small smile

   I hang up the phone with a smile on my face.  It’s strange because I’ve just been talking with a woman in my church whose husband has just passed away.  He had suffered a severe stroke some weeks back, had fought hard, but had eventually succumbed to the damage.  I had been up to the hospital to see him.  He was in pain.  Nonresponsive.  In those moments there’s really only one thing you can do.  I lowered myself into the chair at his bedside and began to pray.  Perhaps, more often than not, that is the only thing we are really supposed to do after all.  Surrender the pain, the confusion, the anger: asking the Lord to “come and see” the sorrow, like Mary when she meets Jesus after Lazarus has died.  We find in Mary the invitation each of us has to ask Jesus into our sadness, our grief, our sorrow.  And he comes, himself weeping.  My Saviour isn’t afraid to cry.  We can enter into the grieving together.

   Death has a way of infiltrating our senses.  The colour of the wall looks muted.  Familiar sounds dull.  We find ourselves doing menial tasks without much thought—keeping busy, I suppose—or we’re crumpled, deflated, emptied of all that feels good and right.  I remember hearing the news that my Grandpa Cain had died.  I think it was the first day of school, 1999.  Dad told me.  I was standing in the kitchen by the dishwasher, myself suddenly awash with a strange mixture of relief and sadness: relieved that the pain and sickness were finally over; sad that it had ever happened at all.  Lord, come and see.

   So what caused the smile this morning?  It was the remembrance that beyond the death and pain, there is indeed a light that shines out the clearer.  A light that does not nullify or ignore the potency of such a sting, yet bathes us afresh in memory and witness anew.  The light is hope.  Hope that rushes to the tomb and finds only folded grave-clothes.  Hope that carries still the scars of sorrow, yet is healed and made whole.  Hope that calls friends to a shore-breakfast of the morning’s catch.  Hope not as abstract principle: Hope who is a Person.  That Person who is no longer dead, but living again.  The same Person who promises that same hope for us: that death be forever broken of its power, that life be restored and renewed again in the morning of New Creation.  This is the Hope of Resurrection—made real and alive in Christ himself.  And this is why I smile, for in that simple phone call—a small gesture, attempted by a pastor to bring comfort, to simply be and be still in the presence of those in mourning—I could hear Hope already awakened and alive in her heart.  And it was beginning even then to spill over and fill me with hope.  The pain isn't over, certainly.  But it is no longer all that is.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower 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.”  -  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Amen.  Come and see us, Lord Jesus, come and see.

Essay: “On Myth & Life”, Paper 1 for Tolkien & Lewis Class

As promised, I’ve been able to upload one of my recent essays to the blog—a little later than I’d hoped, but better than never!

Click here to read “On Myth & Life”. 

The following is my first essay for “Lewis & Tolkien: The Making of Myth”, my spring class I’m currently taking with the Mythgard Institute.  Our assignment was to note what we believed to be the most important or significant point of comparison or contrast between C.S. Lewis’ and J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary theories: that is, how they understood the nature of fantasy literature.
  
This is a bit of a workout for a three page paper.  The idea was not so much to come to a definitive conclusion, but to wrestle with the issues, paying close, careful attention to the text and walking alongside the reader to discover together that which you desired to teach through the essay.  The emphasis here is on an inductive reading of the texts.

I chose to focus on the ways myths or fairy-stories orient us to perceive truth, reality, or life in new ways.  In a sense, it’s my bachelor thesis condensed to three pages!  The introduction starts off a bit slow, and I purposefully rerouted some of the best statements from each of the paragraphs to serve better in the conclusion.

So happy reading!  And as always you are more than welcome to leave any questions or comments you might have.

finding quotes

I really like finding good quotes.  I think I started ‘collecting’ them, in a sense, while I was in college.  It was the first time in my life where I did a lot of nonfiction reading.  As a naturally fiction-loving reader, this was a bit of a stretch at first; after time, however, I’ve come to love some of my text books as much as my favourite stories.  They remind me of people who I learned with, or of ideas that I can remember wrestling with at a certain point in time.  Most of my favourite nonfiction authors are highly quotable: Eugene-Pete and N.T. Wright among them.

Quotes help to crystallize those moments: focussing our attention on some thought or attitude or comment that moved us or startled us or made us laugh out loud.  Good quotes.

I discovered while reading The Hobbit for my Mythgard class that the Tolkien quote at the top of my blog is actually something Thorin says near the end of the story.  "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world" (Tolkien, The Hobbit).  Since it’s been a while since I’ve actually gotten to the end of the Hobbit (I’ve restarted it twice, I think?  Since first reading it…) I had no idea this was Thorin’s line!  It actually sounded like something Tolkien would say in his day-to-day life (probably was!).

In parting, here’s another great Tolkien excerpt.  This one from The Lord of the Rings:

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Anyone with a favourite quote out there?  Let’s hear it!

hobbit trailer!!

I really like that the dwarves are singing their song.  Its the same song re-arranged as a theme in the second half of the trailer.

This reminds me of the good old days of making a trip to Thunder Bay to watch the Two Towers and Return of the King on opening day—our own little there and back again adventure if ever there was one!

Here’s the official site with a larger trailer and the artwork.

talking tolkien

When I was 11 I was invited to travel with my Aunt Jo-Anne, Uncle Jim and cousin Mike to Oliver, B.C.  It was a pretty crazy adventure for an eleven year-old, and was definitely the longest time I’d been away from home before.  I recall the long drives through golden prairies (Mike’s favourite at the time, which he decided were much better than “ugly rock cuts!”), camping in Drumheller and again in Banff, before arriving in Oliver where we made whips out of willow wands and ate from the plum trees to our heart’s content!

Though we saw some amazing country, my favourite moments were those spent in the evenings.  We’d all gather around while Aunt Jo-Anne read aloud from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I had encountered nothing like it before: hobbits on the road, Black Riders who feared fire, a ranger named Strider, and an evil Ring.

When I got home I told Dad all about this story: the first of a trilogy.

“I think I’ve got those somewhere,” he said.  And as Dad often does, he withdrew to the basement and returned with the perfect solution.  He came back carrying a hardcover edition of The Lord of the Rings.

Since then, I’ve been a really big fan of Tolkien and his work.  When I went to College I realized that there was a large scholarly community who also deeply appreciated Tolkien and through books and classes I began to discover others who wanted to engage deeply with all things Middle-Earth.

So when I discovered Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, and his podcasts I was instantly hooked!  Corey has recorded seminar sessions with himself and his students (he teaches English at Washington College) on all of Tolkien major works as well as his essays and letters.  They’re so great, and he’s hilarious! Josh Chalmers, if you’re reading this, go have a listen: http://tolkienprofessor.com/

Anyway, my love for all things Tolkien is going strong, and I’m pretty good with that.  Now I just need to get on my reading for my summer class: C.S. Lewis, where are you!?