Mr. Weasley is more important than you might think if you read the Harry Potter series without care. Mr. Weasley is brave enough and a good enough employee at the Ministry of Magic, which turns out to be rare, but that is not what taught me something so important that I have to go to Wheatstone Academy this summer. Mr Weasley is fascinated by Muggles, the wizarding name for the not magical we that live with no hope of ever going to Hogwarts.He loves toying with our stuff and is always shocked at the clever devices we invent to make do without magic.
It isn’t much, but it shows that J.K. Rowling grasps something very important, even if most of her readers forget it. A world only looks exotic if you are outside of it. In CS Lewis’ Narnia books, Prince Caspian makes this point to the children from our own Earth. Caspian tells them that Narnia is much less interesting, though a more pleasant place to live, when the children are not called to save it. The King of Narnia is also fascinated by the notion of living on a spherical world. The children have to disappoint him by saying it is much less interesting than it sounds. People do not know when they are walking “upside down.”
“Exotic” can, in fact, become a way of marginalizing something different. What we do is “normal” and what somebody else does it cool because it is weird. This is acceptable in the shock of newness, especially in children, but troubling in adults who have more than a second to think. Contrary to what a student once asked me in class, English is not “real” while everyone else speaks something exotic.
And yet Mr. Weasley dimly recognizes that Muggles are not people without magic, they are people with science. Wizards and witches still use owls to get the mail . . . we use email and do not force any owls to serve us. By developing a culture around magic (that actually works!), the magical community has made a choice and the choice has stunted their development in other areas.
Just as one cannot spend four hours after work in the gym and four hours after that learning Latin, so wizards and witches could not develop the arts, history, and culture taught at Hogwarts and produce the art of the Renaissance or jazz or Disney animation.
So what? Is there nothing more here than everyone has a gift, but developing that gift precludes something else? That every culture under God’s heaven has a calling, but fulfilling that calling takes up time from other things? If there was, that would be something.
We all choose or have choices made for us by our heritage. Nor is the message of Mr. Weasley merely that one man’s fascination is another man’s normal work day. A computer is (evidently) as magical to a wizard as a working wand would be to me. Everyone is exotic to somebody else and every exotic thing becomes routine when done enough times.
As CS Lewis pointed out, if Arthur Conan Doyle had captured fairies in photographs they would be like elephants in the zoo: cool at first, nice to look at, but you would not want to own one. Jurrasic World shows how quickly awe and wonder can become boredom and I never met a soul who like being bored.
So here is the deeper truth Mr. Weasley has grasped: nothing is routine. If I wake up to my world, this moment, this ability to capture this text on this Surface is remarkable. I dreamed of such devices as a child . . . and tried to make computers like those I saw on Star Trek and now I own a better one. It sends a shiver down my spine. The wizard world never sees how awesome it is until a “first year” from a non-wizarding family comes to Hogwarts and takes in the wonder they have taken for granted. The Weasley twins have some good pranks, but my roommates in college could have shown them a trick or two.
So it goes. We forget that before the throne of Creator God there will be many tongues, languages, and peoples all being themselves. Holiness is the same for all creation, God is Holy, but that leaves almost everything for us to do or not do. We fixate on a few things that we cannot do and forget the nearly infinite diversity in infinite combinations of Creation. (Thank you, Rev Spock!)
In this glorious Christendom, nobody is left behind or needs to be forgotten. Every lack is an opportunity. Every opportunity produces something wonderful if we allow the Spirit to reconcile us with Goodness.
Wheatstone for me is a chance to renew my wonder in the most magical process I know: the dialectic. There I face open ended questions about everything and enjoy seeing “first years” see the very stairs they have just climbed rhetorically move out from under their feet! I can’t wait.
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