Sad & Worried Thoughts on JKR & a Gay Dumbledore....
JKR's decision to reveal that Dumbledore is gay has been rightly acclaimed as courageous. For a children's writer to even think, without revealing, that a major story character is gay reveals an important step in tolerance. Shortly after outing Albus, JKR went on to emphasize that Harry, in the magical world, had to face all the problems of the Muggle world, and that his seven volumes of struggle could be seen as a plea for and demonstration of the vital importance of tolerance.
Indeed, in our world, there is no more vital task facing us and our children than coming to a heartfelt and intellectually deep understanding of tolerance and spreading this "Gospel" or Good News. On this success or failure depends what kind of world our grandchildren and beyond will be living in, or whether there will be grandchildren and beyond or a living earth. I write these words carrying the awareness, even the burden of a grandfather whose own grandfather helped develop both atom and hydrogen bombs.
Tolerance comes from the Latin word meaning, among other things, to bear or endure. It was seen, initially, in the 15th & 16th centuries, as meaning receiving permission from authority. The first definition of tolerate in the Oxford English English Dictionary, says:
1. allow the existence or occurrence of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.
Dear, dear friends, that isn't going to cut it. Not even close.
To get closer, we can take inspiration and learning not only from JKR -- and more on that later -- but also from perhaps the first great Western exposition of tolerance, John Locke's 1689 first "A Letter Concerning Toleration" -- initially not published in England, but Holland, then as now, generally a much more tolerant country.
Locke knew, firsthand, about tolerance and its lack, living, as he did, through the terrible English Civil War, and facing, as he did at the time of his writing (1688), a King turned Catholic deposed, and another Parliament in revolt. He deeply knew toleration's need and feared its lack. In the first paragraph, he boldly stated:
I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark of the true Church.
This was so not then the view, or better, the vision. Locke continued:
For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all, of the orthodoxy of their faith -- for everyone is orthodox to himself -- these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.
Shortly afterward, Locke restates:
If the Gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.
I don't intend to rehash, much less critique, Locke's views, here, only to point to a crucial addition to tolerance: Love. Tolerance without love, genuine love, isn't worthless, but it isn't what's needed, it isn't what heals and continues to heal & bond. I'll say it stronger: it's not what's demanded of us -- Christians, Muslims, Jews. Buddhists or whatever -- as world citizens
JKR's Harry, as the gay & blessed Albus points out, isn't especially rich in magical powers, with or without a great (or only a very good) "wand" -- Oh, the subtexts! Frankly, Harry is rich precisely, but not only, in this: courage & love. And Albus is right: as a therapist working with severely abused and neglected children, as Harry most certainly was, I know how extraordinary Harry was in his ability to both give and receive love broadly, courageously.
This, to me, is the heart of genius in the Harry Potter series: to create characters -- flawed, and so believable, yet still so admirable and achievable -- that draw us into their story, their struggle so that we are drawn, not to the words of a lesson, but the lived truth of a vital reality we all face.
So why, then, are my thoughts sad & worried?
Nothing I say from here on should, in any way, be taken as a slur on JKR or a diminishing of what she did accomplish. It's only sad & worried because there's still so much more to accomplish. There are many ways to understand this, but I want to continue to use gay as my paradigm.
JKR's beliefs are without question. And as a writer, she pulled her punches, both in toleration and because of that, as an author, in her story as well. Can anyone not readily see and feel how much more powerful Book 7, and so the entire series would have been, both as a demonstration to tolerance and as a story, if JKR had permitted herself to give even part of a chapter to Dumbledore's blighted love for Gindelwald?
I don't need to say why she didn't. We all know. And we all know what that would have cost the series and, in some real ways, the series' well-storied message.
May we all know our responsibility or, to use that wonderful word -- too often lost on this side of the pond, more used on the other -- our duty: to speak & live tolerance as a species of love & humility. And to acknowledge our own (my own) failures here, of commission and omission, and to pick ourselves (myself) up and give it another & better try.
Not only in sadness & worry, but also in love & abundantly-merited, but not nearly so often realized humility,
avus
Indeed, in our world, there is no more vital task facing us and our children than coming to a heartfelt and intellectually deep understanding of tolerance and spreading this "Gospel" or Good News. On this success or failure depends what kind of world our grandchildren and beyond will be living in, or whether there will be grandchildren and beyond or a living earth. I write these words carrying the awareness, even the burden of a grandfather whose own grandfather helped develop both atom and hydrogen bombs.
Tolerance comes from the Latin word meaning, among other things, to bear or endure. It was seen, initially, in the 15th & 16th centuries, as meaning receiving permission from authority. The first definition of tolerate in the Oxford English English Dictionary, says:
1. allow the existence or occurrence of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.
Dear, dear friends, that isn't going to cut it. Not even close.
To get closer, we can take inspiration and learning not only from JKR -- and more on that later -- but also from perhaps the first great Western exposition of tolerance, John Locke's 1689 first "A Letter Concerning Toleration" -- initially not published in England, but Holland, then as now, generally a much more tolerant country.
Locke knew, firsthand, about tolerance and its lack, living, as he did, through the terrible English Civil War, and facing, as he did at the time of his writing (1688), a King turned Catholic deposed, and another Parliament in revolt. He deeply knew toleration's need and feared its lack. In the first paragraph, he boldly stated:
I esteem that toleration to be the chief characteristic mark of the true Church.
This was so not then the view, or better, the vision. Locke continued:
For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all, of the orthodoxy of their faith -- for everyone is orthodox to himself -- these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.
Shortly afterward, Locke restates:
If the Gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.
I don't intend to rehash, much less critique, Locke's views, here, only to point to a crucial addition to tolerance: Love. Tolerance without love, genuine love, isn't worthless, but it isn't what's needed, it isn't what heals and continues to heal & bond. I'll say it stronger: it's not what's demanded of us -- Christians, Muslims, Jews. Buddhists or whatever -- as world citizens
JKR's Harry, as the gay & blessed Albus points out, isn't especially rich in magical powers, with or without a great (or only a very good) "wand" -- Oh, the subtexts! Frankly, Harry is rich precisely, but not only, in this: courage & love. And Albus is right: as a therapist working with severely abused and neglected children, as Harry most certainly was, I know how extraordinary Harry was in his ability to both give and receive love broadly, courageously.
This, to me, is the heart of genius in the Harry Potter series: to create characters -- flawed, and so believable, yet still so admirable and achievable -- that draw us into their story, their struggle so that we are drawn, not to the words of a lesson, but the lived truth of a vital reality we all face.
So why, then, are my thoughts sad & worried?
Nothing I say from here on should, in any way, be taken as a slur on JKR or a diminishing of what she did accomplish. It's only sad & worried because there's still so much more to accomplish. There are many ways to understand this, but I want to continue to use gay as my paradigm.
JKR's beliefs are without question. And as a writer, she pulled her punches, both in toleration and because of that, as an author, in her story as well. Can anyone not readily see and feel how much more powerful Book 7, and so the entire series would have been, both as a demonstration to tolerance and as a story, if JKR had permitted herself to give even part of a chapter to Dumbledore's blighted love for Gindelwald?
I don't need to say why she didn't. We all know. And we all know what that would have cost the series and, in some real ways, the series' well-storied message.
May we all know our responsibility or, to use that wonderful word -- too often lost on this side of the pond, more used on the other -- our duty: to speak & live tolerance as a species of love & humility. And to acknowledge our own (my own) failures here, of commission and omission, and to pick ourselves (myself) up and give it another & better try.
Not only in sadness & worry, but also in love & abundantly-merited, but not nearly so often realized humility,
avus