Connoisseur of simple things, panoramic Trinitarian, writer/musician/chaplain ⚓️ I wrote 'The Proverbs of Middle-earth' (see link below) & paraphrase Psalms.
I was teaching a class 'How to love your neighbour who is sad'. To illustrate 'secret sadnesses', I shared that our dog has just died, and started to well up a bit. One girl came up to me afterwards, looked me in the eye and gave me a piece of paper. "This is for you," she said.
I love working with children, they are the best. Somewhere in her 4th Grade brain, she went, "I KNOW WHAT WILL MAKE HIM FEEL BETTER!!" drew it, and gave it to me, a perfect expression of how to love your neighbour who is sad.
That was yesterday – I opened it this morning. She's a lovely 4th Grader, very kind and thoughtful, so naturally I wondered how she had decided to comfort me in my distress. I unrolled the paper to reveal...
'Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like – such as reading to your little boy... keeps the Devil down in the hole.'
Nick Cave.
The Trinity is probably the
#1
doctrine that convinces me of Christianity's authenticity. I mean, why the HECK would anyone make up something like that??
Our school library has a copy of The Hobbit with loads of illustrations (by Michael Hague) which I’d never seen before. They feel very ‘alive’ and do a great job of drawing me in.
Here’s a bunch of my favourites (please forgive my photography).
The BBC Dramatisation of LOTR was my 'wardrobe' into Middle-earth. Plus I was born on a Saturday night in the Spring of 1981, and my Dad listened every Sunday, so it may be my first literature experience!
Here is a thread of the lovely artwork by Eric Fraser, for the Radio Times.
Five years ago,
@holland_tom
suggested that someone should find a song to represent each of the 66 Biblical books (sorry Catholics, Orthodox, etc.). The following is what I came up with.
Rules: no bad songs, no church songs, no repeated artists, and nothing too obscure. Read on!
My 5-year old likes to say grace before meals, but she sometimes gets a bit carried away with her intercessions. The other day she prayed that the Sun wouldn’t explode and we all wouldn’t die.
This is precisely the sort of interview which isn't supposed to exist anymore. And yet, here it is.
The full conversation is here. It's extraordinarily rich.
A sad day. Priscilla Tolkien, the last of JRR Tolkien’s children, has died. In the midst of life, we are in death. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
@krishk
Rod Liddle is part of a larger group groaning for the "good old days" when Britain was Christian and we ruled the waves
My research into church history suggests that the UK somewhat prospered in the mid nineteenth century under the influence of German Prince Albert who greatly
I heard
@ClintSmithIII
read this poem of his on the radio yesterday.
‘Sometimes the moral arc of the universe does not bend in a direction that will comfort us.’
—
I love that LOTR never equates goodness with softness, or implies that kindness is a weakness for great warriors. Aragorn is a healer, Sam is a gardener, Treebeard is a shepherd, Faramir is a loremaster, Théoden is 'a kindly old man'. All are tough, all are gentle, all are good.
Long before the Incarnation, the Flintstones were already celebrating Christmas. That's real faith.
'These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar... they were strangers and exiles on the earth.'
We had school graduation this evening. I ended up talking to a girl who told me she feels God has called her to be an accountant. I was so excited – I’ve never in my life heard someone say that before.
One of Alan Lee's new illustrations for ‘The Fall of Númenor’: a procession of the Faithful on their way to be sacrificed at Sauron's temple to Morgoth.
[posted by Brian Sibley on Fb]
@PhysicsMermaid
@DrRJKavanagh
@ReignOfApril
I'm a white British immigrant too, and faced no scepticism or even waiting time. The officer who processed me also joked about how nice it was to have someone coming from a country that isn't messed up. *sigh*
Been meaning to post of bunch of Sergei Iukhimov's amazing LOTR illustrations for ages – now's the time! I'm aiming for chronological order, but it's tricky to tell what's what sometimes!
Anyway, if Iukhimov is new to you, STRAP IN. We'll start as Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton:
‘I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been, if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness.’
Holy Saturday
J.R.R Tolkien, born
#OnThisDay
1892, discusses his work - which include The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - with John Bowen in 1962.
The writer explains how he is 'a meticulous sort of bloke' during an intense, candid and revealing interview
Tolkien once described one of the symptoms of Saruman's corruption thus: 'he lost all sense of humour'. This has stayed with me. I don't trust people who are too self-important to laugh – especially at themselves.
Scientists at Nottingham Trent University have reconstructed this 3D model of how Adam, the first human depicted in the Book Of Genesis might have looked.
Scientists at Nottingham Trent University have reconstructed this 3D model of how Adam, the first human depicted in the Book Of Genesis might have looked.
[Transcript of phonecall from Todd Beamer on September 11, 2001.]
Lisa: Ok Todd….my name is Lisa…Do you know your flight number? If you can’t remember, it’s on your ticket.
Todd: It’s United Flight 93.
Lisa: Now Todd, can you try to tell me exactly what happened?
‘When I was lying on the floor having the s—t kicked out of me, I'd envision Jesus on the top of a hill on the cross, and the blood would run from Jesus's heart down into mine on the floor and that's how I got through being beaten. I'd concentrate on that image.’
Sinead O'Connor
@HiddenAegis
Yes, absolutely! The contrast is VAST. Tom Holland's book Dominion does a really good job of showing how Jesus is nothing at all like the religious and moral culture of the Greco-Roman world.
“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”
~Anthony Bourdain
If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food .. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.
Anthony Bourdain
Getting really into The Lord of the Rings is the best way to grow a broad (and delightfully semi-archaic) vocabulary. Quality time with a wordsmith is never wasted.
Has anyone experimented with the pre-modern routine of having a 'first sleep' and a 'second sleep'?
I sleep very badly, and am wondering about giving it a try – getting up at 2am, reading and praying for 45 minutes or so, then going back to bed. Will I be alone in this?
Tolkien said that LOTR is principally about Death; we miss a huge amount if we fail to see it through that lens. Eg. The Elves' grieve the endless passing of time; the Númenóreans dread death; the Rohirrim desire noble death; plus the sacrificial deaths of Gandalf, Boromir, etc.