Dear Mr. Lewis:

I wonder what you would have thought of Harry Potter.

In a few weeks, Part I of the last of the Harry Potter movies will be in theaters at the same time as The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book three or book five depending on how you order your Narnia books).

And I really do wonder what you would have to say about Harry Potter if you had anything to say at all.

The Christian message in your Narnia books has never been in doubt despite the fact that they are books of fantasy, that magical creatures such as unicorns and centaurs, dwarves and witches, dragons and mermaids populate every book. In the Narnia books, centaurs read the stars and even Aslan is subject to the deeper magic that rules the land.

On the other hand, many have viewed the Harry Potter books as being completely unchristian, as leading small children astray with the false hope that spells and incantations can cure all the evils in the world.

I wonder what you would say.

Author Madeleine L’Engle said that the chief ingredient to any work of Christian Children’s fiction is love. Love must be the central theme. Aslan shows his love by sacrificing himself to the witch at the stone table. Meg, in L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, defeats the evil IT by a simple declaration of love.

So is there love in the world of Harry Potter? Well, there would be no Harry Potter at all if it weren’t for the love of his mother. Central to the books’ plot is sacrifice, specifically the sacrifice of Harry’s mother. When Harry was still a baby, his mother sacrificed her life and that single act of ultimate love shielded him and protected him from Voldemort.

It is that love that carries Harry through all the books. It distinguishes him from his enemy. It’s the reason why he will always win and why Voldemort must always lose.

Mr. Lewis, I grew up on your Narnia books. I devoured them again and again and again. I’ve read them more times than I can count. I actually stopped counting when I reached twenty times for each book.

Your books made me a reader. I had read before that and I had always liked to read, but your world of Narnia was the first to pull me in, the first to surround me, the first to feel as real as anything else in this world.

Your books made me a believer. Your books made me a believer in things that were totally and completely outside the realm of my imagination.

At a time when most children begin to let go of childish whims and fancies, at a time when most children stop accepting things at face value and begin to doubt in things they cannot see, your books cemented my beliefs, gave them strong roots and allowed them to continue to flourish and grow.

I was an adult when I read my first Harry Potter book so I don’t know if those books have the same effects on children today that your books had on me.

But I do think, and I do think you’d appreciate this, that the Harry Potter books do have something in common with your Narnia books. They fill a need all children have, not the need to believe in magic, but the need to know that there are things out there that are unexplainable and even in the face of the greatest of evils, good, unexplainable and pure goodness will always triumph.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lewis.

You are missed.

Thanksgiving

I have several routines now when I go to church, especially when I go to church and no one is there yet or there are just a few people wandering around.

I always go through the wardrobe into the library. There is, actually, another door to the library, but I make a point to go through the wardrobe.

Just in case.

I also try and walk the newly created path through the back woods. It’s not that anything has changed since I walked it the last time. It’s not that I spend longer than a few minutes back there. But I think for anyone who walks that path and crosses that bridge and hears the birds flapping through the brush and the lizards skittering across the leaves, there is this moment when you feel like this place is yours and yours alone. There is something sacred and holy and still out there in the woods.

So the library and the wardrobe and the woods and if I’m really lucky and the church is empty, I sit in the sanctuary by myself and try and figure out just how I got here.


There are these surreal moments when I walk through church and it’s as if my brain has not yet caught up to my heart. My heart loves this place and the people here like I have known them all my life. But my brain keeps trying to wrestle with me and tell me it’s only been since April.

That’s when I sit in the sanctuary and take a few breaths and try and let my brain catch up before it gets too winded.

I sit and I thank God for all He has given me this year. I never could have imagined being this happy, this fulfilled. I could never have imagined what it truly means to have purpose in my life.

And then I move past thinking “how did this all happen” and start thinking about “what’s going to happen next?”

That little kid that is still a part of me, the little kid who can’t sleep because every day feels like Christmas Eve, that little kid is not as loud as she was right after confirmation, but she’s still there, this tiny bit of joy nestled within my soul.

And as anxious as I am and as impatient as I am to get on with things, to know what will happen next, I know that the beauty of life is simply the living of it.

In an episode from Dr. Who (yes, I’m quoting from Dr. Who), the Doctor wants to know what will happen next in his journey and River Song, a fellow time traveler, tells him, “It’s a long story, Doctor. Can’t be told. Has to be lived.”

For the first time in my life I am glad and thankful that I can’t flip to the last page of the book and see how the story ends.

For the first time, I am happy just to live it.

Sacred

Some days it’s really hard to write.

Some days things just weigh on me.

Some days it’s physical pain. Some days worry and anxiety become squatters, taking up where they are most definitely not wanted.

And it’s these days when church is so important to me, when church becomes something more than a place I want to go, but a place I need to go.

Last Sunday the praise band sung the song “The Stand.” The song built slowly, and when it reached the climax, people all around me began to stand up. One at a time and then all together—this wave of people moved, were moved to stand and praise God. I told people later that it felt like the breath of God, that I felt this energy move through me and it caught me so off guard, it almost knocked me over.

This Sunday, not once but twice (because I go to both services), I knelt down following communion and prayed. It’s hard for me to kneel because of my back and I do not have the hip muscles really needed to hold me up. After a minute or so, my legs begin to shake, but I can’t stop kneeling.

And this Sunday, as I knelt, I felt this presence behind me and all around me. And I swear it felt like it did the Sunday I was confirmed. That Sunday three women stood behind me and put their hands on my back in support.

Today, no one was standing behind me, but I could feel hands. I could feel the presence of something, of many somethings, and I have no idea what it was, whether it be God or His angels, whether it be the healing that God is working on me in this church. But I felt enveloped in love.

And I heard this voice, this internal whisper in my soul that said, “You are not alone.” And as if that wasn’t enough, it was followed a moment later by “You have never been alone.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I have always believed in God, I have always known that He was there, but something has happened to me these past eight months and I can’t explain it. But God is suddenly so much bigger than I ever imagined. He is so much more real.

And He isn’t just standing beside me. He’s in front of me. He’s behind me. He’s all around me, all the time and yes, I’m more aware of Him at church than anywhere else.

I can’t explain any of it.

Macrina Widerkehr, author of A Tree Full of Angels, describes it as a yearning, and that “If you yearn for God, a sacred presence will begin to fill you. It will hover over you … upset your entire life with a haunting presence, a presence that is both terrible and beautiful.”

It’s a presence that is impossible to ignore and one that while overwhelming, is so necessary in my life right now.

I need God. I need Him more than ever.

And so I write.

And I go to church.

Because I need to.

Bridges, Doorways and Paths, Oh My!

I didn’t read Bridge to Terebithia until I was an adult. It’s a children’s book and for anyone who grew up reading the Narnia books or anything by Robin McKinley or Tolkien or Lloyd Alexander or Madeleine L’Engle, Bridge to Terebithia is a book for any child who ever dared to imagine.

It’s also a heartbreaking read. I will not spoil the ending except to say that the ending still makes me cry, makes me cry just thinking about it because the experiences of the main character are so similar to my own.

Children’s books, children’s fantasy books especially, are filled with doorways and wardrobes, secret gardens and hidden paths that open up to new and strange and mysterious worlds.

When I was a kid, I was always looking for those doorways. My friend Donny and I used to hide behind the hedge that surrounded my front porch. It was cool and dark there and no one knew where we were. In the winter time, we dug tunnels through giant mounds of snow the snowplows had pushed to the side of the road. We were burrowers. We were explorers.

We searched for the hidden because if it was hidden, then by definition it must be fantastical.

Later, when I was a little older and reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and A Wrinkle in Time, I became almost obsessed with finding hidden worlds.

That drive has never left me. I think it’s one of things that continues to make Hope such a special place to me. There’s the Narnia library and the secluded memorial garden. There are paths through the woods that are overgrown yet still inviting.

One such path was recently cleared and Pastor Debbie took a bunch of us out there tonight, in the dark, with only the moon and a little flashlight to show the way.

It was so incredibly dark, but there was something about hiking through the woods at night that seemed both charming and mysterious. We didn’t hike far, just about fifty feet or so until we reached a small clearing by the water.

And then we headed off to the right. There were two trees. One leaned slightly over the other forming a bit of a doorway. We walked through it, bearing left and then a few feet later, we saw the bridge.

Just yesterday the bridge had been a few pine logs thrown across a creek bed. But now, as if by magic, there was a whole bridge, with railings and Spanish moss trickling over the sides.

And beyond the bridge, on the other side … there was only darkness.

I can’t wait until the daylight. I can’t wait until I have time to explore further, to see what lies there on the other side of the darkness, whether it be Terebithia or Narnia, whether there be orcs or dragons, whether there be simply silence and the wind rustling through the trees—I want to know.

Because whatever is there, it is God’s and it is beautiful.

Moses

Every year I have my students read about Harriet Tubman and every year I am shocked at the number of my eighth graders who have never heard of her, who don’t know her story, how she was an escaped slave, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, how she personally helped free hundreds of slaves by escorting them to the north and to Canada.

One part of Harriet’s story that was glossed over when I was a child and still receives little attention I think in public schools today, is the spiritual element to her story. Yes, she was called Moses because like Moses she helped free her people.

But also, like Moses, Harriet Tubman had an ongoing dialogue with God.

Yesterday in the book store, I came across a picture book on the life of Harriet Tubman, entitled Moses. It is a Caldecott Honor book and a Coretta Scott King Award winner and it emphasizes in a way that is touching and moving Harriet Tubman’s relationship with God. It imagines her dialogue with Him.

It shows how when she first escaped, God directed her to this person and to that person for help, how God provided her instructions for fleeing from the dogs that hunted her, how He protected her and watched over while she slept.

And then how when she finally made it to freedom, He asked her to turn around, go back south, grab her family and do it all over again. Nineteen times, Harriet Tubman made the journey with slaves fleeing from the south to the north.

Nineteen times.

Harriet Tubman escapes, finds her freedom after years of beatings and near starvation and just when she knows everything will be all right, God tells her to go back and do it again and again and again.

It would have only been human to be afraid. And she was many times, I’m sure, but what kept her going was her faith in God and her willingness to be used for His good.

Nineteen times, nearly three hundred people and Harriet Tubman never lost one of them on the journey.

At the end of Moses, author Carole Boston Weatherford, imagines Harriet’s response to those who sing her praises. She writes Harriet Tubman’s response as this “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord. I always trust Him to lead me and He always does.”

There have been times in my life and will be times in my life when that sort of clarity will elude me, when I’ll get too comfortable with the status quo, when I’ll get too lost in the blessings that God has provided and forget that He has plans for me.

I hope then I can think of Harriet Tubman and remember that God uses blessings and strife to propel us on the journey and that to get caught up in either means that we have lost sight of the path.

When we do lose sight of that path, we need to just give it over to God and trust in Him as Harriet Tubman trusted in Him to use us, to make use of us, for His greater good.

Background Noise

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of traffic on I-95. The highway is close, but not in my backyard and occasionally I wake up to the howling of a semi barreling through the night. Some nights the low whistling of tires on asphalt sounds like a ghost haunting the moors in some Brontë novel.

Most nights I can tune it out.

I live in a world of constant noise, though.

I know this because on the rare occasion that I can sit in silence, I can still hear a ringing in my ears like I’ve just gotten back from a rock concert.

Finding silence these days, true silence, is a luxury.

And it’s not just physical noise that bombards us each day, distracting us, making it impossible to concentrate and focus, it’s psychological noise too.

It’s the constant chatter that goes through our heads all day.

Pay the bills take out the trash eat something sleep now go here no go there feed the cat change the oil visit the dentist call your mom don’t eat that are you crazy slow down speed up when are you going to get this done NOW DO THIS NOW!

Remember that old commercial “Calgon take me away.”

When Pastor Debbie revealed that when she arrives at church each morning, before she does anything else, she walks the grounds, making a loop along the water before winding her back around to check out her new found oak trees … I was so envious.

I want that kind of quiet time.

So last Saturday, the coolest day of the season so far, I drove to church. I watched Jaci set up for the food drive, and then I took my camera and snuck down to the Memorial Garden and the water.

I had spotted what I thought was a little blue heron dabbing its toes in the water as if trying to decide if it was warm enough.

My feet crackled on the fallen pine needles, but I stepped slowly, just out of sight of the bird.

It was quiet.

I was quiet.

The air smelled of autumn, something I didn’t think was possible in Florida. I didn’t think autumn existed here, but down by the water, surrounded by plants and trees that here dropping needles and leaves, cozying up to one another, ready to hunker down—I could smell it—wet, moist, decomposing plant life that always signaled winter around the corner when I lived up north.

I snapped a picture of the bird.

I was only a few feet away and still so quiet he hadn’t moved.

I followed him a few more feet and then I was too close. He didn’t even look at me. One second he was standing there by the water, the next second he was air born.

As always, times like these remind me that God is to be found in the stillness and the silence.

And as much as possible, I need to run from the noise that intrudes on my life and take shelter among the trees and the birds. There I will find God.

Sunrise

I’ve been thinking about that cross I found last Sunday.

All week—I can’t stop thinking about it.

As I told someone earlier this week, there are times in our lives when God is subtle and there are times like last Sunday when He is so real, He might as well be standing there right in front of me.

Though I still can’t remember why I asked my mom to buy me that cross when I was in third grade, I do remember that year was special to me for another reason.

It was that year that I first remember feeling the presence of God.

It was that year that He became real to me.

I had always believed in Him I think in the same way that I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, except they had more credibility. There was always money under the pillow and presents under the tree.

But when I was eight-years-old, something clicked inside of me and suddenly God became real, as real as my parents, my friends, maybe even more real. He was always present.

He was the sunrise.

Some time after that I asked my mom to buy me that cross.

Years pass and then last Sunday, the cross reappears—like that—without me looking for it, it’s there.

Why?

Why now?

I’ve been having a hard time lately. The last seven months have been amazing and joy-filled, beyond imagination. I’ve agreed to go on this journey with God even though the destination seems a little hazy and the path itself sometimes hidden.

But still I follow.

Lately, though, I’ve started to panic a little.

What am I doing?

Where am I going?

It’s like when I was teenager and learning how to swim, I never strayed more than an arm’s length from the edge of the pool.

But now God has dropped me in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. He asks me to trust Him.

And I want to trust, but I’m so scared.

I’m frightened even as I know that I can’t and won’t turn back now.

“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for,” the poem says (author unknown).

We are not meant to be safe. We are meant to grow and change. We are explorers and the journey is sometimes joyous and sometimes painful as we become who God intends us to be.

Finding that cross the other day, reminded me that I have known God a long time, but He has known me infinitely longer. Whether or not I knew it at the time, asking my mom to buy me that cross was my way of committing myself to the journey.

Finding that cross reminded me that I do not take the journey alone.

Every day this past week when I have struggled with doubt and fear, I have looked to that cross, thought of that cross, thought of God’s commitment to me. I have remembered that God is real, more real than anything else in this world and that despite my fear I have to keep going.

The night is sometimes long.

But the sun always rises in the morning.