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Does Magic Exist in Middle-Earth?

Does magic exist in Middle-Earth? After the Company had received miraculous gifts from the Elves of Lothlórien — lembas bread, ropes made of hithlain, superlight boats, and “magic” cloaks — Pippin asked:

‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them with wonder.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’

Whatever Elves make looks like technology but feels like music. They make in the law in which they were made. They infuse all they make with Music of Iluvatar whence they came. They hearken unto the Music and capture it in whatever their hands touch. All they create is prayer — attuning to the celestial Music and letting it flow into the world.

Music doesn’t manipulate. Beauty never coerces; it invites. Take it or leave it. It’s not going to force you. The Machine, on the other hand, does force. It is not made from a desire to capture the Music. It is made from a desire to dominate. The Machine is the opposite of prayer. Prayer is about: “Thy will be done”; technology is about: “My will be done.”

The heart of the Machine is bulldozing reality to fit my will. The heart of prayer is tuning in to the invisible Law behind all things and reflecting it in whatever you do. That’s why the art of the Elves is not technology even though it looks like technology. Their creations are spun from prayer — their attunement to the Great Music.

When you pray, you create art. When you seek to bend reality to your desires, you build the Machine. When you pray, you don’t think about your desires — your only desire is to become small and be caught by the mighty Flow of Beauty. When you wish to dominate, all you think about is how to force the world to fulfill your desires.

The fundamental difference between art and technology lies in the will. It’s either: “Thy will be done” or: “My will be done.” As Martin Buber pointed out, God is either Thou or “it.” When God is Thou, he invites you into a personal relationship with him — to join the Great Dance. When God is “it,” no relationship is possible. The only way to relate to “it” is through domination.

When we don’t see the Divine behind visible phenomena, we seek to dominate the phenomena. They become mere instruments to fulfill my wishes. If I see the world as “it,” not Thou, I create the Machine. If I see God as Thou, not it, I see his Presence behind all phenomena and create Art.

Art may look very similar to technology, but it feels like Music. Art is humble; its desire is to become small so the Music can be big. That’s why all the Elvish gifts had such incredible power. They were infused with the power of the Music of creation captured through prayer and contemplation.

“Spirit is not in the I, but between the I and the Thou.” – Martin Buber

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What is the Mystery of Motherhood?

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What is the mystery of motherhood? When you read about the “hand of God,” it’s natural to imagine some sort of hand. Even though God is Spirit, we are told he has hands, feet, fingers, ears, eyes, face, etc. Apparently, such anthropomorphisms carry profound significance. Eventually, we realize that spiritual hands, feet, arms, and faces truly exist — they are realities of which our human hands, feet, arms, and faces are but shadows.

The phenomenon of God’s spiritual hand was beautifully captured by George VI, King of England, who said at the beginning of WWII that he had asked God about the future of his people and God replied,

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

Somehow, we all know what a “spiritual hand” is. Most of us experienced it as children. Remember walking into a dark room as a little boy or girl, terrified of the boogeymen, ghosts, and monsters hiding in the shadows? The fear was overwhelming—until the moment our mother took us by the hand. Suddenly, we found the courage to go in.

Deep down, we knew that our fragile mother could not possibly defeat all the fire-breathing dragons that lurked under the bed. But the moment we took her hand, we miraculously felt safe. We were utterly certain that somehow, she would prevail. She is the mother, after all.

The phenomenon of the mother’s hand is purely spiritual. It’s paradoxical too — on the one hand, we know the mother cannot possibly prevail against such odds, and yet we feel totally secure as if she had hidden powers. As if there was more to her than met the eye. As if her gentle hand was a spiritual hand.

What is a spiritual hand? It is a hand that holds a power far beyond what it may appear to possess. It is infinite. It takes up certain physical space, but its reach is boundless and all-encompassing. True victory over fear is not when we can predict the future and make plans A, B, and C, but when we have the “hand of God” experience embodied in some material form.

We have had it in childhood when we held our mother’s hand. But this isn’t the only way to encounter it. This experience can come to us in many ways and forms. God’s spiritual hand is revealed through some physical medium. Spirituality is always revealed through physicality. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The hand of God is present here, too. Its mystery is always embodied in something tangible. We can see it in the smiles of our friends gathered around a dinner table. We can hear it in the rustling of autumn leaves beneath our feet. Or we can feel it when gazing into the eyes of a saint.

Its effect is irresistible — it calms us down and relieves our fears. God’s spiritual hand is everywhere, but it must be recognized. It always hides behind humble appearances. Its power is immense but hidden. It invites us to look for it. To whom has God’s hand been revealed?

“To whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.”

The mother’s hand is the ultimate embodiment of the mystery of God’s hand. It is something humble and hidden in the physical world that nests infinite power. When we experience it, we become infinitely bold and happy. When we hold that hand, we can walk through any darkness.

We don’t need certainty or knowledge of what lies ahead. We can step out into the unknown because we have something better than light — the experience of being held.

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What is the Truth Behind Optical Illusions?

What is the truth behind optical illusions? “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” is a well-known optical illusion that presents two different images in one. It was created by the British cartoonist W.E. Hill in 1915. The drawing cleverly shifts between two perspectives: you can either see a young lady looking away or an older woman with a large nose and chin.

The paradox of all optical illusions is that the viewer’s mind cannot see two images simultaneously. It has to switch. This presents a huge philosophical conundrum — if people can look at the same thing but see two different pictures, how can we tell if there’s an objective reality? It all depends on what you focus on.

The “aha” moment comes when we discover the two pictures. Of course, we can’t see them simultaneously, but we can switch between them. The very act of switching seems magical in and of itself — after all, we see that every line in every image is exactly in its place. Yet, the brain cannot perceive two things simultaneously — no matter how much we try.

So, what is objective reality? Can I look at something and definitively say, “This is
”? Unless I question how I see before I decide what I see, I don’t really see. The â€œhow I see” always precedes “what I see.” Unless I question my semantics and see how I see, I will be under the illusion of seeing. As Jesus said, “Though seeing, they do not see.”

If I absolutize my way of seeing — my semantics — I will create an idol. I will say, “There’s nothing else to see here besides what I see.” The absolutization of one perspective is the end of true seeing. It is semantic idolatry. An idol always arrests our gaze and does not let us see beyond.

The opposite of semantic idolatry is semantic transcendence. The moment I realize there are at least two pictures to see, I stop absolutizing my own. I start switching between the two. But I don’t absolutize the second one either. Both are but shadows of reality, not reality itself.

When I realize that the “real switching” is not between the two pictures (or two cultural semantics) but between shadows and Truth, I start seeing. My eyes open. It’s not just a young lady or just an old woman. These are but shadows of reality. They are symbols that must be transcended. When I realize that my way of seeing is symbolic, I realize that all the symbols are real inasmuch as I see through them, not at them.

Shadows are not absolute. The Absolute lies beyond the shadows. In the Absolute, opposites converge.

“God is the coincidence of opposites.” Nicholas of Cusa

In God, all contradictions converge and are reconciled. Now we see partially, as in a mirror. Then, we will see face to face. In God, we see two (or more) pictures at the same time without having to switch between them because we see with the heart, not the mind. The heart perceives an old woman in every young lady and a young lady in every old woman. It doesn’t mistake a symbol for reality. It transcends the shadows and becomes sane.

“The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic
 He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland
 If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.” G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)

In God, we see two things simultaneously. The mind cannot grasp the Whole — it has to switch. The heart can. Mystical vision is stereoscopic. It allows me to see the Whole without sacrificing either part. The moment I see God, I start seeing The Face behind every face.

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What Do Plato and C.S. Lewis Have in Common?

What do Plato and C.S. Lewis have in common? One curious thing about Platonic ideas is that Plato used the Greek word for idea (ΔጎΎω, eidƍ), which means “to see,” to denote something one cannot see. For Plato, the idea of a thing is its invisible essence. A carrot can be seen; the idea of a carrot cannot. “Carrotness” is invisible.

And yet, Plato uses the word “ΔጎΎω,” which means “to see,” to point to the invisible. Why? How do you see the invisible? In Plato’s mind, a thing is not in one of two states — existing or not existing. It can be in a wide range of states depending on how far it is from the Idea of the thing. The closer a thing is to the Idea of the thing the more it “exists.”

That’s why Plato uses the term “anamnesis,” which means re-collection,to suggest that learning is essentially the soul’s act of remembering something that it has always known from its existence in the realm of Ideas. The soul is from that realm. It recognizes the perfect Ideas behind the shadows of this world — or it doesn’t.

That’s why human consciousness is symbolic. Whatever it looks at, it tries to “see” (ΔጎΎω) — or rather “see through.” Its question is, “Do I recognize what’s behind this thing or not?” For the soul all things are symbolic. It strives to see the primal creative Logos (the perfect Idea) behind all things.

When it doesn’t it feels bad — the soul abides in the realm of symbols. When it does, it feels good because it recognizes its homeland. When the soul reads the pure poesis off the creation, it thrives. In Hebrews 8:5, it says about priests:

“They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’”

When the soul creates, it always re-creates. It strives to remember what it saw in heaven before creating something on earth. It wants to create things that “truly exist.” The more symbolic meaning it imbues in a thing, the more it reminds us of heaven.

“Creation happens when the conscious mind allows the deeper, unconscious forces to emerge and manifest in the form of symbols.” Carl Jung

That’s why C.S. Lewis says in The Four Loves,

“The most important thing a mother can do for her child is to show him that he does not need her.”

The best form of parenting is to gradually redirect the child’s gaze from shadows to realities. The role of the mother (and father) is to show the child that they are not their real mother and father. They have Another Mother and Father. Human parenting is at its best when the child’s gaze is not tied to their earthly parents but sees through the parents to catch a glimpse of the real Mother and Father.

What do Plato and C.S. Lewis have in common?

A shadow is good only when it points to heaven and bad when it blocks the view of heaven. We think we live among things, but we live among symbols. If we are surrounded by things that cannot be recognized as symbols, we feel dead inside. When we recognize things as symbols, we come alive. Our eyes sparkle. We recognize the primordial poesis (the making) behind the world of shadows. We return home.

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What is the Homo Ludens Theory?

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What is the Homo Ludens theory? In The Sounds of Music, when Fraulein Maria arrives at the von Trapp house and speaks with the housekeeper, Frau Schmidt, about the children, Frau Schmidt says:

“The von Trapp children don’t play; they march.”

Captain von Trapp, who had lost his wife, lost his ability to play. He was running away from himself. Grief turned him into a detached disciplinarian. Ironically, this was happening in the 1930s when Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian, was writing his Homo Ludens (Man the Player).

Observing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he felt that the spirit of play and spontaneity was slowly replaced by marching. The country was forgetting how to play. Play is spontaneous by definition. No one can be made to play. You can make people march but not play.

Play comes over you when you have no cares in the world. When you care, you can’t play. When you don’t care, you can’t help playing. Huizinga wrote,

“Play is free, is in fact freedom. Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. It is rather a stepping out of ‘real’ life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own.”

Captain von Trapp was too overwhelmed to play or allow his children to play. He needed Fraulein Maria to burst into his ‘real’ world and reawaken him to the spirit of play. Maria was a God-sent. She saved Captain not only from his self-imposed shell of a man — she saved him from the spirit of marching that was overtaking Germany.

For Maria, play was as natural as breathing. She turned everything into a piece of cake. She turned drapes into children’s clothes, boredom into song, and enemies into friends. That’s what the von Trapp children lacked the most; that’s what they resented their father mostly for — for his refusal to play.

Maria may not have been an “asset to the abbey” because she â€œwaltzes on her way to Mass and whistles on the stairs,” but this was exactly what was lacking in the von Trapp’s household. Captain von Trapp’s soul was dead. He marched to the tune of grief, despair, and apathy and made his kids do the same.

And yet, there was an edelweiss still alive deep down in his soul. Maria’s natural playfulness reawakened the spirit of play in his heart, and the flower bloomed again. She gave him a gift of himself.

“In play there is something ‘at play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something.” Homo Ludens

What did Maria’s play mean? It meant that there was something transcending the immediate needs of life — something beyond the world of care. Captain felt that “something” knocking back into his life. A Life from beyond life. He let down his guard and allowed the spirit of play in.

Why did he refuse to serve in the Royal Navy of the Third Reich? Because of his strong moral and ethical principles? Maybe. But it seems more likely that he didn’t want to march anymore. There was too much play in his soul to march to the Nazi’s tune. The time of seriousness was gone. He was full of life, song, and poetry again.

“[Play] lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child’s soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man’s wisdom for the child’s.” Homo Ludens

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What is Donegality in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien?

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What is donegality? Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man represents the “perfect man,” based on the ancient knowledge of ratios and proportions in human anatomy. Leonardo, often called a Renaissance man, depicted something very different from the medieval understanding of man.

His Vitruvian Man is autonomous. There’s nothing around him. He is in the center. In the visions of Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098, a man is also depicted in the center, except that the space/cosmos he is in is surrounded by the figure of God. The man is literally inside the womb of God.

In the medieval understanding, the man is in the center, and yet he is not. He exists in God’s embrace. The space/womb he is in is part of a Universal Body that has a head, face, hands, legs, and feet. The medieval man was not autonomous. He was loved. Embraced by the personal cosmos.

He lived, breathed, and moved inside the Divine womb. When the baby is inside the womb, they can’t see the mother, but they can divine her motherly presence in all things. She is hidden behind the walls of the world, and yet she is present in everything. The baby literally eats her body and lives off of her — her body is his whole world. The mother is hidden and yet revealed from the inside out.

C.S. Lewis once visited County Donegal in Ireland and was struck by the specific feel of the local landscape. He coined the term “donegality” to describe the unique atmosphere or mood that gives a particular setting or narrative its distinctive character. Donegality is a unique feel of something.

The Chronicles of Narnia is intentionally suffused with a certain donegality so we can recognize the Mother. All its symbolism — the talking animals, mythological landscapes, magical transformation — the whole atmosphere creates an irresistible sense of wonder and and an invitation to ask the main question: “Who?” Who is behind it?

To be born means to go out of the womb and see the mother face to face. But while we are in the womb, we live in her donegality. We see her dimly, as if through the looking-glass. We swim in the cosmos of her Divine Body, eating and drinking her self-revelations.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s worlds, this “donegality” is even more pronounced because Iluvatar, the Divine Source, is mentioned only in the beginning of The Silmarillion. In the rest of the legendarium, he is not mentioned but implied. He is the force behind all forces. An attentive reader divines his Presence in all the peripeteia of the plot. Tolkien plunges us into the donegality of the Music of Iluvatar.

Both Lewis and Tolkien represented a deeply medieval understanding of man. The man is only himself when he is embraced by the cosmos of Divine love. The Divine love puts him in the center and nourishes him until he is ready to see her face to face. When in the womb, he sees her only in dreams, visions, symbols, metaphors, and parables. She is revealed from the inside out.

St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), a Byzantine monk and theologian, taught that even though God is unknowable in his essence, he is revealed in his energies. While in the womb, we cannot see God face to face, but we can know him partially through his energies. God manifests himself through his donegality, the unique atmosphere of the world.

That’s why Jesus said, “He who has ears, let him hear.” Hear what? The heartbeat of the mother, the warmth of her womb, the nourishment of her Body. When we feel embraced, we become ourselves. Divine donegality gives us the energy to be who we are.

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Why Was Barnabas Called Zeus in the Bible?

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Why was Barnabas called Zeus in the Bible? Ever since I read in Acts 14:11-13 how the people of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for Greek gods after seeing a miraculous healing performed by Paul, I have been intrigued. They called Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes — because Paul was the chief speaker.

I could see why Paul would be called Hermes with his ability to wield words and arguments. But why was Barnabas called Zeus? Zeus is the king of the Olympian gods who hurls bolts of lightning. This doesn’t align very well with what we know about Barnabas whose name means “the son of encouragement.”

Between the two of them, Paul qualified more for the role of Zeus with his thunder-and-lightning statements. Yet, the Lystrans must have seen something in Barnabas that reminded them of Zeus, the king of the gods.

Zeus is a complex mythological figure. His father Kronos was known to eat his own children. When Zeus was born, Hera hid the child from his ever-hungry father and gave him a stone instead of the boy. Kronos swallowed the stone without noticing anything. Kronos ate his children not without a reason — he was chronological time. We are all born in chronological time, and we are consumed by it.

Zeus is a moment in time that was saved from being consumed by time. In the Greek lore, Zeus is someone who is above time. He prevails over his father Kronos and becomes king. In doing so he becomes electrified — a Source of divine electricity. People who are above time, shine with heavenly light and joy.

That’s why the Romans associated Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus, with heavenly joy (gaudium caeleste). He was often depicted as a triumphant figure with a ruddy face. Have you ever met people who are above time? They rule, and they radiate heavenly electricity.

You can read it in their eyes. They tread on earth as kings and queens. They rule over circumstances. They rise above the temporal. They live as if they were eternal. When you touch them, they pass their electricity to you, and you lighten up. You meet them and exclaim, “By Jove, I feel so jovial!”

Maybe that’s what the Lystrans saw in the eyes of Barnabas, “the son of encouragement.” Like a lightning bolt, he must have struck them as someone timeless, someone electrified with divine light, someone contagiously jovial. He was a walking encouragement.

The Lystrans wanted to bring sacrifices to both Paul and Barnabas, but the two men redirected their gazes toward the true Source of light. The light was not their own; they shone with a borrowed light. They were images of the Divine, not gods. And yet, the light shone through them to such a degree that people mistook them for gods. Here’s what C.S. Lewis wrote about this phenomenon:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship
 There are no ordinary people.” The Weight of Glory

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What Does “Little Things Matter” Mean?

What does “little things matter” mean? G.K. Chesterton famously said,

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

The renowned Georgian pedagogue Shalva Amonashvili counts his life in days, not in years. Born in 1931, he knows exactly how many days he has lived. He says when you count days, days become longer. Counting days helps you notice interesting things about your day — not the duration of time.

When you recognize God in little things, you realize there are no trifles. Everything is a tremendous trifle. If God is anywhere, he is everywhere. If we see him at least in some things, we will see him in all things. He is either everywhere or nowhere. If we don’t notice him in little things, we won’t notice him in big things.

Amonashvili plays a game with his students — every time he runs into someone in the corridors of his school, he asks them, “What happened?” The student answers. Fifteen minutes later, he asks them again, “What happened?” The student shrugs his shoulders, “Didn’t you ask me already? What could happen in 15 minutes?”

Amonashvili says, “Something must have happened. You don’t think God was on vacation these 15 minutes, do you? He must have been creating.”

God is in the business of creating tremendous trifles all the time. The more we zoom in the more we see. The word “happen” comes from Middle English happenen, derived from Old Norse “happa”, which means “fortune.” Every time something happens, we are fortunate. It’s a chance to see big things in trifles.

When my friend calls me from Russia to catch up, sometimes it’s hard to start a conversation from scratch. So, I scratch my head, “What has happened since our last talk? Hmm
 not much.” But then I tell him little things like the weather, and what I had for breakfast that morning. Suddenly, I see a hummingbird hovering over my wife’s flowers. How fortunate!

The hummingbird reminds me of something I had read about birds recently. Our conversation opens up into something tremendous. There’s a fortune lurking behind every trifle.

“Teach us to count our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

G.K. Chesterton opens his Tremendous Trifles with a story of two little boys, Paul and Peter who met a fairy. Paul asked to be turned into a giant so he might stride across continents to Niagara and the Himalayas in an afternoon dinner stroll.

Voila! He was turned into a giant. He stood up and strolled to the Himalayas, but
 “he found they were quite small and silly-looking.” Then, he strolled to Niagara, and


“
he found Niagara it was no bigger than the tap turned on in the bathroom. He wandered round the world for several minutes trying to find something really large and finding everything small, till in sheer boredom he lay down on four or five prairies and fell asleep.”

Peter made the opposite request. He wished to become a pigmy about half an inch high and immediately became one. His small garden suddenly transformed into a huge plain covered with a tall green jungle. He saw gigantic trees in the distance, and even a mountain — a whole wide world full of wonders. He smiled, rose to his feet, and


“
set out on his adventures across that coloured plain; and he has not come to the end of it yet.”

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Has Communism Ever Been Successful?

Has communism ever been successful? When I talk about what it was like to live under socialism, I sometimes get this reaction from people in the West: “But the USSR didn’t hold a monopoly on socialism. There are many examples of it being successful.”

I asked: “Can you name some?” One person answered, “Many indigenous communities were socialist in nature. And I have been part of spontaneous communities that had everything in common. It was very successful.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t continue this discussion, but later I realized that this answer revealed a deep misunderstanding of the nature of everything ending in “-ism.” There’s a world of difference between “social” and “socialism.” There’s an unbridgeable gap between community and communism. Just like there’s an unbridgeable gap between capital and capitalism.

Things like social justice are good. Taking care of the ill and elderly is good. Taking care of widows and orphans is good. But socialism is vastly different. When we add “ism” to “social” we turn morality into God. Being “moral” becomes the highest priority. It becomes the all-important thing. It becomes an idol.

Community is good. Community is the essence of spiritual life. The Lord’s Supper is called “Communion.” Yet, when we add “ism” at the end, we change its nature. Communism is the worship of the collective. Collective good becomes the highest good. The collective becomes God
 or rather an idol.

The nature of idols is paradoxical. They promise a lot but deliver… well, they don’t deliver at all. Was there social justice in the socialist USSR? Deep sigh
 No. Did the worship of the collective create healthy communities? Deep sigh
 No. The “ism-based” idols produce the opposite of what they promise. The irony of all “isms” is that they deprive us of the very thing they promise to deliver.

That’s why Augustine called sin “disordered love.” What we should love first, we love second; what we should love second, we love first. By loving a good thing in the wrong order we make a good thing into a bad thing.

Capital is a good thing. It’s a resource. When we worship capital, it becomes capitalism where capital becomes the all-important thing. A good thing becomes a bad thing because we love it in the wrong order.

Why is this “order of love” so important? Because of the nature of the human heart revealed in the Decalogue. The first four of the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with morality. The remaining six have everything to do with morality. The first four are about our relationship with the Divine. The remaining six are about what we do (or don’t do).

In other words, when the first four are first, the last six will be second. When the last six become first, the first four will never be followed — as well as the last six ones. True action never starts with action. It starts with our connection to the Source of all action.

When our connection to the Source is primary, all good things remain good. When good things take the first place, they become bad things because they don’t proceed from the Source. We live in a world of disordered love. Disordered love always leads to “isms.” Isms are inevitable when we put action first.

Action is always second. All morality is derivative. We proceed from first to last, not from last to first. When first things remain first, the second things will always be second.

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Why Did Tolkien Like Trees?

Why did Tolkien like trees? Trees are fascinating — they grow upward and downward simultaneously. Their root system, if the soil is deep enough, resembles the way the branches grow.

The tree stretches itself both up and down at the same time. The more grounded it is, the more it stretches its hands to the Sun. The more it stretches its hands to the Sun, the more grounded it is.

The symbolism of the tree is vast and manifold. Ultimately, the tree is an image of who we are. We have two legs to stand firmly on the ground and two hands to reach to the Sun. J.R.R. Tolkien, a great lover of trees, captured this symbolism in Galadriel’s strange gift to Sam — a seed of the mallorn-tree.

Sam was the gardener. He was “down to earth.” A perfect helper for Frodo, he could always return him to sanity. Hobbits represent rootedness. They lived in the roots of the trees where they dug their smials. After living in the roots for centuries, they became rooted in the soil. They were, so to say, the roots of the world.

And yet, Sam yearned to see the Elves. He was rooted and grounded and yet, his hands spread out to the Sun. The more you are rooted, the more you grow. He was down to earth, and yet his soul longed for the lofty beauty of the Elves. The Elves of Lothlórien lived in the trees. That’s where they built their houses with flets. They lived among the branches and the leaves. They were in touch with the beauty of heaven.

Galadriel knew that Shire would soon be uprooted, so she gave Sam the undying symbol of new hope. The mallorn tree was a symbol of both rootedness and loftiness. In it, the hobbits met with the Elves. Sam and his descendants would live in the roots, but they would always look up at the tree top waving in the wind and think of the beauty of LothlĂłrien.

Galadriel gave Sam the gift of himself. He was the mallorn-tree. Rooted in the soil, he yearned for the skies.

“He [Sam] took the seed in his hand, and looked at it with wonder. ‘This is a gift from the Lady Galadriel,’ he said. ‘A piece of the tree of Lothlórien, a piece of the Elves, and of her grace. A thing that might grow into a living memory of a land that was once so beautiful. I will plant it in the Party Field where the old tree stood.’”

We are all trees. We have a dual nature. We are from the earth, and we are from heaven. We are hobbits and Elves at the same time. We live on the Vine that grows up to the sky. We are its branches. Our roots go down into the earth, and our hands reach up to the Sun. No wonder on many medieval frescoes, Christ was depicted as a Vine with disciples sitting on its branches. We are the Tree as we participate in the great Vine, which is the Tree of Life.

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