TOLKIEN ON DEATH AND REBIRTH
The poem below is included in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
It is one of the most brilliant portrayals of death in literature.
What would happen if you died?
What would happen to the people who cared about you? How would they go on with their lives?
What would happen to the people who need your help?
What would happen to the work you do and the causes you support?
Tolkien's poem is a brilliant vision of all this.
Time remains the same.
Nature's laws remain the same.
Down through the ages world religions have a vision of a supreme god.
We are certainly not saying all major religions are the same. They are not.
However, there is a universal awareness of a supreme god, whether it is a conscious or a subconscious reality.
When they described god to Helen Keller who was deaf and blind, she said, "I always knew he was there."
So when Tolkien considers life and death, he sees a cycle of time.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
It is a powerful vision.
Life goes on.
Power forces of ancient traditions appear again.
There is a logic and an order to life
We are all parts of larger whole.
Our brief lives come and go as they always have.
Our lives have meaning in so far as they reflect the laws of the cosmos.
Today's world is a contradiction of those laws.
It is a contradiction of nature's laws.
However, this will pass.
See also:
I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.
