The Ring

I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo

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Last week I promised to think about the price Faramir is prepared to pay for the saving of his people. These reflections are based on all that he says as he walks with Frodo and Sam towards the hidden refuge of Henneth Annûn after the battle against the forces of Harad.

As he walks he muses aloud about the nature of Isildur’s Bane and as he does so he gets close to its true nature. “What in Truth this thing is I cannot yet guess; but some heirloom of power and peril it must be. A fell weapon, perchance, devised by the Dark Lord.” Such a weapon, he guesses, would have been desired by Boromir if it might have given hope for the victory of Minas Tirith over its great enemy. But then he declares: “I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her,so, using the weapon of the  Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”

But why not seek the triumph of Minas Tirith? Surely the triumph of the city that has resisted the forces of darkness for so long is something worth paying any price for? How could the victory of Mordor and its lord be in any way preferable to the victory of Gondor? I think the answer lies in the memory that Faramir speaks of when he speaks of his city. Like Aragorn he is a man of the West, a man of Númenor, the great island in the Western Sea formed by the Valar as a gift to the Edain, the men who fought alongside the Elves against Morgoth, Sauron’s lord of the First Age. The men of Númenor became so mighty that they were able to defeat Sauron in the Second Age and make him a prisoner. But Sauron was able to corrupt the King of Númenor and most of its people, turning them from worship of Ilúvatar to the worship of Morgoth and of all that was dark so that even in the temple of Ilúvatar human sacrifice was made. Eventually Sauron was able to persuade them to make war upon the Valar an act that led to the destruction of Númenor itself. During the days of the corruption of Númenor Elendil and his family were a focus of resistance to Sauron and all his works and although Faramir is not himself of the house of Elendil his ancestors supported them and so were among those spared when the mighty wave destroyed the island. So it is that Faramir holds the memory both of a people corrupted even in the moment of their greatest victory and also of a people who resist the corruption, who remain a faithful remnant even as it appears to triumph.

Faramir knows that any victory gained by using the weapons of darkness opens the door to the same corruption as destroyed Númenor and so he declares his rejection of such a triumph. There is only one thing worse than being defeated by evil and that is to become evil oneself. Surely that is the deepest meaning of the last petition of The Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from Evil”? Nearly a year ago I wrote a post on this Blog entitled “The Dark Lord is Afraid of the Dark” https://stephencwinter.com/2014/10/23/the-dark-lord-is-afraid-of-the-dark in which I tried to show that it is those like Sauron and his servants who are in thrall to darkness and who fear it. Those who can embrace the dark are those who can truly pray “Deliver us from Evil” and Faramir is such a person. He is prepared to die rather than win a battle with the weapon of darkness. Such preparedness is the truest rejection of despair because it is an expression of the profound hope that light will conquer darkness, love will conquer hate. In every generation we need those who like Faramir are prepared to declare and live by this truth.

A Story Too Big for Us

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It is time to leave Gandalf and Pippin as they make their desperate dash to Minas Tirith upon the mighty Shadowfax to find Frodo and Sam wandering in hopeless circles upon the barren heights of the Emyn Muil as they seek a way down from sheer cliffs that thwart them at every turn. If the pace of Book 3 of The Lord of the Rings was often frantic now it is painfully, agonisingly slow. Over the last year in this blog we have travelled with orcs as they bore Merry and Pippin relentlessly towards Isengard and we travelled with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in their brave but hopeless pursuit of the orcs. With the three friends we met Gandalf in the Forest of Fangorn and joined them in their dash across the grasslands of Rohan towards Edoras. With little time to rest we then rode with them to Helms Deep where they fought a mighty battle against the armies of Saruman and then joined them again as they rode onwards to Isengard. There they met the young hobbits whom they had long sought and who had escaped from the orcs to meet Treebeard who carried them in the last great march of the Ents to the walls of Isengard. And at the last as we have already said we rode with Gandalf and Pippin on their way to the great battle of the age. Aragorn and his friends and Théoden and the Riders of Rohan will soon follow on as swiftly as they can.

Every deed that can be accomplished by them will be vital but all will be in vain if the Ring cannot be cast into the flames of Mount Doom, Orodruin in the land of Mordor; and the Ring has been entrusted to Frodo Baggins and his servant, Sam Gamgee and they cannot even begin their journey there, the “one place in all the lands we’ve ever heard of that we don’t want to see any closer; and that’s the one place we’re trying to get to! And that’s just where we can’t get, nohow.”

Anyone who has tried to do something that really matters will have known times when they feel stuck, when it seems that all they can do is to travel round in circles and back to the beginning again. In such times they will feel abandoned, useless and desperately vulnerable. In the words of an ancient Celtic prayer they will say, “The sea is so very great and my boat is so very small.”

Frodo and Sam are in a story that is far too big for them. Frodo said Yes to the story in Bag End one night when he spoke long with Gandalf and first learnt about the Ring that he had kept for seventeen years. Later he said Yes once again at The Council of Elrond though he did not know the way. Finally he said Yes when Boromir tried to seize the Ring and Frodo knew that he could journey with the rest of the Fellowship no longer but must take the Ring alone to Mordor. Sam made a simpler choice but one that was equally costly, to go with Frodo wherever he might and to offer him whatever support he could.

The truly great stories are the ones that we somehow seem to “land in” as Sam will put it later in the story. The temptation when we realise that this is happening to us is to reject the story, to hide away in some dark corner of our soul with the doors and shutters firmly closed. Or we might try to retell it in some way that will make it more palatable for us. Or we might say Yes to the story in full recognition that it is far too big for us and that in some way we must be carried or else destroyed. We might say that Gollum hides, Saruman and briefly, Boromir, try to retell the story and Frodo and Sam say Yes to it. How Frodo and Sam will be carried as they must be we will see in future weeks.