Thursday, April 29, 2010

dumbledore and jesus

I spent the other night listening to the soundtrack from the sixth Harry Potter. It really has some amazing tracks. Sara Cafe and I watched a documentary about JKRowling and it's strange to me because in some ways I want to shake the woman but in others I fully relate. She writes idealized father figures. Those usually come out in older brothers for me.

It's interesting to me how her big theme is that loving people is the most powerful thing, how love will triump in the end of it all. Theologically this is interesting in the sense of God's truths shining through whether people give recognition to him or not, although I think she tends to be a hair off, that good and evil in people aren't counterbalanced, aren't like yin and yang.

But theology aside, I love the fact that love wins, that Harry wins, that there is hope for good things. After rewatching the sixth movie I went back and reread something I wrote about the fear in a specific part of the movie and everything hanging in the balance, the fact that ''good'' might not triumph. I told the Colombian roommate that was how I imagined the disciples must have felt after Jesus died. This guy who was their hope, who they didn't really understand but must have at least hoped he was really God--and then he dies. It's like when Dumbledore dies (or when Gandalf does). You think, this wasn't supposed to happen this way. And the uncertainty--this could really all fail, could all be lost. Having Dumbledore's funeral or Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, wrapping Jesus' body in myrrh and aloe and linens.

There is a difference--God has already won. But something in me, perhaps the writer side of me, comes abck to this moment where everything is unsure and so very human. Jesus seems more personal to me in no other part of the Bible than this, and what it means I'm not sure, but the music during these parts knocks me over. Something in me knows it--I don't know. This track--Inferi in the Firestorm--there is hope, but you don't know what will happen. (The part I'm talking about starts at around 1:08). (Also, this is a slightly better version because it's an actual clip but I can't embed it...)



If you clicked the video clip version, you'll have noticed that Dumbledore parts the fire like Moses. Pretty epic, even if is Harry Potter. I'm sure there are all sorts of things like that you can get into, but first, let me just say: music like this just gets me. Vast, reaching music. And when you pair it with that moment when you don't know yet, when people are fighting for good and for hope and you just want so badly for good--well, this is why I'm endlessly sentimental or literay romantic or whatever you call it. Big, epic stuff just gets me. But I do think that this goes along with that idea of story, of living good stories. I don't mean melodrama and constant crisis. I mean something like doing good (not well), living out your part in that story that's way bigger than you are.

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