Is the Shadow Only a Small and Passing Thing?

I woke up this morning with Tolkien in my ears, specifically my favorite recorded books version of The Lord of the Rings by Rob Inglis. If you enjoy listening to books and don’t know this version, I recommend him strongly. Inglis beautifully voices the many peoples of Middle Earth, singing deep as a dwarf, high as an elf, merry as a hobbit. I grew up with his voice in my mind as I read Tolkien, over and over. Lately, I’ve been listening to him in the middle of the night when I try to get back to sleep, and I find him to be very comforting.

The Shadow That’s Our Government

On November 1, my birthday, SNAP benefits run out for many Americans. And, the news this morning tells me the President wants to test nuclear weapons. You know that grave environmental damage is being done that can’t be undone. People are being made to suffer and are being killed by our government. The world is very, very dark right now.

I’m not going to compare the President with Sauron and pull out that Tolkien quote about the star and pretend I have a lot of hope. You know that I’m not an optimist; I don’t have even a small seed of Christian hope in me, I don’t look on the bright side or believe that everything happens for a reason.

I do love this quote though so I’m going to pull it out anyway. My blog, I can be as illogical as I want.

You know the drill. Sam and Frodo are trudging to Mordor to destroy the weapon, really a bit of the essence of Sauron, in order to save Middle Earth from the kind of destruction we’re facing now. They’re at a very low point in their long, hard, lonely journey. Sam looks into the sky in his despair and sees a certain star. And he has an awakening:

[T]he thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Tolkien tells us in the appendix that this star was put there by a certain elf long ago to give hope to Middle Earth. We can interpret this as Christian hope or belief in nature in a greater form that assures us something will always exist no matter what we destroy. We hadn’t walked in space yet when Tolkien was writing, nor had Carl Sagan written about us being made of the same stuff stars are made of, but I believe Tolkien was saying all of these things with his line about “the shaft, clear and cold” that smote Sam’s heart and gave him the courage to continue. We all certainly need courage right now.

My History with Tolkien

Now that I have stable electricity and internet, I’ve started sorting through the 35,000 photos I have on external disks from when Finn was born until when we all started taking photos with our phones and storing them in the cloud. A small set I found are from my days of belonging to a Lord of the Rings bunch of friends, which itself needs a bit of backstory. Well, a lot of backstory, but this post will be way too long if I give that its proper due. I’ll be brief.

My mom and sister were fans of the books, and I read them and loved them from when I was very young. When my dad died, I had just turned 11, and somehow shortly thereafter I ended up spending quite a lot of pleasant time reading them aloud to my good friend and neighbor there in the woods in Virginia, Karen.

Tolkien’s rich worlds to escape to, and his beautiful language, and his story of hope were all a great comfort to me, and I’m sure they were to Karen, as well. Years later when her first son died, I visited her for the first time in ages and sent before me a large figure of Gandalf instead of flowers.

I read the books aloud to Finn, as well, and I listened to Rob Inglis on some of the many roadtrips I made to and from hospitals to see what I could do to help with my niece, Katherine.

When Peter Jackson’s first movie came out, my mom and Kim and I were all so busy that we didn’t know anything about them. We went to see Fellowship of the Ring just as something to do when we were together for Christmas, I think, and I’ll never forget our collective joy when the greenery of The Shire appeared so perfectly on the screen, and Ian McKellen as Gandalf rode in his cart along the path, with this amazing Frodo jumping into the cart beside him and hugging him. I could not have orchestrated a more perfect way for the three of us to be introduced to the incredible Jackson movies.

Then Kim and I found a fan club message board online, and we began sharing something joyful together, really the only thing we shared that was joyful in our entire relationship. We went a little overboard, posting on the boards, dressing up for meet-ups, flying to Los Angeles for the Return of the King Oscar party.

And that’s where my current photo project comes up: I’ve found a bunch of photos of us from those years. Dressed as elves, dressed up for partying, me dressed as Grima Wormtongue by my friend Donna. Those were an amazing interlude for Kim and me between dark times.

A Little Personal Hope

Right now I’m also taking advantage of being in place to catch up on medical care, and I hope that’s going to pay off. Last night I slept, for the most part, for seven hours, which is a record for me, breaking years of bad sleep.

(Partly that’s because my restless legs syndrome is a bit better. My PCP has been consulting with the damned neurology department—that I still don’t have an appointment with—and now has me tapering off of some meds that were making my RLS worse, hallelujah.)

Another villain waking me up in the middle of the night is my heart, racing. I’d seen a cardiologist last year for this, and my heart is in great shape, so that was a mystery that may have been solved. Remember when I had to get an MRI for a possible brain tumor? That mystery, too, has been solved, maybe. Heart and hormone imbalances are due to a “toxic” thyroid nodule that’s making tons of extra hormones, out of control of the pituitary and adrenal glands, both of which my Brownsville endocrinologist had thought were broken.

So, I’m having my thyroid taken out (either all or half, tbd soon), and I’m told that will address many symptoms: racing heart, crazy hormones, I hope even my continued swollen knee two years after I received my zombie ACL. Last night I slept only because I’d taken a handful of beta blockers, but my watch app shows my heart as steady as a normal person. Maybe that will be me naturally post-surgery.

So, Tolkien’s clear, cold starlight full of hope applies a lot of places right now for me. I hope you have your own source of clear, cold hope.