Slight spoilers ahead. Proceed accordingly.

“How is this rock making me so emotional?” This extremely strange phrase has become rather commonplace as Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary hit the silver screen this past year. The most resonating theme within Weir’s work as well as the film has been that of the friendship between Ryland Grace and Rocky, the Eridian alien. Perhaps, the reason that this relationship has struck so many is that we are starved for legitimate friendship. This friendship love has been prized through the ages. Cicero in De Amicitia (On Friendship) grieved the idea of life without friendship in these terms.

C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves notes that of all the loves, friendship has been devalued most by modern society. Friendship has largely been seen in decline in the West, due to a number of factors including the rise of technology. This decline was only exacerbated by COVID as people reported fewer and fewer close friends. However, the desire for friendship has not decreased nor gone by the wayside. We want friends, we need friends. There is an innate desire to love and be loved. I believe Rocky and Grace have resonated with so many because their friendship has tapped into those innate feelings within us. Why so many moviegoers have fallen in love with this duo’s friendship is that it offers a stark contrast to our current loneliness. Rocky and Grace built a true relationship upon the need to know and be known. I’ve selected three moments that stand out to me with their friendship.

Understanding One Another

Grace and Rocky seek to understand one another. Their friendship is initially built upon the foundation of seeking understanding. Humorously captured in the movie, Rocky and Grace spend a considerable time finding a voice for Rocky through Grace’s computers that translate Rocky’s unique musical language. However, in the book this progress is not simple but a labor of love as Grace slowly feeds the computer program full of Rocky’s language. It is a difficult task that serves as the anchor to their friendship. Weir even highlights how Grace and Rocky navigate each other’s differences by preserving special ways to note when the other has come to a cultural point that does not require explanation. By the end of their mission, Grace no longer needs his program, he has become fluent in Eridian. He knows his friend and understands, because he has paid attention. And here we come to a key diagnostic for friendship. Understanding requires listening and paying attention. It’s not our voice alone that builds a friendship but the allowance and joy at hearing our friend speak. Friendship like all other loves must be built upon a foundation of understanding. There is a simple joy in friendship that comes from wanting nothing but the company of the other, and that is paramount.

Delighting Together

Rocky and Grace bond as only friends can over shared interests, like science. As Lewis remarks about this phenomenon, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Yes, the threat of astrophage has brought them together as the only living things for many light years around, however, they legitimately enjoy each other’s company. While it also serves a foil for laughs in the movie (and a little in the book), it is when they move a living space for Rocky into Grace’s ship that their friendship moves from its foundation of understanding to a more mature friendship. They create memories, they tease one another, and protect one another. The language of friends is apparent without any explicit explanation; you just know when people enjoy each other’s company. The movie does a great job at the first good-bye between Rocky and Grace. It is a rather long scene and at first, I found myself thinking that time was short and planets needed saving. But something else was playing out between just as it is played out every day in the lingering of friends in parking lots, front porches, phone calls, and cars.

Saving One Another

The testing of any relationship comes at the first true test of personal cost. Will it cost me something and will I give it up (how we accept that cost accounts for something too)? Both Rocky and Grace must save each other at different points of the story at personal risks to themselves. Grace is hurt during their mission at the planet, Adrian. Rocky, who can’t survive in Grace’s atmosphere, endures extreme pain to save his friend, while Grace in turn experiences burns getting Rocky back into his environment. Their friendship is a constant giving up oneself for the other. Rocky at the cost of more years traveling home, gives Grace fuel which allows Grace the chance to make it back to Earth. The pledge to help a friend outweighs the years of solitude, in which Rocky has already endured. Grace near the end of the story must make a decision between seeing Earth again or going to save Rocky, however, their friendship makes the decision rather clear. What are friends for after all.

A life with friends is a rich life. To love is risky and friendships are sometimes rather limited to seasons of life. But a life without friends is worse. It is better to give oneself over to the love of friendship. Lewis warns us of a life without love.

C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia provides numerous parallels and pictures of Scripture. Its depth feeds the soul of adult and child alike. I’ve written in the past about the gospel of John in Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Deuteronomy in The Silver Chair, but for this post I would like to explore the story of David and Saul found in 1 Samuel and its parallels in Prince Caspian. These stories are not exact mirrors of one another; there are enough episodic moments to warrant that Lewis may have had the story of David and Saul at the least in his mind while writing the second volume of Narnia.

The King Removed and the True King

The young Prince Caspian, son of King Caspian IX, has been sidelined for the throne by his uncle, Miraz. Unbeknownst to Caspian, his father was killed by his uncle (some Hamlet-esque influence) for claim of the throne. Caspian comes to the truth through his tutor, Doctor Cornelius, a dwarf, and hidden remnant of Old Narnia. The heart of Caspian warms at the stories of Old Narnia and the Good Lord of Narnia, Aslan. The land had fallen into corruption under Miraz and no longer follows the ways of Aslan. However, Doctor Cornelius teaches Caspian that Aslan can be called upon by the power of Susan’s horn (given to Susan Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe).

Saul does not start as a usurper unlike King Miraz in Prince Caspian but instead, hesitantly takes the throne due to Israel’s demands for a king (1 Samuel 8-9). While he starts well with Scripture confirming that Saul was “a man after God’s own heart, his heart is soon corrupted, loving his position of power more than his God. The spirit of the Lord is removed from him. God send the prophet, Samuel, to the youngest son of Jesse, the shepherd boy, David and anoints him as the King of Israel. Samuel’s role of prophet and proclaimer of God’s word has certain parallels by Lewis to his Doctor Cornelius.

Caspian and David’s Escape and Exile

In Prince Caspian, King Miraz has claimed a throne not his own and sits knowing that Caspian, son of his brother, is the true king. When King Miraz’s son is born, Caspian must flee the castle echoing David’s own escape from Saul in First Samuel 18. Just as Saul is concerned for Jonathan’s claim to the throne, so Miraz worries of his son’s claims with the true heir nearby. Doctor Cornelius tells Caspian to find the Old Narnians, those that are still loyal to Aslan. Caspian like David is hunted by the King (1 Samuel 19, Psalm 59). David flees and one can imagine David’s “Fugitive Psalms” as parallels and similar feelings for Caspian. While the film of Prince Caspian features the evening Caspian and Miraz again after his initial escape, Lewis’s novel does not contain such scenes. However, the filmmakers seem to have similar notions of these Davidic parallels as Caspian, like David, shows mercy while fully in power to kill Miraz/Saul (1 Samuel 24 & 26).

The Witch of Endor & Defeat of Evil

Prince Caspian and the Old Narnians battle against King Miraz in which they experience continuous poor results. Here, Prince Caspian does not experience a parallel with David but with Saul. However, it is not under his own proposition, and he passes the test as a true King and follower of Aslan would. Caspian is approached by Nikibrik, the dwarf, and a disguised werewolf and hag. Their plan is to appeal to the White Witch, the ancient power that came before the Telmarines came to Narnia. Eerily similar to Saul’s journey to the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28), these wicked Narnians propose an action of great evil.

Necromancy is against God’s law, which contained in Deuteronomy 18 follows the commands of God to the King over his people in the preceding chapter. Saul knows his sin; he is aware of his failure and why he comes at night to this detestable medium. So too, do the Nikibrik and his allies for their sly speak and trickery are methods of deceit against the young true King of Narnia. Thankfully, the parallels here do not meet, while Saul fails, Caspian (David-like succeeds). David becomes King of Israel and establishes God’s people under the headship of Yahweh. Caspian too, brings Old Narnia back under the rule and reign of Aslan.

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an English poet in the 19th century. Her best-known works include, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” “Love Came Down at Christmas,” and “Remember.” She never married though been offered three proposals, her life was devoted to her poetry and her faith. A life-long Anglican, her high church leanings, led to an association with the Oxford Movement. This movement became known as Anglo-Catholicism for its push back against growing liberalism in the church and commitment to the riches of church tradition, particularly the Eucharist. She would struggle with health issues and depression throughout her life. Rossetti is still widely read and celebrated. I hope this small entry will serve as a little gateway for readers to encounter her more.

Poetry is often bogged down by over analyzing. Rossetti’s liturgical, call and response poem is brief. So, too must be my words. I hope for you to sit with her words, not mine. I have found my mind drifting back to it this summer and pray that it is a blessing to you as well.

Q & A 1. Here she invokes the weight of wet sand at the shore and the sorrows we each face upon our pilgrimage on this side of eternity. I hear Aslan’s words to Shasta in The Horse and His Boy, “tell me your sorrows.” Grief is great, but it should not paralyze us from doing good.

Q & A 2. Time is short. How often I long for tomorrow and miss today, only to find that when tomorrow arrives, it’s again tomorrow that I seek. Time is the most precious of commodities that I possess. I’m reminded of another poem, W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening,” and the stanza, “But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: "O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.”

Q & A 3. Imagine the trees on a cool Spring morning with their young blossoms popping out. Youth is a spirit that breathes in vitality but like that young blossom it can bend easily. Despite our current ages, we still hold those hopes and dreams from our childhoods. As Christ tells his disciples, “Let the children come to me.” That call applies to us at five and eighty-five.

Q & A 4. Gregory the Great notes that Scripture is like a river in which a lamb can walk and an elephant swim. As Christ proclaims in John, “the truth will set you free.” But how deep the foundations of truth are, only God as author can truly ever know. Yet deep does not invoke a call to a self-righteous seriousness. G.K. Chesterton reminds us that “seriousness is not a virtue,” for it is “easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”

Centered on the French and Indian War between Great Britain and France, both sides joined by their Native American allies, James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans is a work of Romanticism. While there are numerous characters in the novel, the two that concern us the most is that of Hawkeye, the frontiersman and scout. And that of Uncas, the last of the Mohican tribe, as a constant of self-sacrificial and nobility. Several clear examples shine throughout the novel, particularly that of Uncas as the noble virtuous savage, the beauty of the untapped North American wilderness, and the character of Hawkeye as the Romantic hero, rejecting society and instead living in harmony with nature.

A short synopsis for those that have not read the book before or in a few years (or maybe you’re only familiar with Daniel Day Lewis and his epic hair as Hawkeye). Last of the Mohicans begins with Major Heward and his small group, which includes Cora and Alice Munro traveling to Fort William Henry to visit their father. Their guide, Magua, has taken them in the wrong direction, but the party soon meets Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas, with Hawkeye alerting Heyward to Magua’s deception. The party flees but soon is captured by Magua and his fellow warriors but are rescued by Hawkeye and the Mohicans. Eventually, the group arrives at Fort William Henry as the French and their Native allies attack the British position. Colonel Munro surrenders the fort to avoid a massacre. While the British troops are permitted to leave, Magua invokes a massacre of the survivors and takes Alice and Cora. He seeks revenge against Colonel Munro for his humiliation, by forcing Cora to be his bride. The novel follows Heyward, Hawkeye, and the Mohicans and their pursuit of Magua and his captives. Finally, the group catches up to Magua, and a battle ensues with Cora being killed by one of the native warriors. Magua kills Uncas before Hawkeye finally kills Magua. The novel ends with the burial of Uncas and the grief of the death of the last Mohicans.

Romanticism has long upheld the ideal virtuous savage trope. Sparked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s jarring opening to Confessions, “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chained,” society and civilization became characterized as defiled from humanity’s noble beginnings. John Locke’s tabula rasa, “blank slate” idea in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding gave further influence upon the Romantic movement. Perhaps most vividly expressed by the monster in Frankenstein, born innocent, slowly the monster is also corrupted and mirrors the hideousness of society. Even in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the savage, John, is corrupted before finding his release from such a vile hedonistic society through suicide. Cooper’s use of this trope is through the virtuous Mohican, Uncas. A particular example in the novel is after a fierce battle with Uncas covered in blood comes upon the sisters, Cora and Alice, not in a bloodlust but possessing a calm presence, “with eyes that had already lost their fierceness, and were beaming with a sympathy that elevated him far above the intelligence, and advanced him probably centuries before the practices of his nation.” Note Cooper’s description of Uncas’s sympathy. Often, Uncas is presented in such terms as an ever-benevolent presence in the novel, giving the Romantic view of the savage as better than man touched and familiar with civilization. Nature offered a true liberty for the Romantic. Society required rules for human flourishing and thus, it ruined the natural goodness found in humanity, therefore the natural man was sought by the Romantics for true liberty and flourishing.

Another key Romantic theme throughout Last of the Mohicans is the beauty of the untapped North American wilderness. Cooper’s use of poetry such as Wiliam Bryant’s “An Indian at the Burial-Place of His Fathers” at the beginning of chapter three as the group enters the wilderness hints at his view of the beauty of untouched wilderness and the misfortunate that has occurred at the hands of the “civilized.” The selection and inclusion of Bryant’s poem is Cooper’s own desire of the beauty of nature found in America before his own time in the 19th century. When the group enters upon an area of refuge around a water source, the scene is described with irony as the author exerts himself and his own knowledge into the narrative, “that solitary and silent spring around which and its sister foundations, within fifty years, the wealth, beauty, and talents of a hemisphere were to assemble in thrones, in pursuit of health and pleasure.” Cooper is recalling the beauty of untouched wilderness and the selfish pursuits of the 19th century that lead to its disappearance (unveiled criticism of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in America); the audience is able to gather his feelings regarding the loss of such beautiful nature.

Hawkeye offers another Romantic theme within Cooper’s novel, playing the ideal of the Romantic hero who has rejected society and lives freely in nature as a scout and friend to Native Americans like Uncas. Nature’s rules are different and better than those in society which stem from a Christian morality. There is a particular telling interaction with David, the musician and Christian, about the providence and provision of God after a battle in which Hawkeye denies the doctrines espoused by David and further denies the power of any deity or Scripture other than that of nature. The entire conversation offers a small picture of Romanticism’s denial of traditional Christianity in favor of nature and God being found not only in nature but a part of it. This denial is not simply an emphasis upon general revelation like David’s declaration in Psalm 19, but instead a move toward pantheism. Hawkeye holds to the truths based upon his own authority and experience rather than those from an external source like Scripture. Near the novel’s conclusion, Hawkeye offers his life forfeit in exchange for Cora’s life, though Magua rejects such a trade. The idea of giving one’s life for a precious cause was a central theme to the Romantic hero. Romantics saw this denial of self as the ultimate conclusion to one’s life, Lord Byron’s own death in the Greek’s war for independent was seen as an embodiment of the Romantic hero.

Romanticism came as an argument against the cold logic of the Enlightenment. Cooper is one of many within the American Romantic movement like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Both sought not only nature over civilization but rejected the Puritan establishment in the Northeast. Thoreau through his ideals of civil disobedience (recall Rousseau’s complaint of society) and Emerson through his Transcendentalism. I plan to look at another American Romantic author this fall, Edgar Allan Poe. The Gothic style is also contained within the vast boundaries of Romanticism and Poe is much more than a simple horror writer and poet.

Spoiler Warning for Theo of Golden.

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi began taking over my Goodreads page a few months ago. Then my wife read it and seemed to be moved to tears every few chapters or so. I took the book with us on vacation to Michigan and Theo captured me has he has with many others. Why are readers finding delight and joy in reading the small acts of kindness by this mysterious 86-year-old man in a small Georgia town? They are being pulled in the same reason why the citizens of Golden are too (there are a few exceptions in both camps of readers and citizens of Golden that don’t like Theo - oh well), we long for beauty.

Beauty is an argument. Moses tells us in Genesis that God saw his creation as good. Our culture made the horrendous trade for efficiency over aesthetic and everything from art, work, and relationships are seen in self-centered terms. Theo of Golden is an attempt at destroying the self-centric universes that we have constructed. While at times a little cheesy or preachy, Levi, has offered a hopeful novel in the midst of cynical post-modernism. Theo offers a relatable elderly man seeking to do good and love well in his final days. His letter to his son, Asher, reflects on a life of mistakes and selfishness. There is a sadness in the novel’s overarching beauty as we note that beauty comes with a great cost at times. Theo began to understand the good, beautiful, and true later in life. He is like all of us, not naturally dispositioned toward selflessness and generosity. Levi’s novel shines in the fact that we are watching herculean efforts of an elderly man seeking to make amends. He is our Ancient Mariner warning us to not follow in his footsteps and turn back from our own ruin. We rejoice that he still found it but also must come away from the novel with a warning to our own lives. Are we living beauty, goodness, and truth?

Theo’s appearance is sudden and mysterious. His death is also sudden and mysterious. His manners, appreciation for people and art don’t make sense to many at first. But the town of Golden is changed. His goodness lives on in the people he affected. There is a reason we use the phrase, “being ugly.” Beauty changes how we act and treat others. Theo’s interactions with self-absorbed people like Pierce are humous but also introspective. We can shake our heads all we like but we often can be just as self-absorbed as Pierce. We must humble ourselves. Theo’s own hubris was broken feel the warmth of hope and restoration. A quote, I often found myself recalling was Prince Myshkin from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and his famous, “Beauty will save the world.”

However, this beauty cannot be detached from a source. St. Augustine, in his Christian Neoplatonism argued that beauty elevates the person closer to Heaven and the Ultimate Supreme Beauty of God, Himself. Plotinus the Greek philosopher posited that experiencing and knowing beauty allowed one into union with beauty and thus reflected in that person’s character. Augustine would expand this no mere union but a deeper and holy communion with God. This communion with True Beauty was transformative as Augustine writes in The City of God.

The prophet Isaiah remarks that God’s people will “see the king in his beauty” (Is. 33:17a). Perhaps Theo’s most jarring quality is that of his sight. He actually sees people and seeks to know them through their brief interactions on his beloved little park bench. He often mentions the eyes, and what he finds there. Eye contact has diminished significantly in our phone crazed society. Throw in headphones and we can be connected but completely alone. Theo’s Christmas Day letter to Asher (Chapter 50) speaks at length about a homily regarding faces and eyes with our first instinct to find a face. I remember every little moment when my own three children were small and their looking for a face. And how they would just stare once they found my eyes. Father Lundy’s eulogy for Theo is fittingly about the disciples on the road to Erasmus having their eyes opened. I am reminded of the blind man in John 9 and that famous line by John Newton, “I once was blind, but now I see.” Theo asks if your eyes have been opened, and if opened are you seeing beauty, goodness, and truth all around. Are we seeing others like Theo saw others? I close with C.S. Lewis’s famous sermon, “The Weight of Glory.”

***Spoilers ahead for Project Hail Mary, both the film and movie.***

I did something I rarely do; I saw the movie, “Project Hail Mary”” before I read the book. My students had seen it and their appeals piqued my interest, so one evening my wife and I decided to go see it and of course, loved it. Summer break afforded me the chance to finally read Andy Weir’s book and here we are.

Project Hail Mary certainly is a science-fiction book, heavy on the science; however, at its heart a book about humanity, character, virtue, and ethics. I could spend an entire post on the friendship of Ryland Grace and Rocky (perhaps I should) but I wanted to look at the relationship and dynamic between Dr. Grace and Eva Stratt. While the film keeps many of the major plot points of Project Hail Mary, it also does something unexpected, it softens Eva Stratt and her no-nonsense ways. I’m sure it was a choice to make her more palatable to audiences with the decisions that she was required to make, but the book presents a Stratt that is more than no nonsense, she will do whatever it takes to complete the mission.

Stratt wields an exceptional amount of power in attempting to save the Earth. In the book there are many sacrifices dedicated to the mission of Project Hail Mary. From the destruction of the Sahara to the detonation of nuclear weapons in the ice of Antarctica, every action has an end goal (telos), to save the planet from extinction. She is the embodiment of consequentialists (teleological) ethics. In consequential ethics, there is the believe that the criteria/standard for right and wrong is based upon the end/results (i.e. end justifies the means). Within the framework of consequentialism, there is the egoist camp which Stratt does not fall into. Following an egoist consequentialist ideal, the means and end are personally focused, yet Stratt knows that her future will be governed by lawsuits and trials over her actions. The book captures a scene where she is given a trial prior to the launch over trademark violations. Every action is not personally oriented but instead governed by the end goal of the common good. Therefore, Stratt belongs to the second camp, utilitarianism ethics. The film, “Project Hail Mary” does attempt to warm Stratt as more than efficient and cold, but Weir’s book does no such thing. Even after the deaths of the project’s leading science officer, Dr. Martin DuBois and the alternate, Dr. Annie Shapiro, Stratt wastes no time calling up the lists of viable candidates for the project, leaving Grace in shock at her coldness, however, with 9 days until launch, Stratt is simply carried on by her efficient utilitarianism. Looking at the classic trolley problem, Stratt will always sacrifice the lesser for the greater.

Deontological ethics approaches life with the assumption that moral actions hold a(n) inherent/fundamental right or wrong regardless of outcome/consequence. This ideal of right and wrong is derived from sources like reason, religion, and/or accumulated wisdom. Dr. Grace appears to be governed by this ethical idea at the beginning of the novel. We know what he knows and only receive context and background information when he is finally able to recall past events due to his induced coma for the years long trip to Tau Ceti. He performs his tasks admirably as the lone surviving astronaut on the Hail Mary and is a near perfect candidate for humanity when he meets the alien, Rocky. His scientific reasoning and logic make this connection, seemingly an easy alignment. However, the deaths of DuBois and Shapiro require Stratt to find another qualified science officer for the mission that also has the “coma gene.” Of course, Grace is all those things and has been with the project for years, he is the most logical pick. Stratt forces Grace onto the mission and while the movie makes this scene slightly comical, it is anything but in the book.

Stratt only gave the appearance of a choice to Grace but knowing her utilitarianism, she has already selected the replacement science officer. The pivotal scene transpires as Grace declines Stratt’s proposal to join the Hail Mary. Grace gives a feeble excuse of not being an explorer and that his students needed him for the coming mass starvations and extinctions on Earth, at which point Stratt cuts to the heart of the matter deducing Grace’s really reason was that of cowardice. Any appeal to the dutiful heights of deontology ethics nor the egoist ideals of consequentialism do not work on Grace. His cries of being afraid and not wanting to die are of course human. We naturally want to flourish; few really want suffering and pain. Stratt in all of her powers and immunities has Grace placed into a medical coma before Hail Mary’s launch is the final confirmation for us as to her character and what she will do for the greater good, but it is not a final confirmation for Grace. The reader arrives at the scene after witnessing Grace exhibit bravery and heart and that bring us to the final ethical framework we will look at.

Virtue ethics is concerned with the character of the individual. Its key issue is not about the consequences or the absolutes of principles but instead asks the question of what type of person we should be. Aristotle argued that virtues are states of character situated between extremes of vice and excess (“golden mean”). Bravery stands in the golden mean between the vice of cowardice and excess of recklessness. Looking again at Stratt’s calling Grace a coward, and his going on the mission against his will, she remarks that while she does not respect him much, but she does find him to be fundamentally a good man. And yes, he does forget all of this due to the drugs and coma for space travel, eventually Grace does remember this conversation. He recalls his cowardice and desire to not go. And this is why I believe he exhibits virtue ethics. Christianity, C.S. Lewis notes of three parts of morality, relations between man & man, relations within oneself, and relation with the power that made him (I won’t hit on this here but I do think there are some interesting conversation about faith that arise from the story plus the great play on words: Hail Mary, full of Grace). Grace needs the mission to change his relationship with himself, stepping out into what he has been but never quite knew.

Grace had sacrificed and worked for the greater good within his role on Hail Mary while on Earth. He had never been tested before with such a request that essentially amounted to a suicide mission, and while he may have failed his first chance to be brave, he does not fail in light of that recollection. The mission to Tau Ceti and his relationship with Rocky change Grace. Weir puts that scene exactly where he wanted because we know from everything up to that point, Grace is a virtuous and good man. Humanity and all of the universe is saved by Grace (yes, that phrase is deliberate). His virtue is that there is a right and wrong based not on consequences or duties but through the very essence of humanity, at which I would add has been made in the image of its Creator. Project Hail Mary is to be sure a science fiction book that is quite heavy on its science, but its profoundly so much more and why it has resonated with so many.

If you missed it, I had the chance to review Theodore Dalrymple’ Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder for Mere Orthodoxy, you can check that out at this link.

Recently the conservative commentator, Jack Posobiec, boldly proclaimed that J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was not a Christian book. Backlash was imminent. His interpretation was just the pendulum completing its swing from the left where we find plenty of similar arguments rejecting the story as a Christian book. It feels like that scene in Parks and Recreation where they are arguing over those that find Twilight too Christian and unchristian. Ironically, both denials appeal to Tolkien’s clear use, influence, and enjoyment of pagan mythology. And here we are with the central question, is The Lord of the Rings, a Christian book? However, my thoughts on that answer find grounding in the debate regarding the worldview of The Lord of the Rings. Simply put, yes, it is a Christian book, but the journey to that conclusion is complicated.

First, let us hear from the author, himself. Tolkien wrote in December 1953 to Father Robert Murray, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’ to cults or practices in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism” (Letter 142). Tolkien continues in the letter about that unconscious stream from his upbringing in the “Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it.” Tolkien was a devout Catholic, attending mass almost daily throughout his life, his daily liturgical practices shaped his life and thought and thereby, his great work, The Lord of the Rings.

In a letter to famed poet, W.H. Auden, Tolkien talked of not being “under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief” (Letter 269). While he may not have sought out certain dogma or theology, The Lord of the Rings echoes the Christian worldview in larger and smaller tones. Tolkien’s comments on how his story unfolded is quite well-known, as he has described his writing process as one of discovery. Most famously was the stumbling upon the beginning of it, as he famously wrote of hobbits while grading papers. Tolkien noted to Auden in 1955, “Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo…”

Peter Kreeft notes that there is no true clear Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings like there is in Tolkien’s friend, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series with Aslan, it is invisibly yet present throughout. Philip Ryken describes Christ in The Lord of the Rings has “not a single thread in the story but is deeply woven into the entire narrative fabric.” There are examples that shine through like Gandalf’s resurrection from Grey to White, Aragorn’s kingship of long waiting Gondor, and Frodo’s dedication as a sacrifice for all of Middle Earth. Even more is the entirety of the chapter in The Return of the King entitled “The Houses of Healing” or the eagle’s psalm-like praise over Gondor at the fall of Mordor and Sauron. Even the dates of the Fellowship and Fall of Sauron are handpicked in accordance with the Church calendar with the Fellowship of the Ring leaving Rivendell on Christmas and Sauron’s defeat on Easter (March 25 according to the early church).

In Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy Stories,” he recalls his poem and the idea of sub-creation, a great gift given to humanity by God. Even within pagan myths there were grains of truth. There was what theologians call, general revelation, found within these stories. They spoke to certain depths of truth, Lewis would find this argument influential in his own conversion, later writing the essay, “Myth Became Fact.” Tolkien would anchor his own myth to the Myth that was fact as well as the myths that he loved best. There is the reason such ideas can be found throughout The Lord of the Rings, he found them as an aid to pointing to Christianity.

As for the debate regarding religion in The Lord of the Rings, I think it is due to what Lewis remarked in an essay, “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings…. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

Tolkien wanted a world that felt real and out of the past, not one that preached in such silly and painfully obvious ways. It reminds me of Flannery O’Connor’s defense of her dark and often grotesque writing about religion, “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures." Tolkien’s world was Christian in name but dead in heart, his grand myth was aimed at the heart of his nation and perhaps that of the western world. To speak of Christianity, it would not have done well to talk directly about it, for who would listen, but instead to weave a narrative wrapped in such a way as to sneak past watchful dragons, even if that comes with the charge here and there that it is in fact, not a Christian story. But how sadly wrong they are for it is thoroughly and fundamentally a Christian story.

This Saturday, April 25, is Independent Bookstore Day, and I wish to take a brief moment to celebrate bookstores and encourage you to go patron one today if you can. I love bookstores, I have fond childhood memories of Davis-Kidd in Nashville. The frenzy of Harry Potter is how I got into reading (yes Harold Bloom, and I don’t believe it dumbed me down…). Local independent bookstore have a charm that cannot be matched. Who doesn’t love getting a coffee and exploring the nooks and crannies of some bookshop on a sleepy, rainy Saturday morning. They offer a community, a museum, a haven, challenges, exploration, and so much more. A well-tailored bookstore staffed by fellow booklovers is a wonderful, albeit rare place. Treasure your local bookstore.

Books require us to slow down and take our time. In our instant world of Amazon and AI, books are not meant for quick plot summaries, they are to be enjoyed. Transformative things take time. We are not machines. We were creating in our Creator’s image, and our telos is not one of mere productivity. Books like their authors invite you to come and sit. You can think, argue, imagine, laugh, and cry. Books offer transformation in its properly paced nature. They invite the reader to come and listen. They wait on the shelves for when you are ready and dispel their wisdom at their own pace. Bookstores hold memories and I can attest that our vacations and trips always include bookstore visits, whether it is a convenient stop or not.

I can recall wonderous finds in places like the entirety of Winston Churchill’s history on World War II in Black River Books (now Hello Books) in South Haven, Michigan. Litchfield Books in Pawleys Island, South Carolina was where I first dove into Flannery O’Connor. My nerd heart found an older copy of The Hobbit in the depths of Pikes Market Place in one of the many bookstores there. No stop in Nashville is complete until Hannah and I have combed Parnassus Books in the Green Hills area (they are responsible for the rapidly enjoyed Seven and Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle). Carmichaels in Louisville was where I found one of my favorite volumes on C.S. Lewis. Union Avenue Books in Knoxville, Tennessee has gotten a good deal of my money. Our own local Bolin Books has filled plenty of our shelves as well, including some of my most treasured (dear friends purchased a beloved first-edition volume of essay by C.S. Lewis there for me).

And of course, there are numerous more that I would include from the awesome Landmark Booksellers to perhaps my personal favorite, Eighth Day Books. So, today load up the car, get some coffee and some snacks and go find the next great read at your local bookstore.

Here we come to the last of the Four Quartets. T.S. Eliot has weaved throughout these poems, the theme of time, redemption, grief, death, joy, prayer, and resurrection. As I mentioned at the beginning, poetry like a good joke is ruined by explaining. This is merely a guide as we wind down Lenten Season and enter into the jubilant time of Easter. Indeed, “all shall be well.”

Eliot centers the poem in the fluctuating time of winter and spring, or as Charles Dickens puts it, “it was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” Again, we are on a journey in between seasons, on a path that we likely know and take, “from the place you would be likely to come from…it would be the same at the end of the journey.” I cannot help but think in this first section that I will one day come upon my last Lenten season. There is a time when our journey comes to it end, but it is no mere end. But only the beginning as Eliot writes in section five, “What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning.” This section also reminds me of the epithet that C.S. Lewis wrote for the grave marker of his wife, Joy Davidman. “Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind). Like cast off clothes was left behind. In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day.”

Section II is one of ashes and death. But here Eliot mirrors his master, Dante, and meets a stranger, a ghost, in the bombed-shattered streets of London (this poem came out in 1942 as England faced another bleak winter). Like his master in Purgatorio, Eliot wanders these desolate lands in search of hope. And to love as section III brings us to a right centering of loves. Something is not lovely merely because of how we view it, but is lovely on its own rights, as it is from the source of Love. “Of love beyond desire” reminds me of Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and Orual’s sanctification of proper love. Redeemed Orual says to her sister Psyche, “Never again will I call you mine; but all there is of me shall be yours. Alas, you know now what it’s worth. I never wished you well, never had one selfless thought of you. I was a craver.”

Section IV is quoted above as the dove of the Holy Spirit descends and the tongues of fire are alit as Pentecost. The Church is refined “from the fire by the fire” (1 Peter 1:7). Christ has made a way and here it comes this Easter Sunday.

And we come to my favorite section, section V. “We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration.” The rose of life and beauty and the yew-tree of graveyards. Both are intertwined as the Kingdom without end approaches. And as it approaches, “we shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” Our parents began in Paradise and we shall return there.

Are you keeping watch over this swiftly passing Lent? Easter is coming soon. But until then we wait. T.S. Eliot’s third poem in Four Quartets, “Dry Salvages,” deals with the author’s past, both America (the poem’s title comes from grouping of rocks near Cape Ann, MA). The poem feels like waiting. Waiting for that glorious ending in “Little Gidding” and fitting for the middle of Lent as we long for the Light of the Resurrection.

Eliot contemplates his childhood in St. Louis and the mighty Mississippi River, “strong brown god.” He continues with the struggle of the unknown in life through the imagery of the river and the sea. The depths of water are not only external but also internal, “The river is within us, the sea is all about us.” We struggle not merely with the world outside of ourselves but with the complexity and depths of ourselves.

Water like life changes and our journey takes us across raging waters and calm seas. Eliot writes, “Also pray for those who were in ships, and Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea's lips Or in the dark throat which will not reject them Or wherever cannot reach them the sound of the sea bell's Perpetual angelus.” This passage in section IV has always reminded me of Book of Common Prayer and the Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea. The winds and waters obey their King. I’m also reminded of Rembrandt’s masterpiece, The Sea of Galilee (1633). If you count the members of the boat, you find Christ, the disciples, and one extra, Rembrandt, himself. He is the man looking neither at the storm nor at Christ but at you, the viewer, as if asking where will you look: the storm or the Lord.

Where does this wrestling lead us but to an intersection of seemingly paradoxes. By encountering ourselves, we begin to understand God. Eliot writes “the point intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint- No occupation either, but something given And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love, Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.” Our nature was taken on by Christ at the Incarnation. The “impossible union” transpired for “Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled…” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the eternally begotten Son, the one in whom all things were made has stepped into time and space and will redeem all things onto Himself.

Near the end of “Dry Salvages” is the mention of the yew-tree. In England, yew trees are often found and thus associated with graveyards. We need more churches with graveyards here. I am fond of the little old country church with its graveyard right beside it, we see a glorious picture of the church triumphant and church militant gathering together waiting for the voice of their King and the victory over the grave. Eliot remarks near the end of the poem, “If our temporal reversion nourish (not too far from the yew-tree) The life of significant soil.” Christ tasted death for his people, that they may not taste death. The seed that died in the ground alone, has borne much fruit (John 12:24).

We have one final poem, “Little Gidding,” that will come out right before Maundy Thursday. Christ has come and Christ will come again.

My title comes from C.S. Lewis’s address after taking the Chair Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, “De Descriptione Temporum.” I am surely a dinosaur. I’m under no false pretense that it is going away. I worry about AI, not in the “Skynet became self-aware sense,” though that may not be far away. No, I’m worried about us losing ourselves. So, if you will indulge me for one post, I will speak about AI and then we will be rid of the vile thing and back to books and the wisdom of the past.

Winston Churchill remarked that "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last," and so are those warning us to stay ahead of the AI curve.

Earlier this year Raoul Pal, former Goldman Sachs analyst, proclaimed that knowledge now has a net worth of zero. Information that used to be held by a privileged few is now accessible to the masses. Every other week features an interview from some tech insider that sounds as though it has been pulled from the pages of a dystopian novel. The constant improvements to AI are surreal as Elon Musk has estimated that AI will surpass the smartest humans by the end of 2026 and humanity collectively in some 5 years. No one can “keep up” with its advancements or outperform AI, we are Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel up against the newest greatest shovels, however there is no happy ending of valued work in the basement on the horizon. Unlike the inventions before that offered alternatives for humanity to learn and adapt, AI works best with itself, not us.

We were not meant to focus solely on efficiency; we were not meant for a life online as consumers. And yet, AI is not leading to more building, it is leading to more consuming. The reason that reports are slowly coming out on the negative impact of technology in the classrooms is that education is not an assembly line for success and profitability but instead is a shaping of the soul. The humanities are the shaping of a soul towards virtue; AI does no such thing and the tech bros that welcome AI are wonderful examples of knowledge without virtue. Pal might be correct in his estimation that knowledge has a net value of zero, but wisdom still holds its value, and AI will not get us that value.

Could AI have written this article better than me? Absolutely. But it is not me and therefore useless. It can write and summarize at levels I will never reach, but it is not me and therefore does me no good, nor will it be able to grow lifelong students and learners. Proponents tout its abilities and while they are impressive, rarely is AI being used in such ways. Neil Postman notes in Amusing Ourselves to Death, “You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content.” I add that you cannot use AI to do learning, its form excludes the content. Learning is built upon by resistance.

It is almost deity-like in its ability to work and never slumber, but God created us with finiteness and that is not anything to lament or despise. I realize that I am currently writing and positing this article due to numerous technological advancements, and that AI is simply the next advancement. Indeed, we are sub-creators that make as we ourselves were made. It’s not just the intention with the invention and AI may very well be our Tower of Babel.

We are stepping into a transhumanism world and have the potential to step out up the cliffs into “unbeing.” It is affecting every part of what it means to be human. People are giving their lives over to AI, some so far as pursuing intimate relationships. Maybe we should reconsider Arthur Weasley’s warning, “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.” Before readers claim this to be jumping the gun, however, the Anthropic CEO which runs Claude, are wondering whether Claude is conscious as of this month. I’ll side with Mr. Weasley. Better yet, Mr. Beaver from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe might win in the advice column, “when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet".

I remember a commercial for some AI chatbot that mentioned it is a bad time to be a problem. No, our great burdens and problems remain. The questions that have plagued humanity will continue because it’s part of our very nature. A machine will never understand such a journey. So, I’ll keep reading and writing. AI has not solved our greatest problems, nor can it, it’s still just smoke signals.

This Lent, I am reading through T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. If you missed the first post on “Burnt Norton” you may find that post here. East Coker is a village in Somerset in Southwest England. Eliot’s ancestors came from the village before immigrating to the United States, his ashes are here in their resting place in St. Michael. Time and our need for redemption are again much of Eliot’s focus.

“East Coker,” the second poem in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is bookended by the phrases, “In my beginning is my end” and “In my end is my beginning.” Scripture, itself, is bookended by holy matrimony, God presides over the union of Adam and Eve in Genesis, at the close, Revelation ends with marriage as God joins his people to himself forever. All of creation including time and flesh have been redeemed by their Creator as its was to be in the beginning. Our beginnings whisper our endings.

Eliot reflects the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, as there is a time for everything, “Old stone to new build, old timber to new first, Old first to ashes, and ashes to the earth.” Time continues on and we are part of this dance as Eliot calls it. I can’t help but think how beautiful the passing of time is via sunrises and sunset. It is an honor to grow older, and I hope to use that blessing well.

But parts 2 and 3 of “East Coker” are the middle between the beginning and the ending, and in this middle, there is “November.” Eliot turns to calamities and sadness of wars and storms, of the houses gone under the sea and of darkness. Part 3 features a great deal of talk regarding the soul. We have left the tranquil peace of East Coker and find ourselves in the hustle and bustle of London. Every face seen by Eliot reveals a “mental emptiness” and the “growing terror of nothing to think about.” I can’t help but think of that interview with Mr. Rogers and his reflections on the gift of silence, the trading of silence and wonder for noise and information; I think Eliot is repeating a similar thought for us, what a noisy world. Flee to silence this Lent as we learn to wait and to wait well.

Again, Eliot becomes King Solomon. Solomon at the beginning of his reign asked of the Lord, wisdom and it was granted. By Ecclesiastes we have a broken King but again a wise one, telling of not his wisdom but his folly. He made his way to humility and Eliot does the same, “Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

Like a psalm of David, part IV begins a final upswing. I turn to the quote at the top of this post, redemption is at hand. As Christ proclaimed, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” I need his flesh and blood. I am not well but ill, we need the hands of the Healing King. And so, during the Lent, we long for the washing by the Savior, for by him we are healed.

And what of this redeemed life? We glorify and we enjoy the Lord as the Westminster Catechism declares. I love Eliot’s turn to adventure in our older age. We let our desire for God carry us forward and deeper into communion with him. Worries die away as we are carried to what is to come. The end that has been known since the beginning. I think of C.S. Lewis’s essay, “The World’s Last Night,” as he writes, “We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are ‘on’ concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.” Or from Narnia, “Further up and further in!”

Today is Ash Wednesday and the start of the season of Lent. As the church prepares for Easter we remember, repent, abide, hope, weep, rejoice, proclaim and commune. Christmastide and the Lord’s birth brought us into this new year and now we arrive at cross and the weight of atonement. Over the course of the next 40 days, I would like to reflect on T.S. Eliot’s “The Four Quartets,” and the poem’s look at time, death, redemption, and resurrection. Before jumping in, I would like to give a little background into Eliot’s life and why the modernist that wrote “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song J. Alfred Prufrock” was no longer the same by the time of “The Four Quartets.” One another note, these are merely reflections. Similarly to a joke, poetry loses its power with explanation. So, there will be little explanation, least it loses its power. My hope is that these short posts are helpful during this time of Lent and just may have you reading a little more Eliot.

Eliot’s life changed in 1927 as he entered the Anglican church. His hopelessness captured in his earlier poetry has been replaced. What was fragmented and full of anguish had been redeemed. His poem, “Ash Wednesday” (1930) deals with similar themes of Eliot’s earlier works of time, death, hope, and redemption but as a man saved, a man converted. Here in the Four Quartets, we have a matured view of these themes.

Poem I - Burnt Norton

Set in the garden of an English manor, Eliot begins by wrestling with the concept of time and the haunting notion of what could have been. He reflects on memories of footfalls and passages that he did not take. The poem is a pondering on “what if” from an older man. He is wrestling with the fact that both time past and time present will be there together in the future, but not the time of “what if.”

Lucy Pevensie desires a similar answer in Prince Caspian. She longs to know what would have been. What a terrible fate to constantly be consumed with. Yet, Aslan remarks, “To know what would have happened, child?” said Aslan. “No. Nobody is ever told that.” Moses reminds us that the secret things belong to the Lord (Deut. 29:29a). The poem moves around the center of stillness. The dance as Eliot calls it. But to remain in a state of “what ifs” is paralyzing, for the “time and the bell have buried the day.” Eliot needs this poem on the sobering lines, “Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.” Let us leave the wanting to know what would have happened in the past and to the secret things of the Lord.

Time is the main subject in the poem. At the beginning of “Burnt Norton”, we are immediately introduced to the concept of time and the idea of the abstract that cannot be touched or grasped. What is time? Can we actually make a claim to this question? Augustine wrestles with this very idea in Book 11 of Confessions. He writes on the three times (past, present, and future), “Our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized none the less.” We have a recognized meaning by time, but this agreed upon concept might be completely inaccurate. Augustine notes that time is seen as a measurement, but this is difficult as “it [time] is coming out of what does not yet exist, passing through what has no duration, and moving into what no longer exists.” In other words, time comes out of the nonexistent future into the present and fades back into the past of nothingness. How do you measure such a thing?

But we all go through this wrestling. Our culture has numerous adages regarding time. However, has Eliot remarks, “To be conscious is not to be in time.” I’m not aware of time as I’m living in the present. My awareness of time can only have proper meaning in the context of the time that has come and gone. I cannot observe the very time that I inhabit now, I must observe that which has already been lived.

Time is a theological matter. We are everlasting; we have a beginning and are made for a world to come. We will participate in this world without end. C.S. Lewis remarks on this in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory, “Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.” The church has long proclaimed this belief in the “resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” But this is still the first of four poems, Eliot has started us on a journey, and we must first think about time before we redeem it. And it can be redeemed, even if it is all eternally present as “Burnt Norton” begins, it is creation and creation groans for redemption (Romans 8).

Despite only appearing in a few pages of The Horse and His Boy, King Lune of Archenland, jumps off the page. He is a character of warmth and light, and someone that I wish to emulate. I call him a character of light, not merely in reference to illumination, though he is that but regarding weight. He carries a glory within him. King Lune is a man of eminence. That ability to be exactly as needed at the exact moment. He is grave when there is a seriousness matter to attend to. His kingdom is under attack by Rabadash, Prince of Calormen. He is the first out of the gate in the charge, his righteous anger burns brightly. Lune is not a coward but one that is good and brave (how he lights up at the story of his son, Cor, and his bravery against the lion). He is exemplary in jus in bello.

Lune is merciful and just. As Rabadash survives the battle, he is a prisoner of Archenland and Narnia and at the mercy of the victors. Lune governs with honor and mercy. He could easily remove the Tisroc’s crown prince by cutting his throat, the risk of invasion is minimal, however, that is not the honorable way. Lune laments on how it would have been much more agreeable to slay Rabadash in battle.

King Lune knows his place, when the King of kings, Aslan, appears he submits. And in light of Aslan’s punishment, he is moved by compassion. What judgement can be more complete than that of Aslan. He is described as “the kindest-hearted of men and on seeing his enemy in this regrettable condition he forgot all his anger.” As Paul proclaims, “Be angry, and sin not.”

King Lune exudes joy, though this not by a life of ease or comfort. For joy is something far greater and stronger than the fickleness of happiness. His son, Cor (Shasta) was kidnapped and his wife died, and yet, we encounter a man full of joy. And here is where happiness fails for it is tied to circumstance. Joy is a far deeper and greater thing than happiness. Joy, nor King Lune in his joy make light of sorrow, it is real and difficult, but joy knows that redemption is coming and everything is not as it will be. Or better put by Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Above is King Lune’s well-known remark to his son, Cor, on being king one day and the responsibility (weight) of being a leader. Here, we see what we have mentioned above. He is living out Paul’s instructions, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4). How can I live like King Lune? What does a man full of joy, bravery, kindness, courage, light, and weight look like? It looks like the following from Mere Christianity.

“Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

As Valentine’s Day approaches, and I think of my own beloved, my mind turns to this beautiful poem by Robert Burns. Words can often fail us when it comes to describing the depths of our love for those in our lives. Yet they can also fit perfectly. I recall that aha moment when reading Pride and Prejudice as Lizzie asks Darcy when he first realized that he loved her. Darcy responses, "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

Oh, how glorious and how insufficient words can be at times when we wish to convey our heart. Burns’ poem sings. Poetry suffers from too much analysis and so I leave you with Burns’ words, they are enough. It stirs the soul and reminds us of how wonderful it is to be loved and love.

One small note, Burns was Scottish, you need it read in that wonderful accent. Perhaps you should follow the link here and listen to Nicholas Ralph read it as James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small.

Welcome to 2026! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. I had an article published with Front Porch Republic last week on the rivalry and eventual friendship between C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot. If that interests you, you can find that article here. I’ve been pondering the idea of goals and the emphasis on them around this time of year.

Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire, has one simple goal - never die. He has dedicated his vast resources to anti-aging, believing that through science he may live forever. Others have expressed hope in “mind uploading” to achieve a digital immortality of sorts. The quest for immortality is nothing new, humanity has long sought such possibilities from the ancients hoping to join the pantheon of the gods, the hopeful rush for the fountain of youth, to modern medicine’s constant pushing off of the great inevitable. Despite Johnson’s dedication to stopping death, he will one day face what everyone must face, death. Memento mori.

The fear of death is a constant refrain throughout human history. Yet, science will not stop death, it is the great guarantee in life. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, Eru Ilúvatar, the Creator of Middle Earth, gives the race of mankind the gift of death. A gift; eh, thanks? He intended death as a blessing. Unlike the elves that are tied to the world and fade with the world, mankind is able to move forward. Mankind is there for a short time but each and every man will die and face the great unknown of the next world. Tolkien, professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and devout Catholic, sought to capture his love of ancient literature and his faith in The Lord of the Rings. In Letter 142, Tolkien would write to Father Robert Murray, “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like “religion,” to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” As for his love of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien would apply much into his world as well including the poem, “The Wanderer.” The Wanderer is an exile that contemplates upon the changing of the world and reflecting upon his sufferings. He sees himself at an end, a passing upon the world, it is God in whom, he can only find security.

The poem is where Tolkien got the name of his fictional world and this name has theological implications. This land that humanity occupies is not the finale, but is a place of passing, it is a “middle” earth. And so, in our world too for Isaiah declares that there shall be new heavens and a new earth. This world is one of sojourners and pilgrims on their way to the City of God.

While Tolkien’s Eru Ilúvatar gave death as a gift, YHWH did not. Death entered the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve (Romans 5). It is not a gift but a curse and a great enemy that Christ came to defeat. Gregory of Nyssa writes in the Great Catechism of the Incarnation and Christ’s defeat of Satan and death, “the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh, and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to light and life might vanish; for it is not in the nature of darkness to remain when light is present, or of death to exist when life is active.” Middle Earth was passing away just as our world is passing away too. However, death is not a gift here but a curse and one that everyone must face. However, unlike Johnson’s foolish search for immortality, we can welcome death as it has been defeated by Christ.

Happy Advent as we wait and remember the promise of the coming Messiah. I had the distinct honor of being part of Pints with Jack livestream for C.S. Lewis Reading Day, which you can watch here. Thank you, Pints crew, for letting me join! You should check out the episode and its guests, including a great presentation by Dr Crystal Hurd and the Max McLean (I’ve seen him twice, you should too)! My article for C.S. Lewis Reading Day can be found here. I wrote on family love in Till We Have Faces. Grading is done and we are now on Christmas break (my Inkling elective finished The Great Divorce - oh what a marvelous book)! I hope to get to work soon on next year’s schedule of books. If you have anything you’d like to see here, please reach out. Cheers to you all.

Bah humbug! The number of interpretations and productions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol are numerous and rather difficult to tally. However, my plea is this Christmas to not only enjoy your favorite adaption (pretty easy, obviously the Muppets) but to read Dickens’ masterpiece. Victorian England enjoyed a good ghost story at Christmas time and Dickens’ novella has become the most famous of them all. It follows the classic Dickens’ tropes of social injustice, human nature, and redemption. Beautifully told, it is a spiritual journey and one that makes an evaluation upon us to show our faith (James 2:18).

Bitter and alone, the novel follows Scrooge and his cold dark heart that remains unmoved by the light and hope of the Advent and Christmas season. We are given the insight and reason into this immediately upon the arrival of Scrooge’s nephew, Fred. The very greeting of “Merry Christmas,” stirs our curmudgeon up with the reply, “What right have you to be merry? what reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” Fred gives as good as he gets, but alas, Scrooge only sees Christmas as a time of less money, less time on this earth, and less business.

Christmas is the remembrance of the great light that appeared to those walking in darkness (Is. 9:2), however, not all liked this appearance but instead liked the darkness (John 3:19), and Scrooge (being cheap) liked the dark. Dickens plays the scene of light and dark with Fred’s very appearance as “all in a glow” and “his eyes sparkled” compared to the brooding Scrooge.

But Christmas ranks second in Scrooge’s evaluation deserved hatred and ridiculousness. It is love that Scrooge finds ultimately ridiculous. He finds his nephew’s reason for marriage to be unsatisfactory, ‘“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas.’ Scrooge cannot imagine the thought of care or concern for anyone but himself. But love is not self-centered, by its nature it is about others, hence the translators of the King James Bible use of charity (particularly in 1 Cor. 13).

Each spirit that visits Scrooge reveals the condemnation that is swiftly approaching as he evaluates his charity-less life. It is most telling in the scenes regarding Scrooge’s fiancé as his heart changes from one content in love despite having nothing. It is his fiancé that delivers the diagnoses, a new idol had come to reign in his heart, Gain, and love was swallowed up by the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10). Indeed, which is why Scrooge the social-Darwinist cries out to those asking for charity on behalf of the poor, “If they would rather die…they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Scrooge has clearly been reading his Thomas Malthus).

It is Tiny Tim that truly breaks through the heart of Scrooge. The languishing family, yet full of life and love breaks the heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Scrooge, versed in the Greek philosopher, Celsus, and the coming critic Friedrich Nietzsche, is broken by the heart of Christianity, a loving, gracious, and merciful God. That Christmas Eve spent with the spirits finds a Scrooge that will “honour Christmas in my heart.” Upon this repentance (“Holding up his hands in a last prayer…”) and change of heart, Scrooge runs to join his nephew for Christmas dinner, using his nephew’s Christian name for the first time in the novel, Fred. Dickens’ ghost story reads somewhat like a biblical parable. A story and chance for repentance. A Nathan’s “you are the man” moment (2 Samuel 12:7). That Christmas Light had shone into the world and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).

Greetings on C.S. Lewis Reading Day 2025, started by the wonderful gentlemen over at the Pints with Jack podcast. In Lewis’ The Four Loves, he looks at four Greek words of love: storge (familia/affection), philia (friendship), eros (romantic), and agape (divine charity). There are differing understandings of love. A modern feature of this is our use of love/like. My exclamation of “I love tacos” and “I love my wife” are two different uses (or at least they should denote a hierarchy). Context allows the hearer to note that while I really enjoy tacos, my wife is of a first and greater order. This year we are looking at storge (family love) or as Lewis calls it, affection, in Till We Have Faces. The novel’s main character, Orual, desires such love throughout the story, yet she serves as a warning against the dangers within affectionate love. Clyde Kilby notes that “Orual’s great defect was selfishness and selfishness masquerading under the perfectly serious mantle of love.” Spoilers abound, proceed with caution.

Till We Have Faces is Lewis’ retelling of the myth, Cupid and Psyche. The book is a complain and charge against the gods by Orual, Queen of Glome (kingdom east of Greece). She is despised by her father, the king, due to her ugly appearance. Orual and her sister, Redival lose their mother at an early age and are educated by a Greek slave, whom they affectionally call “the Fox.” In time, the king marries again. This marriage will produce a beautiful daughter, Psyche, and while the king’s wife dies in childbirth, it seems that Psyche brings favor to the kingdom. The outbreak of plague, drought, and famine brings accusations that Psyche in accepting worship not due her is responsible and must be scarified to the god of the Grey Mountain.

Orual returns with the protection of Bardia, captain of the King’s guards, to give Psyche a proper burial. However, she is stunned to find Psyche very much alive and well and married to the god of the Mountain. Yet, Orual is concerned for she does not see the palace that Psyche keeps claiming, nor in fact has Psyche even seen her husband as he only comes to her at night. Under Orual’s orders, Psyche takes a lamp into her bed chamber and after the god is asleep gazes upon him. For her unbelief, Psyche is sent into exile and Orual is given the threat, “You also shall be Psyche.” Orual replaces her father, after his death, and rules the kingdom well. She falls in love with Bardia but hides her unrequited love. She grows old and establishes a mighty kingdom as its beloved ruler. While traveling she discovers a temple to the new god, Istra (Psyche). The priest tells her Psyche’s story, but it is from Orual’s own life, but it has been changed and twisted. Angry, she sets to writing her charges which are part 1 of the novel. Part 2 is an additional revelation made to Orual in light of her charges. It is an answer to her questions and challenges to the gods and finishes at her death.

Affection is something missing in the life of Orual. She longs for it, yet it ever eludes her. Her desire for this love is immediate upon meeting her sister, Psyche, as Orual laments, “I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich.” Lewis highlights this in The Four Loves, “There is a paradox. It [affection] is a Need-love but what it needs is to give. It is a Gift-love but it needs to be needed.” Psyche offers the first good chance at this humble love for Orual.

And for a time, Orual was contend playing the mother-role as Psyche was young. And yet, this love falters upon Psyche faces the prospect of becoming the sacrifice to the god of the Grey Mountain. It is not Orual that comforts Psyche but the other way around. Orual’s love hardens as she manipulates Psyche and attempts to induce guilt by questioning if Psyche ever truly loved her. But by the end of this swift visit, despite Orual’s charges of a hardened heart and cruelty to Psyche and the gods, we can’t help but think that the charges might be misdirected.

When Orual returns and finds Psyche alive, she is less interested in hearing and acknowledging Psyche’s new station as Bride. Instead of joy, Orual notes her further diminished role in Psyche’s life, her love becomes increasingly fickle. Psyche makes to comfort her sister saying, “I’m your own true Psyche still. Nothing will change that.” Orual makes the turn toward what Lewis warns and that is a ravenous love. It becomes possessive, manipulative, jealous and keeping record of wrongs. The depths of Orual’s love though perhaps its full form of hatred stirs as she charges her sister to take a lamp to her bedchamber. Their conversation features hard and quick words, gone are terms of endearment with Orual calling Psyche, “girl,” instead. Her manipulation reaches its darkest and most desperate as she threatens to kill Psyche and herself if Psyche will not take the lamp in the bedchamber. She (Psyche) carries through with the promise but is sent into exile by the god all while Orual watches light and hears the voice of the god of the Grey Mountain proclaim his curse. Psyche’s challenge to Orual rings true, “you know little of love.”

Orual complains to the gods that they had taken everything from her, claiming, “They gave me nothing in the world to love but Psyche and then took her from me.” As the novel moves towards its end Orual falls into a dream or vision and gives her complaint to the gods. She interacts with those from her life like her father and the Fox until final she views Psyche’s life after being cast out by the god of the Grey Mountain. Orual comes to terms with her selfish love that disguised itself as affection. As they finally meet, Orual declares to her sister, “Never again will I call you mine; but all there is of me shall be yours. Alas, you know now what it’s worth. I never wished you well, never had one selfless thought of you. I was a craver.”

Here, at the end of the novel and this short essay, Orual’s affection for Psyche is redeemed. It is restored by the love of another. In that Light, Orual could love the way that she ought to have loved Psyche. In this place, Orual loves because she experiences love. As He, the god, approaches, Orual humbly proclaims, “I loved her as I would once have thought it impossible to love, would have died any death for her. And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and oh, gloriously she did) it was for another’s sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes.”

Funnily enough, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, now considered by many to be one of the quintessential American novels, was not an initial success. It would be saved from obscurity by the paperbacks, Armed Services Edition (ASEs), printed for U.S. troops in World War II. Written in and about the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald offers a critical look at the underpinning of the United States after World War I.

The novel is an insight into the Lost Generation as writers and artists wrestled with the aftermath of such a cataclysmic war. The ideal of H.G. Wells’ “crystal palace” had been shattered, these were as T.S. Eliot put it the “hollow men.” At its heart, the novel is about America, and its hope and idealism captured in the American Dream as Nick Carraway reflects at the novel’s end.

The American Dream is an ideal captured in the heart of the country from some the earliest settlers and continues to the present day. This dream has drawn untold people to this country due to its ideal so eloquently captured by Thomas Jefferson, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Birthed from Protestant and Enlightenment individualism, the United States has held lofty aspirations by preaching the right for an individual to a liberated life spent pursuing happiness (Jefferson did not intend such simple hedonistic belief).

Thus, Jay Gatsby can invent himself into what he wants to become. At the heart of the dream is the possibility of a self-made man. No matter where one came from or did in their past, the U.S. has held this lure that you can become something different and something far greater. Similarly with the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, as he migrates from the isolated world of the Midwest to the bright lights of New York City. Fitzgerald seems to be diving into the promises that America offers in self-autonomy and the ability to improve one’s station in life.

Within this theme of self-made Gatsby, being new money can parade around with those of old money but as the novel progresses, we find that with old money comes a pedigree that new money cannot penetrate. And it’s the pursuit of becoming self-made, earning your place among the “betters” of the culture. The novel’s last lines capture this pursuit of the American Dream and the hope and promise of tomorrow.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow” reaches its full height of a meaningless life, but for Fitzgerald, it brings hope and promise. And that’s the power of America, that this nation has been built on the pursuit of that “one fine morning.” How beautifully put that these noble attempts will be back by the constant looking to the past.

Gatsby’s dream revolves around his love, or better put, his obsession over Daisy Buchanan, a woman that he fell in love with five years ago has been instrumental in making himself. All that he has done has been in an attempt to win her back. She is married to another member of the “old money” guard, Tom Buchanan. The only people who die in the novel are those that are not part of the old money society. But those that long to be part of that world and yet, cannot enter find themselves cast out, as Nick remarks, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

The American Dream can become a nightmare, a full abandonment of morality in pursuit of happiness can easily become a rat race that leaves crumpled lives in its wake as it does to Gatsby. From the guy with the best parties to an empty funeral, his life was built on an unhealthy love that consumed him and to make himself up into something “great,” but detached from a virtue, Gatsby remained hollow despite Nick’s reassertion, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” It’s not difficult to be better than the old money like the Buchanans of East Egg. And perhaps this is where we leave Fitzgerald’s classic as it celebrates 100 years this year, a testimony and warning to human nature, that our desires and longings matter a great deal. What image are we making ourselves in?

Remember the Signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the Signs. — The Silver Chair

As Jill Pole arrives in Narnia with Eustace Scrubb, she comes face to face with Aslan, the great Lion. In the wood beyond the World’s End, she encounters the authority, majesty, and glory of Aslan. This short section breathes out Scripture, in particular, the book of Deuteronomy. So, we begin with Jill having watched Eustace fall off the cliffs and be blown on the wind by Aslan towards Narnia.

Jill after a good cry, finds herself thirsty and alone among the trees. However, between her and the stream lies Aslan. Known her thoughts and desires, he invites her to the stream to come and quench her dying thirst. Aslan denies Jill’s requests for him to move or to do anything to her. He answers that he has consumed, “girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” indeed, as the Lord is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). For creation is under that of its Creator.

Despite this ominous warning, Jill approaches upon the news that there is no other stream. Moses is reflecting upon the history of the Hebrews in the book of Deuteronomy. It is typically seen as a book of sermons for the people before the prophet of the Lord dies; he reflects upon his teachings and words near the end, “Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As raindrops on the tender herb, And as showers on the grass” (Deut. 32:2). His words are life-giving water, Israel is entering into a “good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs,” but even that water will be a reminder of the Living water to come (John 4:13-14). Jill’s thirst is only quenched by the lone stream of Life at the top of the World.

Upon her thirst being quenched, Jill stands before Aslan. But it appears to her that the Lion has made a great mistake. She was not really meant to be here; she was not called for. And yet, she is here because she was called as Aslan answers, “You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.” Jill has been called into Narnia for the exact same purpose as the rest of them. Aslan reminds Lucy Pevensie of this purpose at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” For God also called Israel to himself (Deut. 4:35-37).

As Aslan charges Jill with her tasks in the quote at the start, it is his reminder to repeat his commands that echoes the charge of Moses to the people of Israel as the Hebrews prepare to enter the Promised Land. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9). To remember, what a wonderful and difficult task, but it is a task that Jill must take up and one that we must take up. Remember.