Red goes the iron, 
‘neath the waters of time

Green goes the brass, 
under the wheeling sky

Blue goes the silver, 
as the stars at night’s end

But gold, it does not wither,
and so, dreams to us it sends,

of life there, past the river, yond’ the bend

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Goedele and I had a fantastic and sprawling conversation about the musical harmony of all created things, the song in our soul, and God who sings them both.

Thank you for being here.

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I’ll come right out with it.

I think the 2030’s should look like real rest, E-ink screens, hard hand-wrought work, and a renaissance of Beauty and transcendence.

Now, you may find me rather optimistic.

I generally am, as a rule.

But I think hope is the only way to dream or draft a fitting future.

Yet, even I must admit, if you care about anything I care about, you probably have noticed plenty negative about our current age.

Our lives are based around consumption. Our schedules, our technology, our architecture, our food is based around efficiency and profit. It has become our idea of progress.

Efficiency.

We want everything faster and with less work, and whenever we want it. A great deal of people now have their groceries delivered to their door. We skip the shopping and cooking, and we do not even remember that we have skipped the concept of harvest time. You can get any fruit whenever we wish.

We take it for granted.

We can artificially engineer the circumstances to get us what nature does not ordinarily afford—and humanity is now daring to do such a thing with deeper goods such as knowledge and intimacy.

Answers without study for Art without techne—

“Love” without the necessary growth—

But we are on our third wish.

Did we forget that in those stories the granted wish comes like a curse?

Here, we stand at the edge of the future.

We dreamt of efficiency, but now at its crest, we cast the edge a wary eye.

As we stand on the precipice of our wish being granted,

as we hold it even in our shaking palms,

are we having second thoughts?

Second Thoughts

“Materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of evil.” - Tolkien

I am not sure that I want the man-made attempt at utopia which is unfolding.

I have peeked over the edge once or twice myself and thought,

“I do hope there is another way around.”

Well, I have been dreaming of it.

You probably have too,

I don’t know.

It is as if we are under a curse we are constantly trying to undo, but for all of our magic, the curse only takes a different form.

It doesn’t change the fact that we stole fire from the gods.

It doesn’t change the fact that we stole the fruit and now work by the sweat of our brow. Now, do we think are we inventing our way out of every toil?

The toil of learning to paint?

The toil of learning to cook?

The toil of learning?

The toil of writing?

The toil of reading?

We are outsourcing larger and larger parts of what it means to be human—and it is costing us parts of what it means to be human.

But odds are, you have read that article before.

This one is rather about what could be.

This is a daydream of the 2030’s.

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But daydream or not,

I am not writing something I think is impossible.

I write this because I think it is possible.

This is my second thought:

Weeding and Pruning a Tangible Life

“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”

— Wendell Berry

“There is one sin: to call a green leaf gray,
Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth.”

— G.K. Chesterton

I believe we urgently need to rethink what advanced means.

If it purely means efficiency and profit, then what opens before us is that yawning abyss. But this same door can turn on another hinge. Push it hard, and I believe it is still possible to rename “progress” to human flourishing.

I have doubts that it is really progress for everyone to compulsively reach for their device at any moment of downtime. We have invented an attention trap for ourselves and we carry it around in our pockets.

My last job had no accountability for these things. Everywhere you’d go, you would find an employee with their face buried in a phone. One fellow would watch full-length movies and pace back and forth all evening shift.

The worst part is that I understand it. I do not write this from atop a high horse. I write this with the siren’s song of Youtube Shorts playing in the background, ready to catch me fast and drain my hours and years.

And frankly, I’m sick of it.

But this is the point.

Most of us are,

deep down.

Every time I see my one-year old daughter’s eyes lock on our phones—when I see her desire it more than anything or anyone else present, it makes my heart ache. Is this what we are modeling to our children?

I refuse to outsource my attention owed her to a tablet, but,

if I cannot distract her while I distract myself,

then something needs to change.

We have to do better.

And we know that.

I know that we know that because it is what we always say when someone brings up phone usage. We all nod our heads like an AA meeting.

“I know… We have to do better.”

That perpetual answer betrays to me that we actually want to put down the phones and live a real life, but we believe we are held captive.

The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,

But Lord help us if we do not fight.

And I realize—maybe we don’t know how.

Maybe we do not think there is another way in the modern world.

“Ah, I wish I could, but I need Google maps”

“What if I need to look something up?”

I am not sure these excuses are really the crux of the issue. I hate to break it to you, but I have a feeling you already know it. We are addicted, man—and we are clinging to any excuse we can.

I know because I got a dumb(ish) phone last year.

I began to leave my smart phone at home when I go to work, and once, I even went on a whole vacation to a different state with it left at home.

We already know the truth, don’t we?

I did not miss it.

They sell dumb phones now which have maps equivalents. There are less excuses than we thought. We may not be able to look things up as often, but do we really need to?

I have found that we don’t.

We actually probably do not need to ponder our orb before we go to sleep, or when we wake up, or every time we think of anything.

But be honest, is it not more because we are afraid?

I think we are afraid we won’t know what to do with ourselves—as if we would not be as entertained or enjoy our lives as much.

Have we lost our minds?

I am beginning to think that if all our phones died an unceremonious and permanent death, there would actually be a genuine renaissance. People would be forced to do things, read, spend time with one another, and learn skills for 3-9 more hours a day.

I think the enchantment would break, and we would look in the mirror and remember who we are.

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With all the time we gained, maybe we wouldn’t have to feel like skimping time on everything else.

I dare say I think you believe me too.

I still have my smart phone for now, but every time it gets me stuck, I get closer to being fed up enough—fed up enough find a way to getting it off of me permanently—and there are ways.

Besides throwing it in a river, I could put it in one of those lock-boxes and only allow an hour a day.

I could hit it with a hammer.

“There are apps to help reduce screen time.”

My brother in Christ, we are addicted. In the moment of weakness, I will remove the bounds of time I put on myself, and months later I will have forgotten I had ever done it. I have made my feeble and repetitive attempts.

Perhaps you are stronger than I am.

But for me, something has got to give,

and I think it is my smart phone.

I think there are too many weeds in our garden, and many tired flowers to prune, and if we could uproot them and cut back the old growth, we could see a new, colorful, and simple type of life emerge.

Even if we think that we are doing something worthwhile, much energy of a plant is spent toward empty branches—toward fading and wayward blooms. In gardening, if you snip those wayward blooms, it is remarkable what the flower does with it. New and larger blooms come up to the left and to the right.

And I want you to genuinely imagine the difference. Imagine that every time we would normally pull out our phone and stare at some inane filler, we created something instead.

What if we honed cræft to pass on to our children,

and to our neighborhoods around us,

and to the next generation?

We could spend all that time reading, or engaging in focused learning.

We could become more human than machine again.

We could be like Gerda.

We could carry a sketchbook and learn to paint.

We could learn an instrument, or three.

We could also learn to knit.

My wife has been learning to knit, and I have seen first-hand what an underrated art it is.

I am not sure that people realize that being good at knitting essentially means you can create your own high quality clothing. There is a whole community called Ravelry where people create patterns, share them, and people create their own versions and share those, and I think that is the type of social network we need (part of what makes Substack special is that we come together around a shared cræft of writing).

She one day wants to knit me an heirloom sweater, probably with some fish on it or something—and I cannot imagine someone doing something like that and wishing they had rather spent those hours wasting away on social media.

We can still do things.

Many of us on here are writers.

Allow me to show you something cool I found.

I got this Freewrite second-hand on Facebook marketplace a year or so ago.

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Personally, I love it, because if I bring it to the coffee shop or the park and bring nothing else, I won’t be distracted before I ever get to writing. On my laptop, there have been many times where I find myself on social media or checking email, and before I know it, I’ve used up an hour of my writing time, if I am lucky.

That window between booting up a laptop and getting to the document is a razor’s edge. I am liable to fall off it and directly into the Youtube. With the Freewrite, I press a button and I am right where I left off in a moment.

I am talking about this not just because I think it’s a cool technology, but because it is a type of technology I am beginning to see emerge as a pattern.

The Freewrite is tactile and sensory. It is slower than a computer. It can connect to the cloud, but most of the time it stays offline. It is not user-friendly, but something with which you need to spend a little time learning secret key-codes. The E-Ink screen reads like an electronic newspaper.

The Freewrite has all the style of a 1940’s car, but to me, it is the future.

It is the spirit of the 2030’s.

I call it that because it is not confined to the Freewrite alone, but it is an undercurrent in many new designs and technologies.

Take the dumb phone I chose, for example.

The Mudita Kompakt was the most inexpensive of the options for what I was looking for—and what I was looking for was simplicity, function, and I would be lying if the elegance of it did not strike me.

It, like the Freewrite, helps one to have a more focused life. It does not have a browser, and it does not have social media. If you want it though, it is still possible to side-load the Spotify app, or a form of maps, and the side-loading itself will make you feel like a technomancer.

It too has an E-Ink screen, and if you look at the two pictures, you cannot help but feel a resemblance between the two technologies—just like the Daylight computer:

It does less,

but that is not a step backwards.

It is a sharpening of a tool and the weeding of a garden.

Less is more.

Every new I-phone, more capable of grabbing and keeping our attention is a step backwards. We have reached the zone of diminishing return. But, if we can adjust our sight, I suggest to you that less is the step forward. Less is how we progress from here, if human flourishing is to be the aim of technology.

The Daylight Computer is yet another technology with an E-Ink screen, and a desire to simplify life.

And I just find that interesting.

Focused, human flourishing-centered technologies are already coming about, and for whatever reason they are looking the same—coming from the same genome.

What we are noticing is something still sprouting small, but I believe that if we water it, we could see something happen which many of us do not expect.

The 2030’s could actually be something spirited—something special.

We may live to see our screens turn gray, and our cræft golden.

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Caught Wind of The Spring

“The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist.”

— G.K. Chesterton

“Good farming is first and last an art, a way of doing and making that involves human histories, cultures, minds, hearts, and souls. It is not the application by dullards of methods and technologies under the direction of a corporate-academic intelligentsia.”

— Wendell Berry

I suppose if you have made it this far into the article, you are probably with me—or at least interested. So, I have an important question to ask you.

Have you seen the new USPS trucks?

There has been some small controversy around them.

I hear some people react immediately and say it looks impractical or inefficient, but I think that reaction is odd as well as irrational.

I do not think that such people are actually concerned with the efficiency of mail trucks, but if they were, they would know that the old ones got 10 mpg on a good day.

Are they concerned because it is not aerodynamic? (I don’t buy it)

Anyhow, I think they look like an artistic child’s drawing of a mail truck.

It looks like what a mail truck has always wished it was.

I must confess I love them.

They add a little bit of whimsy to what has otherwise become boring. Interestingly enough, the design has been very popular apart from those vocal haters.

Now, I could not have ever expected to find it here in a mail truck, but I personally see a first budding leaf.

An agency, nearly as ubiquitous in the United States as possible, has made a bold and fresh design choice—and people have appreciated it. An artist actually got that design through.

The masses liked a good bold choice.

Can you believe it?

It feels like someone actually cared about the look of a mail truck, beyond the bare necessity—and I find that to be important.

Like how just 100 years ago, they would go through the effort of making water towers into wonders.

More About The Water Towers Here

The mail truck feels classic.

It feels like the spirit of the 2030’s, and it feels like a return to breathing character into what is everyday and common.

It feels like 1950’s toasters and refrigerators.

It is such a small beginning, but I can feel a wind moving the trees.

It feels like an air of caring about Beauty again. I think under the surface of this consumerist people is one starving for Beauty, that ultimately of God. Whenever I talk about it with people who haven’t given it much thought, I see something wake up in their eyes—as if they are remembering a dream they had in the night.

Like the first fresh wind of spring.

I have been finding a lot of people who have been thinking about it too. It very well may just be the circle I am in—but then again, I don’t recall people talking so much about this ten years ago at all. I feel that I myself, despite having been an artist for most of my life, was asleep to the reality of Beauty just the same, even five years ago.

Beauty was something nameless yet surely from heaven, stirring underneath the surface—a wind, sweeping through me until it found the reed of my heart on which to play its music.

I have nothing with which to prove to you what is coming but a wonderful sense that something is happening, and these things I have been showing you—but I swear I feel that wind blowing.

I feel it blowing not just in here, but out there, in a dry and weary land.

It is howling through the branches—people, and the fruit they may yet bear.

I think the artists are walking in a waking winter dream—always wishing that the buildings and the parks and the water towers could be made right again.

The artisans were the first leaf to fall when it came to cost efficiency.

What we have seen since is engineers doing both jobs.

To be sure, engineering is its own cræft, but it is precisely that.

Design for utility is not a replacement for beauty, nor the other way around.

The ceiling painter and the stone carver have in some sense been orphaned by the industrial revolution—severed quietly from a full participation in society. An artisan of whatever skill level used to be present for every house and church built. Art used to be techne. It used to refer to any creative skill, and the world used to be made of it.

Every hat, every garment, every blanket hand-woven

Every chair, every chariot, every door hand-carved

Every buckle, every bell, every sword hand-forged

Every meal, every wine, every fruit hand-farmed

Has it all now slipped through our fingers?

Is it only a world we used to know?

Only a fading dream?

Maybe.

But this is the very dream I think we could wake up to some day soon.

Not without work,

And perhaps not all of us,

But I think a new-old way of living is coming and is already here, and whether we are a part of it is up to us whether we do want to participate in it—to set down the phones and become human again—to pick up the brush and the stained glass, the marble and the wood, and intentionally make the world we miss—

To make things worthy of being antiques in 2070.

To make life organic again—to remember that hand-made, organic, or healthy are not premium, but simply human.

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Though, maybe you have heard that the advent of AI is likely to make hand-made, hand-painted, and hand-written art to be valued more highly.

That is precisely the wave I propose we ride—not that hand-made arts should become more expensive, but that it should become so deep in the demand of society that Amazon could conceivably capsize in the coming tide. I have hope that someday soon enough that cheap and inhumane options will be obsolete.

I probably sound insane—but I think on some level this requires a leap of faith. The raising of the mast sets one off and out into the unknown.

I think, for instance, that if those selling organic or hand-made items were priced the same as their inhuman counterparts, I could see something remarkable happening.

While at first, those craftsmen and farmers would see a poor return on their investment, I think that soon the world’s standard’s would rise.

Why would I pay the same amount of money for something fake—something worse in every way?

I think after weathering the difficulty, organic farmers would be doing rather well.

But, I do not think this uncertainty is a burden which farmers should have to take up on their own. Why should they have to weather it?

What then do you suppose would happen, if tomorrow, 100 farmers and organic companies each put up Kickstarters for businesses which sell

“organic foods at normal prices?”

I don’t know.

Do you think it would work though?

Do you think that people would care enough to try and change the world?

Do you think if we got this word out to the farmers that they might try—and the patrons of the world might just hold them up long enough to see the world change?

I don’t know.

Perhaps I am only dreaming.

But it is a good dream.

Hmm.

Yes, just a dream.

. . . . . .

But do you think it would work with art too?

I mean, you never told me whether you thought it would work for food, but let’s just assume. Do you think that if we brought back patronage in full swing, that we could see artisan construction companies, woodworkers, car manufacturers, or anything—do you think if they could match the prices, that humans could beat the machine, like John Henry against the steam engine?

Without dying of exhaustion afterwards—obviously.

Do you think we can beat the machine?

Do you think that if we tamed technology and streamlined some way of local patronage, that we could fund each other’s greatest ideas and sow the seeds for locations to have a sense of place and culture again?

Maybe it could be on Daylight Computers someday, when technological deflation hits and people have them instead of I-Pads or laptops.

I am only dreaming. These are just ideas—and maybe you can tell me how economically ignorant I am in the comments.

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But my point is that many people are having ideas like those I am talking about. Many healthy technology companies are coming about whether I talk about them or not. Many people are becoming vocally concerned with Beauty whether or not I have anything to say about it.

There is already movement.

I think if we look now toward the horizon,

we may even see the artist returning from exile.

My new boss at a high-end garden design company actually hired me because I showed him my paintings, and he saw them as applicable experience.

He says that people have been more interested in what their design has to offer—that is, people are having more interest in a high attention to Beauty.

If businesses want to keep with the times and ahead of the curve, they might have to consider the beauty of their project. After all, I wager that the first car company to make everyday cars (yes, especially the cheap ones) look classic again is going to take over the market. They need to be bold—do something new that reminds us of the old.

Go, tell them. Once one has success, the rest will follow.

When I drive through a major city, I am confounded by how every car is white, black, or gray, and maybe a couple red (especially in Dallas—good grief).

I am not a prophet, but it is my conviction that we would find millennial gray is already dead behind the curtain if we could peek. I think we would find that it is already out of date, and what is coming to replace it is simply struggling to breach the soil.

The fact that it is called millennial gray tells me that it is seen as a passing trend—like a passing gray winter. People are beginning to watch the empty branches in expectation.

The mail truck is only the first green leaf.

Tomorrow, it is the Vintage Modern Broncos

Tomorrow, it is the Renault 17 x Ora Ïto

Hey man, I can’t afford them either.

But tomorrow, it is whoever decides to make the bold decision to give all of their cars soul again, from the top to bottom—and if you say that it is too expensive or they wouldn’t know how, I swear, I will show you a picture of a 1978 Toyota Corolla.

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But am I really only talking about cars?

The Color of Life

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
— Wendell Berry

“The breakdown of initiation and the diminishment of mythic understanding are actually defences against encountering our own beauty.”

“Those sculptural images on the temple walls are telling us this, warning us of major potencies at play. If you want to keep everything just so, nice and white, go no further.”

— Martin Shaw

Have you ever been walking in the woods and noticed that in all dead and dying things, natural colors fade? The tired flowers and last year’s sticks—the hair on our heads and the light in our skin—even dry bones fade from what life they once had.

When I look out at the things we have made, at the things we have become—at gray plastic apartments, and churches like office buildings, I cannot help but wonder if something has died in us.

Creatures created to cultivate the earth,

with no more interest in its beauty?

A people fashioned in the Image of the God who “made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…”

but we do not desire our inheritance?

Not merely to swallow the world, huddling beasts into boxes for slaughter, but to shepherd it, to know it, to plant it, to prune, water and weed it.

That was not the curse.

This was the gift.

It is life.

The sheep sheers not her wool,

nor the flower prune her own stalks.

Man’s hands are for the care of the world,

and for the garden in which he walks.

When massive machines harvest our food, and kill our nameless, loveless animals,

when they cut and forge our furniture with brutal efficiency, no time for the human touch,

and when they feed us our sights of the world as we lay numbly on our beds,

I do not know what we have become.

Our crown is tarnished.

We huddle ourselves into our own boxes,

and do we doubt something is eating us?

There is a beast that knoweth only hunger,

It liveth in the heart of man.

It devoureth his time and tear it asunder,

Yet he knoweth it and hold out his hand.

If our belly is our god, then it does not matter whether the walls are grey. It does not matter if there are trees at all. It does not matter if we are eating real food, or seeing real things. It does not matter if we speak to a real person. And why even go outside?

It can be delivered.

Why even do anything at all?

You may find me dramatic, but I believe the void is that which drives the gray. Our outer world is shaped by our inner world, and what I see in the gray box is meaninglessness,

a hunger above and a hunger below,

no care, no time for anything more.

Here lay the grim winter dragon,

where the leaves fell fast from the tree.

The fruit of our labor, it eateth without savor,

and then falleth fast to sleep.

Our outer world is shaped by our inner world, and the outer aesthetic and goodness we put to form is merely the leaves and fruit on the tree.

If our outer world is dull and gray, it is a sure tell that our inner garden has gone to sticks and dead leaves.

But even these dry bones groan for Eden.

That ancient serpent’s word led to this—and made our gardens graveyards.

take of the fruit, and you will be like Him—reach, steal fire from heaven

Did we not know it? That fire spent these sticks to the dust.

But the seed of heaven is a gardener Himself,

and falling into our heart to die,

all of Eden springs up green.

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“the palaces will be forsaken, The bustling city will be deserted. The forts and towers will become lairs forever, A joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks—Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, And the fruitful field is counted as a forest.” — Isaiah 32

Our outer world is shaped by our inner world, and in our inner world, we must, by God’s help, slay the dragon.

When the seed is pushed into the earth,

And the leaf buddeth on the tree,

Know ye the serpent’s curse returneth to his mouth

And he sleepeth eternal sleep.

In that day the Lord with His severe sword, great and strong, Will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan that twisted serpent; And He will slay the reptile that is in the sea.

In that day sing to her,

“A vineyard of red wine! I, the Lord, keep it, I water it every moment; Lest any hurt it, I keep it night and day.” — Isaiah 27

When the serpent is slain,

a green garden sprouts from winter’s decay.

If the seed is sown in us, we must begin the slow work. Take away then the dead leaves and wayward weeds. Take up the sticks from the dust, and plant ye new things.

Awake O’ sleeper.

This world is our gifted garden.

You do not need to be an artist to care if the garden looks good or grows good things. An artisan is not needed to water what is being planted, or to clear the bed of debris.

But it is natural when the seed grows forth to fruit in our soul, that it would be made manifest around us.

Creation is woven into what a human is,

and craftsmanship is of the Spirit of God. (Exodus 31:1-6)

The arts—every cræft we cultivate is a gift which ennobles man, and shows him to be something mythic. They show that God already made us to be like Him before we ever took the fruit.

They grow from that hallowed green place sown within us, if it is green.

Know that fruit born of branches is born to be seen.

Yeá, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

And a lamp is not put under a basket.

What matters most in art is not skill or cost, but care.

(Though, it is a sad commentary when our capital buildings have gold domes, but our churches are less cared for than our homes—like when Solomon’s Palace took thirteen years, but the Lord’s temple took seven)

We think in America that it is a waste of money and time to put real care into the artistic Beauty of our physical place of worship.

Efficiency.

We forget that which classical Christians knew.

God is Beauty, just as He is Truth and Goodness.

We have applied ourselves diligently to express accurately the Truth of God, and some have produced fruit of His Goodness.

It takes a lifetime to embody either, even imperfectly.

But similar to the harm of failing to tell the Truth about God, or to show He is Good by our actions, it is also possible to fail to express the Beauty of God.

Descriptive words only get so far.

They are nutritious, but the one who has not tasted and seen does not know their acquired flavor.

But the tree’s fruit is not invisible, but beautiful, not by marketing and pandering to the passing ages, but by the true and timeless beauty and goodness of its nature.

I think this is why the early Church looked the way it did.

Because the seed of heaven was in their heart, they carried their worship as from heaven. They did not carry a censor of incense around a golden altar because they thought it would attract people. They did it because Revelation told us that the angels carried incense around the golden altar in the heavens.

It was never for fixing our eyes on the visible rather than the invisible, but seeing through the visible to the invisible.

"Let us, who mystically represent the cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving trinity, lay aside all worldly cares, that we may receive the King of all, who comes invisibly up-borne by the angelic hosts.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

The poetry of our liturgy and the golden-fruited gardens in our parishes are as much a testament to what we have seen and received as our descriptions and explanations are. In some sense, they make incarnate the faith which we otherwise can only express invisibly and intangibly with words.

It is not a wonder that while we might believe we are saying all the right words to someone, for some reason we just cannot express to another the depth or the beauty of how it feels with words alone.

It is possible to take the fruit from the tree of life, press it, and offer the nutritious juice to the one who has not tasted,

But let them come instead, and let them in a holy and haunting moment, see the gold fruit glisten in the midst of the sacred grove.

Let them behold the shadow of heavenly things on earth.

“For two hours I enter a kind of Christian Dreaming that is so deep it is without beginning or end. Every ten minutes it seems another door to another century—both before my life and after it—is opening. I am in participation mystique. Finally, the deep interior in me is getting fed, and I’m not thinking about myself one little bit.

When it’s over, I am unable to move. After fifty years of heading for the door the second a service is finished, I’m absolutely stock-still. Near Tears. Most of what has happened I don’t understand, not intellectually. But my soul has set out on divine waters…”

“…For this absolute beginner the presence of the Galilee Druid has announced himself. For this absolute beginner a door has opened to nighttime starry deserts and burning bushes and a fish with coins in its mouth. Like babushka dolls, as the liturgy progresses, older and older images push forward, one inside the other. There seems to be a trackway here back to the very beginning of Christianity.

When it comes time for the Eucharist—communion—I find myself compelled to take it. There seems to be no choice in the matter.”

— Martin Shaw, about his first Orthodox Divine Liturgy

Beauty does not make an argument, it makes an impression. It takes the side door to the heart, and the road which the rampart does not watch. It kisses the cheek that does not expect it, and pierces where there is no armor.

It is more like being enchanted than converted.

Someone who has been in love will understand it.

It is the Good power of poetry and myths and legends.

It is the Good power of the burning bush and the white stag.

It is the Good power of nature and of temples and hand-woven tapestries.

It is the Good power of the Edenic garden growing in our souls,

And it is the color of life in a world turning gray.

But is it turning gray?

There are cathedrals being built and painted in our day.

It is likely you have not heard of them.

But I am hearing of them often.

They do not make the news, and yet they are feats of love and devotion.

Something is happening quietly,

But you best believe it is happening.

And people are beginning to hear about it.

I think, for instance, the impact of Martin Shaw and Paul Kingsnorth becoming Orthodox Christians has not yet truly been felt.

Two green horsemen—one of mossy myth—and one of natural living,

Each are not standalone figures.

I do not mention either as mere men but as two that represent thousands of leaves—thousands of people who have a love of beauty, story, and simple, human life, stumbling into the same sacred grove and being compelled to eat.

Behold, at the horizon, people are coming who want to set down the phone, and work on the garden. They want to tell tales around campfires, make garments and build houses—and man alive, are they having children.

As my small parish and many others had between 50 to 1000 catechumens this year, and as the Orthodox Church builds and paints new Cathedrals in the United States and elsewhere, I feel we are seeing the beginning of something, not the continuing of a downtrend.

All, as the Ballad returns by the pen of Malcolm Guite, selling out and topping the Amazon Book list.

All, as Liturgies of The Wild becomes a New York Times Best Seller.

All, as you actually read this to the end.

I see an ornate and intricate garden sown.

You may not think much of the numbers just yet.

But I see the return of the Christian Imagination, the love of Beauty, of cræft,

and the color of life,

in the 2030’s.

I put a lot of work and prayer into writing this, and it is free because I am trying to say things I believe the world needs to hear right now.

If you think it does too, then please do what you can to put wind in the sail, whatever that may be.

Thank you for reading this very long article.

God bless you.

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A garden is a holy place, set apart.

Some weeds are called weeds because they steal nutrients from other plants.

In a garden, some plants are weeds simply because they spread and overrun everything else.

One needs to pull a weed out by its roots, or you will find it again soon. Even if you are thorough, you may find it again soon, but the more vigilant you are, the better your garden will look.

Some weeds do not have deep roots at all. Some are thorny and resistant, and some, like buckthorn, root themselves deep.

Sometimes a shrub may bear fruit, yet it may also bear thorns.

Another may flower beautifully each year, yet is thorny to the touch.

Some flowers only bloom once and never again.

Some, like the tulip, bloom once for a few weeks, and then never again—yet their empty leaves will sprout up again next year, if the bulb is not removed.

The corpse flower only flowers once every seven to ten years, and when it does, it smells like rotten flesh.

The Queen of The Night flowers once a year on one night, is absolutely breathtaking, and then its petals fall before sunrise.

Some flowers, like geraniums, are beautiful, but only last a short time. Then, the old pods must be clipped to make room for next year.

Sometimes cutting a perfectly good zinnea in its prime is the right thing to do, for even in that same season, it will grow an even larger flower to replace it.

After lamb’s ear has grown and flowered, if you cut it short once more, its leaves will grow back before autumn, shining like the silvery moon.

Sometimes, a perfectly good branch must be cut to open the path and the line of sight.

Some flowers, like Lantana, produce a sweet aroma.

Some trees are green all through the winter, withstanding the cold, but they bear no fruit.

A juniper bush produces something like berries, but one can only eat of them when they are dark and mature, for otherwise, some are toxic.

Some trees, like the manchineel, bear fruit which is toxic to eat.

Some soil is so dry that it repels both seed and water. One must till the earth if one wishes to grow something there.

An olive tree may take up to twelve years to bear fruit, and requires much help to arrive there, but once it does, it may bear fruit for many generations.

Herbs produce leaves valuable for the healing of disease, or for the flavor of food.

A healthy eucalyptus tree is nearly immune to rot, and its leaves are antiseptic, antiviral, and anti-inflamatory. I think of it like the gold of plants—incorruptible.

Some fruits fortify against disease.

Some trees produce fruits multiple times a year.

The Glastonbury Thorn flowers both around Easter, and at Christmas, and is the only Hawthorne to do so.

The Tree of Life bears twelve fruits, yielding fruit in every month, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

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A white bird flickered yonder, 
Before the great green-treed hill.
It caught the sun in its fluttering wings,
Perching on a mulberry tree.

They said they had seen it lately,
A rare and shining swallow
I stared as it danced further into the green, 
I stood on the edge, wondering.

I turned aside and followed up the hill,
Over the lightning fence and still,
I climbed through tall and dewy grass,
To the place I'd seen it last

I passed through thorny bushes,
And up the slippery slope,
And over the rotting wood
And as I crested the vast holy hill,

I removed my hat
And prayed

And while I saw not my burning bush,
This is what I saw instead:

I saw three purple flowers,
Like stars on a stem

I saw where three great trees 
were fallen and dead

And when I had crested 
And gazed up through the ceiling,

I saw a golden hawk circle
Three times overhead

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The trees shall clap their hands
On branches, don their wedding bands
And turn their leaves to gold

Yeá, though the earth turn cold

One day the autumn will not end
But she will sit in peace and spend
All the winter, cool, and with a friend

And they will never grow old

They will turn back from the dead
And ride back into youth instead
And the leaves shall keep their golden edge

I’m told

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Mystical and Mundane

The trees suggest, but yet refrain
From saying things they know

Even so, they whisper
Just outside of earshot
Like they want me to feel I am missing out
On mystery too deep for words
Something they’d only tell the birds
That nestle in their branches

My home is decorated
With green and gold and red
And being bold they said
“There’s better yet ahead”

Though simple blood you’ve bled
And with it you’ve contented
Yet though known it may be shed
Though til’ now life has relented

But think now how you’d spend it

How brittle your breath should be
If there no magic in it
Your breath whispers too
In speech you understand

Of Long Forgotten Land

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In the Elder Days of Middle-Earth,

Two trees Yavanna sung to hold the world in light.

Laurelin, like the golden Sun, and Telperion as the silver night.

Two Trees to Begin, Two Trees to End

“The one had leaves of dark green that beneath were as shining silver, and from each of his countless flowers a dew of silver light was ever falling, and the earth beneath was dappled with the shadows of his fluttering leaves. The other bore leaves of a young green like the new-opened beech; their edges were of glittering gold. Flowers swung upon her branches in clusters of yellow flame, formed each to a glowing horn that spilled a golden rain upon the ground: and from the blossom of that tree there came forth warmth and a great light.”

They were the glory of the First Age.

Melkor hated them both.

He had chosen dissonance when Eru first brought him and the other Valar to sing the world into being, and so his all works were dissonant to the world rather than harmonious.

He could not make anything so beautiful as those trees.

So he hated them,

and he sought to kill them.

When Melkor schemed to slay the Trees of Valinor, the elf Fëanor hid what he could of their glory in shining Silmarils, gems unique in beauty and power.

Then the Valar, Aulë, made what he could of their remains.

He placed the last flower of Telperion in a vessel,

and it became Rána,

The Moon

He placed the last fruit of Laurelin likewise,

and it became Vása,

The Sun

And they were glorious.

Yet one was but a final flower,

and the other, a last fruit of what once was.

The glory of Middle-Earth, even all Arda has ever suffered this march—this slow death—this “Long Defeat,” as Tolkien called it.

Each age fades into the next.

Each age grows lesser than the last.

The First Age was the Age of Legends.

It was an age of Valar and elves—of gods and fae.

It was an age of grand tales and heroes—dangers more dire than of Mordor.

But the Valar left across the sea for Valinor,

And Many Elves died or departed when the hidden city of Gondolin was betrayed into the hands of Melkor, whom the elves call Morgoth.

The great city could not stand before the force of the dragons and the Balrogs which swiftly descended upon it.

And so, the glory and beauty of the first age died.

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The Second Age was the Age of Númenor.

It was the golden age of man.

But when mankind became strong and wealthy, it only inflamed their desire. They scorned the curse and boon of death given to them.

They sought rather what was not theirs,

They sought the immortality of the elves.

In their strength, the men had captured Sauron as he surrendered.

But they were deceived.

The pride of man proved their downfall, for Sauron corrupted their courts to worship Morgoth—and so, having their ear, he seduced them to seek a vain thing.

He turned their eyes to the West, to Valinor.

In folly, the Númenóreans sailed as if to invade the Undying Lands, and thus paid no heed to the Valar’s ban.

For this, Eru, The Father of All, sank the great island of Númenor,

and all of her ships and men fell into the sea.

The beauty of Númenor and the strength of her men drifted into memory.

The wonders of the world became myth—and many of the old things fell asleep.

The Third Age is the Age of Fading.

The trees snore and creak in the woods.

The Elves and their beauty fade into the West.

The song of the Valar merely echoes in nature and legend.

The last king of old Númenor is but a whispered rumor in the North.

And hobbits,

the smallest folk,

can still surprise one of the Maia.

The glory of Rivendale and Lothlórien are only held aloft by the rings on Elrond and Galadriel’s fingers—and they are leaving.

The old towers grow moss and crumble.

Weathertop was once Amon Sûl.

Amon Hen lies in ruins.

Osgiliath is a waste.

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Not very unlike our own world, I think.

All our oldest buildings are the most fantastic. We look at them as though they were done by some magic—some older, somehow greater way.

Our oldest stories are so grand that we do not even believe them anymore. We find it all too farfetched. We are strangers in our own world, and though we tell ourselves that we are making technological progress, we can feel the strength of our own hands diminishing. We are in the Age of Fading.

Well, not quite.

Did you know that Tolkien wrote the books of his Legendarium not as a separate world, but as a mythical past of our own?

We may even be in a fourth age, or a fifth.

In the past, we have had Bronze and Iron Ages, but we have settled of late for materials unworthy of mention, and unworthy of standing the test of time.

I have heard our current one called a “post-literate society.”

We are slowly abolishing ourselves, as C.S. Lewis writes about.

We are defeating ourselves.

“I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ – though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.” -Tolkien (Letter 195)

Do we feel the Long Defeat?

And yet, Tolkien mentions something else there at the end.

“glimpses of final victory”

There are many glimpses in Middle-Earth—and songs.

“Some there are among us who sing that the Shadow will draw back, and peace shall come again. Yet I do not believe that the world about us will ever again be as it was of old, or the light of the Sun as it was aforetime.”

-The elf, Haldir

It is all mingled, bittersweet, but there is a hint and a whisper of a turn—and I think Haldir might have been wrong about one thing. The world about them might again be as it was of old,

or perhaps greater.

There is a little-known prophecy among the histories of Middle-Earth. It is called the Prophecy of Mandos, and it speaks of Dagor Dagorath—that is, “The Battle of Battles.”

It is not known why it was not included in the Silmarillion, though it was in every draft from 1920 to 1958. There are some theories having to do with unsolved contradiction, but it is not important to the story at hand.

What is important is that these are Tolkien’s own thoughts toward the end of things in Arda.

Thus, Mandos spoke to Fëanor in the cold north of Araman:

“When the world is old and the powers grow weary, then Morgoth, seeing that the guard sleepeth, shall come back through the Door of Night out of the Timeless Void; and destroy the Sun and Moon. But Eärendil shall descend upon him as a white and searing flame and drive him from the airs.”

“Then shall the Last Battle be gathered on the fields of Valinor.

In that day Tulkas shall strive with Morgoth, and on his right hand shall be Eönwë, and on his left Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin, returning from the doom of men at the ending of the world; and the black sword of Túrin shall deal unto Morgoth his death and final end; and so shall the children of Húrin and all Men be avenged. Thereafter shall Earth be broken and re-made, and the Silmarils shall be recovered out of Air and Earth and Sea; for Eärendil shall descend and surrender that flame which he hath had in keeping. Then Fëanor shall take the Three Jewels and he will break them and with their fire Yavanna will rekindle the Two Trees, and a great light shall come forth. And the Mountains of Valinor shall be levelled, so that the Light shall go out over all the world.”

“When the world is old and the powers grow weary…”

At the bottom of the long defeat, that is when the gold sun rises.

Many heroes, like rays, rise up suddenly and strike Morgoth.

But one of the heroes in particular strikes me—

Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin.

The rest are Elves and Maiar and Valar.

Tulkas was the first Valar to brawl with Melkor.

Eönwë bore Manwë’s banner.

Fëanor is a legend.

Túrin is a man.

A dead man.

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Morgoth once cursed this man’s entire bloodline through his father.

The curse which befell Túrin brought not only evils from the outside,

but the curse was in Túrin’s very own hands.

It was an ugly act of spite and cruelty.

It ought to have been thwarted.

It ought have been avenged.

But Túrin suffered a life like a Sophoclean tragedy until the day he died.

Túrin killed his closest friend on accident. His marriage also turned to be an awful realization, his wife—his sister throwing herself to her death.

Death and misery followed him,

And so, after slaying the dragon Glaurung single-handedly with his black sword, he took his own life with it.1

He was a mixed figure. He did mighty deeds, and foolish ones.

In some way, I think he is a symbol of all those wronged by Morgoth—

All the normal, broken people, powerless in the face of the deep darkness.

In a sense, it had to be Túrin.

“The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to the fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist”…it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat.” - Tolkien

A man is perhaps never more soundly defeated than when he is driven by misery to die on his own sword.

Túrin went down to the dust,

but it was not his end.

It was not defeat.

Túrin was dead for thousands of years, and there is probably nothing which Morgoth expected less than a cursed man from the first age to come back from the dead and avenge his bloodline.

Though hope was more dead than the dirt, it turned.

For this, Tolkien liked to coin the word Eucatastrophe.2

It shines like a star in the blackest night,

like the phial in Frodo’s hand.

Tolkien describes Eucatastrophe as

“the sudden happy turn in a story

which pierces you with a joy that brings tears”

or

“a glimpse that is actually a ray of light

through the very chinks of the universe about us”

Tolkien believed it was the greatest sort of moment a fairytale could produce,

and so, Tolkien sowed his Legendarium with it at every fractal level.

Our story must go to the dust, where there, hope is dead,

Where the walls are breached, and the door, broken.

But Eucatastrophe is the moment which follows.

It comes when Théoden rides out to meet death with courage.

It comes at first light on the fifth day.

At dawn, look to the East.

For Túrin, it comes after a long grave—for the world, a long defeat.

Tolkien called the resurrection “The Great Eucatastrophe,”

first in Christ, but through him, the whole world.

“But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed.” - Tolkien

Túrin’s legend is hallowed, and to him, like the Hobbits, honor is given.

And if one man is raised, what song is sung from the West?

What chance could be whispered among men?

Something deep here is reversed.

The Silmarils are found,

they that fell into Fire and Sea.

With them, the Trees of Valinor rekindled,

And their light is not held in Valinor alone, but is shed over Middle Earth.

But Lo! we talk of great and final things,

things rightly too great for words.

Let’s talk about Hobbits,

and gardens.

“Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!” - Samwise Gamgee

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The Seeds of Future’s Song

“To hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted.” - Frodo Baggins

Sam was a humble Hobbit—humble as Hobbits already are. He was just his master’s gardener—but it was given him to carry something very special.

As the fellowship left Lothlórien, Galadriel gave Sam an understated gift.

“‘For you little gardener and lover of trees,’ she said to Sam, ‘I have only a small gift.’ She put into his hand a little box of plain grey wood, unadorned save for a silver rune upon the lid. ’Here is set G for Galadriel,’ she said; ‘but it may also stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it.

It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there. Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, that you have seen only in our winter. For our spring and our summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.'”

Sam had longed to see the elves, but now they were fading—sailing to the West. Lothlórien’s trees were gold, but they were fading gold into winter.

Such little is said, but I think Sam understood what a gift he had been given.

“Sam went red to the ears and muttered something inaudible, as he clutched the box and bowed as well as he could.”

It is both a humbling and honoring thing. This smallest gardener was chosen to carry on the Mallorn’s line—though, he did not know that until later opening the box. Inside, he found a fine grey soil and a small nut with a silver shale, and planting it, it grew something special.

“It had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeen a mallorn, and it was the wonder of the neighborhood. In after years, as it grew in grace and beauty, it was known far and wide and people would come long journeys to see it: the only mallorn west of the Mountains and east of the Sea, and one of the finest in the world.”

Though winter had come for the Elves and their wood, Sam was to plant a new one—not a whole wood of the same grandeur, or preserved by the ring of Galadriel, but by the calloused hands of a Hobbit—a garden wonderful in its own right.

And well, if Middle Earth is meant to be our own past, perhaps your own garden is descendant from the same line. Perhaps the deepest beauty still lives on in the little things—even if more leaves have fallen by now.

Perhaps the petals of the smallest sprout may shine the brighter,

like a star in the night sky.

I believe this is what Gandalf wanted to show Aragorn, high on Mount Mindolluin.

“This is your realm and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age; and it is your task to order its beginning and to preserve what may be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the first time comes the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart.”

Even Gandalf must go away. The Third Age has ended.

For this, Aragorn is troubled. Will he go on without Gandalf’s council? What will become of Man? Aragorn will die one day, and even the line of Númenor will fade.

‘The tree in the Court of the Fountain is still withered and barren.’ Aragorn said, ‘When shall I see a sign that it will be otherwise?’

Gandalf answered,

‘Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold!’

Then Aragorn turned, and there was a stony slope behind him running down from the skirts of the snow; and as he looked he was aware that alone there in the waste a growing thing stood. And he climbed to it, and saw that out of the very edge of the snow sprang a sapling tree no more than three foot high. Already it had put forth young leaves long and shapely, dark above and silver beneath, and upon its slender crown it bore one small cluster of flowers whose white petals shone like the sunlit snow.

Then Aragorn cried: ‘Yé! Utúvienyes! I have found it! Lo! here is a scion of the Eldest of Trees! But how comes it here? For it is not yet seven years old.’

And Gandalf coming looked at it, and said, ‘Verily, this is a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair; and that was a seedling of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion of many names, Eldest of Trees.

The old White Tree, faded and withered, was taken then from the court of Gondor with reverence and laid to rest in Rath Dínen among the kings of men—but the new sapling was planted in its place, and quickly it thrived.

Yet, did you notice also that the White trees are the descendants of Telperion?

These trees are part of the greater story of Arda.

The White tree of the Third Age fades,

but a sapling is found in the winter.

The image echoes The Prophecy,

faded though the grandeur is.

The light of Telperion lingers on, sometimes fading, and sometimes springing forth from withered leaves. The flowering of The White Tree of Gondor takes on a broader significance when we know whose heir this tree is.

And, well, the White Tree echoes Telperion,

but who is Laurelin’s golden heir?

It seems a secret, but I believe she must be the Mallorn.

The woods of Lothlórien are called the name Laurelindórenan,

“The Valley of Singing Gold.”

The way the tapestry is woven, the Mallorn finds herself across from the White Tree—and across from the king, the gardener.

Where Aragorn, highest king of men, plants the White Tree anew, Sam, a servant-gardener of the smallest people plants a gold tree in the place where Saruman had chopped down The Party Tree.

A gold and a silver tree are planted at the end of the Third Age,

and they sing a harmonious song,

from the future,

and the past.

If the White Tree can find an heir in the snow, then Telperion and Laurelin—perhaps the same could happen on the grander scale? If life can turn upwards by however little at any moment, could all the world somehow turn upward again into eternal Summer?

Could everything sad come untrue?

And if the lost heir of Númenor could appear from the North, then perhaps Manwë could appear once more as Elder King, even from the West.

The King Has Got A Crown Again

Two Hobbits once walked through the tired woods of Ithilien. They had been walking under the ugly glow and gloom of Mordor’s casting all day for days, but a moment came where the light was pure—and they saw something.

“The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside.

‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.

‘They cannot conquer forever!’ said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone.”

[You have just read Part Four of Four]

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Some stones are for keeping
Some stones are for skipping
Some stones are for casting away

Rocks and clear water
Deep, but not cold

Do you remember your father
How he was when he got old?

Do you remember the mountains
Treasure high, and untold?

“Where did the Sun go?”
You’d wonder in your youth

Where did your youth go
When at last you learned the truth?

Starless night is not so made
The unmaking of the day
But that night itself at last be cast away

But whither does that hope fly?
Will you ever ask why

Some stones are for keeping
Some stones are for skipping
Some stones are for casting away?

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I began, telling the Legend of Fyjör and Yddren (a myth from my book) in a Nordic accent.

Fyjör the young peered from the trees, naive eyes he had. A courtyard of stone, flat and round, lay wide there ‘round before him.

In its midst stood ardent Yddren, noble tree of gold.

Not a large tree was Yddren, but more stately to his eye than any seen he. The tree glittered in the light of the brightest star—for the heaven shone forth its face in youngest days—yea, though clothed with cloak of night.

And flamed with fruit, there Yddren stayed, under star or Sun.

Yet, it was not sparkling bark which naive Fyjör eyed, but fruit on golden branches glistened, flickered like white wild fire. Wild but slow the fire-tongues flicked, in every color, they waved. Though they flicked slow, his mortal eye, too mortal to comprehend—fire flicked from no beginning, so came thus to no end.

Eternity out of Fyjör’s reach, on golden branches hung.

Such light reflected in Fyjör’s eye—in folly, long he looked. For, yearning like the deepest cavern unfilled his heart, with hunger lacking bound. Before he thought, bare foot quick found carven evened stone.

Fyjör looked then to and fro, but no threat him befell. No sight nor sound, no darken’d cloud, no deathly tolling bell—but bright sight before him beckoned still.

So bare foot stepped, and flashed again, then rushing footwork fleeted. Before a warning crossed his heart, he crossed stoneyard and garden—til’ met fyren eyes of golden lion.

Wreathed ‘round the roots of ardent Yddren, the gold-wrought lion lay there guarding. Eyes like gems of fire flared from beast untiring, and Fyjör fearing beast alive, froze fast his steps for fear he might have died.

Fire deep as wells, Fyjör fell into, for sight went forth and into burning truth. Though arrested there in terror, no fierce fate fell on error, no death’s bell rang, nor dire fangs, but in fire found he the force-forgotten warning:

‘Take not the fruit of flame, ere time is come to bear—First-Man, Fyjör, heir. Look not long on glean of Yddren’s golden arm, for can the flesh of mortal man bear flame within his bones? No, wait thee Fyjör—wind and wave will build in thee a home. Time it takes to carve a place in souls as precious stones. Heart and hearth will hold, as earthen vessels hold, nay, though not when scaffold wooden still. Heed me Fyjör, and wisdom’s will, for third toll of bell shall kill the kell, and ye shall wander, a wasting flame to lick thy haunted heel.’

At vision’s end, Fyjör eyed the flicking fire still, and while the words yet echoed in his ears, Yddren’s light yet glittered in his sight, and so he heeded other words, to Fyjör seemed more bright. Quaking hand he raised, dread-mindful of the lion, and stalk of fennel in his left, he stretched forth unto the fire.

And quick it caught entire.

Fyjör held the light aloft, and soft it lighted on his face, but more than fennel stalk it caught, and crept to catch Fyjör’s fingers. The fire, hot, though did not burn, he flicked to cast away—but was too late and in him sank the fire and its brand.

Sadness, new to Fyjör, he could not comprehend. Fate he felt of children’s children, a thousand deaths he died, for Fyjör felt the weight of what had fallen then on man.

And the bell tolled
And the birds fled from the trees
And the cold wind rolled
And told him he must leave

And the bell tolled again
And sky then reeling rend
And heaven bowed to cry
As Fyjor’s grieving eye

Then the bell tolled, yet once more,
And Fyjör dropping fennel stalk to stone,
Fled he the lion for what he’d done,
And in water and the wind,
The world he wist was gone--”

(After I told the tale of Fyjör and Yddren, I tied it into a poetic talk on this theme for an additional 15 min., about the garden behind, the garden before, the dream and the fire which chases us.

In return for their kind support, paid subscribers get the closest thing I can give them to a seat at the show last night by access to this manuscript, thoughts on the painting I shared there, and the music which was sung afterwards.)

Thank you.

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“Fyjör the young peered from the trees, naive eyes he had. A courtyard of stone, flat and round, lay wide there ‘round before him.

In its midst stood ardent Yddren, noble tree of gold.

Not a large tree was Yddren, but more stately to his eye than any seen he. The tree glittered in the light of the brightest star—for the heaven shone forth its face in youngest days—yea, though clothed with cloak of night.

And flamed with fruit, there Yddren stayed, under star or Sun.

Yet, it was not sparkling bark which naive Fyjör eyed, but fruit on golden branches glistened, flickered like white wild fire. Wild but slow the fire-tongues flicked, in every color, they waved. Though they flicked slow, his mortal eye, too mortal to comprehend—fire flicked from no beginning, so came thus to no end.

Eternity out of Fyjör’s reach, on golden branches hung.

Such light reflected in Fyjör’s eye—in folly, long he looked. For, yearning like the deepest cavern unfilled his heart, with hunger lacking bound. Before he thought, bare foot quick found carven evened stone.

Fyjör looked then to and fro, but no threat him befell. No sight nor sound, no darken’d cloud, no deathly tolling bell—but bright sight before him beckoned still.

So bare foot stepped, and flashed again, then rushing footwork fleeted. Before a warning crossed his heart, he crossed stoneyard and garden—til’ met fyren eyes of golden lion.

Wreathed ‘round the roots of ardent Yddren, the gold-wrought lion lay there guarding. Eyes like gems of fire flared from beast untiring, and Fyjör fearing beast alive, froze fast his steps for fear he might have died.

Fire deep as wells, Fyjör fell into, for sight went forth and into burning truth. Though arrested there in terror, no fierce fate fell on error, no death’s bell rang, nor dire fangs, but in fire found he the force-forgotten warning:

‘Take not the fruit of flame, ere time is come to bear—First-Man, Fyjör, heir. Look not long on glean of Yddren’s golden arm, for can the flesh of mortal man bear flame within his bones? No, wait thee Fyjör—wind and wave will build in thee a home. Time it takes to carve a place in souls as precious stones. Heart and hearth will hold, as earthen vessels hold, nay, though not when scaffold wooden still. Heed me Fyjör, and wisdom’s will, for third toll of bell shall kill the kell, and ye shall wander, a wasting flame to lick thy haunted heel.’

At vision’s end, Fyjör eyed the flicking fire still, and while the words yet echoed in his ears, Yddren’s light yet glittered in his sight, and so he heeded other words, to Fyjör seemed more bright. Quaking hand he raised, dread-mindful of the lion, and stalk of fennel in his left, he stretched forth unto the fire.

And quick it caught entire.

Fyjör held the light aloft, and soft it lighted on his face, but more than fennel stalk it caught, and crept to catch Fyjör’s fingers. The fire, hot, though did not burn, he flicked to cast away—but was too late and in him sank the fire and its brand.

Sadness, new to Fyjör, he could not comprehend. Fate he felt of children’s children, a thousand deaths he died, for Fyjör felt the weight of what had fallen then on man.

And the bell tolled
And the birds fled from the trees
And the cold wind rolled
And told him he must leave

And the bell tolled again 
And sky then reeling rend 
And heaven bowed to cry
As Fyjor's grieving eye 

Then the bell tolled, yet once more,
And Fyjör dropping fennel stalk to stone,
Fled he the lion for what he’d done,
And in water and the wind,
The world he wist was gone--”

The pages of the storybook flipped with the wind, but Hillian was too busy day-dreaming to be bothered. Somehow, it felt like that was how it was meant to be read, for now.

The boy shut the book, leaned back on his elbows and stared off into the clouds. He did not know every word meant, but it did not seem to matter.

You have just read an ancient myth from Jállvend, of the land called Álthren.

(of my fantasy book in progress, The Green-Roofed Tower)

Paid subscribers have commenting access to the book’s manuscript, but if you simply wish to visit the land instead, the following links are all either lore or doors to some place in Álthren or Yffellen:

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Hello!

Here I have deposited an assortment of Lore from my book on the horizon. I hope this may give you a taste of what kind of place Álthren is, and what kind of story I am writing.

Names and more may be subject to change.

Thank you for looking, and feel free to ask questions of all sorts,

-Stuart

World Lore

The world, Álthren, is passed in dance from star to star and therefore has years which differ in length. Each season within one year, however, is properly proportioned to one another.

Each star both is, and is connected to a spiritual being, and affects Álthren according to its kind. The walking lights of the sky, the Elaia, and Gathia, Makers and Unmakers as called by man, are given dominion by the throne of Aënd of the Forgotten Land.

The current Sun is Ianu.

The tale begins as the old things begin to stir.

Yffellen, a twilit place, is waking up.

Palestone is a common but valuable mineral which takes on properties of actions done to and with it. This means electricity causes it to become blue and conduct electricity in increasing amounts; heat---orange---fire, etc.

Yet, causes are waking which cannot be seen—not lightning and fire, but honor and cruelty. The world which has forgotten its strangeness is beginning to remember—down to its very stones. The sleeping world is waking and answering.

New winds blow.

New seeds sown.

Locations

Vendálen (nation and city)

Capitol City, Vendálen proper, seat of the king over Vendálen, noble men, Tellion’s virtues–called “the stars in the night sky,” Tradition, stars, Wizards, high walls, built atop a green plateau, Prisos, philosophy, The LoreKeep, Daenlen, Filana, Tomondei–priest of Thäelm.

Where Óren placed his wisdom.

Mysterious lineage

Hohver

A fortress-town of Vendálen, where the Knight, Valden, is Captain of Thäelm’s shield.

The town is burned under mysterious circumstances. The refugees flee for Capital Vendálen.

Mayor Gaion, Devmond, Tomondei, Ciamin, Prince Darei

Atlos

Coastal, beautiful, blue domes, white buildings, art that dreams

Birthplace of Nestor

Tellion technically Atlosian

Sonnënd

Genius, power, incredible but disproportioned and heartless architecture, brutality, solitude, sorcery, demons, uneasy relationship to Jôkulltun (giants), Umbre knights–shadows, assassins, knights of Gath, connections to the Gathia of fire

Cave dragon of Rothdruïn, guardian of the deep waters, his might---the lust of Sonnënd

The symbol of Sonnënd is a dragon gaping upward to eat the Sun

Where Óren placed his power

Human sacrifice

Nestor--once General

Sulver

Small place, terracotta rooftops, idyllic, food, mirth, Sulveran tea from the spiraled leaves that fall each Setting, where Nestor flees to,

Gearney and Maeve, Javie, Buck, Sib, Dellia, Bellena the teacher, and others live here.

Forests---Woman of the starred crown

technically of Vendálen, but really its own quiet place

Jàllvend

Between Vendálen and Sonnënd, ice, mountains, warriors, poetry and story.

This is where Óren placed his Will.

Hillian, Valden’s squire born here

Estlewilde to the West

Castle Isthël

The Feln Valley

Yffellen, Legendary, strange, invisible gnōmen-folk, spiritual beings, the Ancient Wood, the waters of Lelhanos, disembodied voices, poetry, the blue king, the white stag.

Valden played here as a child, but does not remember what it was like.

Odenorn Bridge to Vendálen

Belmer

Gold, high walls, island, backstory related to Nemed and the golden tower of the sea

Lindtiver

Green, island, Alcohol, good art, do not wish to be involved in world affairs, quiet spirituality on white cliffs

Dorn

Ancient, forest, stone, three musicians golden statue, the old garden, tribal and wise, connected to Álthren’s creation

just south of the Feln Forest

Kessia

South, naval metropolis, merchants, tower of the lion, great ships, strange sounds heard on the waters

Orlaith is her queen.

Aënd

A mirage in the clouds, just your imagination, Elder tree (not yet named), the green-roofed tower

Calling, coming

[Paid subscribers are welcome to read and comment on the book manuscript in progress]

More Lore:

Read the Prologue Here:

Read about the Name Here:

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Part One:

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Part Three:

Part Four:

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In 1200 AD, the old Norse Tales were beginning to fade from the Anglo-Saxon mind. They had found the liturgy of the true King to be a better food—but even so, when they felt the poetry they once cherished slipping from the back of their minds, they feared losing it forever.

Poetry, they called the ship of the dwarves, and gold, Freyja’s Tears. When they spoke of swords, they spoke of the fire of the valkyries—but the fire was dying—the ship had sailed—and what once were the enchanted tears of love were turning to mere gold in their hands.

Snorri Sturluson, a brilliant Christian Icelandic poet and scholar, realized that he had to do something before it was too late. In 1220 AD, he wrote the Prose Edda, retelling beautifully the poetry of his people—tales of Odin and Thor, giants, and the tale of Ragnarök.1

If it was not for him, many of the tales would have been lost to time, and knowledge of many others would be exceedingly rare.

But what do you care?

The modern world has no use of Fairytales,

And Christians have no use for Pagan things, as far as we have been told.

Yet, Snorri Sturluson believed he was doing something which benefited us.

I believe he might have been right.

Do you?

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Mythos from The Beginning

Many Christians hold that their beliefs have nothing to do with the myths and tales of the world, and that they are all simply false religions.

They are false religions—but they are false because they are the worship of something which is not worthy of our worship.

Yet, Christianity does not say that the pagan myths are not of things which may be real in some sense. In fact, many of the things expressed in the myths of the world are in the Bible itself.

The Nephilim—the giants and “mighty men of old”—came about because the angels fell and lusted after the women of earth. The Nephilim were their children. (Genesis 6:1-4)

Likewise, Zeus lusts many times after the women of earth and has children with them. Hercules, a demigod was born of such a relation.

I do not personally see a reason to believe that the Bible and the Myth are not talking about the same sort of thing happening.

Do we know that it is not a myth long-passed down,

holding some truth in its core?

Anyway, some of us right away will reject such a thing, but it is not from Biblical reasoning, but from Enlightenment reasoning.

Anything fantastical is suspect to the modern mind.

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I have met many Christians who do not believe in magic, for instance. In fact, somehow it seemed to be the norm in the circles I grew up around.

And yet, sorcery is something actively prohibited in both the old and new testaments—and there were sorcerers written of in Egypt, and in Babylon.

You do not need to prohibit things which do not exist.

Saul also successfully uses a medium to speak to an already dead Samuel the prophet—something which many pagan religions would find familiar in their oracles and shamans.

Beside magic, the Bible actually directly references subjects of pagan myth.

In the Book of Revelation for instance, Hades is mentioned, even though it is the Greek mythological land of the dead.

Now, someone might want to say,

“Well, they were probably just talking about the Hebrew Sheol, but in the Greek language”

—which, for one, would be to my point that the myths hold truths that are in the Bible—and for two, Hades is talked about as a person in Revelation, not only a place.

“When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6:7-8)

“Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” (Revelation 20:14)

Someone might then persist to say that Sheol was also personified in the old testament—and in some ways it may have been. Though, in that case, we must again reckon with it—that the land of the dead is personified both in Greek mythology, and in the Christian mythos.

Really, the concept of the Land of the dead is all around the world and it really seems to take on similar shape no matter where you look.

Did you know that even our English word “hell” comes from the Norse land of the dead called Helheim or Hel. A goddess presided over that place, and her name was Hel.

There is a whole Pandora’s box in this etymology containing the fact that the word “hell” actually refers to the shadowy Sheol, Hades, or Helheim, rather than the lake of fire we have learned “hell” to be,

but I do not think I will open that box now.

My brother in Christ,

I will not even begin to talk to you about dragons right now.

My point is that we have put walls around to insulate the Bible from the myth outside, but the walls are our own making. The Word of God is in an active redemptive dialogue with the myth of the world, not actively avoiding it.

The pagan religions are not false in the sense that have no basis in reality—they are false because they involve worship of something or someone which is not God.

But the point here is not whether or not you should follow pagan religions—it had better be obvious where I stand on that point—the question is whether they ought to be utterly thrown out and shunned as we have done to them,

or whether it may even be Christian to incorporate their imagery.

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The Tapestry and Its Weaving

There is a tapestry woven through time, of all the world’s story and tales. There is a King at its center, but the rest of it did not come about as though His eye did not see. Men did not make tales which surprised their King. No, the whole world is His art, and Adam has only gone to name what he saw in it.

I want to show you that myth is not ignored by the Church, but engaged as part of the tapestry of life.

For this, let the King himself speak first.

“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

You may have expected Him to say “Hell” because that is the way we always hear it said—but Jesus actually used the word Hades here in the Greek.

In fact, He actually also spoke of Hades, not what we call Hell, in Luke 10:15, and in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

The thing about this which may be strange to some Christians is that he treats Hades like a real place—and a kingdom set against the Kingdom of Life.

Jesus places himself and His Kingdom as part of the myth.

He treats the myth as though it is real.

He treats it as part of the story.

This is in fact what the earliest Christians did, and what some do to this day. Paul even came to the Areopagites in the name of The Unknown God, despite the fact that it was an inscription on a pagan altar.

He quoted their own pagan poetry to them,

“as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’”

I think that we rarely take to heart the implications of this. One of the apostles came to a people in the name of one of their pagan gods. To be clear, The Unknown God was a somewhat unique opportunity, and I do not believe it would have been the same to come in the name of Apollo.

Syncretism is not the aim.

This episode suggests, however, a willingness to weave the tapestry of Christianity with other tales at its corners, insofar as they can connect coherently. Syncretism would be fine with Greeks still bowing to Apollo, so long as they mistook him to be the God of the Bible, but this vision of a tapestry would instead seek to reclaim the titles and fore-shadows of God in the world as His own.

C.S. Lewis once wrote,

“[God] sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men.”

In some sense, I think that whatever casts the shadow of God on earth in His Beauty, Truth, and Goodness may be a good dream—and the myths often cast this shadow.

In The Argonautica, Jason and the argonauts sail near the sirens, just as Odysseus once did. Yet, instead of having his crew tie him to the mast, Jason has the legendary musician Orpheus play a more glorious song than that of the sirens.

The golden song makes the tempting one pale in comparison. Jason and the argonauts are not tempted, but sail past, enchanted by a higher song.

As Christians, can we see the value in this?

In the pagan tale, the wonder of the song would ultimately be attributed to Apollo, the god of music and poetry—but we know that he is but a shadow. The glory suddenly sails out past him, to The Unknown God.

The symbol of the stringed instrument—the symbol of heavenly beauty—has represented always what is higher, and we now know The Unknown God, one higher than Apollo. Even if in the myth the glory goes to Apollo, for us, it goes past him. He is but a shadow and a mirror.

It is for this reason that St. Basil writes in his treatise on pagan literature,

“Into the life eternal the Holy Scriptures lead us, which teach us through divine words. But so long as our immaturity forbids our understanding their deep thought, we exercise our spiritual perceptions upon profane writings, which are not altogether different, and in which we perceive the truth as it were in shadows and in mirrors.”

I am not sure I can explain it, but now when I read pagan stories, I hardly see one like Apollo at all. I see through him like a foggy looking glass. I hear through the song of Orpheus the far tune of the One to whom all glory and song belongs—before whom all sirens are rendered as mutes to our ears.

The pagan myth takes its rightful place as part of the tapestry of this varied world. This world both of shadow and light, varied to every value and color—the myth is part of it.

Then, just like the world, it ultimately points upward.

The framing of the tapestry points toward its center, where the King is.

“To be sure, we shall become more intimately acquainted with these precepts in the sacred writings, but it is incumbent upon us, for the present, to trace, as it were, the silhouette of virtue in the pagan authors. For those who carefully gather the useful from each book are wont, like mighty rivers, to gain accessions on every hand.” -St. Basil

If one can recognize Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, all met out in the mythical wild of the earth, then all the land and its tales becomes a book about God—and a rather good one. One grows in the force and speed of a river, and taking more and more sediment, broadens in understanding and pull toward the great sea. For, in pulling from more and more places, weaving toward the source, others may be swept up in the pull of Orpheus’ song, and find themselves unexpectedly before a throne, not of Apollo, but of One greater than Apollo—One who created a world where Apollo could exist.

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Mythos Beyond Itself

This is where, if you have gotten lost and afraid because of the other things I have said, I will find you again. That is because this article is not presenting to you a new idea, but demonstrating to you that it is an idea you are familiar with already.

You see, the mythological tales at the corners and fringes of the tapestry are what drew C.S. Lewis into the center of it. In his memoir of sorts, Surprised by Joy, he expresses what first began to give him doubt in his grey rationalism.

“One [doubt] came from reading the classics. Here, especially in Virgil, one was presented with a mass of religious ideas; and all teachers and editors took it for granted that these religious ideas were sheer illusion. No one ever attempted to show in what sense Christianity fulfilled Paganism or Paganism prefigured Christianity. The accepted position seemed to be that religions were normally a mere farago of nonsense, though our own, by a fortunate exception, was exactly true.”2

If you are unfamiliar, in 40 B.C., Virgil wrote something truly fascinating. It appeared to many saints and scholars, to this day, to have been a genuine prophecy about Christ, despite being written by a pagan poet. (If you wish to read it, it is called Eclogue IV)

While this writing was more on the point than others, Virgil in general has been considered by Christians to be a pagan guide toward Christ.

Dante, the writer of the Divine Comedy, also thought so. As you know, The Divine Comedy charts a journey through Hell, into Purgatory, and ultimately to Paradise.

In the epic poem, Dante penned Virgil in as his guide through Inferno, and the beginning of Purgatorio—that is, up to the point when the comedy and his life flips to an ascent. Though a guide through the land of the dead, he is ultimately a guide in the right direction—to the threshold.

Why is this concept so foreign to us?

You will find the Odyssey, Völsunga Saga, or Prose Edda in the off-hand of every MacDonald or Tolkien since 33 AD—and it is not rhetoric—Gandalf and Gimli are names directly from the Prose Edda. The pagan poetry bleeds into and points toward fulfillment in Christ—and if it points beyond itself in this way, then it is valuable—so valuable, that to try and write mythic tales like the great storytellers without the myth in our own off-hand is to try and write without the language—without dragons, wights, gods, dwarves, or magic swords reforged.

For myth is a language each of them knew very well,

and it is the language they wrote in,

and they wrote

in love.

It is a language which converted Dante and C.S. Lewis, and so it is a language which may convert the next of their kind.

“Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stood the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism.’ Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.”3 -C.S. Lewis

The dissonance mounted in Lewis’ mind until he could find no cure—but it was the myths written by Christians which served as the bridge—a bridge over which the song of a rumored cure rang—the song of another world.

“That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer. I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.”4

The appeals were made to Lewis’ heart through Beauty before they were made by Truth to his mind. It is a dangerous thing for an atheist to fall in love with myth. Virgil is walking in a direction, and if you follow him, you will find yourself at the foot of a mountain path. It is only a matter of time before the bad Christian art cannot hold one back any longer. One must be careful, or the good Christian myths will find you, and like Beatrice, they will lead you up the mountain, and like Matelda, will drag you through the river of baptism.

Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, and Lewis’ good friend Tolkien did some of the dragging in this case. Lewis also penned MacDonald (author of Phantastes) as his own Beatrice in The Great Divorce.

They each did their work.

Lewis also recalled a moment when one of the “hardest boiled of all the atheists” he ever knew sat in his room opposite his fire and confessed that the historicity of the gospels was better than it should have been.

“Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.”5

C.S. Lewis is clear that this shook him very much.

The Dying God, of course is that pattern in mythology we have heard, usually in an effort to show Christianity as a fraud—how we often see one like Osiris, Baldur the Beautiful, or the Corn King die and rise. The argument goes that surely, Christ was simply a plagiarism of a long list of resurrections—that he was just a tale, and one of many Odysseus and Orpheus and Heracles to descend to Hades and ascend.

But Lewis found it all to imply something much stranger.

“If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time…” “…yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god…” “…Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not ‘a religion’, nor ‘a philosophy’. It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”6

Lewis did not find Christ to be set in opposition to the myth, but the myth was the shroud of the God-Man. He was its sum. Where Odysseus and Orpheus and Heracles had descended and come up again, this One descended into Hades and killed it.

This is where the myth ultimately leads.

Odin hung on the world tree to gain wisdom.

Many heroes went down to death and came up again.

But none hung for love—none stooped down to save man from death,

but God.

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The Doors of The Tapestry

In the 12th century, the Hylestad Stave Church doors were carved by Norse Christians with scenes of the Völsunga Saga.

The doors hold the lore of Sigurd slaying the dragon Fafnir, the roasting of the dragon’s heart, and the reforging of the godlike sword Gram.7

This is what I mean by the edges and corners of the tapestry.

This is not an attempt to make Christianity cool.

This is not the appropriation of culture.

This is a cosmic threshold.

It is a door.

The door is a statement that the myth of the world and all its glory has been subsumed. Shadows and mirrors and doors. Sigurd the dragonslayer was placed at the threshold by the medieval Nords8 as a symbol of the greater Sigurd.

You have heard this language before.

The greater David.

The greater Adam.

But God is the God of all mankind,

and He completes all of our stories.

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I said earlier that I would not then even begin to talk about dragons.

Now I will.

Dragons have been part of the world myths for as long as people have been telling stories. It is your business whether you wish to believe that they or any other myths really happened on whatever level. I am prone to believe in them in a “one foot in fairyland” type of way.

Nevertheless, the stories have been told as far as we know, as early as 2700 B.C.—a time much closer to the very first writings of mankind than it is to now.

And they are as wide in world as they are deep in time. Tales are found in Mesopotamia, India, China, Egypt, and of course, all throughout all the myth-weaving lands and ages.

Scripture uses the same mythological image of the dragon and hardly anyone bats an eye.

But the Bible speaks of something final.

“So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”

Christ is the capstone of the myth tradition—not its Ragnarök.

It was as though the Word to finish the tale had finally come to us—but it came not of human will or invention, but as the Word from heaven, to bookend, from beginning to end.

He is the end of the ending, and the bane of Jörmungandr. Thor slew the great serpent and yet died from its venom—but the serpent struck the heel of the Son of Man, and He crushed its head.

“You call a tree a tree, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.” -Tolkien

“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.” -C.S. Lewis

God gave Adam the right to name each creature in the garden, and by myth, we name meaning by the language of story. God is telling the True Myth—and His children have a long tradition of wanting to be like Him.

Even before He ever showed His face, we have been at it, dreaming the tale, “breathing lies through silver”—and yet are they lies? Perhaps they are only attempts to tell the truth—shadows, and mirrors, and doors.

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Théoden’s hands clutched fast his throne, withered ghost of Rohirrim’s king.

It was the wretch called Grima, twisting tongue of gray.

Wicked words of deadly poison,

of fear, of apathy,

of shade

It Is Not So Dark Here

Grima spoke ill words of Rohan’s doom and worthlessness. A foul and hateful, hopeless spirit overshadowed all the land of the horselords.

“What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs.”

These were Saruman’s words, but Gandalf suggests later that these words, “Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning.”

He cast a spell of Saruman’s detest on the Rohirrim so that they no longer saw themselves as a noble people, but as dirty and pathetic. As they looked out on the shadow brewing in the Eastern Mountains, they began to believe it.

There was no hope, they were just stable boys and tired fools—especially their king, who though seeing the coming war, did nothing.

The king fell so under the whispered spell that he became a king who sits.

He became older than he was.

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He fell near to that motionless place of despair—the shadow of death—and believing he was feeble, he became feeble. Théoden resigned all choice and responsibility, and Grima Wormtongue took his mind and will in return.

Some of us know his voice,

those words which come to bite at us as when we sink into the shadow of death. They don’t sound like our voice—they don’t sound like the voice of God, but it would love it if you thought it was either.

If you will believe them, your soul will drink them like poison,

like the pomegranate eaten in Hades

keeps one in shadow.

In the movies, Gandalf draws Saruman from Théoden like poison from a wound. In the books, he does something different.

“Now Théoden son of Thengel, will you hearken to me?” said Gandalf.

“Do you ask for help?”

He lifted his staff and pointed to a high window. There the darkness seemed to clear, and through the opening could be seen, high and far, a patch of shining sky.

“Not all is dark. Take courage, Lord of the Mark; for better help you will not find. No counsel have I to give to those that despair. Yet counsel I could give, and words I could speak to you. Will you hear them? They are not for all ears. I bid you come out before your doors and look abroad. Too long have you sat in shadows and trusted to twisted tales and crooked promptings.”

“Now, lord,” said Gandalf, “look out upon your land! Breathe the free air again!”

From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder.... But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding.... Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass.

‘It is not so dark here,’ said Théoden.

The black staff fell from Théoden’s hand and he stood tall once again. With the light of the Sun reflecting Gandalf’s words of hope,

“the light shone brighter in Théoden’s eye.”

(Perhaps the same light which shone in Aragorn’s eye in Part Two of this series)

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What is remarkable about it is that in the book, Gandalf does nothing explicitly magical to free Théoden from the darkness.

He shows Théoden the sunlit countryside outside his own window.

The gold of the Sun,

The silver of the river,

The mere beauty of the land

Yet, is it not magical?

Our understanding has perhaps domesticated the glory of the world—perhaps so far as we have domesticated fire or lightning.

We can contain it in the hearth or the bulb, but met in the wild, it is still so wild as it ever was.

We grow numb and blind to the glory in our own back-yards, but even the fire in the hearth can burn the hand now and again.

You think that it is not magical?

It will prove you wrong—even in the place you thought was no longer wild.

Théoden’s end would not be withering grey on a wooden chair,

but he would die a king’s death,

worthy of song.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

"Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising
he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.

Hope he rekindled, and in hope he ended;
over death, over dread, over doom lifted
out of loss, out of life, unto long glory."

-Rest in peace, Bernard Hill-

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A Madness for Death and A Robe of Stars

When Merry saw the face of the warrior called Dernhelm, he saw “the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.”

Yet, it was not Dernhelm, but Lady Eowyn of the house of Rohan.

Even so, what Merry saw on her face was true.

Eowyn longed for death.

Grima’s fell words had made the King slack and feeble, but they drove Eowyn to the only hope she felt had left—the hope of honor and a glorious end, fitting of a shield-maiden.

Grima took from her all hope or thought for a long noble life.

It seemed better for her to chase the Sun, and to set along with it.

Aragorn perceived that her love for him came really from this chaotic longing.

He said solemnly,

“In me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.”

But Eowyn said,

“Too often have I heard of duty… May I not now spend my life as well?… Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown?

I’m weary of skulking in the hills, and wish to face peril in battle.”

Even if she was driven by a sorrowful and dark longing, her words are hard not to sympathize with. I am struck by her deep honor. Despite being without hope, she rose to find death and look him in the eye.

And she killed him.

But it was not without a price.

The Morgul mace shattered her shield.

And her arm was marked for death despite victory.

She lay long in the houses of healing, still poisoned, still longing darkly.

“I do not desire healing… and I do not desire the speech of living men. ‘I wish to ride to war like my brother Éomer,

or better, like Théoden the king, for he died and has both honor and peace.”

Death had claimed her King—a man like a father.

Here, the madness is most clear.

She had gained victory.

She had won honor.

But missed death?

And now, to lay in bed and die, not to desire healing, but to be cut off from the voice and face of mankind—the woman of valor to die, shining face turned to the dust—it just feels wrong.

It cannot be.

But Aragorn, the one called Estel by the prophecy of Elrond, came to the houses of healing—and he healed her.

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He healed her physically.

Yet the other poison persisted,

Yea’ though she dwelt in the houses of healing.

In those houses, Faramir came to love the beauty of Eowyn.

He saw to it that she have a place to see Eastward, and a garden to walk in.

“Éowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful. In the valleys of our hills there are flowers fair and bright, and maidens fairer still; but neither flower nor lady have I seen till now in Gondor so lovely, and so sorrowful.

It may be that only a few days are left ere darkness falls upon our world, and when it comes I hope to face it steadily; but it would ease my heart, if while the Sun yet shines, I could see you still. For you and I have both passed under the wings of the Shadow, and the same hand drew us back.”

But her eyes were dark. She could not see the possibility of a future, or a present. She was supposed to have died in those fields, like her king—and yet the dread of death had not since left her mind.

“I stand upon some dreadful brink, and it is utterly dark in the abyss before my feet, but whether there is any light behind me I cannot tell. For I cannot turn yet. I wait for some stroke of doom.”

Though joy fled from her, and she from joy, Faramir loved her, and he kept her company in the houses of healing.

Then soon came the day that Gondor rode against the black gate. Faramir draped on her shoulders his mother’s starry mantle, stars which shine when the night is darkest about it.

The two of them watched as Mount Doom thundered forth black, deathly smoke. They knew not what it meant, but it reminded Faramir of the Fall of Númenor, how darkness inescapable fell upon all the land.

He still dreamed of it.

“Do you think that darkness is coming,” Eowyn asked, “darkness inescapable?”

Somehow, Faramir did not think so.

“The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny.”

Cities had been swallowed before—it could happen again.

But it was not what would happen now,

though lightnings flashed

and earth rumbled

“The Shadow departed, and the Sun was unveiled, and a light leaped forth; and the waters of the Anduin shone like silver.”

The gold of the Sun

The silver of the river

Like Théoden before her,

She beheld the beauty of the land.

Eowyn’s darkness held strong for a time longer,

But Faramir would not let her remain in the Tower of the Moon.

He told her he loved her, and thus,

“her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.”

The stroke of doom departed

and golden light came down.

The words of love fell lightly

and kissed her on her crown.

“I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,” she said. “and behold! The Shadow has departed! I will be a sheildmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”

Eowyn was free to live with hope of a future—and not only of renown—but of light, and love, and a garden. She gave herself permission to live.

When Aragorn became King in Gondor, he gave to Eowyn and Faramir the land of Ithilien. There, Eowyn having slain the witch king, they made the dead land ‘neath Minas Ithil, into a blessed garden.

It is assumed that in the gardens of Ithilien, they lived quite happily until the day they passed.

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Sam and The Light of The Old Tales

Sam started to realize something as he and Frodo drew near to Mordor. As he mused on the songs of old, it struck him in that dark land,

“Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that’s a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it—and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We’ve got—you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on.

Don’t the great tales never end?’

It dawned on him. They were, all of them, in the same tale sung since the beginning. The golden and silver trees of Valinor may had been struck down, but the golden Sun and the silver river still could still shine light on the minds of Théoden or Eowyn.

The power of Eru was passed on still in these rays.

Frodo and Sam still carried the torch in their own hands.

Nevertheless, the darkness of Mordor still wore on the Hobbits a ways after this realization. One does not simply walk into Mordor—unscathed.

As Sam sat there on the jagged black mountains under a burned-out sky—he found himself weary. The tortured Lands of Shadow could dampen even Sam’s spirit.

Then, he looked up.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the 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.”

Sam saw the Star of Earendil itself, The Star of High Hope, Gil-Estel.

And perhaps better than any Hobbit ever to live,

he understood.

“Now, for a moment,

his own fate,

and even his master’s,

ceased to trouble him.”

[You have just read Part Three of Four]

Part One

Part Two

Part Four

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What the icon claims wordlessly is perhaps bigger than we first think.

An Orthodox icon makes the metaphysical claim that idolatry, the worship of matter, was a misuse of nature because we worshipped matter, when all of creation should have been used with a pure heart toward God.

The impression is that all the world is an icon,

to be prayed through and not to,

Not an idol.

In fact,

all of the natural world ought to be kissed,

(admittedly in many cases, not literally)

if only for the fact that it is Christ’s footstool.

The problem with the idol is that we prayed to matter and not through it in the direction of God.

We pray through matter all the time.

It is right that we pray through songs—we pray through words, or when we see the Beauty of a temple.

Abraham prayed through the altar,

and Joshua bowed before the Ark of the Covenant.

We pray to God when we kiss our daughter’s forehead.

(don’t we?)

We pray before we eat a meal.

We pray through the icon of our troubles,

those crashing waves Charles Spurgeon kissed.

We pray through our enemies, for our enemies.

Some of us kiss the words in the Bible’s pages,

for they kissed our temple first.

We pray against demons,

since they exist.

And some people pray when we see the image of our fathers and mothers before us,

whether biological,

or those saints whom God bore home in fire, water, earth, or wind.

The icon proclaims without a word that all the world is consecrated for some use in prayer

down to our cats and our cows,

and even to the stones and grass beneath our feet.

So the ancient Christians blessed water and it was made holy.

They tread the olives and they gathered from flowering Cassia trees

They made the holy oil, and through it they made supplication for the sick.

They baptized as a living sacrament of death and resurrection

And they ate of the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ.

All things,

even suffering became participation in union with Christ

if through it, you pray.

All is to be used as an icon and not an idol.

We are to pray through everything,

We always were

Whether therefore ye eat, 

or drink, 

or whatsoever ye do, 

do all to the glory of God.

This is a house

of prayer

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In Minneapolis, crossing an East-bound bridge on I-94, a white tower with a green, pointed hat rises above the treeline.

Yet, as you drive nearer and nearer, you pass under another bridge and it disappears behind trees. Seeing this day after day planted something in my mind.

What if there was a tower, which seen on the horizon, disappeared when one tried to look for it? What if I marched up into the trees where it should be, but it wasn’t there?

It is a simple and beautiful tower, in a place that is often not simple or beautiful (as you know).

It stands at the highest natural landmark in Minneapolis.

It was actually once a water tower.

You know, it strikes me that only a little over 100 years ago, people still built functional things in a beautiful way. There are actually several old water towers in Minneapolis made with this philosophy, all around the same time.

It is as if the need to build a water tower was the chance to make a park feel magical.

The concept even—towers from which water is drawn—the place where we keep our water—I wish we could love that again.

But we put a Super America Gas station next to them, I guess.

Seriously, who made these? Washburn Park Tower has eight soldiers guarding it all round, and eight eagles at its crest.

Its a water tower.

I miss this part of us—the part that would make a legendary landmark out of something we would today make into a metal jellyfish monstrosity.

These water towers do not even feel like they belong to this world, let alone Minneapolis. They feel magical, like they were dropped here from another place. I think the way my theology works, I kind of believe they did in some form.

I have been writing another place—Álthren.

But I digress! I was talking about this tower.

A tower that beckons and hides.

Nestor, a man who used to be a high-ranking officer in the brutal mountain nation of Sonnënd, hides also in the small forest-town of Sulver.

Always looking over his shoulder, he expects the fire and shadow he left behind. He knows they are looking for him, even if it has been a few rhythms of the sky.

One night, he sees the green-roofed tower and cannot help but wonder whether it had always been there. He had never seen it, but it was not hidden in any way. It stood there as if everyone who walked in daylight was meant to see it.

How had he never seen it? In fact, people he asked about it had never seen it, and neither did they care when he asked them.

Yet, some few knew very well.

But when words of war, and rumors of a “messenger” from Sonnënd arrive in Sulver, Nestor’s fears catch up to him, he packs and he flees.

But to where?

He does not know where to go,

but one place he remembers.

The tower.

With an encouragement from his elder, he makes for the green-roofed tower, though whether it would be there when he arrived was not a question that Nestor could have ever thought to ask.

Old things stir in Álthren.

New winds blow.

New seeds sown.

The tower is always on another horizon.

So often the mystery leads farther—when beauty shines just outside of reach and flickers away from our hand—when it prances away into the forest.

I believe it is hope that compels someone forward.

That, and the yearning for the garden and the One who walks there—

a place that isn’t Minneapolis, frankly.

But it is in Minneapolis. These towers stand, I think for a reason, calling me to another world. Am I writing a myth for the midwest? Gosh, I hate how that sounds. Maybe in part?

But really, I am writing a myth for these broken and sometimes beautiless places we have made for ourselves, where the rare beauty calls from over the treetops, or from the kind neighbor’s garden.

I write a tale using the language of stone cities and dying traditions with hope of resurrection—of giants and gnomes and knights and kings, of fire and lightning and waters and stars and spirits,

and of a place beyond,

calling,

calling

Mystical and Mundane

The trees suggest, but yet refrain
From saying things they know

Even so, they whisper
Just outside of earshot
Like they want you to feel you are missing out
On mystery too deep for words
Something they’d only tell the birds
Which nestle in their branches

My home is decorated
With green and gold and red
And being bold they said
“There’s better yet ahead”

Though simple blood you’ve bled
And with it you’ve contented
Yet though known it may be shed
Though til’ now life has relented
But think now how you’d spend it

How brittle your breath should be
If there no magic in it
Your breath whispers too
In speech you understand

Of Long Forgotten Land

Read The Prologue of The Green-Roofed Tower Here:

Read An Excerpt, and A Riddle:

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Boromir waved frantically for Frodo. The hobbit had vanished utterly.

Frodo escaped up moss and stone, to an old place.

That place was called Amon Hen,

And from it, he saw.

You see, Amon Hen meant to the ancient Númenóreans, “Hill of The Eye.” It was something of a watch-post for the ancient men. At that place was the Seat of Seeing, and though it lie in ruin, yet by its lingering magic, Frodo saw.

He saw Minas Tirith, far off, “proud and fair,” and “beautiful.”

It “glittered with steel,” with “turrets bright with many banners.”

As Frodo looked on, “Hope leaped in his heart.”

Minas Tirith was the last bastion of man’s defense, the jewel in his crown. Yet, in the mountains to the East, there was another fortress set against it.

“Another fortress, greater and more strong.”

As Frodo’s vision flew toward it, he saw “ruined bridges,” “grinning gates", “haunted mountains,” “the valley of terror,” and “darkness under the sun.”

In all these terrible lands, the dark tower, Barad-dûr, was called “immeasurably great.”

When Frodo looked upon it, “all hope left him.”

I find it likely we have looked out from our own Amon Hen lately, and seen these same fortresses. The Beauty in this strange and wide place we find ourselves in, it has a fortress set against it. The moment we see or think on something beautiful, ugliness crouches in wait to remind us we are not there yet. There is a fight even to see Beauty, and there is a fight still coming.

When Tolkien wrote about The Lord of The Rings in Letter 144, he summed up the war taking place in Middle-Earth.

He said, “The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship,” and a few other dichotomies.

The war between Beauty and ugliness is part of the war of the Ring, drawing one like Frodo between hope and despair.

I believe we underestimate this power.

If one like Frodo, Aragorn, or Sam becomes dismayed, what will become of the world? Yet, what if they are filled with hope?

Without the hope of Beauty, our wrist becomes slack. We shrink down before dreadful ugliness in the world. If there is no hope for a beautiful tomorrow, then the fight is over before the first hoof strikes the field.

But if one like Frodo has the light of hope before him, then great deeds are possible, even for a hobbit.

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Light of Eärendil, Shelob’s Bane

When Frodo first received the light of Eärendil from Galadriel, He knew not the depths of night he would have to descend before seeing it shine.

But she told him,

“It will shine brighter when the night is about you.”

He would travel far from then—down through the land of Ithilien, and up into the mountains of the Morgul Vale.

Minas Morgul had once been Minas Ithil, “The tower of the rising moon.”

Now, she is Minas Morgul, “The tower of dark sorcery.” She was once a city of man, but now she stared back as a twisted mockery in a mirror.

Minas Tirith, was called Minas Anor, “The tower of the rising sun.”

But her sister fell,

she became an image of doubt.

If Minas Ithil could fall, then Minas Anor could too.

Her grim gates haunted Minas Anor with the dread of her own dead reflection

So too do the aching and dead parts of the world look back at us, tempting us to fear and despair—but this is the place to which Frodo and Sam must go—Past Minas Morgul,

up the long stair, and into the deep dark tunnel.

In some sense, this is the opposite of the ascent from Moria to Lothlórien (from Part 1 of this series). For the hobbits, since Lórien, it has all been a slow dark descent into Mordor. There are no golden trees here, and no gifts.

Now Frodo must descend into Torech Ungol.

Dank and cobwebbed, and filled with all ghastly death—Torech Ungol was home to a hideous ancient thing—a Child of Ungoliant.

Ungoliant was a primordial spirit, born of void and insatiable hunger and malice, a demon. Her daughter, Shelob, dwelt in these caves.

Her many eyes watched the hobbits.

“Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape.”

Beyond all hope?

“It will shine brighter when the night is about you.”

The hobbit shone forth the Light of Eärendil,

The glory of Gil-Estel,

The Star of High Hope.

“For a moment, it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Eärendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness receded from it, until it seemed to shine in the centre of a globe of airy crystal, and the hand that held it sparkled with white flame.”

Frodo smote Ungoliant’s eyes with its beautiful light.

(I go into Gil-Estel, the Silmaril, in Part One, here:)

Part One

Shelob’s “swollen,” “bloated” frame recoiled in doubt.

Then something strange happened to that hobbit.

“Frodo’s heart flamed within him, and without thinking what he did, whether it was folly or despair or courage, he took the Phial in his left hand, and with his right hand drew his sword. Sting flashed out, and the sharp elven-blade sparkled in the silver light, but at its edges a blue fire flicked. Then holding the star aloft and the bright sword advanced, Frodo, hobbit of the Shire, walked steadily down to meet the eyes.”

A hobbit of the Shire.

The eyes fled.

“Stars and glory!” Cried Sam, “But the Elves would make a song of that, if ever they heard it.”

I am not certain whether the hope he held aloft filled him, or whether it grew from his own hope, or whether perhaps both hopes were bound at the root—really the same essence.

But it filled hobbit, the smallest of peoples, with a fire and courage from heaven which a demon could not withstand.

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Estel, The Returned King

It is little known that Aragorn grew up in Rivendale.

There, he was named Estel.

You see, Elrond could see Aragorn for who he was, and so the name was a prophecy.

Estel—the “trust in Eru the Lord everlasting, that he is good, and that his works shall end in good.”

Aragorn was to be the embodiment of this hope.

When a ranger appeared from the north with Andúril, the blade broked and reforged—when he rode out from Helm’s Deep with Theoden head-into the orc hordes—when he came and healed the wounded in the healing houses, he came as a living hope from above. He came with the Light of Estel in him.

And he came and he rode against the black gate—all, he and his men.

In the field before the gates of Mordor, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, stood steadfast beneath the banner of Gondor. As the horde of orcs all thronged in the gate, so awful in number, Aragorn was not dismayed.

Instead, something different happened.

“His eyes gleamed like stars that shine the brighter the night deepens.”

The same as the star in Frodo’s hand.

The power of the hate which had filled the orcs fled, and with unclouded eye, the orcs saw the men of Gondor,

And the orcs, “Now looking in the eyes of their enemies they saw a deadly light and were afraid.”

Then, “all the Captains of the West cried aloud, for their hearts were filled with a new hope in the midst of darkness.”

I cannot, in essence, distinguish this scene from the hobbits facing down Shelob, except that in this case the star of high hope is not carried in a hand,

but in a man.

And the many orcs,

like the many eyes,

are struck down,

and they flee.

What is interesting to me is that though the beautiful light of Eärendil is made manifest in the eyes of the men of Gondor, it does not take the form of some magical power or fire which comes out of them to consume their enemies. What comes is a mighty and indomitable courage which strikes fear and doubt in the heart of all darkness.

Whenever this remnant light of Eru’s being shines, darkness is cast far away.

It is the Secret Fire, light of True Light, Beauty itself,

And darkness cannot stand against it.

It is the hope and ward of mankind.

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The Icon of Beauty’s Victory

King Theoden lay pierced unto death in Pelennor fields.

The Nazgûl’s beast had thrown him down, and now it crept forward to feast. All of the king’s knights were slain, but one called Dernhelm stepped between.

“Begone foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!”

A cold voice answered,

“Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in turn.”

A sword rang as it was drawn.

“Do what you will,” Dernhelm said, “but I will hinder it, if I may.”

“Hinder me?” The Witch King mocked, “Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”1

Then, she laughed with a clear voice like the ring of steel. It was not Dernhelm, but Éowyn, daughter of Éomund, and sister-daughter to king Theoden.

Merry watched in amazement.

Lady Éowyn, sheildmaiden of the Rohirrim,

faced down the Witch King of Angmar, King of Minas Morgul.

“There some paces from him sat the great beast, and all seemed dark about it, and above it loomed the Nazgûl Lord like a shadow of despair. A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek.”

“Still, she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck, she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away.

A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.”

The fair maiden of Rohan,

of love for her king,

slew the fell beast and its rider

Beauty, as the rising sun,

take head and soul of vile shadow,

to shine then forth like hope’s own ray,

and cast down death’s despair in bright of day

Minas Morgul, her King to fall, the rising moon to rise again

Minas Ithil, her tower tall, her beauty sown, new garden in Ithilien

By sword of golden sheildmaiden

(You have just read Part Two of Four)

Part One

Part Three

Part Four

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