Elanor

“Or If He Pleaseth, Through it Pass, and Then The Heaven Espy.” Reflections on a Visit to The Islands of Mull and Iona.

/ stephencwinter / 2 Comments

It is not necessary to die in order to go to heaven. St Catherine of Sienna, a 14th century Italian mystic teaches that for those who are going to heaven every step is heaven. I wish that I could practice this all the time but sadly I don’t. Most of the time I just see the ordinary and not, as the 17th century poet and Anglican parish priest, George Herbert put it in his poem on prayer, the “heaven in ordinary”.

Thankfully there are occasions when I really see the heaven in the ordinary and they encourage me to keep on going. Last week, in a visit that Laura and I made to the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona I enjoyed such an occasion. I will return to my regular blog on Wisdom From The Lord of the Rings again on Saturday but I would like to think about this experience today. Do let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

My photograph of St Columba’s Bay on Iona where the saint first landed 1400 years ago.

Those of you who have followed this blog for some time will know that I love the work of William Blake and that I have often gone back to lines from his Auguries of Innocence, 

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower, 
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
And eternity in an hour.

And then, surpassing even this moment if such a thing could be possible, was a meal in the Gallery Restaurant in Tobermory at lunch time. Wonderful Italian food was served at unbelievable prices and I ordered a langoustine risotto that was delicious. But the moment that surpassed everything was when I tasted a simple rocket salad. I put some of the rocket into my mouth and entered heaven directly. I have never tasted a dressing like it before and maybe I never will again. I spoke with the young Italian chef before leaving who told me that he was going to be leaving in the next couple of weeks. I told him that if that if this was true then I had been truly blessed to eat his food before he left.

I am aware that these last two paragraphs read a little like a TripAdvisor review and I intend to leave them for others to read there. But the point I wanted to make was that Blake’s point about wild flowers is that an experience of heaven is not limited to wild flowers alone but can be extended to cheese scones and a rocket salad, exquisitely dressed. In fact it can be extended to any human experience. I want to return to George Herbert before I close today. He teaches us the secret to seeing heaven through these experiences. The secret is that we need to choose to look through something and not merely at it. What we have to do is to make it our daily practice to do this.

A man that looks on glass
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.

See you all again on Saturday.

The Marriage of Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton

/ stephencwinter / 6 Comments

Tolkien gives the unmarried women of his story something that he did not give to his own wife. When critics sneered at what they regarded as the bachelor atmosphere of Tolkien’s work, a kind of Drones Club (the club in which P.G Woodhouse’s, Bertie Wooster was a member) in a heroic tale, Tolkien replied that it would be irresponsible for an unmarried man to marry before going to war. A husband is one who, in Old English, is bonded to his house and land and cannot leave them.

Tolkien did not follow this principle. As he wrote to his son, Michael in 1941:

“On January 8th I went back to her [Edith Bratt], and became engaged, and informed an astonished family. I picked up my socks and did a spot of work… and then war broke out the next year [July 28th 1914], while I still had a year to go at college. In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in, especially for a man with too much imagination and little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancee. I endured the obloquy, and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up, and produced a First in Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22nd, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel… for the carnage of the Somme.”

I will leave my readers who want to know more about the story of John and Edith to one of the excellent biographies of Tolkien. Here we are going to think a little about the story of Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton.

Sam joined up or, rather, was conscripted, in April 3018 in the Third Age or 1418 in the Shire Reckoning. He already had an understanding with Rosie Cotton and here I wish to express my admiration for Rosie. She was a farmer’s daughter. Her father owned his own house and land. Sam was only a the son of a land worker with no prospects that this might change. The heirs to Bag End were the Sackville-Bagginses and given their known reputation were unlikely to be overly generous to their retainers. Sam was only a servant and not a master. Rosie was the daughter of a master, and so, just like Gandalf, she must have seen something in him that others might have been slower to see.

Her judgement proved accurate. Sam may have left the Shire a servant but he returned to it as one of the lords of his people. Frodo says as much to the sceptical Gaffer in Rosie’s hearing. “He’s now one of the most famous people in all the lands, and they are making songs about his deeds from here to the Sea and beyond the Great River.” All of this is way beyond the Gaffer’s rather limited imagination and so he quickly puts it out of his mind but “Rosie’s eyes were shining and she was smiling at [Sam]”.

Rosie never quite understood in what way her man had become famous and so, unlike Arwen to Aragorn or Éowyn to Faramir, she never became a “soul mate” to Sam. As Sam said to Frodo, as far as Rosie was concerned, Sam had “wasted a year” in which they could have got on with the really serious business of creating a home and family.  Did Sam mind? I suspect that his reference to himself as feeling “torn in two” means that he did, at least in the half of him that longed for the life that Frodo represented. He became very close to his daughter, Elanor, and when, after Rosie died in a good old age, Sam made his last journey across the Sea to the Undying Lands, he gave the Red Book to her and to her husband, Fastred, Warden of Westmarch as he was leaving the Shire for the last time.

Rosie and Sam may not have had a deeply romantic relationship but they do not seem to have complained about the lack of one. Rosie had the satisfaction of seeing her husband become Mayor of the Shire and along with Merry and Pippin, Counsellors of the King in his northern kingdom, and Elanor become a maid of honour to the Queen.  The marriage of Rosie Cotton and Sam Gamgee was a good one and I hope that when the time came for Rosie to say farewell to this life she was able to do so in peace and in contentment.