Oxford to Hogwarts

I've been missing Oxford a great deal lately.
It's been interesting having now read Harry Potter and wept through watched the first two movies to recall all the HP connections to that trip.
I couldn't appreciate them then, but that's ok.  I still have their memory,
now mingled with my own reading experience.

 All that to say... I was particularly struck the other day when I saw this pin:

The funny bit is that I was at that premiere.  Well, not "at it" as in attending it.  But my very first night in London, the group I was with sort of ran right into it on the way to - get this - the Palace! 

[Trafalgar Square - thousands of Potterheads...and me]

We could hear the cheers from several London-blocks away.

I had never come across or been a part of a crowd this big

[and wouldn't be again until the Seahawks Superbowl parade].

[Bellatrix, Hermione, and Harry]

[They had these jumbotrons they were projecting the arrivals onto - so big, so so insane!]

And then we were off to Westminster, Parliament, and the Palace:

[Buckingham at night]

  The Harry Potter connections continued in Oxford,

the most notable being the "sorting stairs."

The scene in the first HP film where the Harry and the other first years

are greeted by Professor McGonagall before entering the dining hall and being sorted

was filmed at Christ Church College.

We made a visit... and ran into young Harry:

But seriously, it's such a majestic location. 

Hogwarts definitely has it's "Oxbridge" roots and I love HP all the more for it!

So... fun memories blended with new reading/viewing experiences.

...they had everything in common

This passage was reverberating in my mind up at camp this weekend.

And it's made me so grateful to be a part of a community that spends one week every year celebrating each other, relaxing together, seeking the Lord, and sharing everything in common. Food--it is spread around freely. Bikes get borrowed and returned. Spontaneous sleepovers are thrown for the less-air-mattress-fortunate (thank you Beks!). One can walk through camp post-shower (tres au naturale hair and zero makeup).

This weekend - we had everything common!

Today is a relaxed day to "read and roam." On the docket for todays reading: Sense and Sensibility (of Austen's novels, this is the one I have read least recently--does that make sense??). Anyway, it should prove a fun day with Elinor and Marianne.

Tonight, I shall delight mine ears with the Choral Evensong at Christ Church. Yay for boys' choirs!

ps... Christ Church has hosted a choral evensong in their chapel every night except Christmas nights since the chapel was completed by Henry VIII. That's nearly 500 years. I just can't help but imagine weary groups of people in the 1940's shuffling in to hear the Evensong hoping to forget, just for a moment, the war that embroils their nation and of the blitz that could strike at any point. What a hope that must have been. What a delight I am looking forward to tonight...