The Divine Knows Only Love

Five weeks after graduating seminary in May of 2000, my first theological challenge involved Harry Potter. After church services, two very concerned mothers approached me upset because their daughters could not stop casting spells on one another.

“They are consumed by this evil book. Would you please meet with them ?”

I was a new mother and now realized how susceptible my own daughter could be to societal influences, so I felt an obligation to engage. Before meeting with the girls, I went to the library and found not one, not two but three books about Harry Potter beside a huge display announcing a forthcoming book. Unknowingly, I checked out volume two instead of the first in the series. Within hours, I rushed back to the library and checked out the first and third volumes. I was now officially fascinated with Harry Potter.

The two mothers greeted me at the door with vindicated expectations. Their daughters sat dutifully on a couch, arms crossed, looking like they were awaiting to see a principal. I had so much fun engaging them and being able to speak the language of an imaginative world, sharing their enthusiasm, and hearing how much they one day desired to be teachers at Hogwarts. I slowly translated to their parents why their daughters were so enchanted with magic wands and uttering incantations.

Over twenty years later, I see how fear automatically categorizes much in our world as evil.  Religious communities, obsessed with a perception of sin twined with evil, reflect onto their understanding a world of theodicy, perpetuating a theological ongoing struggle between good and evil thereby subjugating God to this way of thinking.  The personification of good and purity in the character Harry Potter succeeds in a fantasy world based on duality.

Makes me wonder why I still get caught up in the illusionary reality that feeds on the duality of good and evil.  And so I want to engage the inner child, so susceptible to living in the Reality of Unity.