I-YOUniverse

1008 pages!

I finished my semi-annual reading of Lord of the Rings.

Not the 130 pages of appendices. Not The Silmarillion. That book’s a little dense for me, or I’m too dense for it, maybe. I’ve read that Tolkien believed that names are the oldest element of language, slowest to change over time. So he packs in names, three to five for each person, place or thing.

But LOTR is one of those books that’s become part of me. I read one of Tom Shippey’s books on the background and buried meanings, which helped me untangle and identify many Christian elements. Since this was a time before Christ, they had to be hidden. But they are there.

For example, the dates, which Tolkien tracked meticulously. The Company sets out from Rivendell on December 25. Another famous Christian element is that elvin waybread lembas is parallel to the bread of the Eucharist.

Tolkien, along with Lewis, Joseph Campbell, and George Lucas, lead the way in recovering myth for our culture.

Myth is language about truth which can’t be put into words.

Oh, I know myth means made-up fable or legend; we think especially of Greek and Roman religious myths. Paul warns against them. I’m talking about language that transcends language, that breaks language like a chick breaks its shell.

Tolkien tells a wonderful parable. I’m not sure where: “Of Faerie Stories,” in Tree and Leaf or “the Monster and the Critics,” his ground-breaking essay on Beowulf which every biblical interpreter or critic would benefit from reading. Here’s the gist of the story:

Old Stones

An old farmer had a field. Some people bought it, and found some wonderful old stones on it. They were carved, some with images, others with letters or ancient runes.

The people became fascinated with the stones. They began to publish papers on the origins of the stones, and the meanings of the markings on them. A great debate rose up among archaeologists, geologists, paleontologists, and all the ologists there are about the meaning of the stones.

But they all forgot the most important thing.

The old farmer used the stones to build a tower. And he used to climb its steps and look out at the Sea.

A Look at the Stars

Near the climax of LOTR, as the Captains of the West, hopelessly outnumbered, press the attack on Mordor to distract the enemy’s Eye from Frodo’s approaching the Crack of Doom, Aragorn stands on the hill, surveying the debacle,

his eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter as the night deepens

(LOTR, 1994, p. 927).

Here the external truth and beauty is internalized in the person of the king, and by them he reigns even before victory is won.

The book is about Aragorn growing into kingship. He moves from Strider, the ranger, to king, nowhere more regal than this moment.

Another star moment comes when Sam and Frodo are walking through Ithilien, toward the lair of Shelob, the monster spider. Sam looks up.

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for awhile. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For, like a shaft clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

 (p. 901)

This passage gives me hope, like almost no other in the book. The Shadows of terrorism, and worse U.S. politics and militarism, are small passing things.

Vertical Meets Horizontal

If horizontal is the human plane, and vertical the God plane, then myth is the moment, like an in-breaking beam of light forming a cross, where God-human transcendent-immanent intersect.

Favorite Character

Faramir, Boromir’s brother, is my favorite character. I like his association with Ithilien, one of the most beautiful landscapes Tolkien creates. I love his courage, his willingness to butt heads with his tyrannical father. He fights but is not a soldier.

The extended version of the film attributes to Faramir a passage the book gives to Sam, when he comes near a dead enemy.

He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart; or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from home; and if he would not really rather stayed there in peace.

 (p. 646)

Of course, Sam with his loyalty, simplicity and goodness is a role model for us all.

 I wish Tolkien’s faith had been more explicit, I guess. I have mixed feelings. Think of his influence on world culture. How many Christians have had the same?

I’m doing my annual read of Lord of the Rings, a myth of war.

Soldiers of Peace?

As much as I love Tolkien, I realize

(1) he wrote when his city was being bombed by the Germans and his son was in the military.
(2) He was a veteran of World War I.
(3) He wrote from the Germanic tradition that glorifies the war hero, depicting Jesus as a hero who leaped onto the cross as to a battle.

For example, take these lines from Dream of the Rood, one of the oldest poems in English:

The young hero stripped himself–he, God Almighty–
strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,
bold before many, when he would loose mankind.

(ll. 39-41)

A Tradition Explolited

More than to Boromir, the elder brother, I’m drawn to Faramir, the younger brother, who longed for peace. He said:

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.

LOTR, 1994, p. 656

In the past the desperate straits of war often called forth human response at its best. Civilians worked long hours, sacrificed for the common good. Soldiers gave their lives to defend home and loved ones, and ideals such as freedom. Today it’s still true some individuals offer their very best in time of war.

Politicians and corporations exploit this tradition of honor and valor.

Mass Destruction in a Bottle

Today is different. The capacity to destroy the earth lies within reach of small groups as well as nations. All the progress of science will be weighed against the development of weapons of mass destruction including weaponized gases and viruses, which can be transported in small bottles. The good accomplished by warfare will be obliterated along with everything else by its indiscriminate violence.

History will judge as a grave error the decision to treat the attack on the World Trade Center as an act of war rather than as a crime. Once we responded with violence, with our own WMD, we became the aggressors, the destroyers; the terrorists became defenders of their homes, their culture, their religion.

A Corporate Shell Game?

The war on Iraq is more about economics, oil, than ideals. It’s about the military-industrial complex. It would be interesting to analyze corporate bottom lines in relation to the cost of war and so-called aid to Iraq, the development of its infrastructure, schools, hospitals. I believe the incredible sums of our children’s and grandchildren’s money we are spending are chiefly going to corporations.

I also keep asking who benefits from keeping the world’s second largest oil reserve off-line?

Is Violence a Vestige?

Violence is a vestige of our evolutionary past. Dictionary.com defines “vestige” as:

a degenerate or imperfectly developed organ or structure that has little or no utility, but that in an earlier stage of the individual or in preceding evolutionary forms of the organism performed a useful function.

Viewing footage of sheep or rhinos or other male animals rutting, competing for the right to mate, you see that violence once served to select out the healthiest, strongest, and most adept individuals to contribute to the gene pool of the species. But we humans don’t determine individual rights based on brute force. (At least, most of us don’t.)

The Courage of a Non-Violent Future

It takes more courage to put down your weapon and fight using non-violent resistance. Yet Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. both demonstrated that non-violence is more persuasive than any weapon. Non-violent resistance is not passive, it is not weak. It takes all the courage, wit, and will humans can muster.

In the coming Presidential election, Americans face a daunting choice. John McCain stands in the tradition of military force. He is honorable, though his temper could have deadly consequences if it had the world’s strongest military at his command.

Barack Obama represents the future. Much of the world identifies with him. He would be the first person of color to hold the office of President. But, more important, he voted against the war. He can demonstrate to the world that this war is not the American people’s war, but the war of a business and political elite, perhaps even the war of America’s enemies seeking to run the U.S. financially into the ground.

Not a bad strategy. You explode an IED that cost a few hundred dollars. Americans respond with weapons that cost tens of millions each. Before long, that amounts to quite a tab.

And even one life (on any side) is one too many.

A New Species?

Jesus never fought in war. His saying about bringing not peace but a sword cannot be used to justify war.

I believe that, in Jesus (yes, uniquely Son of God) and a few others, a new species is evolving, whom I call Homo spiritus, a species whose strength lies in the spiritual capacity to love and be loved, especially in the sense of agape love, and especially in the case of loving those whom it’s not easy or “natural” to love.

We have reached a turning point in human history, in fact in the history of all life on the planet. We will either learn to live together in peace, mutual respect, and cooperation, solving together the immense problems that we face, or we will die.

Unlike the dinosaurs, we still have a choice.

You dig out of a hole many different ways. The truth is, often it’s somebody else who gives you a hand up. In Lord of the Rings, the movies, a hand up is an important symbol. Frodo gives Sam a hand up into the boat (in contrast to Isildur who drowns at the beginning); then Aragorn offers Wormtongue a hand up, which he spurns. Galadriel offers Frodo a hand up as he struggles beyond Shelob’s cave. Of course, it’s Sam who gives Frodo the ultimate hand up by carrying him toward the crack of doom, when he’s totally out of juice.

Counting my blessings is an antidote for the blues. Here’s a sampling:

I am

… grateful for my wife, who loves me in spite of my faults. It’s her nature to love. We’ll celebrate 38 years of marriage this anniversary.

… grateful for my son, who showed up at 7:30 a.m. last week so that I could get to church. Sandy had to be there all day, and Jim made it possible for me to go for one hour. We also had pancakes and real maple syrup. My son is a man of integrity. I’m grateful he’s part of my life.

… grateful for God’s good gifts of a functioning brain, good eyesight, hearing, the ability to move about. (If you’re young and able-bodied, you may not get it. But one of the secrets of successful aging is to focus on the things you have, not the things you don’t have.) This is something I learned in the retirement center. People ate themselves alive by dwelling on the negatives, and overlooked many positive gifts they had.

… grateful for the scripture. The 90^th, 130^th psalms to name just two.

 … grateful for friends who come to the house every Tuesday evening, every Thursday morning (at 7 a.m.) to study the Bible. Bible study is so much richer when in a small group.

… grateful for Bible study tools like the New Interpreter’s Bible. What a commentary!

…grateful for my African friends’ safety and well-being.

… grateful for a peaceful home, full of goodness.

…grateful for the riches of literature. As I do when I hit a bump in the road, I returned to Tolkien. I haven’t  read LOTR in a couple years, and it always renews and refreshes my spirit.

… grateful for a cat who curls up in my lap in the wee morning hours.

… grateful for the chance to write a blog, and for you who take time to read it.