Learning Truth From Fantasy

Much truth has come to me over the years from reading fantasy. These truths land with an almost physical sense of clarity and resonance. I have learned the hard way to follow my intuition, whether it’s about what to read when, or “it’s time to put the house on the market” (2010) or to reach out to a particular person. As I allow books to come to me or to know what to reread, I haven’t read broadly in the fantasy genre, but have reread many times the series I’ve loved. I’m always amazed at the similarity of lessons we learn about love and trust and asking for and receiving help; lessons of discernment as well as the mixed nature of human beings and our varieties of responses to evil.

In June I finally followed my sense of timing and picked up the Harry Potter series again. How incredibly relevant this series is today! Especially the last three books show us clearly the workings of what Walter Wink calls the Domination System—which is simply the air we breathe—and show us over and over the ploys of structural evil as even basically good people pick up the tools of domination. What a slog book 5 is; I have to keep putting it down! The government takes extreme measures to deny and squelch inconvenient truths and punishes and discredits those trying to tell the truth and who only want what is best for everyone. The basic motivations, as with so many things, are fear and the desire to hold onto power. We also learn lessons there of courage and resistance.

By book 7 we see clearly how formerly legislated freedoms and protections can be stripped away; we may have originally read this believing it could never happen here. A whole generation has been taught courage, the value of all people however pure or mixed—and that covers ideals and motivations, how no one is all good or all evil and no one is unredeemable. We see clearly that hurt people hurt people, and we need friends we can trust—and we have to risk trust even if everyone doesn’t live up to it all the time. Giving second chances matters.

While I’ve avoided reading anything directly, I am aware the author has been cancelled for egregious things she’s posted. We can’t expect kindness in the Twitter-verse. (How telling it’s now symbolized by an X, a warning perhaps of what happens to people there. I can’t help but think of Madeleine L’Engle’s concept of being X-ed or annihilated. One can be X-ed by hate, bullying, shaming, violence, etc.) I wonder what would have happened if Rowling had first raised questions on a less volatile platform. I wonder what would have happened if the first responders had said something like “Whoa! That’s so not in line with what you’ve taught us. Can we talk about this? Is there some way to have real conversation instead of sending hexes and curses flying at one another? I thought we were on the same side.” The powers-that-be are really masters of divide and conquer, a temptation we all fall prey to when our fears get going. If we are going to stand against these powers of domination, we have to keep choosing to stand together.

Cancelling someone is like having an argument with a loved one and running out and slamming the door. At that point, everything is completely stuck. Rage may make us feel good for moment, but it’s ultimately destructive. Harry Potter teaches us that, too. The best we can live often falls short of the best we can say or write. We need the reminders of how fear makes us do things we don’t want to do, especially when we fear for our family and friends. Muggle-borns were being rounded up and denied freedoms they’d previously been afforded by law, and blood-traitors like the Weasley family, were clearly next. Ron ran out on Harry and Hermione in an argument, and it took a long time to find his way back to them. We have to pay attention to all our reactions to fear. We do much more good seeing our own reactions to fear than we do by condemning those of others.

The series shows us the rich variety of gifts we each have and how we need all those gifts in community and ultimately in our struggle to be free and whole as a community. We also learn how resistance takes many forms, all of which are valuable. I think of Fred and George using laughter to heal and encourage; of Neville, Ginny and Luna stepping into leadership among the peers who had once seen them as losers; of Tonks staying safe and giving birth to new life; of Mr. Weasley simply going to work at the ministry daily as long as he could; of Molly offering hospitality and care first to Harry and friends and then to those in the Order of the Phoenix of teachers doing their jobs and protecting students the best they could.

Dumbledore teaches us to be a non-anxious presence as well as the importance of doing our own ego work. He teaches us to see and know our ego temptations—specifically in aspiring to power of any kind—and saying no to them; that seeking power before love feeds hatred and hate-full consequences; that confession, remorse and forgiveness have extremely healing properties; and that there are things much worse than death.

As I read with eyes seeing the powers of domination in action around me and with ears hearing of freedoms endangered, I made a very incomplete list of lessons. I’ve mentioned some, but will simply go with a bulleted list of a few of the rest.

·       Good people can do bad things for a variety of reasons.

·       Our individual likes and dislikes are a poor indication of another’s goodness or badness.

·       Domination destroys those it privileges as well as those it oppresses.

·       Misinformation is a tool of destruction, even when the motive is personal gain.

·       People hide who they are for good reasons.

·       Those who would dominate spread discord and enmity. If our aims are identical and our hearts open, any other differences are negligible. If we’re against the powers of domination, we’re still on the same side.

·       People on all sides can use power wrongly.

·       Using the tools of domination, even for good reasons, turns us into the thing we hate.