Hidden Meanings

Okay, I don’t do this very often. Probably once a year, at most. But remember a few posts ago, when I was feeling that Tolkien urge again? Maybe to re-read the trilogy again, eighteen months after I finished my second reading?

Well, what do you think comes in the mail, but this catalogue from CatholicCourses.com. I’m thumbing through it last weekend over dinner with the girls, when I see the ad for this course:

The Hidden Meaning of The Lord of the Rings
The Theological Vision in Tolkien’s Fiction


Whoa! Holy Cow!

I held it up to my wife. “I’m buying this,” I say, flatly, and there’s no discussion. I, who agonize over buying a book if it costs more than five bucks (’cuz of our tight financial budget), have to buy this, no matter what the cost.

So I did.

So there.

Now, the ladies are leaving on a ten-day voyage with my mother-in-law on the Great Triangle Tour in less than a week: 600 miles west to Toledo for a wedding, a thousand miles southeast to Hilton Head, South Carolina, then back up north to New Jersey. I will be here, solo, alone, working, my only time off being the evenings, the weekends, and fourth of July. Needless to say, there won’t be any keg parties here. No, I was wondering on ways to fill the void, and now, now that these DVDs have arrived in the mail, now I have one.

And I still may re-read Tolkien for a third time!