Pelle’s Thoughts

Do you have childhood heroes?

I know that Pr. Pamela has at least one childhood hero. And no: That’s not me. I wasn’t around at that time. I became a hero in her life many years later. Pr. Pamela’s childhood hero is a little witch. This little witch is the main character in a book called “The Little Witch” by Otfried Preußler. Pr. Pamela’s mom used to read stories from this book to her as bedtime stories. And on many other occasions as well. 

The witch in the book is a “little” witch because she is only 127 years old – quite young for a witch. Too young to attend a witches’ dance on the Brocken mountain. But as you can imagine she goes anyway. Her plan is to arrive late and leave early so that the other witches won’t know that she was there. But her plan doesn’t work and she gets caught.  The other witches threaten her with all kinds of punishments. The Head Witch finally agrees to let her attend next year’s witches’ dance if she has become a good witch within a year. What the Head Witch means by becoming a good witch is to actually become a bad witch by learning all the spells and potion ingredients, and using them to do bad things to people. But the little witch has a different idea about becoming a good witch. She studies hard and does a lot of good things to people: helping the chestnut man for example who gets a bad cold every time he is out selling roasted chestnuts in the middle of winter. She also helps a little girl who isn’t able to sell her paper flowers at the weekly market. The little girl’s family is very poor and badly needs the extra money but nobody seems to be interested in paper flowers. So the little witch makes the paper flowers smell like real flowers, and suddenly everybody wants to buy these paper flowers. And: the flowers in the little girl’s basket never come to an end. You can imagine that the other witches are not pleased about the little witches behavior. The worst is her aunt Rumpumpel, a mean storm-witch, who doesn’t like the little witch at all. She spies on the little witch all the time to find evidence against her.

I must say that I admire the courage of the little witch. She does what is right, no matter what others think of her. She does what is right even if others threaten her for helping people in need. For her there is no doubt what a good witch is supposed to be doing. On one hand this is very naïve but on the other hand it is also very powerful. Naïve because she will eventually get into trouble with the other (bad) witches, and powerful because it makes her change the world a little. She makes her part of the world a better place. Only her methods in dealing with the bad people may be questionable nowadays. The little witch would probably approach the “bad guys” differently in 2008, being 178 years old by now and a lot wiser than she used to be in 1957, when the book first was published. And you know what: There are some stories in this book which remind me very much of stories in the bible. I don’t know if Pr. Pamela is aware of this (as a pastor she should be!), but I (as a highly theologically educated teddy bear!) saw the parallels right away. Take the story with the paper flowers for example. There is a miracle happening: the little girl sells the flowers and the flowers in her basket don’t come to an end. People buy and buy but the basket is still full. And: this story is not only about helping a little girl. This story is also about sharing, making sure that everybody gets some of these wonderful paper flowers. Does that ring a bell? In Matthew 14 there is this story about Jesus feeding 5000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. O.k. in case of the little witch there is definitely magic involved. In Jesus’ case the willingness of the disciples to share the little they had may have caused all the others to look closer into their bags, and share what they had. And that was eventually enough to feed all of them. Although the stories are different, there is still a common message: Miracles can happen where somebody simply does the right – GOOD -  thing. 

There is another story that has a parallel in the bible. In Otfried Preußler’s book the little witch casts spells on a Friday to cheer up two very upset children who got lost in the woods on their way home. Casting spells on a Friday is strictly prohibited because for witches the Friday is the Sabbath day. Does that sound familiar? Matthew 12 tells us about Jesus healing on the Sabbath which in the opinion of the Pharisees is against Jewish law. But Jesus doesn’t care about the Pharisees. He simply does what’s right – what’s GOOD – in this situation. 

Being good, doing the right thing, is always worth it. Being a good witch leads the little witch finally to getting rid of all the bad witches.  She finally wins the fight against evil simply by being who and what she is: a GOOD witch! Jesus finally overcomes death – not only his own but ours as well - simply by being who and what he is: the manifestation of God’s love! And God wants us to follow this example. God wants us to be good and to do good. God wants us to change the world. If we are willing to just do what’s right without caring what others think about us, we will be able to perform miracles in this world. It doesn’t need magic to do this. It only needs the courage to sometimes NOT do what others want us to do. It only needs the courage to do what’s right. 

By the way: Did I mention that Jesus is one of Pr. Pamela’s childhood heroes as well? And now as I think about it: Maybe Jesus is THE childhood hero - but the little witch is certainly not far behind J

Yours Pelle