The Windows of Her House Look Outward

“Mightier than Estë is Nienna, sister of the Fëanturi; she dwells alone. She is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. So great was her sorrow, as the Music unfolded, that her song turned to lamentation long before its end, and the sound of mourning was woven into the themes of the World before it began. But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope. Her halls are west of West, upon the borders of the world; and she comes seldom to the city of Valimar where all is glad. She goes rather to the halls of Mandos, which are near to her own; and all those who wait in Mandos cry to her, for she brings strength to the spirit and turns sorrow to wisdom. The windows of her house look outward from the walls of the world.”

[J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 14, doing a better job with the doctrines of Creation and the Last Things than 99% of all the church’s theologians]

As He Imagined Rather Than As He Made

“The curves of the land were familiar somehow. Yes: the ground was becoming level, as it should, and now, of course, it was beginning to rise again. A great green shadow came between him and the sun. Niggle looked up, and fell off his bicycle.

Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.

‘It’s a gift!’ he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.

He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful – and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Niggle style – were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr Parish: there was no other way of putting it.”

[J. R. R. Tolkien, “Leaf By Niggle” in Tree and Leaf, 110]

Appreciate the Intrinsic Heraldic Overtones

“The meaning of fine words cannot be made ‘obvious’, least of all to adults, who have stopped listening to the sound because they think they know the meaning. They think the word argent ’means’ silver. It does not. It and silver have a reference to x, or the chemical Ag, but in each case x is clothed in a totally different phonetic incarnation, x + y or x + z; and these do not have the same meaning, not only because they sound different and so arouse different emotional responses, but also because they are not in fact used … in the same way. We must learn to appreciate the intrinsic heraldic overtones that a word like argent has, in addition to its on peculiar sound, which the word ‘silver’ does not have. I think that this writing down, flattening, Bible-in-basic-English attitude is responsible for the fact that so many older children and younger people have little respect and no love for words, and very limited vocabularies.

[J. R. R. Tolkien, Letters, #134, to Jane Neave]

Joy Poignant as Grief

“In its [LOTR] fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and inso far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

[J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories]

Salvation Changes Not Garden Nor Gardener

“I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends –
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not tread your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden scepter down.

   **

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ’twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.”

[J. R. R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia]

The Work of Our Hearts

“In fact the elves seem much more susceptible to a specialised variety of pride not at all present in Paradise Lost, not quite Avarice or ‘possessiveness’ or wanting to own things (as has been suggested), but rather a restless desire to make things which will forever reflect or incarnate their own personality.… One might rewrite Lewis’s phrase to say that in Valinor, as opposed to Eden, the Fall came when conscious creatures became ‘more interested in their own creations than in God’s.’…

There could be several reasons why Tolkien chose to write about fascination with the artefact. The most obvious is that he felt it himself: to him his fictions were what the Silmarils were to Fëanor or their ships to the Teleri, ‘the work of our hearts, whose like we shall not make again.’”

[Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-Earth, 241]

Not Magic but Fair

“‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lórien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’”

[J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, I.386]

Do Not Neglect Their Lessons

“The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward.” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book I, 62)

This passage was in our family’s reading a few nights ago. With today’s beautiful sun and tonight’s enlightening moon, as well as a sermon on pity this week that was mainly sprung from Tolkien’s writings, it finally hit me on why Gollum ended up how he did.

Yes, it was the Ring that transformed him from Sméagol to Gollum, the Ring that twisted and warped his hobbit-like person into the wretched undying monster that he became. Tolkien was always careful to give main characters very telling beginnings. So it is right for us to take Gandalf’s account of Gollum’s early life before he captured the Ring quite seriously.

In Middle-Earth, while nearly everyone (even Sauron) begin their existence in goodness, meaning well, many seem to snag certain parts of themselves that stick out on evil as temptation passes by. Gollum was snagged on the Shadow by his propensity not to look up at the hills, the trees, and the sky. He initially has no interest in the Sun or Moon, but by the time he has the Ring for a while, he hates nothing as much as these Lights. 

Given the weight which Tolkien placed on Light, Stars, and the account of the Sun and Moon in his other works (e.g., The Silmarillion), and given his and C. S. Lewis’ saturation with Medieval literature and cosmology, it is not unreasonable to see Gollum’s beginning as someone who refuses to be taught by the heavens, the heavens which declare the glory of God. Sméagol would not raise his head to look and hear the Sun, Moon and Stars speaking, and he was thus more easily drawn into darkness, both literally and theologically. For sin is darkness, self-absorbed and imprisoned in one’s lusts. 

We all went out to the porch tonight to be silent under the few stars we could see, and tried to listen to the Moon.

Farewell good thief, I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed.… There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
» Thorin to Bilbo, in J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 301