Paddy McCann says, “My dream is to be a poet. I would love to do it full time.” Hear part of his poem on his home town recorded in his car last month. Good work, sir. May your voice find a large audience.
Blogging through LOTR: A matter of time
Beside the standing stone Gimli halted and looked up. It was cracked and weather-worn, and the faint runes upon its side could not be read. ‘This pillar marks the spot where Durin first looked in the Mirrormere,’ said the dwarf. ‘Let us look ourselves once, ere we go!’
Happy New Year to you. In this season we think about time, which “like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away.” That makes this a good day, I aver, to discuss the question of time in The Lord of the Rings. At least some aspects I’ve noticed.
I’ve been looking for hints of Norse influences in The Fellowship of the Ring, which I’m still reading (almost done now). One such element seems to be the runestone that Gimli visits, shortly after the escape from Moria (excerpt above).
But the stone is illegible, thanks to time and weather. And that got me thinking about time and the concept of ancient things in the Trilogy. Continue reading Blogging through LOTR: A matter of time
How Do Christians Handle Pain?
“Any attitude that emphasizes hope while ignoring lament comes from a naïve and unrealistic optimism that contradicts our actual experiences. Lamenting without hope, on the other hand, is equally unrealistic, a kind of unfaithful cynicism that ignores God’s activity and crushes us in its unrelenting despair.”
Professor Kelly Kapic talks with ByFaith about his 2017 book which presents itself as “a theological meditation on pain and suffering.”
As we close out our celebration of the Almighty becoming a man, Kapic’s book may be just the theological conversation we need to see ourselves as people with originally good, now broken by sin, physical bodies. It’s understandable that we often pray for God to take away our pain and sickness, but as Kapic notes in this video, all of us are either growing older or dead. What we feel and can do now in our bodies is part of the real world in which God calls us to bring him glory.
I regularly get emails from people who have read the book and speak of discovering the role of lament as if for the first time. That tells me, if I am hearing correctly, that we might not be doing a very good job of displaying this biblical expression in our corporate worship and Christian experience.
(See also this listing from WTS Books)
Blogging through LOTR: The pictures in our heads
In recording my Lord of the Rings reading impressions, I keep reminding myself that I’ve got to let the movies go. The web is full of criticism of the films. I can add nothing useful.
But let me say this. I read visually. I stage the scenes in my head, and watch them (more or less) like movies.
The real world movies are hard to get free of. Humans are visual creatures. Things we see inevitably supersede things we imagine, however vividly. As I read (I’m on The Fellowship of the Ring now), I consciously attempt to recall to myself the actual book descriptions, but the actors and sets of the films keep washing over them. (For instance, Frodo is described in the books as “fair,” meaning blond. Doesn’t look much like Elijah Wood at all). For that reason I appreciate the undramatized sections of the novels even more. They are unadulterated, so to speak.
Not that I’m complaining. The movies have many excellencies which I enjoyed. But when I’m reading I want to engage with Professor Tolkien himself. Since the movies came out, they are my main deceivers. But I had deceivers before then – mainly my own misunderstandings.
For instance, on my first reading I got the elves completely wrong. I was in high school at the time, and I still thought of elves as “little” people. I don’t know how I missed the description at the banquet in Rivendell, where both Glorfindel and Elrond are described as being taller than Gandalf. But I did. I imagined elves as basically like dwarves (even to having beards), but better looking. When at last I was disabused of that fallacy (I think my college roommate might have done it), I abandoned it with pleasure.
That was around the time I met a girl who was very like Goldberry. I see her still, in my imagination, every time I read the books. I’m glad no movie actress has superseded that image.
Blogging through LOTR: Concerning dwarves
Continuing blogging my reading of The Lord of the Rings. Still on The Hobbit.
I have an idea that, if J. R. R. Tolkien had gotten the chance to see the Peter Jackson movies, he would have found the Lord of the Rings movies acceptable in parts. But he would have disliked the Hobbit movies intensely.
One of several things he would have hated in the Hobbit movies is the appearance of the dwarves. Both Tolkien and Lewis were keenly interested in dwarves (or dwarfs), and had definite opinions about them. Lewis writes (in Surprised by Joy, I think) about how he loved dwarfs as a boy, “before Disney vulgarized them.” He describes dwarfs as having long beards and wearing hoods. The dwarfs in the Narnia books are always dressed that way. Likewise, Tolkien’s dwarves always wear hoods except when they wear armor.
Peter Jackson, or his costume designers, apparently disliked hoods. Gimli never wears a hood in the movies. I think a hood or two shows up in the Hobbit films, but they’re gotten rid of fairly quickly. Maybe actors won’t wear them because they put their faces in shadow. Aragorn was supposed to wear a hood when traveling as Strider, too. But it’s almost never up.
Tolkien (and by Tolkien, I mean me, because I’m assuming he’d agree with me) would have hated the Dwarf-Elf romance, and the necessity of making one of the dwarfs “sexy” in order to achieve the unlikely goal of attracting a goddess-like Elf. I don’t think he wanted Thorin to look as heroic as the movies make him, either. Tolkien’s assessment of dwarves’ characters is interesting.
There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.
That passage is interesting in light of the fact (I don’t know its source, but it’s commonly cited as authentic by Tolkien scholars) that Tolkien modeled his dwarves, at least in part, on the Jews. The passage above parallels pretty well the opinion of a broad-minded Englishman of Tolkien’s time, when pressed on the subject. It sounds condescending to us, but in that day it was commendably tolerant. It’s consistent with the Professor’s famous retort to German publishers when they queried him about his pure Aryan ancestry.
The Hobbit movies went wrong in so many ways. I’ve heard that somebody’s done a cut that reduces them to one movie, excising all Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit Helper” extensions. I’d love to see that. Tolkien and Lewis might even have tolerated it.
Netflix’s ‘Bright’
Watch a trailer for the new Netflix movie Bright and you’ll see exactly what the movie is, a buddy cop story within an urban fantasy world. As such it stands up well, but, boy, I wish they had shown restraint in the usual content areas.
Will Smith is veteran cop Daryl Ward who has been given rookie cop Nick Jakoby, played by Joel Edgerton, as a diversity hire to meet Los Angeles’s political requirements. Jacoby is an orc. As he described it, his people chose the wrong side long ago and have been paying for it ever since. In a couple conversations, we hear of the nine races who were brought together 2,000 years ago to defeat the dark lord. Now some bad elves want to bring him back, so naturally that’s not going to fly.
The essence of the story is Ward coming to terms with his bigotry against Jakoby and Jakoby persevering through that and everything else without losing hope. That part is painfully realistic. Everyone on the force hates him despite his eagerness to please them and be a good cop. They refuse to believe he will remain loyal to his partner or the force at large when pressured by other orcs.
It’s a straight-up buddy cop story with pervasive and understated fantasy elements. From what I can tell, it follows the pattern set by many similar movies. Perhaps that’s the mindset that gave us 200 f-words for this 117 minute movie (I’m guessing, not counting). When the big bad guys show up, our heroes make a run through a strip club and the bloodshed skyrockets.
So I can’t recommend Bright, even though I like the concept and the big idea. But if you want to see this and have not watched the trailer, I recommend skipping it. It doesn’t spoil the story, but it does take the edge off of all the most dramatic moments.
Reading report: ‘The Hobbit,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien
I keep bellyaching about having a difficult time with my latest Erling book. And this continues to be the case. I make progress – don’t get me wrong – but it’s kind of like punching my way through sand.
So I said to myself, maybe I haven’t spent enough time with fantasy lately. Maybe it’s time to read The Lord of the Rings again, to get my mind onto a different track.
And behold, I did even according to my word. Reading the Trilogy and its prequel, of course, is a time-consuming project. And it’s a little late in history to review the books. So I figured I’d blog my way through them. I can’t compete with the real Middle Earth geeks who’ve memorized Bilbo’s genealogy and know how many miles it is from Buckleberry Ferry to the Grey Havens. But perhaps my modest expertise in Norse mythology and legend may help illuminate one or two points for you, rendering the exercise not entirely worthless to mankind.
I’ve made it through The Hobbit already. There are definite Norse elements in this book. Some of the ones that struck me on this reading were these: Continue reading Reading report: ‘The Hobbit,’ by J. R. R. Tolkien
Did Gingerbread Houses Come from Fairy Tale?
Our family has made gingerbread houses since we were married. We can’t remember whether we made them every year in the beginning or what year my wife worked up a chocolate version. We have made one most years since the kids were born (The photo above is from many years ago (temporarily unavailable). This year’s house was much softer than usual, even though my fist still hurts from busting it last night.
Some people are saying gingerbread houses were inspired by Grimm’s fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” but that story was published in 1812. While it may have popularized family gingerbread house-making, Germans were making these cookie houses for a couple hundred years already as a Christmas tradition. Tori Avey of The History Kitchen offers many more interesting details from the history of gingerbread.
Gingerbread arrived in the New World with English colonists. The cookies were sometimes used to sway Virginia voters to favor one candidate over another. The first American cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, has recipes for three types of gingerbread including the soft variety baked in loaves:
Soft gingerbread to be baked in pans.
No. 2. Rub three pounds of sugar, two pounds of butter, into four pounds of flour, add 20 eggs, 4 ounces ginger, 4 spoons rosewater, bake as No. 1.
‘Sleeping in the Ground,’ by Peter Robinson
I reviewed a previous Inspector Banks novel by Peter Robinson some time back, and my review says I liked it. But I never read another for some reason. I purchased Sleeping in the Ground to try him again. My reaction follows.
On a beautiful day in northern England, outside an ancient church, a wedding party comes under sniper fire. Several people are killed, others injured. Inspector Alan Banks and his team come in to investigate, and soon settle on a suspect – a quiet local man who belonged to a gun club and owned a rifle. When he is found dead in his cellar from a self-inflicted gunshot, the case seems closed.
But it isn’t. Banks’s superior (and others) want to learn why this uncomplicated man – none of whose acquaintances can believe he would kill anyone – could have gone off the rails so. The trail leads to an old murder and a resentment long cherished. Continue reading ‘Sleeping in the Ground,’ by Peter Robinson
Merry Christmas
Sissel with “In the Bleak Midwinter.” It’s pretty cold in these parts.