Harry Potter and the Salvation of a Generation

EXPELLIARMUS!

INCENDIO!

EXPECTO PATRONUM!I

Using my grandmother's broom to play "Bewitched" as a child, I never thought, nearly half a century later, I would have charms and spells to disarm my opponent, start a fire with my wand, or create a patronus (look it up). But there you have it, those Latin sounding words J.K. Rowling so deftly made up can do all those things, and more, in the land of Wizards.

One of my cousins is a senior in high school this year, less than a year away from being a legal adult, yet she still reads Harry Potter books, watches the movies, reads fan fiction, goes to as many nerd-fests as she can (think COMI-CON), has a place and a life on Pottermore.com and a season ticket to all that is Potter in Orlando. She is a friendly, but at times meek girl who nevertheless fiercely defends HP, as if the franchise were a real friend to her, a living, breathing person.

She is but one of a unique generation of kids who had an entire series of books creating a magical world for them, next installments they had to look forward to, stories to discuss the minutia of, to bond with like minded people, shy, awkward kids. This is a phenomenon unique to these people, one I honestly don't think anyone else can fully appreciate. Certainly I know of no other cultural phenomenon with this much impact on an entire generation. The closest thing would be either Star Wars or Star Trek, one of which was limited to 3 superficial (but awesome)movies, the other a weekly series with good ideas and morals but nothing people could really relate to on a personal level...Star Trek dealt in social issues.

I have tried very hard to understand her feelings on this and she has tried to explain  them but I don't think her feelings can be verbalized.

She had to write a paper for school and asked me to look at it. I did and ended up crying and thinking maybe I finally understood. Here it is, edited for space....

In a barren hallway sat a bookshelf full of classic novels with curling spines and dusty pages....the book that stood out to me was Harry Potter...My preteens were a very difficult time for me, my parents never seemed to stop fighting with each other, I was struggling in school, and I felt like I was completely alone. It was when I decided to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone...that my life changed. Suddenly there was something that would always be there...Harry Potter was there for me when I needed it most. A book really is powerful enough to change a person's life. The life in a book can be so beautiful...Harry Potter was how I coped with my parent's divorce, the loss of friends, my brother leaving me with my alcoholic mother. After dad left, my mother would sit on the couch in a daze until midnight. The feeling of loneliness consumed me...The characters were my closest friends and Hogwarts was my home, also my escape...This character (Hermione) was never afraid to be who she was...helped me understand it is okay to be who you are no matter what people say...Through reading these books I understand life is fleeting so we should do everything we can while we are alive...HP introduced me to a whole other world of people like me: nerds who seem to have an intense passion for knowledge and things that are ...out of the ordinary. HP introduced me to the world I belong in and how magical reading can be...

Of course I had begun crying almost immediately when I read this. between the lines lurked the depth of her pain, loneliness, confusion, and lack of sense of self. What her parent's divorce and annamosity put her though, the profound effect of having her brother kicked out of the house had on her, and all the things she never really talks about; I saw between those lines, and it was almost like reading into a mirror.

So much of what she went through, of who she is, could be said about my life too. Yet I had no Harry Potter to console me. I had Nancy Drew, hardly more than fluff, and that was it. Nothing. And my generation sparked the beginning of the "divorce is normal" generations so there were so many out there like me. Plus I had her love of books, knowledge, and that feeling you get when you are smart and dorky, when the kids make fun of you or worse, ignore you all together.

I have not read but the first Harry Potter and I have seen all the movies. I see now, after having the memory of those feeling tear through my heart again via my lovely cousin, how this series can bind all the hurt, broken, lost children together, or even console the single child on a dark

lonely night. This series teaches morality, strength, how to honor your word and your friends, how to stand for what is good and what is right, how to have the courage of your convictions and still see the wonder of magic that is out there, and it is there, even if between the pages of a book.

I have no love lost for KJ Rowling, but I must give her credit for saving a generation of children from their parent's bad marriages, addictions, abuse, neglect, or simply bad parenting. For beginning the trend that nerd is cool, that being smart is not dorky, it is to be admired, even though the dumb kids will always jealously make fun of the smart ones.

One of the beautiful things about this series is that these children grew up with the characters, and as they grew so did the dangers the characters faced, the magnitude of the situations, and the difficulty of the moral issues they had to grapple with. They babysat our kids through the beginnings of school, through the beginnings of puberty, and all the emotion that entails, to young adulthood, all the while guiding and entertaining the lost and lonely. Giving these kids a sense of self, helping them find their sense of self, teaching them lessons and morals no one can argue with.

I seem to be switch perspectives here, from parent to child, but I see both sides of it both from my own difficulties growing up to watching my generation pass or fail at parenting.

Thank you Hogwarts and friends, for properly parenting our children when we were too self involved to do it ourselves, for keeping them company when they were alone, for giving them courage when they were afraid. Thank you for taking away the pain we inflicted and showing them there is a bright wonderful world out there, just waiting for each of their unique shining stars, something we woefully neglected to do.

Shame on us, and thank you Harry, I wish you had been there for me too.

I Don't Know

Quick...

Adam and Eve or Evolution?

Big Bang or Creation?

How old is Earth?

Was there a "Noah's Flood"?

And the questions go on...

"Do you believe in God?"

"I am spiritual but not religious."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I believe in something but not what is in the Bible."

"Then you worship trees or Satan or something?"

"No, I believe in a God that is different than your God"

"Well then you aren't REALLY a Christian."

"...Um, yes, that is what I said. I am not religious but I have a set of beliefs."

"There is only one true God and he will show you the way. I will pray for you."

Good lord how many of these inane conversations do I have to have in my lifetime? Why is it so hard for

people to understand that not everyone believes as they do, and most of all, that you cannot put a label on everyone. I do not believe Christ was a Supernatural being, so I am not a Christian. I do not believe in worshiping trees so I am not a Pagan or Wiccan. I do believe in something but I don't know what, so that makes me neither Atheist nor agnostic. (Atheist meaning you have no belief in any supernatural being and Agnostic meaning you are not sure if you believe in any being or not, basically an Atheist in training).

And yes, those who know me know I do believe in paranormal forces. Just what they are I have no idea, but you CAN believe in something and not have ALL the answers, you just have to have some science to back it up. My belief in the paranormal is as science based as my non-belief in the Christian God.

I know there are others out there like me. We have no voice. We belong nowhere. We lead our own spiritual lives in private and try to gently talk around others because we do not want to lie, nor do we want to talk about it and be lectured, pitied, or condemned. For me, I would have to add that I respect other's religious belief and do not want to discuss it because it usually ends up with me using words like "blind" and "ignorant" and that is ugly and disrespectful to something that is an integral part of who they are.

Here is one to make your head spin. I believe, no I know that evolution exists..it is not a belief system, it is fact. Don't believe me?  Look at your dog. If you have a purebred dog you can be damn sure man genetically selected puppy after puppy to get Fido at your feet. This is a scientific fact, not a belief.

But the second part of that is where I lose people... I do not think humans came from apes nor do I believe the Adam and Eve story.

"Well what do you think happened then?"

"I don't know."

Everyone, repeat after me...I DO NOT KNOW.

Yes, you can doubt something, have no faith or belief in it and not be obligated to fill in the blank with something. I don't know is a perfectly honest and reasonable answer.

Why do I not believe we came from apes or in the Adam and Eve story? Science.  Adam and Eve; so many holes in that story, in that whole book, from a scientific perspective I can toss it out immediately.

Man not evolving from apes? Science as well. If you read more than a magazine article here and there about the science of archaeology you will see that the vast majority of what we "know" about pre-humans is basically made up. Fit the facts to the theory.  Find remnants of a fire with a bone  and instead of concluding simply that Neanderthal cooked their food, archaeologists are quick to set up a whole scenario  behind a glass case at the Smithsonian, complete with what they wore, how they looked, what their social structure was, who hunted or gathered what...all this from a bone in a fire huh? I don't buy it. I used to play a game

See the "wings" on this
 archaeopteryx  hoax fossil.

with a friend when I was in elementary school. One of us would pick up an object and the other had to create a whole, believable story around it to show how it ended up where she found it. that is what archaeologists do. There is nothing in the records or in existence of ANY species evolving into another. For example, there is no fossil record of that cross-over, that critical hybrid...the dinosaur with feathers (we thought we had that one in archaeopteryx but that turned out to be a hoax) proving dinosaurs turned into birds, and we do not have one showing an ape turning into a man. With all the fossils we have found, not one shows ANY species changing into another. and as soon as they find even one I am on board with species to species evolution)We thought we had a few times but they ended up being either hoaxes or mistakes. And if you look at it the other way, we have the shark and the alligator, creatures who have not evolved  in millions of years, so evolution is not an inevitability.

So how do I think humans and all other creature got here?

I don't know.

Science has not proven, to the best of its ability, that we came from apes or that birds came from dinosaur. Yes, there are many physical similarities that point to this, but the rabbit has the exact same eye structure we do, does that mean we came from rabbits?

This mode of thinking, which is basically "prove it to me" is why I also know the paranormal exists and why I do not rule out cryptids. Cryptids are mythological animals that actually do exist. Bigfoot is the most famous. When you are finished laughing, tales of a wild, bloodthirsty deer that hopped on its back 2 legs and carried its young in its stomach were reported sporadically by early Australian explorers but it wasn't until the 1770s that a dead one was found and taken to England for dissection. Now, of course, we all know of the kangaroo.  More recently, about a week ago it was reported what sailors called "The Kraken" and oceanographers call the Giant Squid was first filmed live in the black depths of the ocean. Previously, one would occasionally wash ashore but for a very long time there was no evidence for their existence at all. Or take  the coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for 66 million years, was caught in 1938. and Here is a list of the top 10 cryptids that we now know are real:

http://listverse.com/2010/08/13/top-10-cryptids-that-turned-out-to-be-real/

So if these, and many more can be real, and if you look closely at all the evidence for Sasquatch (meaning reading books by scientists not watching bigfoot shows on the Travel Channel) you will see there is a very good possibility these creatures exist. And this does not, in any way, conflict with science. It also does not mean I think every cryptid is real, but instead of dismissing it all I take each one individually, look at the evidence both for and against, and come to a conclusion as to whether or not the creature MIGHT exist. I cannot say it does, as no one has properly documented it to be a fact.

My interest in the paranormal is usually where people think they have stumped me, trying to equate it with

One of the oldest & still
unexplained ghost photos.

religion. For some, it is a religion, just like for some, science is a religion. All of this meaning that you hold tightly to a belief system,  regardless of the facts and evidence to the contrary and yes, scientists are guilty of this too and it makes for very bad science and fuels the fires for the Creationist Movement, but that is a book in and of itself.

Lets choose an aspect of the paranormal, one everyone is familiar with. Let's look at ghosts. What evidence is there that they exist. I am the one that said I will not accept it if there is no evidence. Well, there is the history. Ghosts have been seen for all of recorded history and almost always have the same traits. Anecdotal evidence usually is tossed out but when you have this much it cannot be ignored. We now have EVPs  which are recordings of supposed ghostly voices. Many of these are recorded under laboratory-like, strict conditions and there is no physical, electrical or mental explanation for them. I want to prove my hypothesis. Since so many people are computer savvy and can build so much in their own homes now, we have equipment that has shown ghostly activity is more prevalent near certain rock formations, near water, in places with certain histories, we have lots and lots of footage, both still and video (the most impressive being dated prior to the computer so it would be virtually tamper proof). There is so much evidence over so many hundreds of years that there has to be something there, you cannot just ignore this part of the human experience simply because you have not experienced it. I have never seen a kangaroo but I know they exist. Shouldn't I be saying "I don't know" you ask? Well yes, and I don't know, but that is why I do the research, so I can know what I suspect. I have seen a ghost, many ghosts, but I did not document it, I had no witnesses, so I need to research it, to find the answer, which may be totally wrong and ghosts do not exist but we are talking about my quest  here, not a call for a new religion or scientific paradigm. This affects no one but me, whereas science and religion affect billions of people, so they better have their facts straight.

So back to where we began.

God.

If we look at God and the Bible scientifically,  the ideas have more holes than a sieve. Sorry but it is a book of fables with a few historical facts regarding the existence of certain people and places that archaeologists have found, and therefore I accept. The rest of it? I simply cannot believe. I actually have tried my entire life to be Christian. I always thought life would be so much easier if I knew there was a better place to go when I died, that my good deeds were smiled upon by someone, that there was a heavenly father that loved me unconditionally, that had a plan for me, that protected me and heard my prayers. I can see why people hold on so tightly to their beliefs in the face of all contradiction. But you cannot MAKE yourself believe something and as much as I want to, I simply cannot.

Now I did say I am spiritual. What does that mean exactly?

I don't know.

I know what I feel. I know that too many coincidences have happened for me not to feel some of them were engineered somehow. I sometimes question whether or not something as complex as Earth, life, the universe...how could all of that just happen? what created the Big Bang, what was before it? I don't know. I have just enough personal experience to make me believe there is something else there but what it is, who it is, how it operates or even if it is, I don't know.

One thing I do know is that  I will never push either science or spirituality into a religious person's face, as some of them do to me. I will never start a war over spirituality as religion has done for millennium. I will never look down my nose at a person who "sins" and feel superior, or not buy a bum a hot dog because "I gave at church". My love for my fellow man, my caring for others, behaviors, my moral code is not driven by fear of eternal damnation or to seek the approval of some nebulous deity, it's because that is the person I want to be, regardless of who knows it.

So I want to make a deal with all religious people out there. If you do not try to convert me I will not insist you explain to me how you can be as intelligent as you are and still believe in the Bible.