Galadriel

“What did you blush for, Sam?” said Pippin. “You soon broke down. Anyone would have thought you had a guilty conscience. I hope it was nothing worse than a wicked plot to steal one of my blankets.”

“I never thought no such thing,” answered Sam, in no mood for jest. “If you want to know, I felt as if I hadn’t got nothing on, and I didn’t like it. She seemed to be looking inside me and asking me what I would do if she gave me the chance of flying back home to the Shire to a nice little hole with – with a bit of garden of my own.”

“That’s funny,” said Merry. “Almost exactly what I felt myself; only, only well, I don’t think I’ll say any more,” he ended lamely.

All of them, it seemed, had fared alike; each had felt that he was offered a choice between a shadow full of fear that lay ahead, and something that he greatly desired: clear before his mind it lay, and to get it he had only to turn aside from the road and leave the Quest and the war against Sauron to others.

- Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”, Book II of The Fellowship of the Ring


...


I paused when reading this last night, particularly that last paragraph. Now I don’t want to read too much into Tolkien, as regards Christian allegory and such, as the great man himself tended to discourage such speculation on metaphors and hidden meanings in his work. But The Lord of the Rings is a Christian work by a Christian author. And though there are no churches or religious sects in Middle-earth, Tolkien himself writes that the book is set in “ a monothiestic world of ‘natural theology.’ ” I think a fair and open-minded reading of the work, as well as The Silmarillion, reveals this to the reader.

That being said, the possibilities of interpretation of that last paragraph above kept resounding in my mind. Read it again. Now change some words, the way they were changed for me as I pondered the passage before sleep:

Each of us is offered a choice between a “shadow full of fear that lies ahead” and “something he greatly desires.” All we have to do is turn aside and leave the Battle to others.

Now the way I interpret that, coming from a Catholic perspective, is that we face, almost every second of every day, a choice. Choose God’s will or your own will. And when we choose our own will we leave the Great Work, by default, to others. We become bystanders instead of active participants. Sure, the days will flow by more pleasantly (at least superficially, and at least for a little while), but in the end, will not the regret be overpowering?

I’m not sure I articulated exactly what I wanted to say in the best way I could have said it. But the thought is something I wrestle with on a daily basis, and regularly come up short.