A message from Tolkien

Everyone who knows me, knows how much I love Tolkien. I read him as more than just a wonderful vision of a lost world (lost, not invented). Sometimes, I read him as metaphor. I'm surprised I didn't think of putting this passage up before; now that I think of it, it's a perfect 'snapshot' as it were, of a sort of universal pattern-that-connects. An experience we've all had, at least once, that drives us forward. Who doesn't gain some sense of peace and strength from the experience of sudden, ravishing beauty? I don't know a single person who is immune to that. If there is something that we all have in common, surely this is one such thing?

Here's just one of the ways Tolkien described the experience.


"Sam struggled with this own weariness, and he tool Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent until deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wreck above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. 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 for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been a defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear cast himself into a deep and untroubled sleep."

I am not for a moment suggesting that the sight of a star can solve all our problems - either those of the soul or those of the world-at-large. What I am pointing to is simply this: sometimes we don't need to find the ultimate solution. We just need some peace until the time is right for the solution to arrive, on it's own.

And who here doesn't just want a little peace.