Welcome back to Godbytes, the Tuesday edition.

The Harry Potter train (broom?) just keeps on rolling (er, flying?), keeping the blogosphere under its spell. (because he’s a wizard, get it?) Betsy Shirley at Sojourners God’s Politics Blog wonders aloud what a Harry Potter prayer sounds like:

So as I watched the final Hogwarts Express depart from Platform 9¾ in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II this past weekend (slightly teary-eyed, I confess), I started to wonder: What might it sound like to pray in the language of Harry Potter – language that clearly resonates with folks around the world? Would it be cheesy? Probably. Profane? Perhaps. But I figured the God who relied on earthly parables about wineskins and fig trees to explain the Kingdom would understand.

Some folks are buzzing about Wired piece on Chain World, a game designed to be played “like a religion,” inadvertently giving millions of kids the ability to tell their parents that time spent playing Mario counts as “church”:

In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion-a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation. This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird. Before Chain World, like religion itself, mutated out of control.

Jason Byassee at the Faith and Leadership blog got some unexpected leadership lessons from those oh-so-inspiring and oh-so-folky rockers Mumford & Sons:

Preparing for a concert by Mumford & Sons, the British “new grass” quartet, I expected the roof to come down. These guys’ glory is that they pick the banjo and smash the bass and stomp the floor like an Appalachian dance hall band rather than a group of west London lads. I even expected a spiritual experience: few musicians, secular or sacred, sing about God with such depth of spirituality without saccharine piety. I’d heard their concerts are like church — just a whole lot better.

I expected all that. I didn’t expect a lesson in institutional leadership.

People are starting to pick up on a post by Rodney Clapp over at The Christian Century, who says that Lady Gaga is “a Kierkegaard in fishnet stockings,” possibly supplying Gaga with her next costume idea:

Lady Gaga is a Kierkegaard in fishnet stockings, who can play piano and guitar. Whether she intends to or not (and however sacrilegious such songs as her “Judas” may appear), Lady Gaga reminds us that Jesus came among us as a misfit, born into a feed trough.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel Page at Killing the Buddha wrote a bit on the Dalai Lama’s visit to Washington D.C., but was a tad miffed that the Dalai Lama’s events in the U.S. Capital cost money:

On July 9th, the Dalai Lama appeared on the West Lawn of the US Capitol to talk about world peace. He was in town for the ten-day Kalachakra Ceremony for World Peace, a Tantric initiation rite. His lawn talk was the only Kalachakra-related function that did not require tickets, which ran from $35 to $45 a day.

Speaking of the Dalai Lama, our Tweet of the Day comes from the one and only Drew Carey – yes, that Drew Carey – who happened to worship with His Holiness last week, albeit awkwardly:

@DrewFromTV – Omw to another teaching by the Dalai Lama. Don’t know chants/prayers, but won’t be first time I faked my way through a service

That’s all for now. Remember to follow us at @religionnewsnow and let us know if there are other places we should be looking!