J. R.
R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)
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| An absolutely beautiful wallpaper based on the original Hobbit cover art by RossSchmidt on DeviantArt: http://rossschmidt.deviantart.com/art/The-Hobbit-wallpaper-404247712 |
This evening, a housemate and I
have plans to sprawl on the sofa in front of the second half of the extended
edition of The Two Towers, while working our way through the
second half of a packet of chilli Doritos. An excellent plan for anyone’s
evening, I think, but especially for the said housemate and myself, because
neither of us had watched the whole of the Lord of the Rings trilogy before
embarking on our current run-through of it together.
You may indeed gasp in horror
at this statement, O Appalled Reader; that would be the response I would expect
based on experience, followed by something along the lines of, ‘How have you
not seen it?’ or, ‘You have to see it!’ It always feels slightly as if
my status as not having seen these films casts aspersions on my very membership
of civilised human society; wounded, I tend to lamely attempt to make some
level of amends by countering that I really like The Hobbit.
And I do really like The
Hobbit. (We read it in our English lessons during the summer term of Year
7; in fact, sessions with that particular teacher consisted entirely of reading
The Hobbit, writing our own adventure stories, and, in one memorable
instance right at the end of term, eating ice cream, and I tend to feel that
English lessons rarely get better than that.) Among the many highlights of the
novel are included the trolls’ argument over how best to cook Bilbo and his
dwarven companions; the escape from the Elvenking’s halls in floating barrels;
and, of course, the famous riddle competition between Bilbo and Gollum. Why on
Earth this last scene was abridged in the film version, when so much else that
wasn’t even mentioned in passing in the (actually rather short) book was shoved
in to eke out the plotline enough to charge viewers for three cinema tickets,
is entirely beyond me.1 In fact, as a result of all this cutting out
scenes that were in the book in order to make space for elaborate
subplots that weren’t, the Hobbit film trilogy ended up, in my opinion,
being an altogether rather different animal to the book. The films seem to have
been designed to be grand and epic and impressive;2 that is not at
all what the book is like. The book is full of people squabbling over niceties
and making daft decisions and trudging along exhaustedly and wishing there was
more to eat. For the high fantasy story it is, it is stunningly, in that sense,
realistic.3
And that’s actually one of the reasons
it’s such a favourite of mine. All this adventuring is all very well, but it’s
pretty well guaranteed that if one were to give in to the Tookish side of
oneself and set off on an adventure with a bunch of dwarves one barely knew,
one would find oneself squabbling over niceties and making daft decisions and
trudging along exhaustedly and wishing there was more to eat on not infrequent
occasions. And yes, adventures include intense battles and daring escapes and
the occasional encounter with a dragon, but they also include, necessarily, a
whole lot of walking about in between them. In the following passage from
Chapter 8, ‘Flies and Spiders’, the party are working their way through the
gloomy forest of Mirkwood, and Bombur has just woken up from an enchanted sleep
on account of which the others had been forced to carry him for some time:
[Bombur] woke up suddenly and
sat up scratching his head. He could not make out where he was at all, nor why
he felt so hungry; for he had forgotten everything that had happened since they
started their journey that May morning long ago. The last thing that he
remembered was the party at the hobbit’s house, and they had great difficulty
in making him believe their tale of all the many adventures they had had since.
When he heard that there was
nothing to eat, he sat down and wept, for he felt very weak and wobbly in the
legs. “Why ever did I wake up!” he cried. “I was having such beautiful dreams.
I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches
on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the
ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland
king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was a merry singing, and I
could not count or describe the things there were to eat and drink.”
“You need not try,” said Thorin.
“In fact if you can’t talk about something else, you had better be silent. We
are quite annoyed enough with you as it is. If you hadn’t waked up, we should
have left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry
even after weeks of short commons.”
There was nothing now to be
done but to tighten the belts round their empty stomachs, and hoist their empty
sacks and packs, and trudge along the track without any great hope of ever
getting to the end before they lay down and died of starvation. This they did
all that day, going very slowly and wearily, while Bombur kept on wailing that
his legs would not carry him and that he wanted to lie down and sleep.
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| Sleeping is, of course, excellent, but a forest floor is not exactly the best place to do it. (Especially if that forest is Mirkwood.) |
And sometimes life is like that.
And my point is not really that life is hard, although certainly it can be. My
point is that life is often dull and plodding and disappointing and irritating,
and the issue is not so much that dreadful hardship is fortuitously thrust upon
us, as that we find ourselves midway through fulfilling commitments that demand
of us effort they barely seem worth. And, when it comes to following Jesus in
the midst of that wearying slog, I can often be like Bombur in my despair at
the discrepancy between where I currently am and where I wish I was.
Spiritually healthy as it is to long for that real and promised never-ending
feast under the greatest King of all,4 such longing can all too
easily end up robbing me of the motivation to actually do anything where I am. My
depressingly lengthy to-do list seems to have nothing to do with the glory of
the coming age, and I am painfully aware that I am capable of no deed, word, or
thought that adequately reflects that glory.5 My legs will not carry
me; I want to lie down and sleep.
Happily, it was never my legs
that were carrying me in the first place.
Not that I have already obtained
[the resurrection from the dead] or have already become perfect, but I press on
so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ
Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one
thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies
ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and
if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you;
however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained…
…our citizenship is in heaven, from
which also we eagerly wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will
transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His
glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to
Himself.
That’s from the third chapter
of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. (I’ve quoted from the New American
Standard translation rather than my usual anglicised English Standard Version,
because I think it expresses the idea more faithfully.)6 Note how
Paul’s logic sits in exact contradiction to that I outlined in the previous
paragraph. According to him, we press on in our inevitable imperfection not in
spite of the knowledge that we are awaiting the return of our Saviour to
perfect us, but because of it. Longing for perfection should not make me
want, like Bombur, to stop putting one foot in front of the other and retreat
into dreams; it should renew my commitment to keep plodding onwards, to press
harder, to live by that same standard to which I have attained. Why? Because that’s
what Jesus took hold of me for. The discrepancy between where I am now and
where I wish I was should prompt me to reach more determinedly across the gap, even
though I know I’ll never actually cross it in this lifetime, because that
very reaching is a key component of what God intends for me, as much as my
being ultimately brought into full perfection is.
Which all sounds very nice, of
course. It’s a lot harder to actually apply it during the Hobbit-esque slog,
when tasks are tiring and people are irritating and the necessary obligation in
front of me seems very far removed from the metaphorical Lonely Mountain and
Arkenstone and end-goal of the quest. But then, if it weren’t hard, there’d be
no need for pressing on; I’d meander a couple of steps and already be there.
So what does this pressing on
actually look like, in the translating of prose and writing of essays, the
doing of laundry and food shopping, the following of the same dull route up to
campus? Well, that would take another post to explore, for one thing, and for
another, I’m still very much in the process of figuring it out. But striving to
figure out how to actively follow Jesus in the everyday slog is surely a part
of striving to actively follow him, and I’m learning. Thankfulness is one good
thing to work on. Not grumbling is another. Taking pains to show respect and
concern for others is too – am I being kind to my housemates and lecturers and
the lady at the checkout and the incredibly slow walkers taking up the whole
pavement in front of me?7
Following Jesus is an adventure,
and as such, there tends to be a lot of walking in between the ostentatiously
exciting bits – but when we consider that the very act of pressing on is part
of God’s glorious plan for us, even the depressingly lengthy to-do list in
front of us surely becomes at least a little bit exciting.
Footnotes
1 For some
purchasable-on-a-T-shirt hilarity on the subject of three films having been
squeezed out of The Hobbit, reparrish on Redbubble is most excellent: http://www.redbubble.com/people/reparrish/works/13058873-writer-fights-tolkien-vs-lewis.
2 Mind you, a Tobscus Literal
Trailer is surely capable of de-epicising anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86bznYoj9e0.
3 If you would like to assess
the correctness of this statement by reading or re-reading the novel for
yourself, you are fortunate in that copyright expiry laws mean the whole thing
is available free online – here, for instance: http://www.goodreads.com/reader/27325-the-hobbit?percent=24.028013.
4 Indeed, Romans 8 speaks of all
creation, along with us, groaning as in childbirth until it should be liberated
from decay and brought into glory: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+8&version=ESVUK.
5 The end of Romans 7 is useful
on this: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%207&version=ESVUK.
“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have
the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”
6 Do have a peruse of the whole
chapter. It’s such a good one, and Bible Gateway will gladly provide it for you
in whichever version you like: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=phil+3&version=NASB.
7 It seems to me that people
often quote Colossians 3:17 on the subject of living for Jesus in the everyday:
“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” But when you get some
context on that, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=col+3&version=ESVUK,
it comes at the end of a whole list of characteristics to be displaying. We are
not simply told to do everything in Jesus’ name; we are also told what sort of thing
that is going to consist of.
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