how totally out of touch I had become with Christianity. I read it a second time a few years later and it revitalized in me a determination that my daughters not be brought up in a faith that taught them they were second-best.

Thank you, Merlin Stone. May you rest in peace.

2 Charming Graphic Novels - Highly Recommended

Completely free of any paid endorsement or incentive, I’d like to recommend a couple of graphic novels I read recently.

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, written and drawn by Barry Deutch is a charming all-ages stand-alone story. The sub-subtitle “Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl” spells out the subject matter, and gives you a hint about the book’s sense of humor. Aimed at younger readers, I still enjoyed it. Mirka lives in a conservative Jewish community where the other women try to convince her to hone her domestic skills, while she dreams of becoming a dragon slayer.

One of the things I liked about this book is that Mirka does not have to learn to transcend her community realize her dreams. Her heritage is not incidental to her success, but a major factor in it. I would recommend it for older elementary and middle school kids for discussions about how our religion and community shape us.

I spent part of the last weekend reading Action Philosophers by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey. I didn’t even know this book existed, but I happened across it in our local library. Van Lente and Dunlavey are both comics industry professionasl who were awarded a grant to publish this history of western philosophy under their independent label.

This book is awesome. It explains dozens of philosophers and their theories down in comic book form. I swear, I will never think of Plato in the same way again. Need a quick review of someone you read in college, flip through this book and you’ll be sucked in to read the rest. These easily digestible nuggets of complex ideas are actually funny. Try though I may, I still don’t get Wittgenstein, but I don’t hold Action Philosophers responsible for that.

While Van Lente and Dunlavey mostly restrict themselves to western thinkers, I appreciated the inclusion of a few non-Christians like Rumi, Boddidharma, Lao Tzu, and the guy who began Kabbalah (his name is escaping my mind). I would have liked to see a few more of these, but I still enjoyed the book for what it was. The only two women featured are Mary Wollstencraft and Ayn Rand, but I lay the blame for that more on western culture as a whole.

There are a few off-color jokes, but I think this would be fine for older teenagers. Thank you for indulging this moment of nerdery; you may now return to your regularly scheduled reading about important things.

Physics and Goodnight Moon

OK, one more sciency thing and then I will settle down. Like many of you I overdosed on Goodnight Moon when my kids were little and now a physicist approaches the beloved and obligatory tiny tome.

Nerdcore parenting. Word.

Manhood For Amateurs

I have to return Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon to the library tomorrow and I am reluctant to let it go. It is an interesting and very personal collection of essays on a variety of aspects of modern manhood, but it also explores the relationship between fans and authors. As a life-long fan of many geeky series & creations, I loved reading his point of view as both an author and a fanboy, and the relationship between those identities.

I have no non-weird way of writing this, but his essay "Woman of Honor" about Big Barda from DC Comics is one of the most romantic things I have read in a long time, at least if you are a geek girl. Read the whole essay because the romantic angle won't make sense when you are half-way through reading about the life of Jack Kirby, but the payoff is worth it.

I may have to actually buy a copy.

Adventures at the Library

Tiny Daughter M and I went to the library today. I've been wanting to read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book for a while now, but decided to wait for October for the right mood setting. I knew it was written for children, but I enjoyed Coraline. When The Graveyard Book started winning every genre award around, including the Hugo, I felt like it might be worth my time.

So today at the library, I couldn't find it on the shelf in the young adult section even when the computer said they had two available copies. After consulting the children's librarian, she took us back to the juvenile section where the two copies were shelved. I was pretty sure I knew, but I asked why the different shelving areas and she replied that the juvenile section was for 3rd - 8th graders.

At this point, I chose not to inform her that the book was for me. I just thanked her and walked away. At least Tiny Daughter M was there as cover story for me. Then we went upstairs and harassed my high school English teacher who now works as a librarian.

Read a Banned Book

I've haven't written here in a while. Life has been just a little crazy lately, but I am working on finding equilibrium again. I have not, actually, fallen on the face of the earth.

This week the American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week. It's a bit gimmicky, but it's a nice reminder to stop and appreciate the freedom to write and read whatever we want in this nation (mostly). My current read is The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell and it is unlikely to be banned anywhere in the U. S anytime soon. The last book I read was Things I Have Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi. Ending her title on a preposition only bothers me a teensy little bit, but I love her memoirs so much that I won't let that get in the way.

Nafisi's previous book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, is an amazing book and this week would be a perfect time to start it if you haven't already. In memoir form, it explores a number of themes including what makes literature relevant to our lives and the psychic toll taken on women who saw a glimpse of freedom only to lose it. It's a fascinating picture of life in Iran and it will make you more grateful to be able to pick up a copy of Tropic of Cancer or Slaughterhouse 5, or Harry Potter or whatever book you so choose. So go read something controversial.

What are your favorite banned or controversial books?

Jonesing For Harry, and Hermoine, and Dumbledore, and the Weasleys...

I still have six hours to go and I can't wait to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight. Daughter E and I have gone to each of the HP movies either on the opening weekend or opening day if it starts on a Wednesday. It's our tradition and I'm excited.

I've been jonesing to re-read the last two books, but I am about to finally finish the Dune series so I have to finish Chapterhouse Dune first.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later, either celebration and glee or scorn and dissappointment, but for now I'm just counting down the hours. I shall leave you with this: Hermoine rocks!

Chaos Theory and Spirituality

I recently finished re-reading Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick which recounts the development of the new cross-disciplinary study of Chaos Theory. This book is highly recommended for any of you interested at all in science. One of the things that draws me to UUism is that I don't have to give up a belief in the rational in order to have an experience with the spiritual.

I can honesty say that the first time I read this book about 8 or so years ago it changed my life. This book is the reason I became an agnostic instead of an atheist. I doesn't make me believe in a god or a God, but I do believe the universe exists around an organizing principle, for lack of a better term, and I'd like to become more in tune with that principle.

Chaos theory is largely about the study of patterns. It shows us that any order we imagine or try to create will always contain disorder inside of it, but that random and disorderly things contain a strange and unexplained logic when looked at closely enough. I'm not explaining it nearly as well as Gleick does, but his book gave me a whole new way to look at the world and everything in it. It gave me a way to make sense of the interconnected web so that I could accept it. All of the Buddhist aphorism and Pagan declarations in the world could not make me feel that we are all part of the same great thing they way that this scientific explanation does.

Chaos theory gave me the name for this blog: a strange attractor is a mathematical concept where a seemingly random pattern stabilizes around an unexplained equilibrium, never repeating exactly, but always staying within the parameters of the pattern. To me, that is a beautiful metaphor for free will and the tides of history. Also, it seemed like a fun pun for all of the strange and wonderful people in my life. Any philosophy that denies free will just turns me off immediately, but you cannot deny that so many things are totally out of our direct control. The concept of the strange attractor portrays to me that the universe and history will roll on as they must, but that my particular role within all that is still mine to determine.

I never used to believe the old chestnut that every snowflake is unique. Out of all the trillions and trillions of snowflakes in the history of the world, surely there must be some repetition. How many possible shapes can there be? Now I understand why they are each unique. They are each shaped by the path they follow as they form and fall to the ground. Turbulence tells us that each path is almost random and unrelated to the paths around them. Each snowflake makes a totally unique journey from the clouds to the ground. Snowfall got even more beautiful as I read that.

I don't understand it well enough to explain it, but the Mandelbrot set is one of the most fascinating things I have ever encountered.

Chaos also shows us that many things that we think, in our Aristotelian way, have nothing to do with each other, are actually quite similar and organized along the same principles. The human circulatory system, the formation of clouds, the flow of water, the oscillations of pendula are all related. Scale becomes much more important than definition. This reminds me to look at things from another angle, to look deeper at things and people. Our common assuptions about things are not necessarily in tune with reality and connections always deserve a closer look.

It's and I'm rambling now, and I wish I understood chaos theory well enough to explain why it fascinated me so much. I do know that learning about it rang true with me in a way that my religious upbringing never did. I believed in God as a young person, but I didn't feel him. I felt the beauty of this theory as I read this book and it has forever changed the way I look at everything in the world. The miraculous structure of a leaf feels real to me. It is accessible in a way that Bible stories are not. Now, when I come across religious writing that speaks about interconnectedness, I have a frame of reference that works for me, that feels true.

It seemed very strange to base my spirituality on a scientific theory. I didn't even know if it was legitimate, but if felt right. I don't know of any other religion that would have made room for me to let reason inform my spirituality like the UU's. I can embrace Paganism emotionally, some of Buddhism and Chaos theory intellectually and feel like I am trying to understand what the world is and to find my place in it, rather than existing to worship some outside being or accept what a spiritual leader says without examination. Maybe I am the only person in the whole world who find fractals to be his or her most meaningful symbol of the mystery, but I am glad to have found a place I can explore that and integrate it with whatever else seems beautiful and meaningful. I'm glad to have found UU's.

Why We Need Empathy

I've been reading Reading Lolita in Tehran and it's a fascinating look at how people who know better gradually succumb to tyranny. It is also an exploration of how literature affects us as readers. Maybe this resonates so strongly with me because I have always been such a rabid bibliovore. I have never been able to understand how some people don't like to read.

Empathy runs throughout the book. I can sometimes be too empathetic to the point that it becomes paralyzing, but we undervalue this trait. Empathy is what we learn in literature and it is what prevents us from creating an "us" and a "them". It allows us to see everyone as a complex person. Empathy won't allow you to de-humanize others. It insists that you try to understand or at least imagine their point of view. Without it, we can never really appreciate art.

Empathy makes it possible for me to respect someone else's choices. It is very easy to lump groups of people together and make assumptions about them based on that group affiliation. It is also very easy to judge them. But if we are really to respect the right of every person to seek spiritual truth on their own terms, we need empathy. Like I said, I tend to be very empathetic, but lately it has really difficult to respect the point of view of conservative Christians. I have been turning them into a "them" and you cannot love people when you think of them that way. If nothing else, I am going to have to remember to see the perspective of some of my relatives and not just view them as crazy people who are trying to make me miserable.

This would be much simpler if more of the Christians in my life showed respect and understanding for my choices, but I can't make them change their minds about my beliefs. I can, however, stop treating them like the enemy.