Tales from the perilous realm: An overlooked bit of Tolkien

 While many LOTR fans are silently dying inside thanks to such catastrophes as Rings of Power and The Hobbit, they have always had the classic books to fall back upon.  I've finally decided to read the Silmarillion (on the library wait list!) but whilst searching for that book, I ran across a collection of short stories and poems by the infamous author.  While I didn't make it through Roverandom, some of the other bits of story and nonsense are pretty good, though I almost felt I was reading George MacDonald at times. I haven't finished yet, but certainly an interesting bit of side salad for Tolkien fans discouraged by modern interpretations.  It also gives a primordial writerling hope, that if one considered a master of the craft can publish such stuff, perhaps there is hope for the least of us as well.  But what is even more interesting is the subject of all these little stories: mere mortal glimpses of Faerie, something hardly noticed in the epic seriousness of the great tomes, but with all the flitting and impish mischief of fairy children playing hide and seek amid the garden flowers but all the mystery and splendor of the mountain heights wrapped in shadow and snow and mist in the dawning.  And it is the same glimpse one finds in MacDonald, Lewis, Chesterton, and L.M. Montgomery: humor and mystery and sorrow and awe and wonder and joy.  The very heart of a Child of the Kingdom.

It is the something missing in this age of mere information, much of it wrong.  We only want to know the what of the moment, having no time for the why or the how thereof.  Information scans through our brains like data through google and we skim what we like, discarding it almost as soon as we notice it, never finding 'the answer' but merely fretting ourselves sick with what we might not know or in knowing it a moment too late.  We don't know how 'to be still and know.'  We gorge like pigs at a trough, uncaring of what we swill down, only that we must get our share.  But these pretty little books are a journey, a slow unveiling, a call away from the hustle and bustle and nonstop busyness and 'in the know' of our daily grind.  A call from the Shepherd to go out into the hills and be.  To watch the sun set and hear the birds sing, to contemplate the ocean's breadth and wonder what might dwell in its hidden depths.  To ask what lurks on the far side of the moon and what it would be like to dance among the stars.

We want to be our own gods, the source of all things, to define reality as we would have it, but we are fooling ourselves and making our lives miserable for no gain: mice running on a wheel, no better off for running harder, longer, or faster, for you always end where you begin.  But Faerie is calling, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, to step off the highway of modern life into the forgotten, misty lanes that run 'East of the Moon, West of the Sun.'  For 'not all who wander are lost,' for they are on a Journey indeed.  Forget everything modern and shiny and new, seek out the twilight, the shadows, the wooded edge of the meadow, the misty fields and silent stars, fireflies and mountains and Saturn and the dappled green of a spring morning under shining leaves.  Be still and know, Know as ye have ever been Known.  When the Deep cries out to your Deep, will you hear its resounding cry?  For to such belong the Kingdom!

Another not so joyous ride through the apocalypse

 I just finished reading 'Vivian Applie and the End of the World,' and the one thing I will say for it is that I actually stuck around til the end.  I've really tried to read modern books the last few years but most just sputter out in the first quarter or so.  There are a few exceptions, this one I kept waiting for something to happen, mostly they just drive around and mope, and then the book ends without really getting anywhere.  It is doing an excellent job for the genre though, Left Behind did a great job of making an entire book about nothing so you'd have to read three or four to actually have some semblance of a bad plot.  The premise was an interesting one: some mega-cult that seems like a cross between the Mormons and the worst of the prosperity gospel televangelists with a hearty dose of patriotic deism has pretty much taken over American culture promising an imminent rapture while weird climactic shifts are playing havoc with the weather setting the stage for a seemingly pointless road trip across post-rapture America.  This was written a long time pre-covid and was first published in the UK.  Having survived that minor apocalypse, I had a hard time believing the US economy could function as it does in this frivolous tale, how does a burger chain stay supplied or gas stations stay open?  How do you reliably get gas or cash to pay for it?  How do you still have cell service?  Why does a US teenager sound like a Brit?  Have you really driven across South Dakota in May?  Where is the rest of the world in the middle of this global but local crisis?  What is the point of this book?

I don't like most of the characters, the ones with promise have far too short a role or are left in a drug induced coma for the majority of the book.  There is plenty of death and danger and emotional angst but it's as easy to forget as driving over the next hill.  Nobody has a heart or feelings or any attachment to anybody or anything.  While we are shown the dangers of fundamentalist belief, secular nihilism isn't shown to be any more useful or comforting, nothing means anything so why should we care about any of it?  There is only a small dusting of plot near the end and then it just ends, there is a sequel but I don't really care at this point.  I kept reading hoping there would be a point, unless the point is to show me there is no point?  There's a little humor but way too much circling the drain and pointless drama.  The author makes a point of not stereotyping people but most of the characters are sadly stereotypes with no depth or interest or complexity, maybe it is a silent commentary on the plight of the modern soul, but this book is certainly lacking one.

Is it trying to be the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, That Hideous Strength, the anti-Left Behind, a secular dystopian Jane Austen, or what?  It does a great job of showing the futility of extreme cult groups, hippie communes, and secular nihilism but it gives you nothing to cling to, no hope in a maelstrom of meaninglessness.  If it is a social commentary it is lacking in comment or clarity or I'm not bright enough to discern it.  If it is humor, it is of a morbid and vapid sort.  If it is high adventure or youthful frivolity it is certainly frivolous but rather drab in quest and scope.  If it is about character and personal growth, sadly the main character's suicide or tragic death might have been preferred.  If it is to show the insipidity and heartless individualism of modern Americans, then the climate change tsunami cannot wash away our sins too soon, for we are all of us deplorable beyond reach of redemption or forgiveness.  If it is to warn about the dangers of fanaticism for any cause, it was a clarion call that went unheeded, for the pandemic was a far better teacher.  

I did appreciate the book's minor attempts to respect religious belief in non-fanatical cult situations, but it was sort of a ho-hum half hearted attempt, as was everything in this tale.  I really was left wondering what the point of any of it was, maybe the point is there is no point?  The point was to point out the futility of everything in modern life?  If this is modern life without a firm belief in anything, then I could not write a better argument for true and abiding faith.  There are little hints and tidbits that the main character longs for just that, but her own cynicism blinds her to anything and everything, even her own deepest feelings and longings.  This book does a great job pointing out the futility of everything but it leaves you with nothing to fill that gaping hole in your heart, which a far wiser writer once said is eternity placed within the hearts of men, a thing we cannot fill with temporal and transient what-nots, a thing that can only be filled with something bigger still, or rather Someone.  

That's what this book is looking for, it is a search for belonging, for True Love, for real redemption and purpose and meaning, a yearning for Home and Peace and real Joy.  But every discovery, every relationship, every new mile only yields disappointment and discouragement, for we're looking for love in all the wrong places, nay we have mis-defined love.  Love is doing what is best for the beloved, no matter the cost to oneself whether the beloved likes it or not.  Perhaps that is the point of this book: that longing, that search, the futility of it all in chasing after the wind.  It is a modern Ecclesiastes perhaps?  I'd stick with the original, at least that will point you towards the Answer rather than just heaping up the questions.

A Tale of Two Novels and the cure for both: The Worm Ouroboros and The Once and Future King

 I just finished the Worm Ouroboros and as it is a big, epic book, it put me in the mood for more tales of yore, namely rereading The Once and Future King (and if you've seen Camelot or Disney's The Sword in the Stone, you have actually sampled a section of this curious work!).  I called the Worm Ouroboros a christianized myth as it were, not Christian in the sense that it is anything like Narnia or Tolkien's epic, but rather that it is the result of an education founded in the christianized classical thought that resulted when Rome fell and the myths spouted by a collection of Galilean fishermen took hold of popular thought and culture.  Perhaps it is more a medieval epic than it is an odyssey, but what struck me as just plain wrong was the end.  Throughout the book is an epic struggle of mythic proportions against the powers of darkness, the cost to the seeming demigod heroes is immense but even more is the utter wickedness borne by those of common birth, who die in their thousands unnamed and unmourned, with only a little side note on their utter misery at the hands of the villains.  When finally the good has conquered, rather than rejoice that peace has been won, and little thinking that another great evil will no doubt arise from some corner unlooked for, our heroes mope about that their playmates have been overthrown and thus has all glory ended, and when given the chance, they happily renew their age old pledge of violence against their now eternal foes, never blinking an eye to ask what the common farmer, whose sons will die nameless on sea or land, while his daughters and wife are ravished, his holdings burned, and he himself brutally murdered, will think upon the matter, as long as these great ones can have their eternal glory.

Enter the modern Arthurian saga that dares to rethink the ancient tale, exploring in full the idea that Might does not make Right, that glory for its own sake is wrong.  That Men are the only species that routinely goes to war against itself for no better reason than that they don't agree over some silly matter none can remember once the blood starts flying.  Neither of these books are written from an orthodox Christian perspective, indeed, Once and Future makes plenty of sly jabs at religion and God while still stealing from its ideals to make its point.  Worm glories in Man's quest for personal glory whereas Once and Future bemoans his fallen and selfish nature somehow hoping some earthly king, himself a fallen man, can overcome it.  The cure to both is a good dose of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton who all wrote and lived during the same era, namely during and after the two world wars.

Worm envisions a bloody and dark future wherein death and destruction and evil is borne by all men for the glory of a few.  Once and Future ponders over what life might be like could man but overcome his inherently selfish nature, finding no satisfactory answer but 'maybe tomorrow!'  Both inevitably sad pictures of humanity serving or saving itself.  Both an endless and meaningless cycle of personal ambition and trying to overcome it, only to fail and raise up a new sort of tyrant instead, the futile fulfillment of the hopeless worm eating his own tail.

The myths of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton are the cure for this dismal miasma, this stark gray utopia that is neither morning nor evening but always a bitter November day.  We need not a circle but a cross!  The dragon is not content to eat his own tail but rather wishes to consume the whole world and all reality besides.  There is an everlasting glory but it is not found in our personally vanquishing the worm but rather in following the only King Who can, and we die not nameless minions, unmourned, uncounted, rather has He our names graven upon His very heart, his very hand, and it is He that died in our stead, not a glorious Captain in war but rather an innocent criminal in shame.  And when He brings His promised peace, it will not be boring or pointless, but will grow from glory to glory, forever, for His glory is to be our own!  We can neither save ourselves or win eternal glory to ourselves that last more than a sunrise, nor match even the glory of a simple flower that fades within a day.  But He who wrought both Day and Night, lilies and Men, has glory to spare, for He is the true master of the Serpent that has for a while proclaimed himself King, and of the mean little potentates of all the ages that likewise think they rule the world, but are merely gnats in all the long ages to come.

Both books are interesting and intriguing and thought provoking, but neither gets it right when it comes to true glory and the source thereof.  Tolkien's great epic pushes back the darkness at great cost and most certainly never wishes for its return, though he has characters enough that wish for glory for its own sake, rather it is his noble vision of a lasting glory from beyond the world's shores that makes this epic so beloved and remembered when the other books are becoming almost obscure, though no less epic in scale or excellent in execution, it just happens that Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton's tales happen to be true, and in our heart of hearts, this is indeed what we desire, no matter what our lesser thoughts tell us at any given moment.  Forego despair and never ending darkness, embrace the True Light of the World and never again fall into abject and utter night, or worse, an unending gloom with never a star to light again the way!

Sitting here eating licorice

Dear Internet,

Yes, the title of this piece isn't all that snazzy or exciting, unless you know the context.  But who needs context when there's the next video, the next meme, the next whatever, just a constant scroll of information and you might be missing out.  Well you are, not because you aren't scrolling fast enough or long enough but because you aren't sitting there pondering the depth and breadth of whatever it is that has caught your eye in that particular nanosecond.  This is why your life and personality and happiness are about as deep as the average Facebook post and perhaps why civilization itself is about to collapse.  All the ancients looked to the aged for wisdom while in western society all the elders are mimicking the antics of those whose biggest life struggles are acne and being ghosted by that cute guy in third hour chemistry, which is why 'whiny teenager girl' is our national spokes-person (that was my name for this mediocre musician twenty years ago, but sadly she hasn't changed much and the appellation still applies).

Still here?  Wow, see, miracles do happen!  And that is why, lame title not withstanding, I am even writing this today.  If you have any familiarity with my life and habits you may be aware that I can't eat wheat or ten thousand other things.  Licorice happens to contain wheat.  And despite my valiant efforts and fruitless internet searches, you can't make decent gluten free licorice at home, it is just taffy with the wrong name, corn starch will never replace wheat in a decent piece of real licorice, sadly one of my favorite candies and one I haven't eaten in years.  But it isn't just that, it isn't celiac where I can skip the gluten and live my life happily ever after.  It is a symptom of an invidious, insidious, and pervasive condition without name or treatment or cure.  I have no energy.  I eat the wrong thing I'm in gastronomical agony and everything hurts for three days.  I can't eat in restaurants or at people's homes.  I have to make all my own food from scratch and have about 5 things I can eat (gets very boring).  I can manage it but I'm still sick, and then there is the emotional and social burden you carry.

People think you are lazy or selfish or uncaring.  You can't hold down a job or play with your kids.  The flowerbed is a mess because it hasn't been weeded in three years.  You feel guilty, ashamed, terrified all the time.  People with cancer and heart disease can be publicly acknowledged and allowed to be ill, but you don't even have a name for it, you bear it alone along with society's scorn.  This has been going on for 15 years, a third of my life, over half my adult life.  I hide it as best I can so many people don't even know I'm sick, just can't eat a pizza or something.

And then that something is gone.  I'm a medical professional and I have no explanation that any of you practical atheists will believe.  Many will scoff and say I was never that sick to begin with.  Others will say it was the body healing naturally after years of careful living.  Others will ask what supplement finally did the trick, which essential oil redeemed my life?  All I can say is that it was a miracle.  Now we'll have the spiritual healing whackos coming out of the weeds and asking what was said or done or what prayer lifted the curse or how did my faith become strong enough or what powerful shaman did the trick or how many days of fasting and prayer or which crystal or amulet worked the charm or who straightened my chakra or how did I become virtuous enough to be healed?  And it was none of those things.  It was a simple, biblical service with a little bit of scripture on the real biblical truth about divine healing. No intensifying music, no amens and hallelujahs, no outstanding faith or virtue, no big name healing diva, just a simple acknowledgement about what God says about healing.

Signs and wonders should accompany the preaching of the gospel, which is a really freaky thought to this modern western church that likes the idea of Jesus but is a little leery about encountering the supernatural. We want to make it about us, a big show, and if it doesn't work, well Joe didn't have enough faith.  But really, God says He may or may not heal you, it has nothing to do with you, the healer, anyone's faith or virtue, and isn't available upon request.  He can and will say no or wait.  He told Paul 'My grace is sufficient.'  And that was that.  It is for His glory alone, and all the awesome music and chanting amens in the world won't change that, in fact I doubt He would deign to heal many in such an atmosphere since it is for someone else's glory.

And this service was just that.  We had a brief teaching session then broke into small groups of 3-5 and prayed for one another.  There was no lighting or fireworks, the blind man did not suddenly see.  I felt encouraged and like I had just drunk some Mountain Dew and had a really weird craving for stuffed crust pizza (a big no no!) and that was it.  Two days later we picked up a pizza on the way home and I had a slice.  The next day I ate other stuff on my don't eat ever list and so forth for almost a week now.  I also feel like I haven't felt in 15 years, I'm better at forty something than I was at thirty, energy wise.  A miracle, pure and simple!

And no, it wasn't a gradual healing.  I ate some cheese (like a bite) a few weeks ago, just wondering if my severe sensitivity had lessened after 5 years of no dairy, and I definitely felt that one in the morning.  A few crumbs of wheat bread in my jelly left by an unwitting guest was enough to make me ill.  I've tried various supplements and dietary changes and doctors and tests and nothing works.  I can manage but that's about it, I'm not living just surviving.  Until now.  God flipped the switch and shut it down, that is all there is to it.  And no, He didn't heal everything, just my gut/inflammatory issues, my joints are still shot, I have a cold, etc.

He's real, He's in control, He wants to help you, but He isn't a nicey-nice grandpa who just wants the kids to be happy and thinks they should be nice to each other.  He has rules, expectations, and we need to come to Him His way.  We can't just reimagine Him into our own image and think things will somehow work out, they won't.  That lie is as old as Eden: 'Did God really say?' 'Be your own god!' 'What is he hiding, trying to keep you from having fun?'  'A loving god wouldn't do that!'

He's been patient, ever so patient, letting us live as we please, destroying one another and His world to boot.  But He's still there, very much alive and real, and He's moving and active, even in this material age. He has opened the door, will you walk through or keep trying to cut a window through a stone wall with a toothpick?

Soli Deo Gloria!

Of all men, most to be pitied

 I was just reading about 'of all men, most to be pitied,' this morning, it was Paul talking about the sad plight of true Christians if there was no resurrection from the dead, but in our enlightened modern age, I think this applies most to the complacent, comfortable, country club church wherein Nice Jesus sits idly by and smiles benignly at all and sundry, sort of like those creepy Ronald McDonald statues that used to sit in a booth at the iconic restaurant.  But then again, Nice Jesus didn't rise from the dead, he came preaching love and tolerance and niceness, acceptance of everything and everyone, that everybody should be happy and always get along, or at least pretend to.  He wears sandals and maybe sunglasses, has a perfect smile and long hair, maybe even a tie-dye shirt and he is most definitely an upper middle class white guy, probably a younger, hipper version of Santa Claus.

There is no grunge, no offense, no blood, no righteous judgement, no hatred of sin, no poverty or hunger or exhaustion, no suffering or grief, nothing real or gritty or relatable except to the socially comfortable with their own inane grins and social media perfect lives, as vapid as their facial expressions.  If Nice Jesus was a true friend of sinners, but he's only a Facebook friend, he'd want to help them out of the quagmire of their sin, but he's more of a drug dealer or a shallow acquaintance who doesn't want to be bothered by someone else's problems: he'd rather pretend everything is okay and enable you in your wretchedness.  We'll just change our perception of the reality, though nothing actually changes, we just all think the Emperor has some nifty clothes.

But the culture is dumping Jesus altogether, be he Nice or Real.  You can't be a comfortable Christian any longer, individuals and whole churches need to decide who they are going to follow, what they are going to believe.  Nice Jesus isn't culturally acceptable anymore, Real Jesus has never been.  So if you are going to suffer for the Name, it had better be for the Real thing, otherwise you most certainly deserve pity because Nice Jesus isn't going to save anybody, but the Real Jesus came precisely for that.  He came into our mess, our disaster, our sin and death, grief and sorrow, and He embraced it fully, God became Man, became Flesh, for us!  He doesn't want to smile benignly while we destroy ourselves and His creation with our rampant sin and selfishness, rather He invites us to embrace His cross, our own destruction, that we ourselves and the world might be saved through Him, rather than smiling benignly as we rush joyously into eternal destruction.  Nice Jesus will sit there smiling benignly as you burn, whereas Real Jesus stands in the fire with those that are truly His.  The cultural fire is heating up, who are you going to choose?

The Requisite Christmas Song Post (with another pirate guest blogger)!

 So someone else beat me to the punch this year, but happily he didn't write about the musicality of the season.  Check out his article on the storied ghosts of Christmas here, much recommended!  I know Charlie Brown really tried to get the true meaning of Christmas, but it's depressing.  I know the Grinch hinted at it, but the roast beast just doesn't cut it.  Even my local Christian radio station seems to be missing the boat, literally playing things like "Let it snow' and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" endlessly but ignoring the many great sacred classics save an occasional instrumental nod from the Trans-Siberian Light Orchestra, at least there's no Santa Baby, that's a plus, right?  It sounds more like a seasonal mall sound track than anything else, especially a Christian station at Christmas!  While I don't mind that stuff, sadly, like Charlie Brown, I am more than a little frustrated with our whole culture focusing on the tinsel and the glitz and ignoring the glaring ache that this season entails for many.  It seems we can either be insipidly happy or alone in our grief which often manifests as anger towards the season in its entirety.

But if you hate Christmas because you hurt, you aren't alone!  It is a problem native to all humanity, not just the modern post-christian west, our problem is the same as the ancient pre-christian east or even the insipidly pseudo-christian America of our nostalgic recollection.  While Charlie Brown thinks he hankers after that nostalgic, idyllic ghost of Christmases past, there is no such history, no such reality, because that has never been what Christmas has been about nor is it the ache that haunts his heart like Marley in Ebenezor's bed chamber.

Many of the secular Christmas haters are happy to proclaim that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th and that we're simply recycling an old pagan holiday, and I'm most happy to agree with them, and their point is?  Men have always been religious, keenly interested and much afeared of the supernatural, at least until our materialistic modern age with its electric lights to forever drive off the dark of superstition and the utter night of ignorance, thinking we are quite something, as if we invented the physics behind the phenomenon, content in our assumption that it 'just happened,' and never questioning the Light behind our light and little realizing that by blinding their own eyes thereby, they are now the ignorant!  That is why we demand a Light in the darkness, and celebrate its coming at the darkest time of the year, not because we know Jesus was born on that particular day but rather that His coming at the appointed time relieved the spiritual darkness in which the whole world languished and we celebrate the fact as his first coming at the darkest time of the year.

But our problem is we forget why we celebrate His coming, yay a baby, a light of the world, but why is that significant?  His birth, while miraculous and marvelous and bright, is nothing, does nothing, rather it is His sinless life, His atoning death, and His conquering of death and darkness and sin forever by rising again to new life that we can sing and rejoice and make merry this time of year and all the year long!  But we'd rather sit with our glitz and jingle, aching inside, making merry without, and wondering why we can't be happy when everybody else seems to be as well.

This is where the great sacred Christmas hymns come in, look past the first well known verse or chorus or the haunting instrumental and delve into the depth, the mystery, the sorrow, the joy, the meaning of this babe's incarnation, the very word made flesh.  Only therein can we find meaning and true joy in this paradoxical season of utmost joy and aching loneliness and unrelenting sorrow, only in Him can all find their true 'comfort and joy.'  Santa and Grinches are fine and fun, but let us not forget the true meaning behind it all!

I didn't write this, but should have! Pirate guest blogger returns!

 Just go read it!