Another End to a Lent of the Lord of the Rings

And so, another season draws to a close.

We prepared with Frodo and Sam in the Shire. We set forth from Rivendell on Ash Wednesday with the Fellowship. Throughout Lent we plunged through the depths of Moria and ran the fields of Rohan, fought for good things at Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith, struggle through the sorrows the Dead Marshes and Mordor itself. On Good Friday we scaled Mt. Doom and saw the end of all things. And then Easter came and continues, and our tears of sorrow are now mixed with tears of joy.

Every year we have this opportunity to return: both to Middle-earth and to Lent. Every year we have a chance to reflect and muse, wonder and wander, to save the Shire. Every year we have another choice to embrace the good, true, and beautiful: to stand against the sin and hatred that would divide us.

It was a pleasure doing so this year with you. Until the next time, may the blessings of all the Free Peoples be with you, and may your Easter joy overfill your soul.

Sailing to Valinor

The Grey Havens

And what shall we see? (Source)

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

-William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium”

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Past Reflections
Year A: For the Purposes of Remembrance
Year B: On What Lies Beyond the Circles of This World
Year C: On the Simple Rewards of a Good Life

Home

The Scouring of the Shire

What is home? (Source)

There exists the home that is our residence: our birthplace, our dwelling, our place of identification. There exists the home that is preserved in memory: the nostalgia of growing up or raising family, of consistent experience over a period of time. There exists the home that is worth fighting for: to maintain for ourselves and for those we love, to defend against corruption and devastation.

For our returning hobbits, the Shire is this type of home. it is where they are from; it is a place they strongly love; it, more than Middle-earth itself, is what they set our so long ago to save. Home has inspired them, comforted them, gave them courage, gave them hope. And in the end, they saved the Shire: though not without change, not without loss. Even with our best intentions, we can prevent the passing of time, the evolution of home.

But there exists another understanding of home that resist time and change: the vision of home, the home of the heart. There is a Shire for which the hobbits long, that Sam wishes to regrow, which endures all passings. It is the shadow of the form, a taste of the eternal: the longing for a home which does not end. As our Lenten journey nears its end, it is for such homes that we should reorient ourselves: and in doing so, help bring about a foreshadow of that Home into our own homes today.

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Past Reflections
Year A: On the Care and Concern for All Creation
Year B: On the Things that Really Matter
Year C: On Bearing Wrongs Patiently

The Easter Journey

Homeward Bound

The road home (Source)

Our journey from Rivendell to Mt. Doom was our Lenten journey: 40 days we walked across Middle-earth in detail and reflection. Our return journey from Mt. Doom to Rivendell takes a fraction of the space, and leaves little time for reflection. Yet the Easter journey lasts longer than the Lenten period: our celebration is more extensive than our penance.

That the journey home hold less of our attention is not surprising: after all, returning from a hike seems to pass faster than our initial climb since we are familiar with the trail and have a clear endpoint in mind. Yet there is much to see, experience, and reflect on this Easter journey: on the great conversations still on-going, on the pains that remain, on those who did not understand what we’ve been through.

We who have so intentionally walked the Lenten road should embrace the Easter trail; we who have trained our bodies for pilgrimage should not let our muscles and habits go slack. For we who have looked inward must now look to the horizon: there is much to say and to do inspired by our Easter joy.

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Past Reflections
Year A: On the People Who Did Not Make the Journey
Year B: On Returning Home
Year C: On Ills That Linger

Comradeship and Serious Joy

Many Partings

G. K. Chesterton (Source)

Nothing save the Divine last forever. All earthly things change, evolve, and ultimately pass away. Even with with the Ring destroyed and Sauron defeated, the Fellowship and their allies cannot remain together forever. Even with the Tomb empty and Christ victorious, we still must daily deal with imperfection of the world.

That things are not yet perfect–that we still experience loss, that we still must bid farewell to friends and family–does not diminish their significance. In fact, in our fallen state, it is perhaps the absence and the distance that helps us to understand the profound significance of love and friendship. G.K. Chesterton spoke of this in his concluding reflections on Charles Dickens:

“Comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel, but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, which, through God, shall endure for ever. The inn does not point to the road: the road points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn, where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters. And when we drink again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world.”

We cannot prevent time from passing; instead, we can choose how to respond to its passing. By celebrating one another and appreciating every moment. While we await the tavern at the end of the world.

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Past Reflections
Year A: On Gifts
Year B: On the Long Defeat
Year C: On Burying the Dead

Restoration

The Steward and the King

The restored king (Source)

The entrance and coronation of Aragorn as King of Gondor is a weird phenomenon to a society so focused on progress and newness. In our times, when we restore something, it is as an act of historical preservation: to keep the past alive so it can be studied, taught, or perhaps even experienced. But this is a different kind of restoration, one that moves beyond the tension of past verses future.

For Aragorn is a king, no doubt, of the line of kings from ancient times; he will rule from their ancient stronghold, with their wisdom to guide him. But he is not a carbon-copy of the kings of old, for he has endured new things – exile, The Fellowship, the War of the Ring – that allow him to meet the needs of his people presently. Aragorn goes out of his way to bring the old – the crown, the scepter, the white tree – together with the new – Gandalf and Frodo’s part in the coronation, the wedding to Arwen, forgiveness to the eastern men, the new purpose of the steward.

At Easter, we celebrate a restoration: Christ, by his death and resurrection, has restored men and women to their original relationship with God. Man was created and meant to dwell eternally in Paradise: sin destroyed that path. Through Christ, we are restored, but to a new state, one which is essential old and yet entirely new. And in fact, the Christian tradition celebrates this new relationship as even more glorious than the old: “O happy fault, o necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so mighty a Redeemer.”

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Past Reflections
Year A: On the Secret Fire That Kindles the Heart
Year B: On the Need for Justice and Mercy
Year C: On Willingly Laying Down One’s Office

The Unexpected Victory

The Field of Cormallen

The unexpected victory of the empty tomb (Source)

Each year, we hear the story again: told at length at the Easter Vigil, more briefly on Easter Sunday itself. The story of salvation history: the promise, the long road traveled, the deeds of Good Friday, the unexpected victory.

In Middle-earth, no doubt the story of nine-finger Frodo and the ring of doom is retold year after year on the anniversary of Sauron’s final defeat. The story of the War of the Ring: the council of Elrond, the Fellowship’s journey, the deeds on Mt. Doom, the unexpected victory.

Why recount the story time and time again? We know it nearly by heart after the first couple tellings. Yet the story needs recounting in the same way that a meal needs to be consumed though we know the taste: it nourishes us, sustains us, and by its glory reinvigorates our hope.

So, on this Easter Sunday, let’s remember the unexpected victories, the great deeds unlooked for: what a hobbit of the Shire and a man from Galilee have won. Christ is risen, alleluia!

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Past Reflections
Year A: On Relics
Year B: On Glory
Year C: On Hearing the Story Told