More from Madeleine

"And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13: 13

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I started reading Walking on Water in response to a conversation I had with one of my student assistants during a slow period at the circulation desk. She and I had been discussing what we liked in literature and what themes were consistent throughout our favorite books. I admitted that I have a very difficult time reading late19th and 20th century authors (John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Hardy to name a few)  because of their lack of hope. The a fore mentioned authors and other tend to leave me in a funk. I don't need a happy ending per se, but I need a sense of completeness or wholeness.. For instance, the end of Return of the King, is bittersweet. Sam loses Frodo and large-scale adventures, but he regains the stability of a home, family, and hope for the future.

As we were talking of this theme of hope, I brought up Harry Potter, and how I also liked the theme of self sacrifice for the good of others and that I see that this is a type of the Christ story. She was very quick to say she is skeptical of symbolism and assuming we know what has influenced authors. How can we know what authors had in mind as they wrote? She argued that we shouldn't read into this. This left me a bit flummoxed. I was ready to hang my hat on the fact that Rowling was influenced by her knowledge of the Christian story. Furthermore, I was also convinced that the sacrificial dying and rising hero could find its original roots in the Christian story.

And so, work ended on a bit of an incomplete note, and I went home. The following weekend, I rediscovered Madeleine L'Engle's book. I had bough it in high school with the high aspirations that I would one day be an author writing in the Christian artist tradition. I never got past the first chapter. Now I was more curious about how Madeleine could add to and grow my thoughts on the interaction of Christianity of art. How do we understand the relationship of cause and effect in literature?

The most important takeaway from her book for me was not about the root of sacrificial death and resurrection (though more on that later), but about Christian art in general. I'll let Madeleine speak for herself: "And perhaps that is an essential ingredient of a Christian children's book (or any Christian book): the message of love. A Christian children's book must have an ultimately affirmative view of life... [that is] a book that says yes to life." My heart and intellect say yes to this thought. I appreciate books that are life-affirming and that champion the cause of goodness, completion, and sacrificial love that will do anything for the beloved with no strings attached. Harry was protected by his mother's love, and his own greatest moment is when he comes to realize that he must die for evil to die. This is the only way to save those dear to him. He greets death as a friend, and thereby without knowing it's even possible, he also defeats death. Death to self is life to others.

But, let us not forget the original conversation: Was Rowling (and Tolkien and Lewis) influenced by the story of Christ? I mentioned that I thought the root of the sacrificial hero is in Christ, while my colleague's opinion is that it is too simplistic to read symbolism and causation into literature. I'd like to offer a thought from a friend of mine that helped me understand this a little better. Obviously, Christ's death and resurrection is not the first time we this kind of hero going through a death and resurrection cycle. Every year Persephone must go to the underworld for a time and then rise again to bring the life of spring. Achilles is dipped in the river Styx (death). Orpheus attempts to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades. And many other pre-Christian religions and mythologies are full of this theme.

We can choose a few ways to react to this. As my friend said (please forgive my feeble paraphrase!), "Some choose to be scandalized by this theme appearing in so many places and take it as proof that the Christian story is not unique. However, why would we expect for Truth to manifest itself differently throughout  the ages? How much more reasonable to accept that other traditions have had glimpses of the Truth." So, while Christ is not necessarily the source in chronological time or in influence of these stories, as Christians we believe that Christ is Truth outside of time and the origin of right belief. So whether Rowling realized it or not, she hit on key truths that echo the Truth: love, sacrifice, and my favorite, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15:26).

Walking on Water

"If a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child." ~Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

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As a soon-to-be librarian, one of the most frequent questions I am asked is "What is your favorite book?", or the equally popular, "Who is your favorite author?". I'm sure I find this question as equally flummoxing as young children find my question, "Well, what types of books do you like to read?" It's a hard question to nail down. Children usually respond, "Um, something good?"

My response usually depends upon the person asking the question. For people in the adult academic world, I bumble through my favorite "you should read these" kinds of books and authors such as Crime and Punishment, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen's plethora of English prose. For children, I seem to revert back to the earliest favorites I can remember, Charlotte's Web, Island of the Blue Dolphins, or A Cricket in Times Square. And if I really panic, I might cite my favorite Christian fiction (probably equivalent to my favorite candy) such as The Princess by Lori Wick, the Christy Miller Series, and many of the others I read throughout my pre-teen and teen years.I'll say, all of these answers are true. At certain times, any one of these rises to my favorite depending on the time of year or what is going on in life.

But I think the truest answer, and the one I've usually been afraid of giving, is that I have always loved, and still love, literature written for children. Not all of it, but my true favorites definitely fall under that category. I think I've been ashamed of this answer because it seems, well, juvenile. Isn't children's literature just for children? And suggested by this first question is another: isn't children's literature somehow of lower quality than literature written for adults?

This weekend, as I traveled back and forth into Chicago on the train, I started Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, and I found her apologetic of children's literature to be most helpful. After much discussion, L'Engle points out that "If you are not good enough to write a book for adults, you are certainly not good enough to write a book for children." She further insists that any book that is written "down" to children cannot succeed. Authors who write good children's books write good books, not "childish" or "juvenile" books.

Why do we doubt that children can handle deep issues? Why do we assume that they will be amused and kept quiet with the trivial, the mundane, and the stupid. The best children's literature deals with things that adults have a hard time grasping, but that children accept by faith. I think this is what I appreciate about L'Engle the most. She accepts that children will understand what adults miss. "A child is not afraid of new ideas, does not have to worry about the status quo or rocking the boat, is willing to sail into uncharted waters."

I think this is why 'children's' literature is my favorite. Because the really excellent books written for children (A Wrinkle in Time, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, to name a few) explore all these themes and do so with more integrity and hope than books written for adults. I think I'll leave the subject of hope for a different post.