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Far above ... among the cloud-wrack ... Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (901)1
To read Tolkien is to have many opportunities for beauty to smite one's heart, and to grow in trust that all Shadows of evil are indeed fragile in the light of the goodness that can never be touched by any shadow. Recently several books have appeared that explore the ways in which Tolkien's Christian faith permeates his work.2 In this article I would like to consider in particular how his major work, The Lord of the Rings, sheds light on living the Gospel in a contemplative way. As one of the many people for whom Tolkien has been a life-long passion and point of reference, I find my admiration and indebtedness grow rather than diminsh over the years. The reflections that follow are rooted in my own experience of Christian discipleship as well as frequent delvings into The Lord of the Rings. Although this experience is primarily that of a "mere Christian," to use C. S. Lewis's phrase, for readers of Cistercian Studies Quarterly I have not hesitated to allow the flavor of life in a contemporary Cistercian monastery to saturate the whole, trusting that those who are not monks will be accustomed to making the necessary translation into their own experience.
Tolkien sets his tale in a mythical pre-Christian world, but the light of the Gospel shines back over this world. It is a world situated between history and eschatology, and the heart of the story is the battle with the "spiritual powers of wickedness" (Eph 6:12), a battle made visible and historical. The wickedness is personified by Sauron, an evil angel, who at the time of the story is growing in power and seeking to enslave the whole earth. Several millennia earlier he had made, and then lost, a ring into which he put much of his own native...