Tag Archives: death

Authors, Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien’

Leave a comment

Theologically (if the term is not too grandiose) I imagine the picture to be less dissonant from what some (including myself) believe to be the truth. But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted. But I might say that if the tale is ‘about’ anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about ‘power.’ Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the ‘escapes’: serial longevity, and hoarding memory.

(Letter, Oct. 14, 1958, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Rhona Beare)

I’ll have to admit that I’ve always thought that The Lord of the Rings was about the temptations of Power, but Tolkien himself says, in more than one letter in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (which I continue to read), that the story is about death.

Sauron (if I remember correctly) is a Valar, an incarnate angelic being (fallen in his case). He is not the equivalent of Satan, but of a powerful lesser demon. A creature like he (again, if I understand it right) would ordinarily live till the end of the world. But Sauron, as a repeated rebel, has been “killed” and reborn more than once. He knows, or suspects, that if he’s killed again, he’s not coming back in Middle Earth – and he has no reason for hope where his spirit is going after that. He’s struggling to stay alive, even in the hellscape he’s made for himself in Mordor.

Smeagol has been enslaved by the One Ring, and was given (or suffered) extended life thereby – but the life the Ring imparts is not wholesome. Bilbo, who experiences the same thing, says he feels “stretched.” It’s an addiction too – as the pleasure decreases, the craving grows.

Aragorn, on the other hand, who was granted a very long life through his Numenorean blood, will voluntarily lay down his life before it runs out completely. This is regarded as a noble act (not, I’m confident, comparable in any way with assisted suicide).

The elves regard human death as a gift. It’s a mystery to them, but they envy it in a curious way.

These are matters worth pondering, for a man who, like me, is growing old. I can’t say that my whole Erling Saga is about death, but The Baldur Game certainly is. And I was aware of that before I read these letters.

Authors, Writing

Death, Tolkien, and sagas

2 Comments

I’m feeling better today, thanks for asking, so let’s think about death, shall we?

The short Tolkien clip above resonated with me. I forget where I saw it first – probably on Facebook, where I waste too much time.

I’m not sure what I’d have thought about that statement, that great books are all about death, before I started working on The Baldur Game (not to say I’m claiming it’s a great book). If you’ve been following the Erling Saga, you know that this will be the last book in the series. And that can only mean one thing. We’re going to be saying goodbye to at least one important character.

A weird, semi-intentional chronological harmony has followed my Erling books. The first novel, The Year of the Warrior, came out in 2000. That’s precisely 1,000 years after the events described, which culminate in the Battle of Svold, usually dated to the millennium year. That’s what the title means – the Latin numeral for 1,000 is M. And (according to one of my characters) M also stands for Miles, which is Latin for soldier or warrior.

The books have loosely kept pace with the millennial anniversaries since then. If I were following the pattern strictly, I’d have left The Baldur Game’s release to 2030, because it ends in 1030. But the book begins in 1024, and I figure that’s close enough for my purposes. It would be hubristic to assume I’ll still be alive in 2030. I won’t give you my precise age, but I’ll be a little surprised if I live that long. (Though it’s looking more likely as it approaches, which astonishes me.)

And yes, the book is about death. I realized that as I was constructing it. There are recurring images of the sea, of chaos, which in the Old Testament evoked death.

And of course Norse sagas are always about death. There may be numerous other themes – honor, love, freedom, loyalty – but in the end they’re about how the characters faced their deaths.

Like all men, I’ve mostly tried to avoid thinking about my own death – though I’ve made an effort to prepare for it as a Christian. But old age tends to concentrate the mind, as Dr. Johnson said about the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight.

One of the values of literature, I think (and I think Tolkien would agree) is that it prepares us to face the things that must be faced.

Maybe we authors can help ourselves too.

(And before you ask – my health is fine, as far as I know. My chief malady, from my youth, has been melancholy.)

Music, Religion

Once upon a time in an epic

Leave a comment

Nothing to review tonight. I’ve had the misfortune to start reading two books in a row that I had to give up on due to lousy writing. Too painful to finish, even for the base pleasure of shredding them in reviews. And a third, which I just started, is looking a little dubious… (Fortunately, I got these books free or at very low cost through online deals, so my cost was minimal.)

I had a topic all teed up for blogging about, though. Entirely trivial and haphazard. And then I watched the video above, and it sparked some actual thoughts.

I do love Once Upon a Time in the West (except for the massacre at the beginning). It’s a case study in what you can achieve through blending visuals with music. The movie has been called operatic, and its effect has been lodged under my skin ever since I saw it in a theater back in 1969, when it was new. It’s even affected my novel writing – I try to mix poetry in with my big dramatic scenes, striving for the same kind of sublimity.

But it occurred to me to wonder about Charles Bronson’s character, known only as “Harmonica.” In the scene you see above, Jill (Claudia Cardinale) makes it about as obvious as she can (I think even I would have picked up on the hints) that she wants him to stay with her. But no, he’s gotta be on his way. Gotta ride off into the sunset, in the tradition of the Western hero (I think it has something to do with Manifest Destiny). Sergio Leone was explicitly doing homage to Western movie traditions here, and riding off alone, like Shane, is definitely part of that tradition.

But – in terms of this story – why? Why is Harmonica leaving? Up to now, his whole life has been devoted to a single goal – getting his revenge on the evil Frank (Henry Fonda). Now he’s finished that job. He’s got the whole rest of his life before him. Here’s an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of building a railroad town. Not a bad job. Not to mention THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE throwing herself at him. Why not stick around a day or two, just to see if it could work out?

I suppose Cheyenne (Jason Robards) explains it, when he tells Jill that men like Harmonica have got something inside them – “something about death.” Maybe Harmonica has killed too much. Maybe he’s got PTSD, and has lost his sense of belonging anywhere.

Then I pondered epics in general. In epic terms, I think we could say Harmonica is already dead. It’s the epic hero’s job to die at the end, like Beowulf. Like Hector. The very concept of the epic involves a battle with death – a battle no man can win. Epics teach us how to die.

And that’s a mythopoeic thing. The epic hero, in a dim and reflected way, foreshadows the great Hero of the Gospel. The epic hero may have no virtues at all except for courage – like Harmonica and Siegfried the Dragon Slayer – but his iron refusal to let Death break his spirit anticipates Christ passing through Death and finishing the job at which all the others have failed – killing the Great Enemy.

Uncategorized

Should a Christian be Cremated?

3 Comments

“And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16-18 ESV).

Encourage one another with the truth that those who die in faith will rise in faith. They have not been lost because they died before Christ’s return. These believers (including Paul, I presume) did not imagine it would be at least a couple thousand years before that return. Christ had ascended in their lifetime; why wouldn’t he come back in just a few years? Not matter when it happens, Christ’s physical resurrection and ascension is the reason we believe the dead in Christ will physically rise again.

The question for some of us is what state the body should be in for the resurrection. I heard a pastor on the radio this weekend claim the faithful would be raised from their graves as is. Of course, he said, God can reassemble any body from any state of decay, but why force him to do more than he needs to do. Why usher along the decay by cremating a family member? He asked, do you know Christ will not return a few days after your death? What if he does and there you are, a pile of ashes?

I can understand personal arguments for burial over cremation. Christian tradition leans that way. I’ve read that Christianized countries tend to bury the dead, and countries will little Christian influence tend to cremate. That’s not what we have here. The Bible does not imply we will be raised like zombies in whatever nasty state our bodies are in. Most of us (99.999% of us) will have no bodies in our graves, if we still have graves. Within a month of our interment, the best of us will not be presentable.

The Bible does tell us to respect our bodies. Our funeral services should be exercises in hope that honor the one who departed and those left behind. And since the Bible does not command Christians to bury the dead, some of us are asking whether the economic choice of cremation would show the proper respect.

That’s what it comes down to for me. In the past, burial would have been the cheapest, most natural option. Years ago when we talked to someone about buying grave plots, it was several thousands of dollars to be buried but only a few thousand, maybe only several hundred, to be cremated. I can understand how funeral and burial costs add up. When I buried my parents, I helped reduce those costs by buying caskets online. The cemetery part was already covered.

Covering a couple burials myself worries me a bit. It’s the kind of thing you can’t look up online because they won’t tell you the costs up front. You have to talk to a salesman. Hiding the price before you talk to a salesman is how they tell you it costs more than you want. They want a chance at talking you into it.

To the guy who thinks the Lord will raise the dead like zombies, come on. Even Lazarus came out of the tomb in better shape than his body had been that morning.

What do you think about burial and cremation for low-income believers?

Uncategorized

November on my mind

Leave a comment
Photo credit: Beliaikin @ belart84

November is a juvenile delinquent, hanging out on a street corner, looking tough. Not one of those innocent, baby-faced delinquents who’ve only made a few mistakes and can still be salvaged, but a tough, street-smart young thug on his way to incarceration and/or an early death. Soon he’ll grow into December, and then he’ll be a made man.

November is, in poetic perspective, a season of death. The midlife crisis of fall is declining into a slow old age. I went to a sort of a wake tonight. There were three deaths in my life last month, and this was the only one involving a gathering I was able to attend. It wasn’t a drunken wake in the classic tradition, nor a religious wake in the Christian tradition. Just some people gathering to support a family which had lost its central heart.

Yesterday was cold and rainy. Today, bright and cool. It kind of works out the same either way, though, because the night falls early now and makes itself at home.

The only good thing I have to say about November is that it’s not quite winter yet.

Uncategorized

Harvest time

Leave a comment
Photo by Jamie Street @jamie452

[Sorry I didn’t post last night. I did a lecture, and when I came home I found this site unresponsive. Short report: I spoke to a Cub Scout pack, and they were a good audience.]

I am wondering how much my perceptions of the world are influenced by the aphorisms I’ve learned, more than actual experience.

This is what I mean: Some time ago, one of my brothers said, referring to a couple deaths in the autumn, “Well, Dad always used to say, ‘It’s fall – harvest time.’”

I actually have no memory of Dad ever saying this (not that I doubt my brother’s word – lots of things go over my head). But ever since then, when someone dies in the fall, I think about it, and respond (on some barely conscious level), “There it is. Fall, harvest time.”

Except I know it isn’t true. People die all year round. Dying in fall is just thematically harmonious.

That said, there’s been a lot of harvesting this fall, in my world.

The first death was particularly sad. A lovely Christian couple I know, who live in another state, had a little son who suffered severe disability from birth. For the years of his short life they’ve done everything possible to care for him and cherish him. Love being true riches, that boy was richer than a king. But his small body finally wore out not long ago. I mourned with them in spirit.

Some weeks ago, I’ve just learned, my uncle died. We weren’t informed for a while because his widow (a lovely woman) has been too overwhelmed to handle the notifications. I don’t begrudge it. We all have to deal with these things the best we can.

He was the last survivor of my dad’s siblings, and one of my favorite relatives. He was the brother who made good – went to work for IBM and rose to an upper management position on the Saturn Project at Cape Canaveral.

And a friend’s mother died the other day. He’s not a close friend, except in proximity. But his family has had a sad time watching their parent fail for some time now. Ironically, this is the only memorial service of the three I’ll be able to attend.

Of course, fall isn’t over yet.

Non-fiction

Death Levels Us All

Leave a comment

Matthew McCullough’s recent book on death was featured last week in World Magazine’s Saturday series. It’s not a subject I like to think about, perhaps because I like to imagine I’m above it just as he says here:

The reality of death is profoundly humbling. It tells me that I’m not indispensable. It assures me I will be forgotten. And so death boots me from my self-appointed place at the center of the universe. But learning to recognize death’s challenge to my subconscious narcissism also raises haunting questions about who I am. It isn’t just that death is humbling. It can also be profoundly disorienting.

Most of us would probably agree that a reality check is a generally a good thing. No one likes a narcissist. Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if none of us saw himself as more important than everyone else? If death puts us in our place, that’s ultimately healthy, right?


Yes … but. Death’s challenge actually pushes even deeper. Death’s statement does more than put us in our place. It also raises questions about where our place actually is.

Uncategorized

The shadow of death

Leave a comment

Had a strange phone conversation last night. It wasn’t as grim as that summary might suggest – it just had a sort of black humor quality.

One of my cousins died recently – much too young; sad story. Shortly after her death, I had a call from her brother, who wanted to talk, and I was happy to offer a shoulder. He was also concerned that he hadn’t been able to reach our last surviving mutual uncle. Uncle O_____ has had some health problems recently, and my cousin couldn’t find a number for him that worked. I promised I’d call him myself, since I’ve been in pretty regular communication with him, until recently.

I tried calling, and the numbers I had didn’t work.

After the funeral, my cousin called again, and I told him about my failure. My cousin suggested I go through Facebook (which he doesn’t use anymore), messaging O____’s grandchildren. I tried that and broke through. They said they’d pass the news on.

So last night O____ and his wife called me. Apologized for losing touch – they’ve been going through a difficult time of selling a house and relocating, on top of health issues.

Then we started catching up. There was a lot of catching up to do. Continue reading The shadow of death →

Religion

‘The Ruthless Love of Christ

10 Comments

[Below is the text of the sermon I preached at campus chapel this morning. I think it went well, judging by the response. I hadn’t preached in many years, and I’d forgotten how exhausting it is. Someone told me, “Of course you’re exhausted. You’ve been wrestling with the Word of God.”]

Chapel Sermon, Nov. 3, 2016
“The Ruthless Love of Christ”

“Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming, went to meet Him, but Mary stayed at the house. Martha then said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give You.’

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’” (John 11:20-21)

Many long years ago, I was involved with the ministry of an organization called Lutheran Youth Encounter, which, as it happens, just went out of existence this past year. It was similar to our AFLBS summer teams. We sent musical and ministry teams out to work with the youth in congregations. The musical group I was part of was somewhat unusual, in that we organized ourselves and wrote our own music. I was the lyricist. You’ve probably never heard any of our songs, and with good reason. But we had our own fan base, and were famous to a tiny public.

At the end of one summer’s ministry we had a big final concert for all the teams. Afterward I spoke with an old friend, who introduced me to his new girlfriend. I told them I was depressed. A rewarding summer of ministry was done. I was moving on to a different college ahead of my friends. I felt lonely and unsure of the future.

The girlfriend said, “Don’t be depressed. Didn’t you hear the song that one group sang tonight? The one that said, ‘If You Love Me, Live?’”

“I know the song,” I told her. “I wrote it.”

It was worth the depression to be able to deliver a line like that. I live for that kind of stuff.

I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy. I look at the dark side. I’m not bragging about that. I hold – intellectually – with the ancient wisdom that says that happiness is a moral virtue. Happy people generally make the world better. Unhappy people make it worse. There’s no sanctity in a long face. The joy of the Lord is our strength.

But I also mistrust those people whose Christianity seems to deny the dark side of life. There’s a strain of Christianity that suggests that if your faith is genuine, you will never suffer. That Jesus will roll away, not only your sins, but all your troubles of any kind. Continue reading ‘The Ruthless Love of Christ →

Uncategorized

Rotten Day (Part One)

Leave a comment

Yesterday was an awful day.

It started out with the aftermath of several terrorist incidents, one as close to me as St. Cloud, Minnesota. I was troubled enough to abstain entirely from “Talk Like a Pirate Day.”

Then I got personal bad news.

My friend Steve died Sunday night. I won’t give his full name because I don’t know his family’s wishes. But I will sing his glory nonetheless.

I only met Steve in the flesh two or three times. Once at a Scottish Fair in St. Paul, and once more (or twice, I’m not sure) at the L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minn. But we communicated much online. He was considerably younger than me – surely too young to die suddenly.

He was a musician and a connoisseur of music. He was a fan of fantasy literature. And he was a devout, evangelical Christian.

According to reports, he spent Sunday at his parents’ home, enjoying time with them at an antique engine show, and playing games in the evening. He went to bed, and the next morning his father found him lying there still dressed, a smile on his face.

Pretty much the way every one of us hopes we’ll die. But few are actually blessed to pass like that.

He was one of the foremost fans of my novels, boosting my books all the time. I feel as if I’ve lost one of the chief props of my literary career. And I’m the least of those mourning him.

Sometimes I have the feeling that the Lord is taking the best of us now, before dropping the hammer for good on this worm-eaten culture.

Rejoice in the presence of your Lord, Steve. I’ll see you in the morning.