Addicted

Upon becoming school chaplain the end of 2002 and looking around at what was going on, it was immediately obvious to me that our students were less than enthusiastic about coming to religion classes; and small wonder. For one thing, the priest who had been teaching previously had unusual views of Scripture for an Episcopalian such that, teaching from Genesis for example, she had taught the children that God had required circumcision because of His displeasure with the male body. Further, in observing the classes, what came to my mind was my own excruciatingly boring Sunday School classes as a child growing up, forty-five minutes to an hour of sheer agony every Sunday morning. Something had to be done, but what?

Working with the Head of School, we hired several religion teachers in succession, then finally when a successful one resigned to move to Texas, the role fell on me, who had never taught children. During my search for ideas, Time magazine had a cover piece about teaching 13-year-olds and keeping them enthusiastic. Among other things, it strongly recommended snacks. This led to an era of several years in which my token salary was spent on ice cream from the grocery store at Cove Shopping Center, and at the Krispy Kreme doughnut store on 23rd street and the donut shop across from Bay High School on Harrison Avenue.

Sure enough, as Time said, walking into chapel, and down the hall into my classroom, behind a tall stack of doughnut boxes, created enthusiasm. But something was needed for the time after snacks. The idea came to mind of using one of my own interests, as a child and still, of Christian based modern fantasy fiction. It occurred to me that C.S. Lewis had characterized his Chronicles of Narnia as “pre-evangelical,” and that his seven books, and the movies from the BBC series some years earlier, could make for interesting class time. It proved so successful that we featured Lewis the first year for middle school Religion & Ethics classes, then J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings the second year, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and movies the third year.

During my pre-Fall planning the Spring and Summer of 2005, something that came up was a new Hollywood production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. to be released in theaters on December 9, 2005. A huge poster advertising the movie was put up in my classroom, and we announced that the semester final exam for all three middle school classes would be attending the movie together on the Friday followed by discussions in each class the following week. Those three years were as successful, enjoyable and enthusiastic a series of classes as I have ever taught, and left me with years of happy memories.

They also left me somewhat addicted to modern fantasy fiction movies, Lewis, Rowling and Tolkien. After my October 2010 hospital episode and during the last weeks of my Ordinary Time while waiting for my appointment at Cleveland Clinic when life was literally day-to-day and nitroglycerin pill-to-nitroglycerin pill, my only fear was that Ordinary Time would run out before the screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on November 19, 2010 and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on December 10, 2010. But I made them both. Leaving the theater that evening after Dawn Treader and with heart and mind full of that happiest of all happy afternoons taking seventy-five middle schoolers to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe exactly five years earlier to the day, my thought and prayer was, “OK now, Lord, whatever you say!”

Ordinary Time moved into Stoppage Time and on into +Time, and there has been another Harry Potter movie. And now the spirit of Tolkien returns: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. World Premiere in New Zealand on November 28, 2012, and in American theaters on December 14, 2012.

Can’t wait. Hang in there, +Time.