Subscribers to The Woodlands receive weekly reflections on faith and the spiritual life for free. Here's a brief excerpt:
As teens my friend R- and I were immersed in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. We read and reread each book of the trilogy and talked endlessly about the characters and the plot. R- was especially taken with the battle scenes and the heroism of humans, dwarves, and elves.
Those elements of the story interested me; however, something else drew me into Tolkien’s mythical world of Middle Earth. There was a wisdom and a spiritual depth in the pages of the trilogy. I felt it, but I couldn’t quite name it at the time. It was a truth that I longed for, that I needed. Much later I learned that Tolkien was a devout Christian.
In retrospect, I see that Tolkien painted a winsome picture of the Christian virtue of courage. Thomas Aquinas called it fortitude: taking heart in the face of danger