Time to Start Writing Again.

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It is early morning here in the English county of Worcestershire just a few miles down the road from the farm that once belonged to the Suffield family and was the childhood home of Mabel Tolkien, the mother of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and creator of a legendarium that has caught the imagination of the world ever since the publication of that book in 1954 and 1955. The locals who were the neighbours of the Suffields named their farm house, Bag End, and this and the surrounding countryside and small towns and villages was to form, through the medium of Tolkien’s rich imagination, his Shire, the home of the hobbits.

A photo taken of me a couple of years ago at Magdalen College, Oxford, by my daughter, Dr Bethan Winter, who has been teaching there.

Tolkien’s hobbits were very much a reimagining of the Worcestershire country folk among whom Tolkien grew up in the early years of the 20th century both when he visited his Suffield relatives and in the village of Hall Green just a few miles north of Bag End. You can still recognise the slow speech and the rich accent of Worcestershire folk but Hall Green is now a suburb of the English city of Birmingham and many of the farm houses of north Worcestershire are now inhabited by wealthy incomers who have made their money elsewhere and now enjoy the fruits of their labour in this beautiful countryside. At least I hope that they do.

I guess that you could include me among the incomers, perhaps not so wealthy but comfortably off, who have moved into this area. My father was London born but he took the opportunity offered to his generation who had served in the armed forces in the Second World War of a college education to go to agricultural college and spend his working life on farms in the English countryside. We never had much money. My father left enough money to pay for his funeral and nothing more but thanks to the generosity of the English state back in the 1960s and 70s I was educated at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe among boys from the families of senior military officers and leading political families. My school also educated luminaries such as Roger Scruton and Paul Kingsnorth but Scruton came before me and Kingsnorth after.

Following a brief career as a school teacher I was ordained a minister in the Church of England in 1988 and came to serve in the city of Birmingham where I met my wife, Laura, who was a young hospital doctor there, and so we have spent the rest of our lives together since then in the English Midlands where Tolkien grew up.

In these last years I have served seven country parishes here in Worcestershire as their Rector but I will be 70 years old this month and feel that the time has come to pass that responsibility to someone else. It is time to move on to other things.

I first read The Lord of the Rings back in the late 1960s thanks to the encouragement of my school friend, John Flint, whose father was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force. There were copies of the three volumes in our school library and I took them out and read them voraciously. Eventually I bought John’s paperback copy of the entire book in a single volume from him. It cost me six weeks work at weekends on the farm to do this but I never resented a single minute. I still don’t. I have read and re-read this and other works by Tolkien ever since and enjoyed both a BBC radio dramatisation of the work and Peter Jackson’s films.

Back in 2013 I began to write a blog here on WordPress on the wisdom that I have learned from the The Lord of the Rings. I figured that after reading Tolkien for so many years I might have something to say about him. I think that I have written over 300,000 words since then and had over half a million readers. Thank you to each and every one of you.

Last year I somehow lost access to the blog site and as I was winding up my work in the parishes and then taking a complete break after taking my final service at the end of August I haven’t got round to sorting this out until now. Laura and I walked 150 miles of the Camino del Norte, the pilgrim route to Santiago da Composite in northern Spain during the autumn and we will return to walk the last 250 miles later this year. We have been catching up with friends and family and working on our cottage together. And it’s been a lot of fun just catching up with each other after years of busy work as a priest and as a doctor.

Now the energy is coming back and it is time to write again. I both want to return to the blog and I am beginning a book. I will tell you more of that another time. My daughters are teaching me how to use new technologies to publicise my work. There’s a lot going on. To my delight I found that I had a record number of readers last September, three months after my last post and while Laura and I were in Spain. It seems that people are finding their way to my work. I am so grateful.

Thank you to all who have taken the time to send messages of good will while I have been away from the blog. I will write in response to all of you.

I left Frodo and Sam with Faramir in Henneth Annûn last June. They are in safe hands there but they don’t really know that yet. When you next rejoin me I will take up that part of the story again. It has so much to teach us.

Anke Eissman ‘s wonderful depiction of the scene in which Frodo and Sam talk with Faramir in Henneth Annûn. I really love her work!

I hope you will join me.

“Your Land Must Be a Realm of Peace and Content, and There Must Gardeners Be in High Honour.”

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 891,892

Faramir knows that Frodo’s secret is the very Ring of Power. He does not yet know Frodo’s mission, that he has been given the task of casting the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, but he wonders at this little folk who now keep it.

“If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at other’s asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kind of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardeners be in high honour.”

“Are all your kind of like sort?” Faramir asks. The true answer is that just as Faramir is exceptional within Gondor so too are Frodo and Sam within the Shire. Neither are typical of their kinds although there are many good men in Gondor and good hobbits in the Shire. What is providential is that these great ones have found one another in a hostile land and at this critical moment in the story. Within this providential context even Sam’s mistakes, from his negligent care of a smoking fire to his revealing of the true nature of the burden that Frodo bears, only lead to good. Faramir puts this in a different way. Sam was “fated” to stumble, to make such good mistakes and so to aid his master’s mission the better. Later his interventions will be of the most heroic kind.

For a long time when I have read this passage I assumed that the reference that Faramir makes to the high honour in which gardeners must be held in the Shire must have been a gentle joke on Tolkien’s part. When we remember that the very first scene in The Lord of the Rings is set in the Ivy Bush on the Bywater Road near Hobbiton in which Gaffer Gamgee expresses his hope that “no harm” will come of Bilbo teaching Sam to read and write, to “learn him his letters”, it is hard to believe that greatness can come of this family of gardeners at least.

But woven into the rest of the story are very different references to gardens and to gardeners. Galadriel’s gift to Sam, so carefully put together, comes with her recognition that it is Sam, the gardener, who will have to heal his land after the ravages of Saruman there. “Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there.” Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin of the Entwives who were tenders of gardens and how they would love the Shire if they were to find it. And perhaps most telling of all, Faramir himself was given the task, by Aragorn, of healing the land of Ithilien after the ending of the war of the Ring and so himself became a prince of gardeners.

There is a gardener within the soul of this Captain of Gondor that recognises a kindred spirit in the soul of Sam Gamgee even as he recognises greatness within Frodo’s soul. Faramir, like Sam, will become a healer of the hurts of Middle-earth after warfare is ended and, like Sam, he will tend a garden. Galadriel’s gift to Sam will keep the memory of Lothlórien alive within Middle-earth and Ithilien too will be a blending of wild woodland and cultivated lands, a marriage of Ents and Entwives just as the land that Galadriel made was such a marriage.

Tolkien was drawing upon the memory of Eden in his following of this theme in The Lord of the Rings. Eden is the garden in which everything is in perfect harmony and humankind is connected with itself, with the land and with the divine presence. There is no abuse or exploitation here. There is much more than mere cultivation here and so the Gaffer cannot be a perfect example of a gardener. It is Sam with his internalisation of all that he has seen upon his journeys, especially in Lothlórien, who will subcreate Eden in Middle-earth, or at the very least, a glimpse of it, and so draw his fellows into a delight in what is good, beautiful and true.

Ted Naismith gives us a land at peace with itself in his beautiful depiction of the young mallorn tree in the Shire

“Your Heart is Shrewd As Well As Faithful, and Saw Clearer Than Your Eyes.” Sam Gamgee Shows Us How To Make a Mess of Things and Yet To Get The Biggest Things Right.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.888-890

It is a catastrophic moment. Frodo has taken such care to keep the conversation with Faramir away from the matter of the Ring. Faramir is aware that there is something that Frodo does not wish to speak about but once he has made his mind up that Frodo is a man of honour he chooses not to press him on this. But Frodo is tired and lapses into silence and Sam takes over the conversation.

Anke Eissman depicts the moment when Frodo begins to drift into sleep and Sam takes up the conversation with Faramir. Note the intensity of the gaze between Sam and Faramir. Great things are about to be revealed.

Sam begins to speak about Galadriel and he falls into a reverie as he does so and within that dreamlike mood suddenly says of Boromir:

“It’s my opinion that in Lórien he first saw clearly what I guessed sooner: what he wanted. From the moment he first saw it he wanted the Enemy’s Ring.”

Suddenly everything changes. The Ring takes centre stage after it has lain hidden and defended and the brother of the man who tried to take it by force from Frodo stands before it surrounded by a troup of warriors. Faramir knows what it is and he knows that his brother tried to take it. It is as he puts it himself “a chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality”.

And he does show his quality. At this critical moment he chooses not to try to take the Ring. And as when Gandalf and then Galadriel both chose not to take it when Frodo offered it to them and as Bilbo freely let it go when Gandalf told him to do so it is upon these moments of free renunciation that the whole story turns. A number of readers of The Lord of the Rings have noted that Tolkien does something quite unique in his story. That whereas every story of quest is about the finding and getting of something Tolkien tells us a story of letting something go, of casting it away, a story of renunciation. The Ring is a thing that can give great power to the one who possesses it and each one of the characters that we have mentioned chose to renounce the possibility of this power.

Bilbo chooses freely to renounce the Ring after a little persuasion from a good friend.

And what of Sam’s terrible mistake? At this moment Frodo simply sees it as a disaster. What had lain hidden now lies bare before all. The brother of the man who tried to take it knows what it is and where it is. But Faramir sees it very differently.

“Be comforted, Samwise. If you seem to have stumbled, think that it was fated to be so, Your heart is shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than your eyes.”

Clearly Sam was not meant to reveal that Frodo had the Ring of Power in his possession. We thought a few weeks ago about Frodo’s decision not to let Faramir know about the true purpose of his mission. But Sam has come to trust the man who has offered them shelter and has chosen, albeit without reflection, to entrust him with the secret of Frodo’s mission. Frodo himself longs to do the same. It is only the memory of Boromir that prevents him from doing so.

And so it is Sam’s heart, and not his head, that has lead both him and Frodo to this moment. It is Sam’s heart that breaks through all the mistrust that has divided the foes of Sauron from one another for so very long. Gondor’s long separation from peoples who once stood with them as allies is set aside in a moment of heartfelt indiscretion. Not that the heart of Minas Tirith is changed in this moment. Denethor, when he learns of the trusting action of his son, will bitterly declare that if Boromir, and not his brother, had lived he would have brought to his father “a mighty gift”. But all through The Lord of the Rings it is these moments of trust that prove essential to the successful outcome of the great quest and this is one of the most important of all of them. If Faramir had chosen at this moment to take the Ring then all would have ended in darkness and the triumph of Sauron. That he does not do this, but chooses to trust in the mission that Frodo has been given, is crucial to the whole story.

And all becomes possible because of Sam’s heart and not his head.

“It Strikes Me That Folks Takes Their Peril into Lórien, and Finds It There Because They Brought It.” Sam Gamgee Thinks About The Fall of Boromir.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp.888-890

Faramir’s reflections upon the decline of the West bring him to a melancholy mood. Frodo has fallen silent and so Sam enters the conversation asking Faramir why he has not spoken more about Sam’s great love, Elves.

Anke Eissmann depicts the quiet conversation between Faramir and the hobbits.

“No, indeed, Master Samwise,” said Faramir, “for I am not learned in Elven-lore. But there you touch upon another point in which we have changed, declining from Númenor to Middle-earth.”

And so Faramir speaks of the ancient alliance between Elves and Men, the Edain of Beleriand, of whom Beren was one of the great heroes and about whom Tolkien’s early readers were largely ignorant before the publication of The Silmarillion that took place after Tolkien’s death. And he speaks of the gradual sundering of Elves and Men in Middle-earth during the Third Age.

“In Middle-earth Men and Elves became estranged in the days of darkness, by the arts of the Enemy, and by the slow changes of time in which each kind walked down their sundered roads.”

And so through the mouth of Faramir Tolkien draws out his belief that a key feature in the decline of which he speaks is melancholy, not as an occasional mood such as the one into which Faramir has fallen in the quiet of the cave behind Henneth Annûn as night falls about him, but as a settled state of mind. He speaks of a growing fascination with death among the great of his land so that tombs become more splendid than palaces. Later Legolas and Gimli will note the silence of the streets of Minas Tirith and an absence of children as further signs of this state of mind,

Faramir speaks of this and adds that his people have drawn into themselves, into a self-obsessed introspection and have forgotten their roots as the descendants of Elendil, the Elf-friend, whose very resistance to Ar-Pharazôn the last king of Númenor was centred upon the very friendship that gave him his name.

“Men now fear and misdoubt the Elves, and yet know little of them.”

Even Faramir fears to go to Lothlórien, deeming such a journey perilous.

Then Sam makes one of those speeches that those who love him know and delight in and yet Sam himself does not think that he is capable of giving. He speaks of Galadriel both accurately and with words of heartbreaking beauty.

“Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small and slender like. Hard as diamonds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime.”

And Anke Eissmann shows Galadriel as she gives the starglass to Frodo in Lothlórien.

Tolkien skillfully and frequently gives some of his most beautiful writing to his simpler characters and in so doing shows his readers that they too have the capacity to encounter and enjoy the sublime. All Sam’s images in his speech are drawn from his experience as a gardener and from some of the new things that he has seen upon his journey. He is one who has practiced William Blake’s counsel to find “heaven in a wildflower” and who, as a consequence, knows heaven when he sees it, as he does in Galadriel.

But because of his encounter with Galadriel he knows that heaven is not like a holiday resort and when Faramir describes Galadriel as perilous Sam shows himself to be one of profound spiritual insight.

“It strikes me that folks takes their peril with them into Lórien, and finds it there because they’ve brought it”

Sean Bean portrayed the way in which Boromir “brought his peril with him ” into Lothlórien quite wonderfully in Peter Jackson’s film.

This is the way in which heaven is not like a holiday resort, a place in which everything should be as the customer wishes because they have paid for it to be so, and if it is not as the customer wishes, angry complaints are made. What complaints would be made about Lothlórien and what difference would it make if you did complain? Readers will remember that Boromir did complain, warning his companions against their hosts. Sam remembers this and it is Boromir that he has in mind when he speaks of bringing peril with them into Lothlórien.

Sam has the capacity to find heaven in a wildflower and in Galadriel too because he has practiced the discipline of finding over a number of years. Sam’s discipline of delight means that he finds beauty wherever he goes and not peril. He is not perfect. His unwillingness to extend mercy to Gollum is a great shortcoming in his moral character but his willingness, even desire, to find, and not merely to remain within existing prejudices, desires and fears, as Boromir did, makes him one of the great characters of The Lord of the Rings.

“We Are a Failing People, a Springless Autumn.” Faramir Tells Frodo and Sam of The History of Gondor and of His Loss of Hope.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 884-887

One of the main themes of The Lord of the Rings is the decline of the West. Later on in the story Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, will declare to Gandalf that the West has failed and that there is no hope against the dark and Sauron its lord.

Faramir seems to have as little hope as does his father and says as much to Frodo as they converse together after dinner.

“What hope have we?” said Faramir. “It is long since we had any hope. The sword of Elendil, if it returns indeed, may rekindle it, but I do not think that it will do more than put off the evil day, unless other help unlooked-for also comes, from Elves or Men. For the Enemy increases and we decrease. We are a failing people, a springless autumn.”

If one of the main themes of Tolkien’s great work is the decline of the West so too is the matter of Hope. Faramir speaks of help from Elves or Men but describes it as “unlooked-for”. He cannot imagine from where such hope might come even though he speaks warmly of the ancient alliance with the people of Rohan, their distant kin from of old. It is, of course, a delicious irony that the hope of the West is even now sitting before him in the form of a hobbit and his faithful servant. Elrond both recognised and welcomed this irony and Denethor will later dismiss it as a fool’s hope and Denethor will be right. It is my conviction that it was one of the greatest moments of the twentieth century and a moment whose influence is, if anything, greater in our own century, when Tolkien found himself writing words on a blank piece of paper while doing the tedious task of marking examinations, “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.

An evocative illustration by Daniel Reeve. (With thanks to Marcel Bülles for alerting me to my original incorrect attribution.)

Hobbits arrived both unlooked-for in Tolkien’s mind and even unwelcome. They interrupted his life’s work, the creation of a legendarium to which he had devoted himself for many years. They made him some money, a very useful and necessary thing for a man with a large family, but he always felt that they kept him from The Silmarillion, the great work whose existence we owe to his son, Christopher.

But, as he was to say in his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, “the tale grew in the telling”, so that the figure who sat before Faramir in Henneth Annûn was very different and much greater than anything that Tolkien had initially conceived. In many ways Bilbo was a figure akin to the tricksters much beloved of old English folktales like Jack the Giant Killer a figure who won the prize by quick wits and good luck. Such figures would appear in the great mythologies of Europe such as the Grail Legend merely to offer some comic relief. This is how Denethor sees Pippin later on. Faramir recognises something different in Frodo but even he does not recognise just how different Frodo is.

If there is hope to be found in Faramir’s world then perhaps it might be found in “the sword of Elendil” that Aragorn wields, but Faramir is right in saying that the best that Aragorn can do is to put off the evil day. The victory won at the Pelennor Fields is just such a thing. The army that Aragorn leads that follows this victory is “scarce as many as the vanguard of [Gondor’s] army in the days of its power”, such as the army that overthrew the Witch-king of Angmar in Eriador. Aragorn knows that his assault upon Mordor is utterly impossible. There is only one hope, the fool’s hope that Frodo can take the Ring to Mount Doom and destroy it there.

It is here that I would argue that only an imagination formed by long practice of Christian faith is capable of creating the figures of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. I am prepared to be persuaded that other religious traditions are capable of this but even then would argue that if they are then they will be very closely akin to Christianity at this point. Even many who call themselves Christian do not look for hope in the unlooked-for places. Like Faramir we cannot imagine what they might be so we do not look beyond the tried and tested or beyond a slightly better version of what we already know.

But I think that I might be judging Faramir too harshly. When he finally discovers Frodo’s mission through Sam’s unintentional assistance he recognises it for what it is. He knows that all the truth that he has ever learned, in Númenor that was, Elvenhome that is and above and beyond all “that which is beyond Elvenhome, and will ever be” has led him to the moment when he can see that Frodo’s mission is the hope of the West and that, at the same time, it is a fool’s hope as well.

“We Look towards Númenor That Was, and Beyond to Elvenhome That Is, and To That Which is Beyond Elvenhome and Will Ever Be”. Faramir Prepares to Eat in The Divine Presence.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 882-884

While on the journey to Henneth Annûn, Faramir had spoken to Frodo and Sam about his love for the memory, the ancientry, the beauty and the present wisdom of the city of the Men of Númenor, Minas Tirith, and his desire, therefore, to defend that city against Sauron, the Lord of Darkness. Faramir lives in a big world and before he sits to eat with his guests and his men he leads them all in a simple ceremony in which all stand and face west “in a moment of silence”.

This is the only ceremony that takes place throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings until the crowning of the High King of Gondor and of Arnor. There might be an argument to be made that the peoples of Middle-earth are ritually malnourished, an argument that could be made about the West in our own time, but Tolkien had good reason not to give his secondary creation a ritual structure. His creation was a mythical history of our own world but in a world before the incarnation of Christ, the True Myth as he famously explained to C.S Lewis, the moment in which myth and history became one in first century Palestine.

Faramir remembers “Elvenhome that is” as depicted by Alan Lee.

His anxiety was that any attempt to create a ritual life for his sub-creation would at best be inadequate and at worst idolatrous. There is only one place of worship built in the whole of Tolkien’s legendarium and that was built by Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor, for the worship of Morgoth because Ar-Pharazôn had been seduced by Sauron who had convinced him that Morgoth was the ultimate power of the universe. So the only place of worship was idolatrous and rejected by Elendil, the Elf-friend, and his followers, of whom Faramir was a descendant.

So when Faramir leads his men in a moment of ritual before they sit to eat it is done in silence so that there can be no danger of idolatry, the worship of that which is false. But this does not mean that there is no content to the ceremony and when Faramir explains it to Frodo he shows him the world in which he lives.

“We look towards Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.”

Númenor is the memory and the ancientry of which Faramir spoke upon the way. While the Númenor of Ar-Pharazôn was destroyed by a great wave by Eru Ilúvatar at the end of the Second Age Elendil escaped with his followers to Middle-earth and created there the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. Elendil honoured the ancient friendship that the Númenorians had enjoyed with the Elves, a friendship that meant that he fought alongside Gil-galad in the last great alliance between Elves and Men that overthrew Sauron taking the Ring from his hand. Faramir recognises this as he speaks of Elvenhome that is, Valinor that lies beyond the wreck of Númenor.

And he also recognises “that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be”. He recognises God, Eru Ilúvatar, the source of all being and life. Later when he takes Éowyn into his arms for the very first time he tells her of the wave that destroyed Númenor. In doing this he shows that he understands that Eru had intervened once directly in the affairs of Arda and also feels that something similar has just happened at the moment in which the Ring has gone to the Fire.

Frodo feels “strangely rustic and untutored” when Faramir explains all this to him. He recognises that Faramir lives in a bigger world than he does. Faramir probably lives in a bigger world than any of his men but because they honour him as their leader so too they honour his inner life and that which he believes. He is the greatest holder of the memory, the ancientry, the beauty and the present wisdom of his people. One man holds all of this, a fragile link with it all, but the world in which Faramir lives is not held by him. He is held by it as are his men and his people whether they do so consciously or not. Soon Faramir’s world will be assaulted by the darkness and tested to its very limits. It will stand, not because of its own might, but because of that which stands beneath, around and within it, and will hold it even and especially in its darkest moments.

“At Least by Good Chance We Come at The Right Hour to Reward You For Your Patience.” Frodo and Sam Come to Henneth Annûn, the Window of the Sunset.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 878-881

The journey to the place of refuge in which Frodo and Sam will stay that night is not an easy one, especially for Frodo and Sam for they will have to make the journey blindfold. But even Gollum, who we glimpsed briefly through Sam’s eyes at the beginning of this passage seems to be thrown off the trail.

But at the last, after a journey that Tolkien describes by means of the language of sound, the hobbits arrive at their place of rest and find it to be a place of beauty. For Frodo and Sam this will be their last place of refuge upon their long journey before they enter Mordor and there will be no refuge there. The first was at Woody End when they were guests of Gildor Inglorien and his company and there have been many along the way. The house of Tom Bombadil, the Prancing Pony at Bree, the Last Homely House at Rivendell, the secret land of Lothlórien, and now this. Of all the places in which they have rested this provides the least comfort but it is a safe place and it has its reward for those who rest there.

See Alan Lee’s beautiful depiction of the Elves refuge in Woody End.

“They stood on a wet floor of polished stone, the doorstep, as it were, of a rough hewn gate of rock opening dark behind them. But in front a thin veil of water was hung, so near that Frodo could have put an outstretched arm into it. It faced westward. The level shafts of the setting sun behind beat upon it, and the red light was broken into many flickering beams of ever changing colour. It was as if they stood at the window of some elven-tower, curtained with threaded jewels of silver and gold, and ruby, sapphire and amethyst, all kindled with an unconsuming fire.”

If elves had come to this place they would have fashioned a place of wonder just as they did at Woody End in the Shire. They would have learned what the place had to teach them through patient attention and then worked with it to reveal that wonder. As Gimli showed us at the glittering caves of Aglarond that dwarves would pay attention to the gifts of the earth in order to reveal them. And hobbits would discover that which would make it homely just as they had done in the Shire.

But these gifts are gifts of peace and now there is no time to practice them. The men of Gondor have made it a place of temporary shelter just as soldiers did in the trenches of the Western Front in the 1914-18 war in which Tolkien played his part. Whether Faramir returned to Henneth Annûn after the war we are not told but I like to imagine that he did and that some of Legolas’s promised elves from the woodland realm offered their services to create a kingly hall here.

But Frodo and Sam are able to find beauty wherever they go. Perhaps, as Frodo suggests when his eyes are blindfolded, it is a gift that he shares with all hobbits. He spoke at that moment of how, when the Fellowship had entered Lothlórien Gimli had sought to resist the Elves insistence that their eyes should have been blindfolded but that “the hobbits endured it”.

The willingness of hobbits to endure is one of the great gifts that they bring to the story. Of course they are capable of heroic deeds when called upon to undertake them but they do not look for such things. Merry and Pippin are carried across Rohan bound by orcs and Sam follows where Frodo goes without seeking any comfort for himself. And Frodo endures the Ring that he never sought, never desired,but which simply came to him. Later Frodo will be carried into Mordor by orcs and at the end he will be carried up Mount Doom by Sam.

“And do you seek great things for yourself, seek them not,” was a favourite text from the bible of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian and resister of the Nazi tyranny, and one that he pondered often while in prison. And the text continues, “but I will give your life as a prize of war” (Jeremiah 45.5). Bonhoeffer learnt that life was to lived as something given, not shaped by ourselves, just as prisoners of war are allowed to live. Frodo understands life in this way and one of the rewards of his patience is an ability to find beauty at many unexpected times and places.

“Better Fear Undeserved Than Rash Words”. Can Frodo Trust Faramir?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

The question of trust is one of life’s greatest challenges. When we are able to trust someone it creates a liberty that enlivens and energises like nothing else. When trust is betrayed the very foundations of the soul are undermined. In Dante’s Inferno it is traitors who are placed in the deepest circle of hell. Faramir himself has had to struggle with the question, “Can he trust Frodo?”. When he was interrogating Frodo after the battle against the Haradrim it was the one thing that he was striving to establish. Boromir was dead and here was someone who clearly had known him. Had Frodo played some part in his brother’s death?

“Treachery not the least.” Can Faramir trust Frodo? Anke Eissman depicts Faramir’s interrogation of Frodo.

One of the central themes of The Lord of the Rings is the creation of the bonds of fellowship. Fellowship is in the very title of the first volume of Tolkien’s great work, the one title in which he had full confidence, having wished himself that the book should have been published in a single volume and not three as his publisher decided to do. When Elrond formed the Fellowship following the Council in Rivendell and Frodo’s courageous offer to carry the Ring to the Fire of Orodruin in Mordor he had two purposes. One was the decision to choose nine walkers to stand in opposition to the Nazgûl, Sauron’s nine riders. This was a symbolic choice and not a practical one. Perhaps only Gandalf of the nine could match any of the Nazgûl in combat. That one of the hobbits should play a part in the death of their chief was due, not to his prowess in battle, but to the part played by deeper and providential forces at work, another of the central themes of Tolkien’s great work.

The other purpose in Elrond’s choice, and the purpose that we are considering in this reflection, was to create a fellowship of the free peoples of Middle-earth; elves, men, dwarves and hobbits. That these had been sundered from one another over long years had been one of the greatest sorrows of its long history. There had been no alliance of men and elves since the end of the Second Age and the war against Sauron in which Elendil the only High King of both Gondor and Arnor, and Gil-galad, the last High King of the Elves in Middle-earth, were able, just, to stand against Sauron in battle and to overthrow him. Indeed it had been one of Sauron’s main purposes throughout the Third Age once he began to take shape again following his defeat and the loss of the Ring, was to weaken those essential bonds of fellowship among his enemies. Elves and Dwarves had long mistrust in one another as we learned when Gimli came to Lothlorian. Indeed it was one of the greatest fruits of the stay of the Fellowship in that land that Gimli gave his heart to Galadriel and formed a deep friendship with Legolas, the son of an elven king who had once held Gimli’s own father prisoner. Elves and Men had become sundered as the elves had slowly withdrawn into secret lands and a secret way of living, the outcome of which was that elves had become a thing of legend in the minds of men, even an uncanny thing, a thing to be feared little less than Mordor itself. And hobbits, if they were known at all, were largely disregarded as a people of small consequence.

Throughout the Third Age it was examples of friendship between its free peoples that was always remarkable. Elrond’s own “Last Homely House” in Rivendell was a place of hospitality to all free peoples, and its way, The Prancing Pony in Bree played a similar role but on a lesser scale. That Elves never made use of its welcome played its part in the growing belief amongst other peoples that they were fey and to be feared. The west door of Moria through which the Fellowship entered with such difficulty had a password of beguiling simplicity. All a traveller needed to do in order to gain access to the greatest kingdom of the Dwarves was to say the word, friend, and the door would open. And the friendship between Dale and the kingdom under the mountain, near neighbours in the north of Middle-earth, was a rare example of friendship between Dwarves and Men.

Indeed each of these examples brought prosperity and strength and it was to deepen, even create, friendship to which Gandalf devoted his long sojourn in Middle-earth, using Narya, the even ring of fire to “rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill. In our own human history it was the creation of Christian monasteries, first formed in the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the 4th century, and then in the West of Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire, places of hospitality, learning and healing, that played a central role in the renewing of Europe, giving a part to friendship in the history of that continent that stood in sharp distinction to the role of power in the Roman Empire and in the many attempts to recreate empire in the centuries since that time.

So can Frodo trust Faramir? Or is fear, even if undeserved, a wiser cause of action? Perhaps the whole future of Middle-earth rests upon the choice that Frodo will make. Fortunately for all it is Sam’s simplicity that will make the choice for all and that is wonderfully providential.

“I Do Not Love The Bright Sword For Its Sharpness, Nor the Arrow For Its Swiftness, Nor The Warrior For His Glory.” Faramir Speaks of War.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

Faramir is a warrior. When Éowyn first meets him in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields she assesses him shrewdly as a warrior herself, “bred among men of war, that here was one that no Rider of the Mark could outmatch in battle”.

But Faramir does not love war or the way of the warrior. After the War of the Ring and after he marries Éowyn of Rohan he will devote his life to the arts of peace. Together with his bride he will restore the land of Ithilien to its former beauty. Later in his encounter with Frodo and Sam Faramir will say of the Shire, “Your land must be a place of peace and content, and there must gardeners be in high honour”.

Faramir would be a gardener himself, not an industrial scale food producer, one who reduces the land to compliant submission with pesticides and chemical fertilisers, but one who would allow the land to find its true wildness in which the growing of food would take its natural place. In essence he would be one who would re-unite the Ents and the Entwives, if that were possible, working as a sub-creator to make a land where both could live at peace with one another. When Treebeard met Merry and Pippin and learnt of the Shire he commented that it was a land that the Entwives would love. The Ents would love the Old Forest, a land in which the hobbits felt themselves to be alien. Is there a land where both could live together in harmony?

But here we must return to the reality of war. Faramir is now a warrior by necessity. Mordor has already seized control of Ithilien and Faramir and his men are operating behind enemy lines. And they would take the rest of Gondor too and then land by land the rest of Middle-earth also. Mordor is an empire that would make the whole earth its slave, that would make it like Mordor itself. So, as Faramir puts it himself, “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all”.

So Tolkien was not a pacifist in an absolute sense, one who regards war as unjustified in all cases, even that in which an enslaving enemy seeks to devour a peaceful land. But neither Tolkien, nor Faramir, love war for its own sake.

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.”

This is a theme that runs throughout all Tolkien’s works. That the arts of peace are superior to the arts of war. We remember the last words that Thorin Oakenshield said to Bilbo as he lay dying after the Battle of the Five Armies. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold it would be a merrier world.” And yet, as Aragorn says at the Council of Elrond, the northern lands of which the Shire is one would have known little of peace unless they had been defended. “What roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the Dúnedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave?”

So Tolkien never quite resolves the question of how much must a land and its people be prepared to defend themselves against potential threat, and perhaps it can never be fully resolved. So Faramir must be a warrior by necessity even though he longs to practice the arts of peace. And perhaps this is where we must leave the debate for now. Perhaps Faramir gives us a sense of how to live with this tension. He is trained for war and yet longs for peace, He is unyielding in war as he showed in the battle against the Haradrim in which we first met him and yet he is gentle in all his dealings with the hobbits who are now his prisoners. Such a tension requires a hard practice and discipline. The fruit of that discipline is the man who now speaks his heart to Frodo, one of the greatest of all Tolkien’s creations.

“Not a Mistress of Many Slaves, Not Even a Kind Mistress of Willing Slaves.” Faramir Speaks of Patriotism to Frodo and Sam.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 874-878

As Faramir guides Frodo and Sam towards Henneth Annûn he speaks thoughts aloud that, perhaps, he has not shared with anyone else. We have already met his brother, Boromir and know that he was a man of a very different spirit. Later we will meet his father, Denethor, and we will learn that Faramir could not have shared his heart with him. Denethor, as we will learn, discerned much of what lay in his younger son’s heart and laid the blame for this at Gandalf’s door. There is little doubt that Gandalf was a great influence upon Faramir. As with Frodo in the Shire and Aragorn in Rivendell he found out young men and taught them, but they needed to be young men of the right spirit. That Frodo, Aragorn and Faramir all emerged at exactly the same time must have been the cause of great delight for one who came to teach, as Gandalf had done. For it was through teaching, not through the exercise of power, that Gandalf came to change the world.

Last week we learned that Faramir too had no desire for power if it came from an evil source. He has some sense of the nature of Isildur’s Bane even though he does not yet know that it is the Ring of Power that Sauron made to enable him to rule all things. Now we learn what Faramir believes about power itself and the power of his own country.

“For myself,” said Faramir, “I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Arnor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves.”

Tolkien wrote these words towards the end of an age in which his own country, Great Britain, had ruled over an empire, greater in area and in population, than any that had existed before it. By the time he died, in 1973, most of this empire had gone. One particular empire no longer existed but the idea of empire was as strong as ever. The British Empire had been one of many that had existed throughout world history and after its decline and fall it has not been the idea of empire that has disappeared, merely a particular expression of that idea.

As you can see, I have used the word, decline, in speaking of this history and that is how it is usually understood. For about a century after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain was the greatest world power but the story since then has been one of decline. The assumption made here is that the exercise of power, if you have it, is how things are. And when power is spoken of it is military power that we are speaking about. We remember that when Boromir spoke at the Council of Elrond he made reference to the counsel that his host might offer in a somewhat dismissive manner. This “counsel” was all that he expected. It was only when discussion turned to the Ring that he became really interested because he understood this kind of power.

Faramir understood power in a very different way. For him power was meant to be exercised for the good of all; “a queen among other queens”. And the power of Gondor was to be first and foremost power in wisdom, of goodness, beauty and truth. To achieve power in which wisdom was absent was of no value at all. It was a thing to be left by the side of the highway, a piece of rubbish that we notice, if at all, and then pass by.

We might ponder how the history of the Americas, or of Africa, might have been different if Europeans had come, not to conquer but the mutual exchange of teaching and learning. We might wonder in what way the history of the world might have been different. Next week we will think about what part the ability to wage war has to play in such a world. Faramir recognises that this ability will always be necessary in a world in which some will seek dominance over others. After all, he is a soldier himself, and a very good one. But his dream is not the one that Boromir spoke of to Frodo when he tried to take the Ring. He does not wish others to flock to his banner because of his martial prowess. Faramir wishes to be a great teacher. Gandalf, not Saruman or Sauron, is his model.