Happy Birthday, Tollers!

Today marks the eleventy-eighth birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is also the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the time when Magi from the East were drawn ahead by a miraculous star and found the Christ Child.

Tolkien's mythology in Lord of the Rings, steeped as it is in Catholic truth, like the star of the Magi seems to powerfully and mysteriously draw the Gentiles toward the cradle of the King of Kings. They may not realize what they have found, but his tale, I think, moves many closer to the Truth, and blazes a trail.

Hop along, my little friends, up the Withywindle!
Tom's going on ahead candles for to kindle.
Down west sinks the Sun: soon you will be groping.
When the night-shadows fall, then the door will open,
Out of the window-panes light will twinkle yellow.
Fear no alder black! Heed no hoary willow!
Fear neither root nor bough! Tom goes on before you.
Hey now! merry dol! We'll be waiting for you!

  

Are there any readers who credit Tolkien with helping to bring them into - or back into, or further into - the Church?

I can't say it had any conscious effect on me, but it so powerfully and poetically refuted the empty meaninglessness of modern rationalism and nihilism that - in it's fashion - it helped to innoculate me and closed that door for good in my mind. I had friends in college who went through that door and never came out again.

As in much of Chesterton's writing, there is a palpable goodness that many find strangely moving, even if they can't bring themselves to follow it all the way to its source.

At any rate, tonight I go to Mass through the blowing snow to mark the Epiphany, and when I'm home I will lift a mug and light a pipe to J.R.R. Tolkien.

"May his beard grow ever longer!"

 

Oh, you can search far and wide
You can drink the whole town dry
But you'll never find a beer so brown
As the one we drink in our hometown

You can keep your fancy ales
You can drink 'em by the flagon
But the only brew for the brave and true
Comes from the Green Dragon

Comments

[Ken D.]

Tolkien had a small impact on my conversion to the Catholic faith. As a Lutheran growing up with both evangelical and fundamentalist influences, I was a firm anti-Catholic. So, it bothered me that two of my favorite authors (Chesterton and Tolkien) were Catholic. Finally, I asked myself how it was that these two very intellent men could have embraced the Catholic Church as they did and came away with the simple thought that perhaps there was more to Catholicism than I had been led to believe. It was several years later before I was seriously challenged to explore Catholicism, but I look back at this little incident as the beginning of my journey to the Church for it was the first chink to open in my anti-Catholic armor.

So, thank you J.R.R.T. and happy birthday.

[Maolsheachlann]

When I was a kid, I remember thinking that one of the things I liked most about Lord of the Rings was that there was no "religion" in it!

Possibly Tolkien is of most assistance to those who skirt close to nihilism; the Shadow lies so heavily over his world, and over his life (considering the gloom that he so often seemed to be fending off).