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...The Hobbit six times, and The Silmarillion twice. I read the Trilogy continuously. Whenever I finish the last page of The Return of the King, I start over on page one of The Fellowship of the Ring without a break.
I am currently in my eighteenth time through the Trilogy. A passage I read the other day caused me to stop and think.
In the six chapter of Book Two, the narrative continues after the fall of Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-dum in the mines of Moria. The company must pass through Lothlorien, the enchanted land of the elves, but the Elves will not allow Gimli the Dwarf to walk through their land without a blindfold.
For those not familiar with much of the back-story to the Trilogy, there has been a long history of suspicion and mistrust between Elves and Dwarves. Although at this time they are loosely united to fight a common enemy, the Dark Lord of Barad-dur, old memories die hard.
When Gimli refuses to be blindfolded, Legolas the Elf says, “A plague on Dwarves and their stiff necks.” Gimli draws his axe, and the Elves bend their bows. But Aragorn intervenes with a compromise strategy. “It is hard upon the Dwarf to be thus singled out. We will all be blindfolded, even Legolas.” It is now Legolas’ turn to become angry, and he refuses the blindfold. Aragorn says, “Now let us cry: ‘a plague on the stiff necks of Elves!’” Legolas responds, “Alas for the folly of these days! Here we are all enemies of the one Enemy, and yet we must all walk blind while the sun shines on leaves of gold.”
And then Haldir, one of the Elves, comments, “In nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”
I am a student of Church History. I believe that many of the answers for the present are to be found in the past. And if there is one lesson that screams out from the past it is the lesson of Haldir, “In nothing is the Enemy’s work more clearly seen than in the disunity that divides all who oppose him.”
The Apostle John wrote his gospel and epistles near the end of the first Christian century, more than sixty years after the resurrection. He had certainly seen many things in those years. And so it is significant than the word love appears 41 times in his short first epistle.
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (I John 4:7-12)
Out of all the important lessons John could have taught, he chose to emphasize love among the brethren. He must have seen so much estrangement and division in his long life, and maybe he had some sort of prophetic warning about the greater divisions to come.
Eventually, the Church must learn the lesson of unity, the lesson of Haldir: “In nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”
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