Aragorn

The King and The Healing of Faramir

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It is not so much the wound that Faramir received in battle that brings him close to death. Aragorn reaches the heart of the matter when he says to Imrahil, “Weariness, grief for his father’s mood, a wound, and over all the Black Breath”. All these things have finally overcome the valiant Faramir. All his life he has resisted the creeping shadow both in the rise of Mordor beyond the borders of Gondor and within the hearts of his own people and now, at last, his hope is gone.

It is not by Athelas alone that Aragorn heals Faramir. Tolkien does not enter into any explanation of the process but simply describes what Aragorn does.

“Now Aragorn knelt beside Faramir, and held a hand upon his brow. And those who watched him felt that some great struggle was going on. For Aragorn’s face grew grey with weariness; and ever and anon he called the name of Faramir, but each time more faintly to their hearing, as if Aragorn himself was removed from them, and walked in some dark vale, calling for one who is lost.”

What Tolkien describes here is some form of the coinherence about which the Inklings used to speak and an idea which was introduced to them by Charles Williams. Williams believed that Christians could voluntarily bear the suffering or burden of another and so aid their healing. Aragorn’s apparent journey away from himself and his profound weariness as he makes this journey seems to suggest that this is what is happening. For those who would like to explore this idea further I would warmly recommend the work of Sørina Higgins on Charles Williams which you can explore by going to https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com and clicking on coinherence in the tags on the right hand side of the page.

It may be that Aragorn is able to call Faramir back from his journey towards death by this means but the healing is made complete when Bergil arrives with athelas. Aragorn crushes two leaves and casts them into a bowl of water and life is restored to both the healer and the one who is near to death.

“The fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.”

As you read the account of the healings in this beautiful chapter you will note that the fragrance of athelas is somehow different for each person that is healed. It is a beautiful expression of the unique relationship between the one who is hurt, the means of their healing and the healer. Surely in Faramir’s case we catch a glimpse, just for a moment, of his deepest yearning. When Faramir explained to Frodo the meaning of the ceremony that he and his men observed before eating in Henneth Anûn he spoke of his longing for the restoring of Gondor and also for something deeper even than that longing. He spoke of “that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be”.   https://stephencwinter.com/2015/09/08/faramir-remembers-that-which-is-beyond-elvenhome-and-will-ever-be/

Faramir has long pondered that which Númenor and even Valinor can only point to. He is one who cannot stay at the surface of things and so passes through his experience as son of the Steward of Gondor through the history of his people and unto their origins in Númenor. And on arriving there and pondering both its glory and its fall under the shadow he goes deeper yet until he comes to Valinor which is forever closed to them. He will know that it is at the surface of Valinor the deathless land that the corrupted kings of Númenor stayed and so desired to possess it and the gift of immortality and so he passes deeper yet to what lies beyond Elvenhome. This is what he and all in the Houses of Healing glimpse just for a moment. It is a glimpse into the most secret place within his soul, into his most true self, even into the deepest reality of all and so he is called back from the shadows into light and life and into service of the king for whose return he has long waited.

“Come Athelas! Come Athelas! Life to the Dying in the King’s Hand Lying!”

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As Aragorn crushes two leaves of athelas in his hands after breathing upon them “straightway a living freshness filled the room, as if the air itself awoke and tingled, sparkling with joy”. And so begins Aragorn’s healing journey from Faramir to Éowyn and then to Merry.

I said last week that I have been looking forward to writing about this chapter in The Lord of the Rings for some time now and so I don’t intend to rush through it. I also intend at some point to include a guest blog from a young writer whose work has impressed me so do look out for that. But this week I want to begin with something a little more personal, a memory that was jogged as I read the chapter again last week. And it was the description of the fragrance of athelas that I refer to here.

Readers will remember that when Frodo was wounded in the attack of the Nazgûl upon the camp beneath Weathertop Aragorn had Sam look for kingsfoil and they will remember how its fragrance lifted their hearts and its virtue stayed the evil influence of the poison in Frodo’s wound long enough for them to reach Rivendell. Now as Aragorn is revealed as king the fragrance is immeasurably greater and so too is the healing virtue. It “came to each like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.” And what follows for each is a fragrance that speaks of the particular way in which each is healed, made whole.

What this recalled for me was a dream that I had about fifteen years ago. In my dream I find myself in a hotel bedroom with a woman lying beside me and water pouring through a crack in the ceiling over my head. I climb out of bed telling the woman (who I never identify) that I will go and get the problem sorted out and find myself immediately in a field with a fence to my right and a long queue of people in front of me. I ask someone what the queue is about and they tell me that the Pope is in a shed in the field just up ahead and that they are waiting to see him. I decide to wait too and soon find myself in the darkened shed. The Pope is John Paul II and he is in the last stage of his life, a frail old man. Behind him a priest with shadowed face waits in attendance. No one speaks. I simply know that I must kneel before the Pope and wait for his blessing. He lays his hands upon my head and as he does so the room is filled with the most wonderful fragrance. I stand up knowing that everything is alright and that I do not need to return to the hotel room.

Of course it is my memory of the fragrance in the dream that was recalled when I read this chapter once again and it is the fragrance in relation to the revelation of Aragorn as king that I want to briefly ponder here as I think about my dream. In his book on male initiation, Adam’s Return, Richard Rohr thinks about the power of the king archetype that is so rarely revealed in most men except in its dark form in the bully or in the weak form endlessly complaining that no one is paying sufficient attention to him. Rohr describes the true king as “the master of all power, so much so that he can risk looking powerless… The kingly part of a man connects heaven and earth, spiritual and material, divine and human, inner and outer. When you meet a man who seems a bit larger than life, you know he has some king energy. He is a healer of souls.”

The king that I met within myself in my dream was old, not fearing to risk looking powerless. The power came in the blessing which is the true revelation of the king energy just as it is in Aragorn. My disordered state was healed in turning to the king energy within me. I can say quite candidly that it is still being healed to this very day but I am learning in my contemplative practice where to turn and I think there is hope for me yet.

The Hands of the King are The Hands of a Healer. Aragorn in The Houses of Healing.

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I have been looking forward to this part of The Lord of the Rings for some time now. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been carefully reading Tolkien’s wonderful story and that each week I write a reflection or meditation inspired by what I have just been reading. And so in recent weeks I have been reading Tolkien’s account of The Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the Death of Théoden and the Fall of the Witch King of Angmar at the hands of Éowyn of Rohan and Meriadoc Brandybuck of The Shire.

And now I want to turn to the beautiful account of the coming of the King to The Houses of Healing and in the weeks to come we will walk with him to the beds of Faramir, Éowyn and Merry and feel for ourselves the power of the king and perhaps, from afar, catch the fragrance of athelas. 

And just in case regular readers may have noticed that I have not made any reference to the timely arrival of Aragorn upon the battlefield that is because I want to reflect on that event through the telling of the story by Legolas and Gimli.

The battle that has been fought has been unlike any other in that a power is at work in the wounded that is named “the Black Shadow, for it came from the Nazgûl”. Tolkien tells us that “those who were stricken with it fell slowly into an ever deeper dream, and then passed to silence and a deadly cold, and so died”. Viktor Frankl describes something remarkably similar in his account of working as an inmate physician in the Nazi concentration camps with nothing more available to him than a few bottles of aspirin. He noted that if someone lost hope and a sense of meaning then they would almost certainly soon die. But if they were able to hold onto hope and meaning then there was a good chance that they might survive the many epidemics that swept through the camps even though they were half starved.

It is the coming of the king that brings hope and meaning to the stricken. In their seminal work, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette describe the energy of the King Archetype as being one that brings order and a sense that everything is in its right place without anything needing to be forced and as one that brings blessing and fruitfulness. It is not just Aragorn who brings this archetype to bear. We saw the impact that Théoden’s arising from his chair to lead his people once again had upon them. It was literally transformative. This transformation shows why Saruman and his agent, Wormtongue, put so much effort into unmanning the king. And now in the account of the events in the Houses of  Healing Tolkien makes it clear that Gandalf is unable to heal those who have fallen under the Black Shadow. It is not that Aragorn has a magic that Gandalf does not have but that he can connect to the King Archetype in a way that Gandalf cannot. Aragorn is the king.

In English history the belief that the king or the queen was a healer persisted right into the 18th century and a liturgy for the royal touch was included in the Book of Common Prayer that was possessed by most literate people of the time. It was only with the growing influence of the Enlightenment that the monarch came just to make a gift of money instead of also laying hands upon the sick. The Queen still makes the gift in a service on Maundy Thursday each year. Shakespeare wonderfully describes the older practice in lines from Macbeth,

“Strangely visited people, all swol’n and ulcerous,  pitiful to the eye, the mere despair of surgery, he cures, hanging a golden stamp about their necks, put on with holy prayers.”

It is this ancient belief that Tolkien draws upon here in the stories of Aragorn’s healings, and ancient belief that I would argue was seen at work in Viktor Frankl’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps. Frankl showed implicitly in a way that Moore and Gillette do explicitly that access to the King Archetype is available to all of us and will order, heal and bless.

 

Théoden and The Lord of the Nazgûl

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It is but thirteen days since Gandalf came to Edoras and restored a shrivelled old man to life and to vigour. Now his body lies broken upon the field of battle and life ebbs swiftly away. It is Merry who is near him at the end, who hears the words of a man at peace.

“Farewell, Master Holbytla!” he said. “My body is broken. I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not now be ashamed. I felled the black serpent. A grim morn, and a black day, and a golden sunset!”

And we remember, that day after day, the wizened creature enslaved by the leechcraft of Grima Wormtongue had to look upon the image of his mighty forefather, Eorl the Young, as he rode to victory and glory long ago and so won the plains of Calenardhon for his people as a gift from the Steward of Gondor. Doubtless this torture was a part of Wormtongue’s purpose as the shame Théoden felt worked its way into his heart and so unmanned him. It was from this that Gandalf freed him so that he could lead his people into battle, casting down the chieftain of the Haradrim and his serpent banner and driving his forces from the field. And it was from this that Gandalf freed him so that he could lie broken before the wreck of the Lord of the Nazgûl and the foul monster that the Ringwraith had ridden through the air into the battle.

If Gandalf had failed to heal him or if he had chosen to leave him in his chair then doubtless Théoden would have held onto life a little longer. For many it is this clinging onto life that is regarded as the final work of old age and when the weakness and the pain of the last days of life is borne with courage as it was by Pope John Paul II who allowed the world to watch his final struggle and, as I remember it, by my own father who bore great pain with quiet dignity in his last days, then this is praiseworthy. But to hold onto life merely for the sake of extending our existence just a short while longer is hardly an achievement of any merit.

At the ending of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen Aragorn speaks to Arwen as he draws near to the end of his great life. Arwen finds the choice of her husband to lay down his life a hard one but Aragorn replies, “Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and fall from my high seat unmanned and witless.”

Aragorn chooses the grace given to the Númenorians by the Valar of old to lay down their lives freely and so entrust themselves to the mystery of death unafraid. “In sorrow we must go,”  he says, “but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

Aragorn lays down his life in freedom in the glory of his kingship. Théoden lays down his life in freedom upon the field of battle in the glory of a promise kept and his people raised from shame to honour. It is this freedom that is the essence of both in the ending of their lives. At the end of his great book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, puts it like this, “Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.” Frankl recognised that our choice to find life as meaningful is the greatest one that we make and that we must make it daily. Théoden made the choice on that day in Edoras, made it again on the Pelennor Fields and so he ends his life in peace.

The Boldness of the One Necessary Deed

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For a few moments before they take what rest they can Gandalf and Pippin speak together of the debate with Denethor and Faramir. For Pippin the question that is uppermost in his mind is whether there is any hope for Frodo, any hope for any of them? Gandalf’s reply is to take Denethor’s words and to make them his own.

“There never was much hope,” he answered. “Just a fool’s hope, as I have been told.”

And even this hope, slender as it is, is shaken by news that Frodo and Sam seek to enter Mordor by way of Cirith Ungol and guided by Gollum.

But then Gandalf begins to give a little substance to his hope. The substance comprises two hobbits and their treacherous guide, a foolish hobbit gazing into the Seeing Stone of Orthanc drawn by his own curiosity, and a captain, “bold, determined, able to take his own counsel and dare great risks at need” who challenges Sauron in the very same stone. All are bold deeds, even that of Pippin’s foolish act but they amount to very little. Of themselves they will win no battles. Of themselves they cannot withstand the armies of Mordor.

But it is the boldness that exposes both Sauron’s desire and his fear. His desire we know. He desires the Ring and he desires the power that the Ring can bring him. We know that Sauron has become reduced to little more than the sum of his desire. He is no more than a bigger version of the hungry Gollum. “Eat fish every day!” When we saw that desire in Gollum we found it pathetic, even sadly laughable. Somehow when such desire is allied to power it seems to have a semblance of dignity but it is in essence the same thing, both entirely destructive and ultimately empty.

And because Sauron of his own prideful choice can see all reality only in terms of scale, “who or what is bigger or smaller than he is?”, he has a strange and fearful vulnerability. The foolish boldness of Frodo and Sam is something that does even enter his calculations. The Council of Elrond declared that at the very outset of Frodo’s mission. It is an action that is beneath even his contempt and certainly outside of his understanding. No one who possesses the Ring could possibly do so with the intention of not using it, even destroying it! This is the weakness that Frodo and Sam expose.

But there is also something that Aragorn’s boldness exposes and that is his fear. All things seek to hide from Sauron. Until now even Aragorn has done so. Now he challenges him face to face, the heir of Isildur displaying Narsil, the sword that once took the Ring from Sauron’s finger, reforged. This alone brings doubt into Sauron’s mind but it is connected to something else and that is to Pippin’s foolishness. Sauron has seen the face of a hobbit, associating it with the fall of Saruman. Does the heir of Isildur possess the Ring? And so he launches his attack just a little too soon.

What hope Gandalf can find in this remains slender. All that he can offer to Pippin at the end in response to Pippin’s anxiety about Gollum is one of those proverbs that can mean either one thing or another. You take your choice. But Gandalf takes his leave of Pippin with a firm “Good night!” and his determination is renewed.

Such boldness is what is meant by the story that Jesus told in the Gospels of the man who on finding the treasure in the field goes away and sells all that he has in order to buy the field. At that moment there remains no more place for calculation only for the deed. This does not mean that such recklessness becomes the determining principle for every action. There is a place for caution and for prudence especially when care for others is concerned but happy is the one who listens so carefully that they know that all caution must be set aside for the one necessary deed.

 

“He Would Have Brought Me a Mighty Gift.” Denethor and the Ring.

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Denethor sits with Faramir and Gandalf in his chamber with Pippin standing in attendance. Until now he has maintained a courteous front but in the presence of his son, the wrong son, the mask slips and both his anger, his resentment and his desire are displayed to all.

“Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard’s pupil. He would have remembered his father’s need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift.”

With these words Denethor displays his lack of self-knowledge. He believes himself to be greater than the Ring. Lesser beings than himself may fear the Ring but he is not weak as they are. He is the Steward of Gondor and a true son of Númenor and the Ring holds no terror for such as he. And when Gandalf asks him what he would have done with the Ring Denethor replies:

“It should have been kept, hidden, hidden dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need, but set beyond his grasp, save by a victory so final that what befell would not trouble us, being dead.”

So Denethor would use the Ring “at the uttermost end of need” and he judges that he above all others has the capacity to judge when that time has come. We have seen already that the Ring will twist the heart of even the strongest. Gandalf and Galadriel have both been offered it by Frodo and both have been sorely tempted to take it but both have resisted the temptation. Denethor does not even recognise this as a temptation. To him it would be a gift, an opportunity to be grasped by the bold and by those who are worthy to receive it. And he judges himself to be worthy.

Denethor has lived his life as one given to fantasy. In his fantasy he is the wise and benevolent lord of the West, the one who achieves the final victory over Sauron and all his allies, the one who receives the grateful thanks and submission of all free peoples, the one who rules over them in wisdom and might. In another post at a later date on this blog we will think more about Denethor and the Palantir but suffice to say on this occasion that Sauron, who sees all weakness in others but never their greatness, has fed this fantasy over many years. Indeed the very reason that Denethor has used the Palantir is because of this fantasy. Denethor believes himself to be strong enough to use it even as he believes himself strong enough to use the Ring. But his belief is a delusion. He has disastrously misjudged his own capacity.

True strength and true wisdom involves the capacity to judge these things aright. The strong know their weakness better than any. This is why Faramir does not take the Ring, either for himself or for Denethor and why Aragorn deems that he can challenge Sauron in the Palantir. Faramir knows that he could only take possession of the Ring by force against one weaker than himself and he will not dishonour himself and all that he holds dear by doing so. Not even his father’s specious argument of “uttermost need” could persuade him otherwise. On the other hand Aragorn is the heir of Elendil to whom the Palantir were given and so he judges that he has the right and the strength to use it. Denethor has neither the right nor the strength either to take the Ring nor use the Palantir. He recognises only that he has the opportunity and he misjudges his own strength. The end can only be disaster.

We must achieve wise self-knowledge if we are to act rightly and an essential part of this is to know our weakness. When we are given an honourable job to do then we should act with all boldness believing that we will be given strength to do it. This is why Frodo can take the Ring even though he is only too aware of his weakness. Denethor on the other hand does not and so Gandalf is glad that the Ring never fell within his grasp.

 

Peregrin Took’s Journey from Boyhood to Manhood

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After the tale of how Eówyn and Merry ride to war together Tolkien takes us back to Minas Tirith and to the unhappy Peregrin Took, lonely, hungry and afraid as war draws ever closer.

“Why did you bring me here?” He asks Gandalf and the answer brings him little comfort.

“You know quite well,” said Gandalf. “To keep you out of mischief; and if you do not like being here, you can remember that you brought it on yourself.”

I said that Gandalf’s answer gave him little comfort and that is true in the sense that we normally mean it, to take a child in our arms and to hold that child in loving safety until the unhappiness passes. That is the right thing to do with a small child and not to give a child that kind of comfort is to deny her or him something very precious. In order to become a true man or woman a child must know the happy innocence of the garden but there comes a time when either the child must either leave the garden or the world outside will enter it by force.

Pippin probably thought that when he left the Shire to go with Frodo and Sam that it was a glorious “growing up” moment in his happy life. All that lay ahead was adventure and Tolkien must have been thinking about the young men crowding into the recruiting stations at the outset of the First World War in happy expectation of something magnificent before the reality hit home in the long misery of war in the trenches.

Pippin does not realise that something of great significance is happening to him. He only knows that he feels unhappy. Even when he is attired in the magnificent livery of the Tower Guard, something that once would have given him great delight he simply feels uncomfortable “and the gloom began to weigh on his spirits.”

An immature person just tries to make the gloom go away just as Pippin wants it to go. From time to time in this blog we have looked at Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s fine study of the masculine psyche, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.  Moore and Gillette show the importance of these classical archetypes in shaping each man’s life. A boy who has grown up in the garden protected by good parents and a nurturing community will journey towards the adult king by way of becoming a divine child, a chosen one. He will journey towards the adult warrior by way of becoming a hero and some might think that the hero is the adult warrior. The journey to the adult magician is by way of the precious child and to the adult lover by way of the oedipal child.

Each of us, as we gain insight into ourselves, will see which of these archetypes are best developed in us and to what degree we are still held in an immature stage of development. In Pippin’s case it is pretty clear that the least developed aspect of his psyche is the magician. He needs Gandalf at this point in his life if he is to have any chance of growing up.

Readers might be thinking of mature men in The Lord of the Rings such as Aragorn and Faramir. They may remember that we spent some weeks last year thinking about Faramir when Frodo and Sam were with him in the refuge of Henneth Anûn and that he has little interest in being the hero of the story. His focus lies solely in doing the job. His desire is not his own glory but the restoration of Gondor; not just that Gondor wins but that something of the true greatness of Númenor should live again among his people. That is why he will welcome Aragorn as king with joy. Something that his father could not do.

Pippin is on the way to becoming a man and Gandalf knows that he is. That is why he does not treat him like a child. Pippin has to be miserable and to do his duty nevertheless if he is to be the “very valiant man” that Gandalf declared him to be when they first reached the defences of the Pelennor Fields.

How Do We Know if the Time has Come Unless We Try the Door?

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One night of rest remains before the host of Rohan begin the great ride to the plains before Minas Tirith. Théoden sits at table with Éomer and Eówyn upon his right and Merry upon his left. At first there is little talk as tends to be the way of it before a great event. What is there left to be said? But at last it is Merry who breaks the silence.

“Twice now, lord, I have heard of the Paths of the Dead,” he said. “What are they? And where has Strider, I mean the Lord Aragorn, where has he gone?”

Théoden does not reply but just sighs and so it is Éomer who tells Merry of the road into the mountains that Aragorn has just taken and the sad story of Baldor, son of Brego, who once dared to pass the door and who was never seen again.

Then it is Théoden who adds something to the telling of the story in order to bring some comfort and hope. He tells of how when Brego and Baldor first climbed the road in search of places of refuge in times of need they met a man of great age sitting before the door.

“The way is shut… It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. The way is shut.”

Until the time comes.

This begs the question that Éomer now asks.

“But how shall a man discover whether that time be come or no, save by daring the door?”

Éomer’s question is answered in the asking of it and we know that Aragorn has already received the answer by daring the door with his companions and has passed through safely, commanding the dead to follow him.

There are moments of crisis in our lives when a choice must be made. It is at such times that the original meaning of crisis is revealed. A crisis is a time of judgment when the reality of who we are is brought into the light and revealed for what it truly is. The unhappy Baldor swore an oath in the pride of his youth, emboldened by the strong drink in the horn that he bore and so the way remained closed to him. Aragorn passed the door as the heir of Isildur at the great moment of the Age commanding the Dead to follow him and so fulfil their oath. Aragorn knew the authority that had been given to him and knew his greatness. To know this is not pride in the sense that it was for Baldor. In Baldor’s case the swearing of the oath was an aspiration, an attempt to declare himself a man of substance, of greatness, who could command the loyalty of his men. In Aragorn’s case the greatness was not something that he sought to grasp; indeed we saw him lay it down with all his personal hope of happiness in order to follow the orcs and try to free Merry and Pippin. Aragorn’s destiny is not an aspiration but is bound with the hope of the West and so he cannot refuse the attempt to pass the door.

And what of us?

Few of us will be called to a deed in which our lives will be put at risk as Aragorn was. But most of us, at some point in our lives, will be called to take a risk, to take a lead, at great cost to ourselves. At such times it will be necessary to examine ourselves to see if what we really desire is a reputation, a name that will gain the respect of others. If we can face ourselves and say that what we desire above everything is some expression of the Common Good then we should take the risk. It may be that in doing so we will achieve a reputation but that will not be our primary purpose. And we will not know, can never  know for sure, as Éomer asked, whether the time has come or not, until the risk is taken.

 

 

Aragorn’s Banner is Revealed at the Stone of Erech

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One of the great joys of reading a great book again and again is that every time I do I discover new things. I don’t think that I have ever really paused at the Stone of Erech before. I think that I was about 14 when I read The Return of the King for the first time. I borrowed the book from my school library and after I had eaten my evening meal I began to read and did not stop until the book was finished. Reading at that speed was a thrilling experience but I missed a lot of detail. Now, nearly fifty years later, after many readings, I am here again.

And what a strange place it is to stay. The Stone of Erech stands upon a hill top and it is black, “round as a great globe, the height of a man, though its half was buried in the ground.” It was brought there by Isildur from the wreck of Númenor and it was said that in times of fear the oath breakers would gather round it, whispering. Surely they were asking whether this might be the time of their release?

And now that time has finally come.

Aragorn speaks to them. “The hour is come at last. Now I go to Pelargir upon Anduin, and ye shall come after me. And when all this land is clean of the servants of Sauron, I will hold the oath fulfilled, and ye shall have peace and depart for ever. For I am Elessar, Isildur’s heir of Gondor.”

And as he speaks he bids Halbarad to unfurl the banner that he carries, “and behold! it was black, and if there was any device upon it, it was hidden in the darkness.”

It was Arwen who created the banner in Rivendell. It was “wrought in secret, and long was the making.” Arwen is a contemplative and her work is secret. I do not want to waste time in arguing whether contemplation or action are superior to each other. Nor do I want to say that one who contemplates is superior to one who acts. Éowyn is a woman who longs to act, to do the great deed, and her desire will be fulfilled. Arwen is a woman who withdraws into the secret and the dark in order to do her work. Neither is superior to the other and both need each other. When Aragorn declares that he is king at the Stone of Erech he draws upon a strength that has been forged, not only through the longest years of his waiting, but also in the secret years of Arwen’s thought. Arwen draws her mind into her heart. By this we do not mean that she turns from thinking to feeling. She turns from all that is mere surface to the very ground of her being and from that ground flows a work of making that when revealed in the darkness at the Stone of Erech is black and calls the Dead to fulfil their oath and when revealed in a bright day at the Pelennor Fields carries a device not seen in Gondor for long years and all the hosts of Mordor are driven before it.

There is a wonderful weaving here of the mystery of contemplation in the secret place and the majesty of the deed that is done in the open and the union of Aragorn and Arwen expresses that weaving perfectly. If the work that we do is to have meaning then we must find that weaving ourselves. To some degree we must find both within ourselves and the people that we meet who are most complete will have done this work. However, most of us will tend either to the active or to the contemplative. We need each other. And when we work best it will be in a flow that comes, from an inner connectedness from a connection to one another and from the connection to the truest Ground of our Being.

 

Gimli Crawls Like a Beast on the Ground.

/ stephencwinter / 4 Comments

So we end our short season in this blog of guestposts on Eówyn of Rohan and judging by the record number of “Visitors”to the blog they have been well received. Of course, this is not the last time that we will think about Eówyn’s story. We will travel with her on the great Ride of the Rohirrim, stand with her when she faces the Lord of the Nazgûl, wait at her bedside in the Houses of Healing and delight in her reawakening as she finds love and hope with Faramir there. Some of these events within her story have already been touched upon by contributors but if you would still like to make a contribution then please send in a Word Document to mail@stephenwinter.net including a brief biographical piece on yourself and links to any work that you have done. I look forward to hearing from you.

And this week we return to the journey of Aragorn’s Company through The Paths of the Dead and Gimli’s humiliation. I look forward to reading your comments. It is always one of my favourite aspects of the blogging experience.

If we tend to do all that we can to try to avoid pain then our efforts are even greater to avoid humiliation. We hold onto a picture of ourselves that we may have spent years trying to construct. We associate that picture with words like honour and reputation. We may extend the picture to involve others so that our spouse, or other members of our family, also serve our reputation and honour. Or perhaps we may find ourselves having to uphold the reputation of a family or an organisation so that the picture that we have of ourselves is inexorably linked to that bigger picture. Sometimes this might give us strength. To be one of the Dúnedain and to follow the Lord Aragorn gives great strength and resolve to every man within that company. They know their greatness. Sometimes it will impose a great burden upon us such as when the reputation and honour of the people to which we belong is under threat as it does to Eówyn during the days when Théoden is imprisoned within the darkness of his own mind.

Whether it is the image of our self that is under threat, or the image of the people or family to which we belong, we will do all that we can to avoid humiliation. But sometimes humiliation is unavoidable. So it is with Gimli and his journey through the Paths of the Dead.

Aragorn, the sons of Elrond and the Dúnedain of the North and Legolas the Elf of the woodland realm, have all passed through the terror of the Door until Gimli is left all alone.

“His knees shook, and he was wroth with himself. ‘Here is a thing unheard of!’ he said. ‘An Elf will go underground and a Dwarf dare not!”

It is with that thought as a goad to his pride that Gimli passes through the Door but his entry is only the beginning of his trials. The fear only grows as the journey continues and especially so when the torches of the company go out.

“Of the time that followed, one hour or many, Gimli remembered little. The others pressed on, but he was ever hindmost, pursued by a groping horror that seemed always about to seize him; and a rumour came after him like the shadow sound of many feet. He stumbled on until he was crawling like a beast on the ground and he felt that he could endure no more: he must either find an ending and escape or run back in madness to meet the following fear.”

Poor Gimli! Let no one judge him unless it be one who has had to face a fear like he has although if there is one that has known such a fear then that one may also have the deepest compassion for him. I hope they will. And I hope that they will not sit in judgement upon themselves either.

Gimli could not avoid his humiliation. Either he would have turned back from the Door and crawled back to the Lonely Mountain never to face his friends again or he would enter the Door and so be reduced to the crawling thing that he is by the end of the journey. Readers of The Lord of the Rings may remember that when Aragorn leads the army to the Black Gate many go through an experience similar to Gimli’s. Aragorn does not shame them but offers them a task that enables them to avoid humiliation. Gimli has no such alternative. At this point in the story it is not a possibility. All must either go on or turn back in shame or in madness.

My hope is that all who read this will look upon all who are overcome by fear, either themselves or another, with compassion. To know fear and to pass through it, even with all pride stripped away, shapes character in a most profound manner. For such a person kindness will never be mere sentimentality but will have a depth that will reach out to others with a healing power that those who avoid fear and humiliation can never have.