Me and Harry Potter and The Sacred Text

I started listening to a podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text — and I will apologize right now for introducing this podcast to you if you haven’t heard of it yet. It is likely to gobble up all your driving, walking, cleaning, and working out listening time.

My eldest daughter told me about the podcast over the holiday break in an off-hand comment, and since I had never heard of it, I immediately thought that it must be either a.) brand new or b.) not directed at people my age. I mention this fact because I think it says something really important for people who are writing books, which is this: the number one way that people learn about books (and podcasts and blogs) is from other people who are getting something out of the experience worth telling someone about. You always have to think about what people might say to their friends — and their mom.

What my daughter said to me was something like this. “Oh! There’s this really charming show that these two divinity students are doing about Harry Potter and you would love it.”

This child began reading the first Harry Potter book when it came out when she was in second grade. She read each one as they were released and considers them to be touchstones of her childhood. So I understood why she would be drawn to a podcast about these books, but for me, the Harry Potter books were a publishing phenomenon I marveled at and a presence in my kid’s lives, but they were not books that I felt a deep kinship to.

So why would I love the podcast? I put it off a few weeks, then decided to give it a try.

First, I learned that this podcast is in its sixth season — so, uh, totally not new. So that’s a lesson in remembering that you don’t even know what you don’t know, and there are whole worlds just on the other side of your cluelessness.

Second, I learned that this is their tagline:

READING FICTION DOESN’T HELP US ESCAPE THE WORLD, IT HELPS US LIVE IN IT.

I have written and spoken words like this — and maybe even these exact words — a thousand times. So suddenly, I was thinking, Wait — these are my people!

Then I began to listen, and I Iearned that charming is a perfect description for the hosts’ demeanor — delightful, amiable, persuasive, fascinating, appealing, charismatic. They are all that and smart in the way of words and ideas.

They created this incredible container for their brilliance — a 30-minute podcast where they do all this:

- 30 second summaries of the chapter which are hilarious and informative

- An exploration of the chapter through a chosen theme, such as commitment, fear, or loneliness

- A practice of looking at a single line of text in multiple layers such as literal, allegorical, and how those lines call you to action.

- A blessing on a character

I just love a great structure, and this is a fantastic structure. Plus, they weave in current events, tidbits about their lives, realities of various religions and more.

What’s So Sacred About It?

This is a podcast that is decidedly about sacredness — so it’s about the things we hold sacred, and it’s about faith (in ourselves, in each other, in our world, in our gods, in our stories), and it’s about our spiritual selves, and gratitude, and blessings. But their vision of the sacred is very expansive — as they explain in Episode #1.

I wrote last week about my experience with breast cancer, and one thing I didn’t say because it wasn’t part of that story, was that through that experience, I actually lost faith in a faith that I had held for the first 35 years of my life. The opposite thing happens to some people when confronted with their mortality, — they deepen their faith — but loss of faith is what happened to me. I have since then walked away from the religion I grew up in, and though I searched, I did not find a formal religion I felt compelled to replace it with.

I have been aware, however, of a low-grade desire for a deeper spiritual practice — which for me, is simply a way to regularly engage with the idea of unseen forces in our lives, and forces that are greater than we are.

I have explored various communities and practices and places and experts and not found it.

But improbably, this podcast about the boy who lived is giving me a way to have that practice.

I go on a walk in the sunlight or in the darkness, and I pop in and listen to these smart, charming people discussing a modern text with the seriousness of purpose and graciousness of heart, and the whole thing just makes me smile so hard.

It also always leaves me thinking about something I hadn’t thought of before related to being alive, or being in community with other people, or being involved in words and ideas as my vocation, or being a spiritual being.

I feel such gratitude to these two podcasters for the work they are putting out in the world — this crazy-seeming thing that turns out not to be crazy at all.

Paying attention to words and ideas, and to their meaning, and to people and their stories, feels like the most sacred thing of all.