Timeless Truths & Classic Critiques c/o C S Lewis' & J R R Tolkien's Tomes

Gazing at America today - insofar as thing've started unfolding, anyhow - Gollum'd certainly be crawling for cover from the gaze of Trump, I mean Sauron ('s evil eye)... and then some!

To any and all those who might perhaps be wondering whether C S Lewis could have anything at all  to say - based upon his past writings (which, after all, when all is said and done, is all we yet have available to us) - about events presently transpiring in, more correctly certain personae currently 'dominating proceedings' in, the most watched and anticipated/feared election result probably in global history...   Coz' I'm sorry to have to say, folks, the aforementioned is precisely the sort of uncritical, sycophantic, obsequious submission we've been seeing from Donald J Trump worshippers at his various rallies... Dear God, he's actually been receiving the sort of mindless worship there that traditionally is reserved for the deity... Interesting that this is precisely the way in which Germans generally - even and especially supposed 'Bible-believing' Christians - in 1930's Nazi Germany bowed and scraped to Adolf Hitler, and indeed generally saw him ...

Yes, John (Pilger), however (penetratingly and perceptively) incisive about so many matters of international note and significance, was once questioned by notable New Zealand broadcast host Jim Mora as to whether a line *wherein good and evil coexisted "ran through the heart of every person", and effectively responded with a grunt of disbelief/disgust/mild contempt even... But as the good book says, let God be true and every ( wo ) man a liar ... *Not in such precise lingo, admittedly.

As One well put it: What is a (hu)man profited if s/he gain the whole world but [ultimately]  lose their own soul? (Though this blogger well appreciates that that  may not have been in Tolkien's mind when thus characterizing Arwen, much less upon the mind or in the thoughts of his cinematic adapters Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.)

How subtle evil is in its effects upon us, promising us unanticipated gains and glory, when even do we ultimately seem to achieve such it always carries a deadly sting in its tale... Thus and so the fellowship's 'ring-bearer', Frodo Baggins, would himself "wish for death before it was all over", as traitorous Boromir assured/prophesied to him... Yet Frodo, with the undying support of his righthand 'man'(or rather hobbit), Samwise Gamgee, nevertheless went all the way to accomplish his weighty mission, not even turning back when it had become clear it would cost him his very life... And, like the God-Man Christ Jesus, it ultimately did cost him his life, but having gone to the very brink/precipice, like That One he came through the (volcanic) fires (of Mordor) to a renewed and glorious life - if not in the world of his day... He had a far better home awaiting him 'over the seas' in the Undying Lands...

But one day - perhaps soon and very soon - human verdicts/judgments will be scattered to the four winds, and those who God Himself approves of will be vindicated/commended...    

Fitting words perhaps as Queen Elizabeth passes from this earthly life and her son and successor Charles ascends her earthly throne... 

 

'The days that followed were golden, and Spring and Summer joined and made revel together in the fields of Gondor. And tidings now came by swift riders from Cair Andros of all that was done, and the City made ready for the coming of the King... All things were now made ready in the City, and there was great concourse of people, for the tidings had gone out into all parts of Gondor...and all that could come to the City made haste to come. And the city was filled again with women and fair children that returned to their homes laden with flowers; and from Dol Amroth came the harpers that harped most skilfully in all the land; and there were players upon viols and upon flutes and upon horns of silver, and clear-voiced singers from the vales of Lebennin... ...a single trumpet, and a dead silence followed... Faramir met Aragorn in the midst of those assembled, and he knelt... And he held out a white rod; but Aragorn took the rod and gave it back... Then Faramir stood up and spoke in a cl...

I find I simply cannot get beyond the following words from the ever deft pen of C S Lewis, writing in his classic The Problem of Pain ... 'By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness - the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we liked doing, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all." Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms: but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds...

Meanwhile as Pippin & Gandalf look out over the high towers and walls of the White City, all hope sinks within Peregrin Took's heart, and, turning to Gandalf, he declares: "So we've sent Frodo and Sam to their deaths!" The ever wise wizard responds: "The hope [of the Fellowship] was only ever a faint and fragile one."

And thus and so 'the world of men' still arrives at the ever weighty decision as to whether (or not) to go to war and fight to the death...often for causes of which they really 'know not what'. And though people throughout the ages, especially the last two millennia, have argued somewhat incessantly at critical junctures in history about there being such a thing as a 'just war', they have often lived to regret it... Yes, Treebeard and Co had more than sufficient grounds for getting their knickers in the proverbial knot over the dire and diabolical fate of their beloved fellow trees.  And yet the Good Book whose writings doubtless ofttimes inspired both C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien in their epic tales of the grand myths backgrounding Western history in particular... ...contains simultaneously the following two conflicting and contradictory admonitions (admittedly each given in a specific historical context): Scatter the people who delight in war. Cursed be he who ...

As one equally perceptive singer-songwriter once put things... '[the one who] write(s) the songs that make the whole world sing '... '[the one who] ha [s] [his] home deep within [each one of) us '... '[the one who's] been around forever '...   Hey, don't the sacred Scriptures say something mighty similar?

Maybe - despite his gender - and alongside another male, the equally incomparable, irascible and idiosyncratic, iconoclastic H Scott Peck, one of my all-time true 'soul-mates'...