"I say to you all, once again - in the light of Lord Voldemort's return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.  Lord Voldemort's gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great.  We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.  Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.
It is my belief - and never have I so hoped that I am mistaken - that we are all facing dark and difficult times.  Some of you in this Hall have already suffered directly at the hands of Lord Voldemort.  Many of your families have been torn asunder.  A week ago,  a student was taken from our midst.
Remember Cedric.  Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort.  Remember Cedric Diggory.""
-Albus Dumbledore 

And that is why I will read these books to my kids.  Courage and bravery.  What is right versus what is easy.  Being run by fear versus fighting with courage - at great cost.  I've been avoiding commenting on here about the fact that I'm reading the Harry Potter series.  I never read them as a kid and I know that many are concerned that they are written about magic.  I don't want to get into a debate about them or encourage young kids to read them whose parents might rightfully wish they wouldn't.

But I'm so impressed by them that I feel it's sort of unfair not to admit on here the gold that is in these books.  One of my goals for this blog is to point out beauty and give value, in places it may or may not be seen.  And that is why I am going to comment.

Not only are they truly amazingly written in style, craft, plot, character development, suspense and story development... but I think they can install courage.  (I know, I know... same old thing I'm always saying.)  And I'm actually really grateful that my generation grew up on them.  I used to be afraid that somehow my generation was more inclined to the occult because of being fed these stories.... and that is probably also true... but I truly believe our generation is going to need a backbone and I'm not sure we have one.  We have been afforded every comfort by our parent's credit cards.  As a whole, we don't know what it means to feel hungry - literally.  We haven't had to fight for much.  And we haven't really had to be brave.

Giving us a story that tells us we have a soul, and that dangers are real, and that bravery is needed - that unity is powerful, discord is easy, and character must be earned?  That I am grateful for.  Yes, I will read these stories to my kids, because like Lewis and MacDonald and Tolkien, Rowland recognizes that more can be infused in a person's character and mind and soul when they enter a world of magic, and fantasy often imparts more truth than any replication of the world as we see it today can manage.  I can see why these are the stories she told her children at night.  I hope to come up with such stories for mine - stories that encourage them that dark and difficult times may come, and if they do, what is right and good and kind is better than what is easy.  That many will judge people from where they come from - but that doesn't have to determine who they become.  I want my children to be brave.  I want to be brave.

The focus is not on what spells and enchantments Potter pulls off - it is on the kind of man he becomes.

"You are blinded... by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius!  You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood!  You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!  Your dementor has just destroyed the last remaining member of a pure-blood family as old as any - and see what the man chose to make of his life!  I will tell you now - take the steps I have suggested, and you will be remembered, in office or out, as one of the bravest and greatest Ministers of Magic we have ever known.  Fail to act - and history will remember you as the man who stepped aside and allowed Voldemort a second chance to destroy the world we have tried to rebuild!"

2/25

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