If we were first of all to take stock of ourselves, we would realize how incapable we were of progressing further. How could a part possibly know the whole? But we will perhaps aspire to knowing at least those parts on our own level. But the parts of the world are so connected and interlinked with each other that I think it would be impossible to know one without the rest.

pascal, pensée 230, pp.70-71

In a conversation with a professor of mine about a paper assigned by another professor, he and I drew parallels between Roman emperors and  Tolkein's Denethor. Specifically, Denethor claims in his conversation with Gandalf that he is the only bastion against the darkness of Mordor. He, like Rome, builds his power on the claim that Gondor is the only hope for civilization in a terrible struggle against all the powers of ignorance, darkness, and barbarism. Denethor claims to be culture and light, he claims that Gondor is peace. 


"If you understand it, then be content," returned Denethor. "Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs. Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again."

"Unless the king should come again?" said Gandalf. "Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor, nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything else passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I am a steward. Did you not know?"


return of the king, chapter 1


Notice that Gandalf doesn't tell Denethor he's wrong. Not in so many words. He grants that Gondor is a key player, and that the steward is important. Yet he offers a counter-story to Denethor's. The Steward claims exclusivity because without the exclusivity he has no reason to demand what he does of his people. Either he must appeal to a higher authority or he must be that authority. And as we see later, his pride cannot stand the return of the king. Gandalf tells him, quite plainly, that while Denethor must steward Gondor, Gandalf is too a steward, and over a greater charge. Gandalf is responsible for this world. 


Like Gandalf, Christians offered to Rome a story that subsumed their own. Rome claimed exclusive rights to civilization: they were the only source of peace. Christians chuckled and said sure, but only because our Prince of Peace lets you stay there. 


In an interesting twist, Rome when the Christians show up is very much like Gondor when Gandalf shows up. Threatened by a great power in the east (Parthia, one of the only nations to ever defeat a Roman Emperor in battle), they are faced with mounted men from the east (the famed Parthian archers), wild men from the north (the Germanic tribes), and corsairs from the south (there were already pirates basing themselves in the Tunisia). The salvation of Rome, eventually, would come in the form of royalty from the north: Charles Martel's Frankish armies. So all that to say, weird. Or, because it's Tolkein, wyrd. 

gray fields

the land around me is flat

though over the corner of the highway there

slinks a gully into a ravine, which quietly grows

into a valley,

an arena for dirt devils to dance.

i quietly skirt the side of the hill, on

my right the fields naked of crops, barns empty

of years and of hay.

that dirt is gray - not brown with dry anticipation

nor yet black with the life that shoots out of death -

gray - not the loud green of the valley or the brash

browns of the hillsides but gray.

Gray with a quiet tired nod, gray as a

concession to overuse and abuse,

gray that knows no other life as it looks

bemused and puzzled at the valley where it

struggles to hold its grain down to earth as sun

pulls the gold - gray, i say, with quiet

shattered dreams of a single good harvest traded

for a dozen half-reapings and now gray with

baffled loss and denial and false cheer and an awful

resignation.

once i met a farmer with eyes brown with a longing

quiet and suppressed, as if he were Noah waiting on a flood.

"don't farm nothin," he said with a dark, quiet smile that did not

need me to understand, but "it's gonna take a while

for this land to come back.... maybe by the time your son

wants to farm." and i wonder about that when i

look up ahead at the corn harvest over land that

once was gray and wonder if rachel's

eyes will ever be green again.

and, by way of disclaiming, rachel does not exist. or rather, she's not named rachel. the story about the farmer is true, and the quotes are unedited.

When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the 'sacrament' of God's presence. Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy themselves because only in God have they an life. The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world. For one who thinks food in itself is the source of life, eating is communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.3, p.17

All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguishing him from the other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to bless God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. 'Homo sapiens,' 'homo faber' ... yes, but, first of all, 'homo adorans.' The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God - and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created as the 'matter,' the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.2, p.15

Whether we 'spiritualize' our life or 'secularize' our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only-begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.1, p.13

Man must eat in order to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: 'that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom.'

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.1, p.11

It is nothing serious, only a touch of amnesia that he is suffering, the common disease of deluded minds. He has forgotten for a while who he is, but he will soon remember once he has recognized me. To make it easier for him I will wipe a little of the blinding cloud of worldly concern from his eyes.

boethius, consolation of philosophy, i.II, p.6

Over at First Things, George Weigel reports on the latest findings of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.

Some of the statistics are provocative, particularly those related to the number of martyrs:


"The provocation in the 2011 report involves martyrdom. For purposes of research, the report defines “martyrs” as “believers in Christ who have lost their lives, prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility.” The report estimates that there were, on average, 270 new Christian martyrs every 24 hours over the past decade, such that “the number of martyrs [in the period 2000-2010] was approximately 1 million.” Compare this to an estimated 34,000 Christian martyrs in 1900."

This is stunning and seems unbelievable, and one wonders how well we (western Christians) really are mourning with those who mourn. Are we really bearing the burdens of our brothers and sisters suffering for the sake of the gospel? How can we stand with them?

Meanwhile, we continue to splinter: Weigel writes, "As for the quest for Christian unity: There were 1,600 Christian denominations in 1900; there were 18,800 in 1970; and there are 42,000 today."

But as God frequently does, for all the dividing there is growth. The report suggests an overall, worldwide growth in Christianity, but the growth of Christianity in Africa is the most astonishing:

"Africa has been the most stunning area of Christian growth over the past century. There were 8.7 million African Christians in 1900 (primarily in Egypt, Ethiopia and South Africa); there are 475 million African Christians today and their numbers are projected to reach 670 million by 2025."

from Pastor Sumpter's blog

crushing and beautiful. truth and mercy are meeting more every day, righteousness and peace are forming a more perfect union as we watch.

Poetry transfigures that nature which ritual has freed from panic. But the world still is the world, where world wars, world riddles, world revolution, world chaos.

eugen rosenstock-huessy, fruit of lips, 1.1