“There and Back Again:  J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings"
Rev. Maggie McNaught
Scripture Readings: Matthew 14: 22-33, Romans 10:5-15

          No one knows for certain exactly when hobbits came into existence but in coming across a blank page from an exam he was marking, Professor of Anglo Saxon John Ronald Reuel Tolkien scrawled his soon to be famous words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”  From that point on a loving father began to create stories about the 3 foot 6 inch curly headed creatures who loved birthday parties, eating, telling jokes and laughing, that he happily told his own children.  Years later in 1937 the stories were published as a children’s book simply entitled The Hobbit. 

          What the children could not have known at the time they heard of Bilbo Baggins’ journey to the Lonely Mountain with the thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield is that their father had already been establishing the history, languages, geography, and cultures of the races of Elves, orcs, dwarves, and humans through two previous ages that spanned millenia of years in his work in progress known as The Silmarillion. Even as a youth, Tolkien was taken with Norse mythology and faery stories while creating two Elvish languages derived from Finnish and Welsh. Hobbits had only recently come to light.  But they were by no means of least importance.  For when Tolkien penned his fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, books written for adults, the hobbits were the central characters.

          The Lord of the Rings takes place during the Third Age of Middle Earth.  The ring that Bilbo Baggins had acquired during the children’s tale The Hobbit is now discovered to be the One Ring that the dark lord Sauron had fashioned to enslave all the races of Middle Earth to whom he had, in an earlier age, tricked into accepting lesser rings of power. Sauron had been defeated in battle and the ring lost for two and a half thousand years until it is found.  As the trilogy opens, Bilbo is tired and worn out and ready to leave his home, the Shire, to go and write the book of all his adventures.  He leaves all his possessions, including the ring, to his young coming of age nephew, Frodo while enlisting the aid of the wizard Gandalf to look in on his relative.  Gandalf has concerns about the ring’s true nature and eventually discovers that it is in fact a dangerous ring that works insidious evil on the innermost heart and soul of the one who bears it.  Furthermore, he discovers that the dark powers of Sauron have reawakened and his will is bent on retrieving the ring that once reunited with its master can wield an unstoppable power.  And already the forces of evil in the land are headed for the Shire to kill the one who possesses it.  Frodo, with the help of his three friends, Samwise Gamgee, Merry and Pip, flee the Shire to carry the ring to the Elves.  There in the land of the Elves, Frodo learns that it is his appointed task to take the ring back to Sauron’s stronghold to destroy it in the fires from which it was fashioned.  He does not go alone and the fellowship of the ring made up of volunteers from every race in Middle Earth surrounds him on the journey.  Aragorn, the heir to the throne of Gondor, but who wanders in the wilderness.  Legolas, the Elf and Gimli, the dwarf.  But they are all together only until the end of the first book of the three.  When the fellowship is rent apart, Frodo and Sam are forced to confront the nightmare that is Sauron’s domain-- alone, weaponless, and in an increasingly weakened condition.  The others in the fellowship rush to aid the existing kingdoms in what will be the battle to end all battles against the genocide of men, dwarves, Elves, and hobbits.

          This heroic epic was in many ways, Tolkien’s life’s work.  He was still writing on it, reworking inconsistencies clear up until his death in 1973 and even then his son, Christopher, took over the job.  But The Lord of the Rings  might not have been completed at all were it not for a series of encounters that Tolkien had with another famous visionary and writer, C.S. Lewis.

          In 1925, Tolkien moved to Oxford to accept a position as the Professor of Anglo Saxon, a philologist by profession.  One year later C.S. Lewis took up his post as an English don at Magdalen College.  They met at an English faculty meeting.  Within a couple of years they were meeting in each other’s rooms, exchanging thoughts, ideas, and reading aloud their works to the other for encouragement and critique.  Oddly they had much in common.  Both had lost their mothers at an early age.  Both had known the tragic effects of the Great World War—losing several close friends in battle.  Both were interested in the imaginative power of myth and stories. These late night talks were crucial in the development of each other’s writing and in their later theological thought.  Tolkien was a strong Roman Catholic whose theological views deeply influenced the themes he chose to write about in the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  In fact, Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, are acclaimed as the ones who convinced C.S. Lewis of the truth of Christian belief.  In one of their late night conversations, “Tolkien argued that human stories tend to fall into certain patterns, and can embody myth.  In the Christian Gospels there are all the best elements of good stories, including fairy stories, with the astounding additional factor that everything is also true in the actual, primary world.  It combines mythic and historical, factual truth, with no divorce between the two.” (1)  Lewis’ heart and imagination were captured. 

          Soon others began gravitating to Lewis’ rooms and engaging in depth of conversation—Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson.  Most of them were Lewis’ friends but together they decided to meet weekly to discuss theological, political, and social ideas and to read aloud their works to each other.  They dubbed themselves the Inklings for they had an “inkling of the eternal—of something mysterious and wonderful moving through the depths of their being.” (2)  What characterized the group were the twin ideas of a healthy suspicion of modernist views in which human reason was accorded an impossible autonomy and there was a blind faith in human progress,  while at the same time upholding the “romantic impulse” as they coined it—of appreciating and cultivating poetic imagination and the non-rational values of love, beauty, awe, and joy—the intangible things God inspires.

          For Tolkien, the Inklings enabled him to flesh out his ideas about imagination, fantasy, and sub-creation. Especially important is Tolkien’s concept of sub-creation.  While he is often accused of creating an escapist form of literature, out of step with the real world, Tolkien’s thinking was actually the opposite.  He sought to engage the reader in such a way that when he or she saw the meaning behind the myth, saw through the metaphors of the story to its essential reality, the reader was empowered to bring that awareness, that truth back to bear on his or her own life’s journey.  I think this is what is behind Tolkien’s choice for the title of Bilbo Baggins’ book of adventures, There and Back Again. We go to another location to see more clearly those things hidden from view or taken for granted in our own world—things that could heal our consciousness and our planet. Then we come back again with our perspectives altered so that choices to live differently are more apparent.

          Tolkien believed that being created in the image of God meant that creating, using our imaginations, engaging in fantasy, was a way to engage in meaning.  He valued looking at reality in a symbolic way.  But the worlds he created had to be as real as possible—using familiar landscapes—mountains, woods, stars, lakes, based on places that were quite real and dear to him, and adding the faery element—Elves and Ents and wizards with a solid sense of history, language, and place that “allow the hearer or reader to move from the details of their limited experience to survey the depths of space and time.” (3)  In other words to create a timelessness freeing the reader to absorb and reflect, consider and decide the larger purpose of living.

          The Lord of the Rings is essentially the story of the fall and of providential grace.  The land of Mordor in which the dark lord Sauron resides, is a ruined wasteland: foul swamps, toxic fumes, tortured beings.  If he obtains the one ring, the ruination of all of creation is assured.  But his is not the only power in the land.  When Gandalf tries to console a very scared Frodo whose innocence is being lost each second of the long journey, Frodo blurts out in adolescent agony, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish it had never happened in my time.”

          Gandalf responds, “ So do I.  And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us....There is more than one power at work, Frodo.  The ring was picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable:  Bilbo from the Shire!  Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker.  I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker.  In which case you also were meant to have it.  And that is an encouraging thought.”  (4)

          Glimpses of the Divine at work abound in the story though they are always subtle, inviting the reader to come closer.  Much like Jesus in his use of parables, the reader has to allow the story to unfold.  Though the strength of humanity has been weakened by corruption, overpowered by the greed for power, Tolkien has a whole host of elements in the story that embody grace and hope, love and joy.  That is intentional on his part.

          The Elves represent the mixture of humanity and divinity.  They are angelic, ethereal, sensitive to the presence of evil long before the humans in the story sense it.  Yet they gift the travelers with precisely what each individual will need in which to face their own demons and challenges with hope and encouragement.  They are reminders that goodness surrounds them. In fact, one the Elves greets with the age old  words “Do not be afraid.”—the sign of the angels.

          Gandalf, the Grey Wizard, points the way forward, leading them closer to the destination—the sign of the Star.

          Aragorn, the king in self imposed exile in the wilderness, is able to heal and so is Arwen his beloved—a sign of the Christ.

          The hobbits take nothing with them for the journey, trusting that what they need will be there—the sign of faith. 

          “For Tolkien, good stories pointed to the greatest story of all.  In other words, he wrote the gospel in his own words, the story of God coming to earth as a humble human being, a king, like Aragorn, in disguise, a seeming fool, like Frodo and Sam, the greatest storyteller entering his own story.” (5)

          It is no surprise that after almost 50 years since its publication, The Lord of the Rings, is still the most popular book bought in the UK, according to a recent survey.  The story connects with millions.  Even Tolkien himself had to hide during the 60’s because so many US youth came seeking him out, wanting to talk about the book.

          When I first read it as a teenager, I didn’t know I was reading the Gospel.  But the courage, faith, and magic of the story is still very much alive for me as well as others.

          When the movie of the first book came out in December at Christmas, I had other things to attend to so waited to go and see it.  But I didn’t get to the theater until March when my niece Rosanna was visiting.  Rosanna, a 13 year old, was also reading the books as she was visiting.  I recognized the signs.  She was completely captivated.  When she asked if I had seen the movie and I replied “No, not yet” she insisted that we go.  So we did.  Three times in one week.  A total of nine hours watching the same movie.  She was working it out.  And who was I to try and stop that? I knew Tolkien himself would have been moved.

          On the third evening we went, I sat down next to a mom and calmly turned to her and said, “Three times, one week.”  She looked at me and laughed and said, “Oh, that’s nothing.  Try eight times in two.”  I looked over at her son. 

          “How old are you?” I asked. 

          “Seven.” He responded.

          “How many times have you seen this movie?”

          He grew sullen.  “Only seven.  They wouldn’t let me see it the first time they went.”

          Then I leaned still further to chat with the daughter.

          “How old are you and which character do you like in the movie?” I asked, pretty sure of her response.

          “I’m 14 and I like Frodo,” she giggled.

          “So do I.  But why do you like this story?” I continued.

          “Because they gave Frodo something important to do.”  She said wistfully.

          I suspect that Tolkien would have treasured that response.  To think that a 14 year old would be thinking about the larger aspects of life and her place in the scheme of things.  And that I would be thinking, “Wow, what do we give 14 year olds that is important to accomplish?”  I keep thinking about Galadriels, the Elf Queen’s encouraging words to Frodo, “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”  If Tolkien’s books generate that kind of imagining, he would be gratified. 

          My niece and I still talk about the themes in the movie and the books.  We go there and back again talking about all the big Biblical themes like Life.  Death.  Sacrifice. Friendship.  Evil.  Purpose.  Joy.  Magic. Suffering.  Redemption.   And what they mean to her, how they influence her, how they are changing her view of herself and the world we live in.  I suspect she didn’t know she was talking about the Gospel.  I didn’t pull out my bible either just to prove to her that she was.  It was enough that she confided in me what her thoughts on these matters are during these late night conversations.  We were glimpsing God, on the lookout for grace, and imagining all the possibilities that Life had to offer.  As I understand it, that is the definition of abundant Life that Jesus came to offer us.  Sometimes it just needs to look and sound like a hobbit.

1.     Duriez, Colin and David Porter, The Inklings Handbook, Chalice Press, London, 2001.

2.     Wiederkehr, Macrina, A Tree Full of Angels:  Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, HarperSan Francisco, 1988.

3.     Tolkien, J.R.R., lecture “On Faery Stories.”

4.     Tolkien, J.R.R., The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954.

5.     Duriez and Porter, ibid.