Hope Stolen Child

I had a dream the week before the presidential inauguration. I was standing in a burned out field, black as far as the eye could see in every direction. In 1996 I visited Yellowstone after the devastating fires the season before, my dream was black like that. I turned away and as my eyes returned to the devastation there were people in the field picking something up off the ground. It is how I imagine the Pelennor Fields to look after the great battle at the end of the Third Age. Slowly they began to walk toward and then past me with the object in their hand. As dreams do, the scene shifts and they are walking toward me again, each one in succession making eye contact, none speaking, then tossing a single long stem red rose into a vehicle parked next to me. They never said a word. The faces were of the leaders present and past in the Palestinian Israel wars. The last one reached up and slammed the back door of the vehicle, which I then realize is a hearse. The hearse pulls away. From the very firsy moment of the dream until the last, the Waterboys song and WB Yeats poen Stolen Child is playing in the background.

The Stolen Child WB Yeats

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where dips the rocky highland
of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
there we've hid our faery vats
Full of berries
and of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
the dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
to and fro we leap
ANd chase the frothy bubbles
while the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

Where the wandering water gushes
from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
the scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
We give them unquiet dreams;
leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams

Away with us he's going
the solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
of the calves on the warm hillside;
Or the kettle on the hob
sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
around and around the oatmeal-chest

For he comes, the human child
to the water
He comes, the human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand
Human child
human child
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of weeping than he can understand...
than he can understand...
he can understand...

Dragon Sickness

4 Epiphany B RCL
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Dragon Sickness
Once upon a time…, I always wanted sermons to being that way…, once upon a time deep inside a dark and dangerous cave, lived a dragon. This dragon was like most, a large dinosaur-like creature, with wings, a long neck, a huge tooth-filled fire-breathing maw, armoring with scales, and very very dangerous. The people of the nearby village were careful not to disturb the dragon, because if disturbed, rather I should say if challenged, he would retaliate and seek his revenge on anyone in his path. When he was provoked to kill, he would steal everything his victims held as precious, usually gold and jewels, and take it back to his cave. This dragon, like most, horded stolen treasure and made a bed of it upon which to sleep.
On March 25th of that year a stranger came to the village. He was a knight errant. He had heard of the terrible dragon and he had come to match wits with it and hopefully to slay it.
“I am strong and skilled with bow and sword, I have felled many a fey creature,” announced the knight, “where is this dragon?”
But king replied, “skilled with bow and sword may you be, but if you are to best this dragon you must be faithful and good, pure of heart and without malice. For it is Dragon Sickness not tooth and fire that is the downfall of many a knight errant.”
“What is this Dragon Sickness of which you speak? “ replied the knight.
“Dragons seduce with rhyme and riddle, they play on their foes greatest weakness be it honor, valor, riches, or wayward love.”
Take care good Sir Knight, warned the king, “He will turn your greatest weakness against you, it will consume you, and you will destroy yourself.”
Dragon Sickness is more dangerous than you realize.

Today’s gospel begins Jesus’ ministry. For the next chapter and half we will walk with him form Sabbath to Sabbath. From synagogue to synagogue. Today the demons ask Jesus, “Have you come to destroy us!” and 8 days later the Herodians and Pharisees will conspire to destroy Jesus.
But why? Since we get to read the gospel backwards, that is we know the end of the beginning of the story, it can be difficult to look beyond, to look behind the obvious and see what is really at play here. The relationship between fear and faith, between evil and good.
The realities of fear and faith are the counterweights that pivot on our relationship with and reaction to the cosmic battle between the forces of evil and good.
Jesus, is identified as the Holy One of God by the demons by the evil forces – and he exorcises them, he cast them out. His faith and goodness overcomes fear and evil. And this act begun in the reading today has a cascading effect on everyone who witnesses and experiences Jesus’ faithful response to the fear and evil in His world. How the people of Jesus’ time respond to fear and evil drives the narrative.
There was this little white clapboard church close to where I used to live in Fort Worth, just off 8th avenue. The sign read Hell Fire and Damnation Spoken Here – Demons Exercised (as in jumping jacks and the like). Dealing with demons is tricky business.
Now I don’t think we can solve the problem of demonic possession in the bible in the next few minutes. And certainly we don’t talk much of demons outside of bad B movies or Teen Fright Flicks. But there is no question that the problem of evil still exists, and quite frankly not talking about it doesn’t make it go away.
The notion of evil seems so archaic, horns, pitch fork, barbed tail sort of stuff, yet we see and experience things all the time that if they are not evil, well then, they are something close.
Dictionary Definition
Evil – noun
1 the fact of suffering, misfortune, and wrongdoing by a cosmic evil force.
2: something that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity

I think humanity’s struggle with the idea of evil is evident in the definition itself. To use the word as an adjective in its definition speaks volumes to our inability to nail it down. And it speaks volumes about its importance in our psyches.
If as Christians, we claim to live in a universe created by a benevolent and abundant God, then questions of the existence and source of evil are sticky ones indeed.
There are really two opinions about the nature of evil, both old, both deep rooted, both still relevant, neither easy to deny, but apparently irreconcilably in contradiction.
Church Definition
Evil as absence of Good: The most famous orthodox Christian view comes from the Roman Senator Boethius (525 ce) in his work written after he was sentenced to death. It is simply, what people identify as evil is really only the absence of good.
Evil itself has no creative power; furthermore it was not created it arose (as CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity), when human beings exercised their own free will in withdrawing their services and their intentions from God.

Evil as a Force:
The other common view of evil is that Evil does exist, it is not merely an absence; furthermore it has to be resisted and fought, not by all means available but by all means virtuous. The earth becomes a battlefield between the powers of evil and good, neither side has an inherent advantage and the outcome is in question.
I would venture to guess that we all have had experiences in our lives where we had a visceral reaction to a calamity that if not evil then something very close.
The more subtle and difficult to discern may be the People, Ideas, or Actions that bring about sorry, distress, or even calamity?
You see we have all experienced Dragon Sickness. Where someone or something that may have the power to destroy threatens our lives, but the real danger is realized in its ability to turn our own fears and weaknesses against us, and ultimately our destruction comes at our own hand. Greed, Avarice, Gluttony, Fear…, I’ll save the rest of the 7 deadly sins for another time - you get the picture. We live in a world infested with our own Dragons to slay.
The question is how do we respond? And that is the question Jesus faced as well.
During his first week of ministry Jesus is faced with the same question – to respond in faith or fear – power of good or evil - there are at least three plausible scenarios:
1. Jesus could upon encountering the demons retreat from the challenge
2. Respond by matching their destruction with destruction. A kill or be killed scenario.
3. Or he could bring his people together in community as a family. Feed them the spiritual food their souls desire and teach them to seek mercy not justice, and send them out to usher in the Kingdom of God.
If we remove the possibility of Jesus choosing choice 1 or 2 we deny his humanity. We are gathered here today because of the choices he made for us.
How do we face the evil in the world? How do we avoid Dragon Sickness, in a world increasingly full of dragons?
Remember the kings advice: you must be faithful and good, pure of heart and without malice.
That is setting the bar pretty high
BUT
It is the Presence of God we celebrate in this season after Epiphany, and it is the presence of God in our midst that assures us and sustains us.
If we were all faithful and good, pure of heart and without malice I’d venture a guess that many of us might be doing something else with our Sunday mornings.

But we come together in community, to pray, to confess, to receive the spiritual food in the sacrament of the body and blood that our souls desire – we make the exact same decision Jesus made when faced with the reality of demon and evil in his time.
These two ideas about the nature of evil, (absence and presence) both old, both deep rooted, both still relevant, neither easy to deny, but apparently irreconcilably are brought together beautifully and sanctified in the words of our Lord’s Prayer

Forgive us our trespasses
Lead us not into temptation (the internal struggle being the source of Boethian evil);
But deliver us from evil (asking for protection from the outside against a force).

You see, we already have a cure for Dragon Sickness - Dragons Beware

Knowledge in Tolkien

In the previous post, we had put forth Tolkien's view that all of us tend toward domination of relationships on some level. That this is part of the fallen nature of humanity recalls the story of the first humans in the book of Genesis. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is a temptation to Adam and Eve only when it becomes enframed for them, a tool to some end that had not previously been a part of their reality (see "Enframing in Tolkien" post below for an introduction to this discussion). There is no suggestion in the biblical text that they are in need of the fruit for sustenance. Likewise, there is no mention of malicious intent on the part of the serpent: it is simply referred to as crafty (translated from the Greek word meaning “understanding associated w. insight and wisdom, sensible, thoughtful, prudent, wise”[1]). In fact, the serpent isn’t even lying; he creates desire in the first humans where it had not existed, and then quite simply presents the facts in a slightly twisted way so as to offer justification for the newly born human desire. The fruit of the tree was no longer a prohibited but un-needed part of their world with which their primary relationship was to enjoy its beauty in and of itself, but was rather a device for their becoming “like God, knowing good from evil.”[2] The tragedy born by this creation myth is twofold: the relationship between creature and Creator was changed, as well as that between humanity and nature.

To stop here, however, leaves us with the notion that it is knowledge, or perhaps even wisdom that began the downward spiral of humanity. If the serpent is wise and in fact does have new information for Adam and Eve, it needs also to be said that this information is only true in a particular sense; it remains incomplete. The serpent informs Eve that she and Adam will not die; and it is right in a literal sense, for God does not put them to death. But in another sense, death is indeed the product of the altered relationship between God and humanity, especially if we consider (as much of scripture alludes to) that life is properly defined as right relationship with the Creator. The tree of life, which was not said to have been prohibited before, was now inaccessible through expulsion from its presence. Since we are not told that the serpent tried to deceive the humans with his wisdom, which again was not incorrect as stated, it was the use made of the wisdom, its purpose, if you will, that soured the relationships at hand.

(Ken, the two paragraphs above could introduce the looks at both the Palantir and Galadriel's mirror. That's a lot of stuff - could be either a long post or a two-parter. I'd hate to leave either one hanging, though - unexpounded, so to speak.)

[1] Bauer, Danker. A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
[2] Genesis 3:5, NRSV translation

Choices in Tolkien

The struggle against the most basic forms of domination, like Heidegger's enframing (see previous post for the enframing discussion), begins for Tolkien simply by our own understanding that all people tend towards it. We all have the potential to become the monster, regardless of the goodness of our original intentions. To be moved by Tolkien's work, it is essential to see in his characters the very real possibility that other life choices could produce another self. Only a superficial and cursory reading of Tolkien finds good and evil in definitive terms - black and white, without any shades of gray. Frodo finds it in himself to show mercy to Gollum, in part, because he sees in Gollum what he could yet become himself. Likewise, by association with the hobbits, Gollum at one point can see himself in them.

Who Tolkien's characters are in actuality is shown to be the result of choices made, many of which turn on how they understand the connection between the overarching choice one makes between good and evil on one hand, and the smaller, seemingly unimportant choice that lies before them in the present on the other. These choices are never disconnected from who we understand ourselves to be: the end can never justify the means used to reach that end. The Ring cannot be used against Sauron because domination and coercion are its tools, and that is inconsistent with who the fellowship is to be. In a letter to his son Christopher, who was at the time fighting in WWII, Tolkien lamented the use of planes as weapons against the enemy. He likened it to the Shirefolk, on stumbling upon a "Nazgul bird," proceeding to use it to fight against Sauron.

Gandalf can resist the temptation of the Ring precisely because he can see what Sauron is as a possibility for himself. Early in Book I, Gandalf refuses to bear the Ring for this reason. "Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good" (The Fellowship of the Ring). While he has altogether different purposes for the power that the Ring offers, the Ring as a means to that end is not justified. One who uses the Ring for anything is one like Sauron, or will become more like him by using his means.


The ability to see the possibility of evil in themselves is precisely what offers Tolkien's characters the choice of whom they will be. Characters such as Saruman who are blind to such possibilities in themselves never recognize that a choice was made and are thereby destined, suggests Tolkien, to "enframe" the relationships in their lives. Jane Chance wrote of Frodo's resistance of the Ring's power on Amon Hen and of his subsequent departure from the fellowship that "...Frodo can now function as a hero for he understands he may, at any time, become a 'monster'" (Chance, Jane. "The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien's Epic").

This concept generates for me a number of questions: Can I see in my own life not only my potential to enframe relationships, but also the existence of enframing within my current relationships with others, with nature, with...? Can I find myself in those that I tend to want to demonize? If not, what am I in the process of becoming? If so, how can I interact with them in a way that is consistent with who I understand myself to be, who I want to become?

Enframing in Tolkien

In the early 1950's, Martin Heidegger described a concept that he referred to as "enframing." In short, the idea is that a person (or a people), intentionally or otherwise, shrinks the boundaries that are the essence of something or someone else. The object of one's enframing is defined in terms of the use that it has for the enframer only. Its reality has changed for the enframer from something that is other and independent of all purpose (or at the least, in which that view remains a possibility), to a tool for the enframer's use, a means to their own private end. It is now defined according to the purposes of one who can dominate it for an end already in the mind of the enframer, independent of the thing itself.

In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien presents the idea of enframing as a reality that is part of the fallen nature of humanity, common to us all. While the ring itself is the book's most dramatic incarnation of this idea, Tolkien takes care throughout the story to demonstrate the temptation to define people and things in terms of one's own desired ends. It is evident in the fall of Saruman as he gradually sets aside his original purpose in being sent to Middle-Earth for purposes that he deems to be his own. All creatures and thngs in the world about Saruman become either a means or an obstacle to his desired ends. Treebeard most clearly articulates this process as he experiences Saruman's rejection of Treebeard himself and all that is important to him.

"I used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face, as I remember it - I have not seen it for many a day - became like windows in a stone wall; windows with shudders inside. I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power; he has a mind of metal and wheels, and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment" (The Two Towers).

The power of this observation becomes palpable when Treebeard and Saruman are understood in a broad sense to describe the historical relationship between nature and humanity.

We'll keep this thread alive for a while, so check back in a few days. In the mean time, what do think? It seems like enframing must have begun when the first hominid looked at a rock, and saw it merely as a tool with which to down his next meal. Sam surely used things, planted things in his garden, for example, for some purpose of his own. But how is that related to the vision he had while wearing the Ring that "at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit...," a garden "swollen to a realm" (The Return of the King)?