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More about this trip-
After all the enthusiasm for our first Harry Potter pilgrimage in October, 2019, we’ve decided to invite another group of pilgrims along for a second trip! Join Vanessa Zoltan and Ariana Nedelman in rural Sussex, England for a Harry Potter pilgrimage this spring. Together, we’ll explore Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets through the theme of love. Each day, we will have a morning discussion about our theme, viewing it through a passage of the text. We will engage in sacred reading practices while reflecting on the text and our own lives. During the day, we will walk through the beautiful South Downs National Park. Using the landscape as a source of inspiration, we will spend our days walking, reading, and joining in conversation about the second book of the series.
For the time we are together, we will be thinking about what role love plays in this book and the Harry Potter series as a whole. We’ll connect these themes and conversations to our own lives, asking ourselves questions like: What types of love do we want to see grow in our lives? What types of love are we ready to let go of? How can we better express the love we feel?
We’ll meet at King’s Cross Station in London on the morning of the 18th and then travel to Tilton House where we’ll stay for the remainder of our time together. Each day, we will make space for writing, reflection, reading, silence, ancient reading practices and of course, for walking.
Trip Faculty
Vanessa Zoltan
Co-Faculty Leader and Chaplain (she/her)
Vanessa is the CEO of Not Sorry. She is on three of our podcasts: Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, The Real Question, and Hot & Bothered. She founded Common Ground Pilgrimages in order to travel with brilliant faculty to beautiful places and talk about books with amazing pilgrims. It was a great trick she pulled off. She is also the author of the book, "Praying with Jane Eyre".
Vanessa was trained as a non-denominational chaplain at Harvard Divinity School. She is a proud California girl who currently lives in MA with her gorgeous, blended family. Her Romance novelist pseudonym, if she ever publishes a Romance novel, will be Lorelai Mason, as you can see in her profile pic.
Ariana Nedelman
Co-Faculty Leader and Logistics Coordinator (she/her)
Ariana Nedelman is the Executive Producer of Not Sorry. She produces Hot & Bothered and The Real Question, and oversees all of the content that comes out of Not Sorry. She has her BA from the University of Chicago and enjoyed a brief stint at Harvard Divinity School before dropping out to become a full time podcaster.
In her spare time, Ariana is working on an audio project called When We All Get to Heaven, which tells the story of how a LGBTQ Christian congregation responded to the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1980s and 90s San Francisco. She loves contra dancing, British panel shows, and reading aloud.
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
-Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets