Ernestly Speaking

Have you experienced heaviness of late? Heaviness of feet? Heaviness in the spirit? A lack of hope that we will find our way out of the moral and political morass of our culture and nation?

I most certainly have. As I write this, I sit in a hotel in Washington, DC where my spouse is attending a conference on Christian ethics. Being retired from “professional Christianity,” I am along for the ride, sitting in cafes, allowing my eyes to soak in the art of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia (at the National Museum of Art), the creativity of Dutch and Flemish women painters and lace artists (at the National Museum of Women in the Arts), eating ethnic foods I don’t get in Grand Rapids, and trying to take in the murder of a young woman in Minneapolis.

This latter dominates all. I see the people serving me in restaurants, cleaning my hotel room, driving my Ubers and busses and wonder, “Are they safe?” I pray and sing a song of faithful longing for justice with other marchers outside the White House and wonder, “Does this matter one iota?”

My soul craves other words. I recently downloaded an audio version of The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unable to sleep well, I have been listening to Frodo’s journey and taking in the “this-is-bigger-than-any-of-us” dimension of his task. The familiar story of goodness vs. evil calls to me. The courageous quest of little people against seemingly limitless powers is awe inspiring. The beauty of Elven song and Hobbit merriment lifts my horizons a bit higher. I need this grounding. Though it is fiction, and “fantasy fiction” at that, it seems very, very real.

Remember the part where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are tying, trying, trying to plot an easterly course through the Old Forest, steering clear of the Dark Riders, heading toward Bree? Up and down they go over steep hills and valleys of brambles, until they reach the Withywindle, a stream in the middle of nowhere that inexplicably has a path along one side. Onward they trudge getting tireder and tireder. Yawning. Stumbling. Lulled into a deep sleep by Old Man Willow who has worked his evil magic. Before long, the human-hating tree has engulfed Merry and Pippin in its trunk and entangled Frodo in its gnarly roots. Sam alone fights off sloth to save his comrades, and the barely flickering light of the quest is reignited!

Friends, we must not sleep. Familiar words of healing and wholesomeness can and must inspire us in the face of overwhelming darkness. If the Sermon on the Mount met the Garden of Gethsemenee, we might interpolate a beatitude such as, “Blessed are those who keep watch while others take needed rest, for they shall see salvation,” or “Blessed are those who stumble on without guarantees, for their tired ears shall hear the Word calling them to righteous paths.”

Let us rise from the Withywindle. Let us encourage one another with words of wakefulness and the saving Word of hope.