I went to see Harry Potter today. Whenever I think of Harry Potter I am so amazed at the brilliance of it. There is a line in the movie when Harry Potter asks Dumbledore "Is this real? Or is this all just in my head?" to which Dumbledore replies, "Of course its in your head Harry! But does that make it any less real?"
I've thought on that many times before. The power we have to create reality. In the church, we strive to reach the highest level of the highest kingdom of heaven where we will have the power to create worlds. Sometimes people spend there whole lives in preparation for this possible future. But you know what I realize? We don't need to waste time, simply waiting for the next life to take part is something like that. We can create worlds right here, right now.
Look at JK Rowling. Has she not created a world? A world that millions of people share? A world that we all feel as though we have experienced? "But," you say, "it is just make believe. It is only in our heads." Yet this make believe world is probably the only real shared experience you have in common with millions of strangers that you otherwise would have no shared experience with. You can meet a complete stranger who is nothing like you, yet you walk into a room with candles hanging from the ceiling and you will both reflect on your memories and experiences with Harry Potter and the world Rowling created. Amazing.
We can help create a new world every day, right now. If we were up to it. We could create a world of equality. A world of love. A world of peace. A world of beauty. We could also create a world of hate, or darkness, or prejudice. Maybe not in a day... but over the course of our lives, we can do a lot to make a world. Even God didn't create the world in a day... or even seven. If one human mind is able to create a world of magic and wizards that the whole world embraces, how can we believe we have no power to create a new world together here, right now?
The human mind is powerful. And as Dumbledore suggests, it can define reality. That is why belief is such a powerful thing and why i believe it is important that we make sure that what we believe is actually going to create a better reality. Will believing that being gay is wrong or that it is evil for two men who love each other to marry create a better world? I have seen that it does not. It creates heartache and pain. So let us use our power to create a new world.
4 comments:
I love this post! I agree with the main point at the end, but what actually gets to me the most is what you say about creating a world in our mind and how we do that in the Church. That is so true. This is really powerful.
Some people say that such an idea is not realistic or "real," but is a world of equality, of peace, of beauty in its purest sense even possible? Is Zion possible? Is Utopia possible?
The fact is, we don't know. But the funny thing is, we can't know what's possible until we conceive of it first and seek to create it. Faith.
It always bothers me when people discount the significance of religion in human life. It just seems so... presumptuous to me when religion has been around for so long and I myself have had some powerful religious experiences. Religion is a means of creating these communal worlds I think and making community life work and reach for something greater than it can be. In this way, as you mention, even Harry Potter or other things we don't usually think of in that context can provide "religious" experiences, even shared ones.
Okay, rather than having I a coherent thought I'm building up to, I will stop my rambling there.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien, "Mythopoeia"
http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_%28poem%29
Love this post! Beautifully presented and thought provoking.
Love this. Thanks for sharing it!!
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