On Hobbits, Spiritual Life and Works of Genius

There are types of fruit that grow from genius which leave the world stunned for a while. The person who develops the fruit may be dead for generations before the world gives the fruit a try.

When I went to see the latest Hobbit film, I had been reading the life of Einstein. As I watched, I compared the work of Tolkien and Einstein. I thought about how their work has touched the lives of common men and women in a surprisingly short time, especially given the way their imaginations so radically reorder the way people otherwise think about life.

This is not a blog about Tolkien. So I won’t waste your time pointing out his obsession with medieval culture, Nordic folk tales, and the ancient languages of Great Britain and Scandinavia. I won’t try to convince you of how weird it was for him to invent two languages for the characters in his stories, languages which he must, nonetheless, translate back into English to be of any use to his readers. But these are monumental products of study and genius and one wonders what made them seem worth it during his long hours of isolated obscurity.  After all, he didn’t know his stories would sell millions of books or become major movies.

Then there is Einstein, daydreaming about riding a beam of light through the universe, just for the fun of it evidently. While playing however, he discovered two major truths that radically overturned centuries of apparently common sense observations about how the world works.

Tolkien, daydreaming about his elves and dwarfs decided his characters would need a translator to communicate among themselves and to humans, and invented a wizard. What else? Surely the modern world needed a new wizard. 

It may be obvious to us that Einstein’s work will prove to be of more practical value than the work of Tolkien.  That was hardly evident however when Einstein was wasting away his early adult years staring out into space. We smile at how his foolish parents paced the floor; watching employer after employer dismiss their wild haired dreamer. Would he ever get a job? What would become of his, poor thing? Was he ill or just irresponsible?

Einstein is vindicated now of course. We have put his theories to work in real life applications and inventions that have utterly reordered our lives.

What do we do with the likes of Tolkien? For one thing, we entertain ourselves. We watch the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as we munch $4.00 popcorn and drink $5.00 Cokes. We get a delightful escape from the day to day and promote the economy by paying prices that would push us into the streets with torches were the government to ask us for that kind of money to pay for parks or bombs. But since its Hollywood that needs the money and we like the taste of the $5.00 popcorn, it makes sense.

But back to Tolkien!  Do two hours at the matinee really justify Tolkien’s thousands of hours spent on inventing languages or reading old manuscripts in Anglo Saxon? What did his parents think? Or his friends?

I don’t know about his parents but I do know something about his friends. Tolkien’s friends were as weird as he. In fact, without those friends, we would have never even publishing his work. He was, after all, a respected professor. Why should he make himself the laughing stock of his world by publishing stories about elves and dwarfs? Fortunately for us, his friends that overcame his reluctance.

C. S. Lewis, Tolkien’s famous convert to Christianity, continually pushed his spiritual mentor to share his work with the rest of us. Lewis, himself a round peg in Oxford's square hole, knew genius when he saw it. He too was tinkering away at things his academic peers would have found utterly foolish.  

People who work on things we already know are needed in the world usually enjoy our respect.

Invention, as they say, is the child of necessity. If we know we need something  we are delighted for someone to try to get it for us. 

That bizarre fruit of genius, which creates something we didn't know we needed -- that is a different category of work altogether.

We didn’t need the theory of relativity, or at least we didn't know we needed it. We were doing just fine with Newton, thank you very much. We could have continued making do with Newton. But as Gandalf tells us in the Hobbit, adventure requires a toleration of, and perhaps even delight with, uncertainty. The people of the Shire will be disgusted with us unless and until we bring home the treasure. Even then they might whisper that we are a bit odd for their tastes. 

We didn’t need a grown man to resurrect fairy stories and epic tales of monsters and magical creatures or to remind us that it requires ordinary people, people willing to step out of ordinary life to confront such things.

We did need, and need still, people who will demonstrate that creativity involves taking risks, thinking about things differently, ignoring the anxieties of friends and foes as one struggles with some problem that others do not see, and, perhaps, finally, discovering a solution others will only gradually accept.

In our pathologically divided nation, in churches divided over issues so trivial as to make even the most pious wonder if we have lost the very faith itself, in the globalized, economically restructured and technologically wired world in which we find ourselves, we wonder if there are brave souls even now tinkering away at some product of imagination that will help us envision things differently than we do today.

If there are such people diligently at work – some David tending sheep, some mad mathematician trying to keep a job that bores him silly and which keeps him from thinking about riding the back of a light beam, some respected professor of linguistics who stays up late writing stories he keeps secret for fear of losing the respect of his peers – they are our hope for a way out of our madding attempts to hold back the realities of the twenty-first century.

Few of us fit in the category of an Einstein or Tolkien. But some of our children may fit there. Some of our young pastors may fit there. If we can just keep ourselves from crucifying the inventors of the future  before they bring their fruit out to the light of day where we can see it, and, perhaps, nourish ourselves with it.  

Patrick, a Sassy Irish Woman, and A Brand New Year

While in Ireland for Christmas, I decided to climb Croagh Patrick.That's where the father of Irish Christianity fasted for forty days and nights.

So, two days after Christmas, Austin, my son-in-law, and I got up, had a small breakfast and then drove old winding roads to the holy site. We glimpsed it after an hour or so, its mighty peak towering above everything else. It was beautiful and inspiring but also a bit intimidating for a middle age American used to driving a car whenever he must go somewhere more than a few blocks away.

About a third of the way up that mountain, I discovered three important things.

One, I should have had a more substantial breakfast.

Secondly, there is a reason sensible people climb the mountain in June.

Thirdly, it was going to take more time to get to the top than I had thought.

Even a third of the way up, the scene is stunning. Streams rush down it’s face, outlined by stone walls as ancient as humanity. Small villages dot the landscape as far as the eye can see as the ocean, covered by a thin fog, meets the rocky Irish coast.

We walked back down the mountain and found a pub. The fire was hot, the food was delicious and, since we were the only customers, we enjoyed the full attention of both cook and the waitress. As we ate, we talked about the age of the pub and the memorabilia that covers the walls.

We drove into Westport then, a beautiful postcard village at the base of the mountain. We walked around the monument in the town square, reading various quotes from St. Patrick’s short book inscribed there.

Deciding we should have a cup of coffee before heading back to Galway, we went into a coffee shop near the square, called Christie's. When I ordered my coffee, the lady behind the counter asked me what had brought me to her town. I told her that my wife and I were visiting our family in Galway and that I had decided to climb the mountain before going home.

She nodded and smiled.

“I didn’t get to the top. Just about a third of the way, “ I added.

“I discovered I was older than I had thought,” chuckling at my funny self deprecating remark. 

“No!” she blurted. “That must not be said. The truth is, you have not been as active as you should be. It is a temporary situation. You can change it.”

She was smiling but rather firm.

“Also,” she continued without my encouragement, “never say ‘when I was young.’ Say instead, ‘when I was younger.”

I looked at her for a moment without replying.  

She was not finished.

“Listen more to Bob Dylan.”

Well, that was over the top. What did Dylan have to do with anything?

“Bob Dylan” I mumbled?

“My husband is a wise man. He reads his Bible faithfully. And he listens to Bob Dylan. Sometimes, when he makes a wise statement, I ask him “Is that the Holy Scripture now or is it Bob Dylan?”

 “It doesn’t matter now, does it," he always says.

“Well, he’s right you know.  So get more active. Read your Bible and listen to Bob Dylan. There it is. You have a good day now.”

The wind bit my face as I walked out of Christ’s shop. I now had a cup of great coffee that I would soon consume. I also had some words for my journey that I could savor but never consume.

I pondered the lines I had read on that old, weathered monument:

“My name is Patrick. I am a country person and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. If I have achieved any success, it has been a gift.”

I tried to ignore the fact that Christie is the female version of the word Christ.

I thought about the coming year, when, God willing, I will enter my sixth decade.

I am trying to keep it all together as I walk my pilgrimage. There are days when I get tired. There are days when I get cold. There are days when I think I was a fool to ever believe there was anything to this journey than just putting one foot in front of another. There are days when I think there are no saints on this path after all. But then, in an unsuspected moment, some voice says, “you are more fit than you think.  All that can really stop you are words you speak about yourself that needlessly limit your journey.”

Or, as Dylan would say it,

Cast down your crown

On this bloodstained ground.

And take off your mask!

For he sees your deeds

And He knows your needs

Before you even ask.

Nothing can hold you back

Nothing that you are

Nothing that you lack.

Patrick once stood here, looking at a nation he hoped to win for Christ. But how? The task was like a huge mountain before him and he was but a poor, wayfaring pilgrim. But he took some time to pray, right here, where these many centuries later stands a humble coffee shop. Right here where one of his children reminds me to stop whining and to keep walking.

Another line on that monument says:

“Because there were many fish, I asked for a large net.”

Patrick climbed this mountain by putting one foot in front of him until he reached the top. He knew his flock would have a difficult time doing that sometimes. So he left them a little book and a prayer to say every morning when they awoke:

“I arise this day with a mighty power …

Christ within me

Christ around me

Christ before me

Christ behind me

Christ on my right hand

Christ on my left

Christ beneath me

Christ above me.

Christ! Be my strong defense!

I arise today with a mighty power.

Lewis, Tolkien and Evangelical Senility

One of the most productive religious revivals of the last two hundred years occurred at Oxford University. Initially, this spiritual movement resulted in the conversion of a few hundred. Now, however, it touches millions of lives around the world. Unlike our more famous revivals, where people may glow in the dark or remain frozen in place for hours, this was a revival of Christian thought. 

The Oxford converts formed a community that launched its members into the intellectual stratosphere. Seventy years later, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Dorothy Sayers,  J. R. R. Token, Michael Palanyi, Charles Williams and many other lesser known writers continue to influence not only Christianity but secular culture as well.

As I write this, The Hobbit is playing in our theaters, just a couple of years after the Lord of the Rings and Narnia may be fading from their long runs at the box offices and bookstores. Meanwhile, the writings of Michael Polanyi have been quietly provoking breakthroughs in economics, neurology and, of course, in chemistry, the field in which he won his Nobel Prize. These Oxford converts have been a most productive group of people.

Christian thought and Christian community nurtured the intellectual gifts of these believers, refined and developed their ideas, and helped them reach several generations of readers and researchers both within and without the Christian Church.

Although most of the Oxford group would not easily fit within the boundaries of contemporary American Evangelicalism, we have continually drawn upon their insights to address our postmodern questions. It is difficult to know what modern Evangelicalism would even look like without them.

Nonetheless, I don't think we would tolerate a community like theirs today.  Unbelievers wouldn't like them or their ideas, of course. But believers wouldn't either, to tell the truth. Intellectual life is at low tide in the American Evangelical Church at the moment. We seem to have little patience for serious conversation.

How can I explain what I mean?

Perhaps this will help.

When I was a little boy, our church ran an “old folks home.”

I found it mysterious. Once, when my great-grandmother broke her leg, I spend several hours there trying to understand the world the staff and patients had created. We had not yet learned how to sanitize (and camouflage) the unpleasant realities of human biology as we do today. So I still recall the sights, sounds and smells of human decay. However, it was the social aspects of the place that intrigued me the most.

I discovered that although Mr. Tommy was completely paralyzed, he was as rational as a person can be without healthy human interaction. The staff treated him kindly and he seemed to appreciate their help. Still, recalling his condition makes one grateful for modern advances like FaceTime and voice recognition software. 

Most of the others in the House of Mercy however, suffered from dementia. Well, come to think of it, perhaps they were not suffering! They laughed hardily enough, rocking away their hours and talking to people I couldn't see. Perhaps it was their lack of awareness that unnerved me.  But of course that was not their problem. 

One French-speaking woman was always calling for her mother. She giggled in her unknown tongue as she stroked a doll’s face.  Even though I watched her intently, I don’t think she ever saw me. Her mind was in a time and place that comforted her but which removed her from me.

Outside, a president had been assassinated. American cities were burning. The world was threatening to blow itself up. People were learning how to fly to the moon. But that poor woman knew nothing about any of that. Her eyes were fixed on something that although invisible to everyone else brought her some sense of joy.

But at what cost?

Inside the nursing home where she and the others lived, a little boy was trying to make sense of the world. He was mystified by this display of human fragility that made the word seem less safe than before. He was discovering that big people don't always have the answers; that sometimes big people are less aware than little ones.

Blissfully unconcerned about my existential anxiety, the inhabitants of the House of Mercy rocked on, shouting at one another about all their real and imagined offenses. They had become yesterday’s people, incapable of (and uninterested in) making a contribution to a world in which they no longer played a part.

Presumably, they had once conversed about world events. They had once made love. They had once raised families. They had once created machines and pieces of art. They had once participated in the life of the world. Then, for some reason and at some point, they began either surrendering their lives voluntarily or succumbed to the various kinds of neurological disease that worked to steal their lives. 

Whenever I consider the current state of American Evangelicalism, I think about those scenes at the House of Mercy Nursing Home. 

We are still here. We still breathe and eat.  But we have gradually cocooned ourselves in a spiritual gated community where we ignore most of the global changes around us. We have disinvested ourselves of huge chucks of real life rather than face the unsettling realities that might shake our internal equilibrium. 

Not much science makes it in here and hasn't for some time now.

Nor literature.

Nor philosophy.

And, increasingly, not much theology either.

We enjoy technological gadgetry, the products of the sciences we have, for the most part, rejected. But American Evangelicalism is a world of group think and cliches, where the price of community is conformity and where happiness is often purchased at the price of remaining in a state of intellectual adolescence. 

Unencumbered by the responsibility of offering answers for modern questions, we prefer speakers that say amusing things to make us happy over ones who tax our minds with difficult conundrums.  Our worship services are brief, vacuous, and often look a lot like kindergarten. We have lost much of our collective memory and so have little idea who the likes of Wesley, Calvin, Luther, and Aquinas were or what they may have said. We may have heard their names but are not likely to believe they have much to say about anything in real life. We wonder what sort of sadistic artists would have ever put words like propitiation, incarnation, and redemption in worship songs and why they could have ever thought anyone would know what such strange words meant.

We wonder why any faithful believer would study things like genetics, paleontology, or neurology.

If we listen to the conversation of people in this gospel ghetto of ours, we will hear amazing and revealing things.

“My nephew was raised in this very church by good parents. Then he went off to college. Now He believes the earth is hundreds of millions of years old; can you believe that? Our pastor took him for a game of golf and lunch but it didn’t help. Maybe it’s not a good idea to send our kids to college!”

“That nice young man wants to become a pastor. Naturally, he wants to study the Bible, which is good, but he will need to understand how the real world works if he plans to be successful. So I told him to study marketing and management. He can study the Bible on his own.”

“I love our church. The pastor talks about sports and things I can relate to. The service keeps your attention and best of all -- you’re out in an hour!”

Meanwhile, the culture's pressing questions about sexual identity, addiction, human origins, global warming, mass killings, and urban sustainability are met with clichés, sneers and, ultimately, by silence. Not only are we uninformed by modern perspectives on such things, we have lost historical Christian perspectives that might have added our unique voice to the discussion. We have become so alienated from our own past in fact, that perhaps few things are as alien to us now as historical Christianity. Therefore, information we might have found in our own hymns, theology books, creeds and art is long gone. Like the people at the House of Mercy, we have found that our old life and its belongings just don't fit in this place.

When someone mentions things we have lost, we comfort ourselves with words that lack real content.

“God is doing a new thing.”

“God hates religion.”

“God wants His people to be happy.”

Rock. Rock. Rock.

Happy. Happy.

Drool. Drool.

What time is lunch?

We do not notice that little children are growing up in a house without answers. We seem unaware that we have been amusing them with the same mindless fare we have been feeding ourselves. Except for our neat electronic gadgets, the world stopped evolving for us somewhere about 1870; before the likes of Darwin, Freud, Einstein and Max Plank; before the discoveries of continental drift and DNA; before globalization and the Internet; before Christians stopped having much to add to the disciplines of human society; before the great Oxford revival that could still renew our understanding of biblical faith if we would actually pay attention to it. 

One wonders what our little children will do when they discover the truth: that for over a century most of us have been asleep at the wheel, too terrified of an evolving world to think or converse about much of anything of substance. And what will they think when they discover that the people who made us the angriest were those who tried to wake us up? 

I am proud that our little church cared for people who could no longer care for themselves. The House of Mercy Nursing Home was a loving and kind response to human suffering. Many congregations still do such things and I am proud of them too. I am not proud when church becomes becomes a retreat for those who no longer wish to think.

There are many wonderful things I could say about American Evangelicals. Intellectual courage is not one of them.

So enjoy The Hobbit. We may not be anything like it for a long time. And besides, like all spiritually healthy things, The Hobbit breathes virtuous life into all who encounter and savor it. Perhaps, just perhaps, it may spark courage in someone to go against the current tide of intellectual sloth. Perhaps he or she will assemble another group of prophetic Christian intellectuals like the ones whom God touched at Oxford. And if so, perhaps our children's children may delight in the wonders of an informed, sanctified and anointed intellect; as we do whenever we read the works of those shaped by the Oxford revival.

Some things to think about as we ponder what we might do with this blessed gift of a brand new year.