Every other year, 天美视频 offers the course SFD (Spiritual Formation & Direction) 523 Spirituality & the Arts and with each offering, the instructor has focused on a particular form of art as a way to explore spiritual practices and how the arts can inform and sustain spiritual formation. Two years ago I centered the course on film. This year I wanted another medium of artistic engagement that students may already find meaningful and that I too have found spiritually and formatively significant. created by author JK Rowling was an obvious choice. It encompasses not only literary traditions rooted in the work of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but it also includes film, fandom, immersive theme parks, and creative digital media.

From January to April of 2019, 40 students read (or re-read) over 1,000 pages of Harry Potter texts, created immersive experiences for their classmates, wrote and analyzed fan fiction as a form of spiritual practice, and unpacked together the resonance, both theological and psychological, of these stories that have enchanted so many of us for over twenty years. I was humbled and awed each week by what students discovered and shared with one another, and am pleased to have some of them able to share their work with a wider community. Expecto Patronum.

Adapted from my final course reflections, this piece responds to a prompt concerning the Spirituality of Enchantment. In it, I hope to offer you a glimpse into my journeys both within the imaginative worlds and words of fantasy, as well as within this, my first year at 天美视频. Both adventures have been ones of story, calling to narratives within me long forgotten, cherished, and too, endured. And through both, I have experienced an awakening of childhood delight, and an invitation to life abundant and life creative.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, 鈥淪tay awhile.鈥�
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, 鈥淚t鈥檚 simple,鈥�
they say, 鈥渁nd you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine.鈥�

鈥� “When I Am Among the Trees,” by Mary Oliver

A tulip bulb graced my palm one day recently. The paper-thin film of skin crackled beneath my fingers, and I studied its subtle earthy coloring, admiring the pea-green shoot already sprouting from beneath its layers. There was something beautiful and delicate, and yet resilient and defiant about this bulb. I am not a tulip aficionado but gifted with this little form of life, I am learning quickly about their care. They must, I am told, be buried deep within the soil. A keen gardener knows to send them 鈥� inches and inches, many times their own immature height 鈥� down into the cold, wet, rich earth. Out of this, their nature and needed nurture, tulip bulbs weather harsh winters, ever maintaining their promise of life in the coming spring. As I hold this bulb, inches wide, and almost weightless in my hand, ever quietly and consistently it calls to me 鈥� “and you, too.”

In coming to 天美视频, I brought along a graveyard of bits of me that I had long since buried. Shameful bits, broken bits, seemingly unwanted bits cut off and then shoved, suffocated, and silenced underground. In their absence, I was growing and pruning myself (or, being pruned by others) into the right shape and size. It was a painful, pretentious, and precarious form of being. Working within this graveyard over this past year of school has been muddy work. Crouched down on bended knee, my hands have been covered in the soil of years and fears past. Getting to know, and willing to see those buried bits of me has been and will be the task, I believe.

However, in this kneeling work, this muddy work, this grounded work, I have discovered that those buried bits from long ago are seeds, alive like tulip bulbs, both delicate and defiant underneath the mounds of soil.

Here at 天美视频, I am beginning to see that my graveyard was all along a garden, yearning and journeying towards spring. Despite this in-breaking of freedom and life, I am not sure that I was entirely ready for the changing of the seasons. Perhaps I thought that I was, but no鈥� true spring in its bursting, breaking and melting鈥� that I was not ready for. Allowing those seeds of the broken bits of me to have space and grace to blossom and grow felt and continues to feel risky, for as spring reminds us all too clearly, shoots are uncontrolled. Coming from the dark underneath, they are joyous and naive, random and dainty, and I was surely not ready or willing for that type of precious life to emerge from my darkest places. Yet in these semesters, my longing for a life that flourishes in all my particularities 鈥� beauty and brokenness, above ground and below 鈥� has screamed louder than the desire to restrict in and for protection.

In many ways, my exploration within this course of fantasy has been like a plant nursery: offering just the right amount of nourishing food, water, and light to my little starved seeds. Surely, I have experienced an awakening of childhood joy, laughter, and enchantment that had, I now see, been darkened and asleep for too long. I have felt myself fall, diving into the waters of delight and longing held both within and also because of the gifted world of story. Such has been this course鈥檚 wake up call (the rooster is joyfully crowing and the sun is rising!) upon my creative seeds and I cannot help but sigh. Perhaps this, surrounded by the seedlings of my own garden, echoes hint of gladness.

The post The Spirituality of Enchantment: A Life that Flourishes appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Every other year the 天美视频 offers the course SFD (Spiritual Formation & Direction) 523 Spirituality & the Arts and with each offering, the instructor has focused on a particular form of art as a way to explore spiritual practices and how the arts can inform and sustain spiritual formation. Two years ago I centered the course on film. This year I wanted another medium of artistic engagement that students may already find meaningful and that I too have found spiritually and formatively significant. The Wizarding World created by author JK Rowling was an obvious choice. It encompasses not only literary traditions rooted in the work of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but it also includes film, fandom, immersive theme parks, and creative digital media.

From January to April of 2019, 40 students read (or re-read) over 1,000 pages of Harry Potter
texts, created immersive experiences for their classmates, wrote and analyzed fan fiction as a
form of spiritual practice, and unpacked together the resonance, both theological and
psychological, of these stories that have enchanted so many of us for over twenty years. I was
humbled and awed each week by what students discovered and shared with one another, and
am pleased to have some of them able to share their work with a wider community. Expecto
Patronum.

When I was a kid, my two best friends and I loved to make movies. Dressed in robes we stole from the church choir and armed with a cheap camcorder, we would run around the neighborhood making cheesy knockoffs of our favorite fantasy films. Given that we lived in the not-so-primeval city of Saginaw, Michigan, an important part of our process was scouting fantastical and enchanting-looking locations. It wasn鈥檛 always easy, but we steadily became adept at finding anything that even remotely resembled Narnia, Middle-Earth, or the Hogwarts grounds. An eerie section of trees, a wooden and ancient-looking church door, a shadowy path; all of these places became something more to us.

During one of the first weeks of Spirituality and the Arts class, I was struck by a quote from C. S. Lewis about the enriching power of fantasy. Arguing against critics鈥� objections that fantasy creates an unhealthy and unrealistic desire in children, Lewis writes: 鈥淸A child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.鈥�

Looking back at our filmmaking adventures, I remember feeling a rush of joy and electricity in finding something otherworldly in a seemingly ordinary place. The stories we loved didn鈥檛 make us despise our city because of its lack of magic; the stories we loved made our city more magical. The woods, the old church door, the shadowy path; they became magical because in them we discovered beauty and detail that we never saw before.

Lewis鈥� quote stuck with me throughout Kj Swanson鈥檚 Harry Potter class. Week after week we would walk into a 天美视频 Classroom for a 鈥淧ensieve Presentation,鈥� a peer-led immersion into the Wizarding World, and feel like we were somewhere else. We were at the 天美视频, but we were also at the Yule Ball, or in Potions Class, or traveling through time, or competing in the Triwizard
Tournament. Whether it was through a guided reflection or through engaging our senses with lighting and taste and sound (actual bubbling cauldrons, butterbeer, candles, strobe lights!), these projects (and the stories that inspired them) enriched the space we inhabited.

Now, even though the class is over, I can鈥檛 help but walk around through the 天美视频 feeling that things are a little more magical than they were before.

I left that class with an unshakable sense of magic, and鈥攇iven my childhood habit of finding magic in ordinary places鈥攊t鈥檚 no surprise that a month or so later I decided to dress up as Harry Potter, take a picture in front of Stadium High School, and create an Instagram account called: The mission: Finding magic in the #cityofdestiny.

When I moved to Tacoma in 2015, I immediately began to notice the rich and timeless architecture. It all began with Stadium High School鈥攁 French chateau- inspired building infamously compared to Hogwarts鈥攂ut I then branched out to other places: an old street bridge on my running route, the ivy-covered brick buildings on the University of Puget Sound Campus. I began to see the fantastic everywhere, and once I started, I couldn鈥檛 stop.

What started out as an impulsive and tongue-in-cheek photoshoot has now transformed into a project that is helping me fall more and more in love with my community and my home. Expecto Tacoma has allowed me to meet new people, inspired others to visit places they鈥檝e never been to in their city, made people homesick for Tacoma, and overall highlighted the incredible pride Tacomans have for their city.

I keep coming back to Lewis鈥� quote because I think it describes my experience so well. Harry Potter has not made me despise the real world because of its lack of wizards, dragons, and magic wands. Harry Potter has helped me find magic everywhere: in Saginaw, Michigan, in Tacoma, Washington, and at 天美视频. It鈥檚 not that these places weren鈥檛 magical before鈥攐n the contrary, they always have been鈥攊t鈥檚 just that Harry Potter (a text) has allowed me to see things in these places that I never would have noticed before.

And, if I鈥檝e learned anything, it鈥檚 that magic is possibility: The possibility of noticing something you didn鈥檛 see before, the possibility of meeting new people and appreciating old friends, the possibility of seeing how the past touches the present, and the possibility of envisioning a beautiful future.

Following the creation of his Instagram account Expecto Tacoma!, Mike Thomas developed quite a following and was featured on King 5.

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