From Dr. Thurow:
“In western lands beneath the Sun
The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night,
And swaying branches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.Though here at journey’s end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.”(Tolkien, The Return of the King)
This beautiful though somber poem is one I often return to amidst the hardships of life. Tolkien so perfectly captures one of the greatest blessings of the Christian revelation. Our hope, as Christians, is not in this world. Yet it is so hard to keep this truth before our eyes amidst our troubles and losses. The world seems so present, while divine reality seems so far away. Yet divine reality is, in a sense, both more truly present and vastly more real than what we seem to experience in our daily lives! It is the source and summit of all that is true and beautiful in what we experience here. Heaven seems like a tiny thing up there on the altar, but it is the whole world that is so very small and heaven that rides above it all forever untouched by stain or confusion. Like the stable in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, the inside is infinitely bigger than the outside! Yet while we carry the memory/promise of our faith within us, that little spark of true beauty, we endure the hardships of this world with a peace that is beyond the world’s understanding. The sweet sadness of this world, which Tolkien understood so well in keeping with his beloved Medieval Saxon poets, is that of the lover surrounded by the beautiful garden, every detail of which reminds her of the absent but approaching bridegroom. We mourn for the world, in its sadness and sin and heartbreaking beauty, because we know the World’s Secret and the simultaneous Source of all her beauty and her sorrow.
September 19, 2025