REDEMPTION IN THIS AGE OF MAN

THE RING BEARER

     Fate chooses wisely when she chooses the Hobbit Frodo to bear the Ring of Power. Frodo certainly wouldn't have chosen this awesome task for himself; yet, when it is offered, he accepts it without question and fulfills it impeccably. He does so without ever once considering that it might change him forever and leave him unable to ever return home to the Shire.
     His burden is heavy, at times overwhelming. Even as he begins his journey, he is wounded with the knowledge of the collective evil that has been loosed upon his time, upon even the Shire itself. Wounded by the fell sword of the Lord of the Dark Riders upon Weathertop, before even arriving at Rivendell where he will finally begin to realize what has been asked of him, he is forced into conscious contact with the dark and collective spirit of his time.
     In Frodo's journey into the heart of darkness, the Ring merely symbolizes his real burden, the sure and inescapable knowledge of the evil that he and everyone else of his time are capable of doing in the name of power. Sauron, the Dark Lord, is merely the truest manifestation of this evil lust for power that lurks within the hearts of all life upon Middle Earth. Bearing the Ring and beset by dangers on all sides, Frodo has to constantly work to prevent this collective evil from taking him over.
     Thus Frodo mirrors within himself the great battles that will culminate before the gates of Gondor and later before the Black Gate of Mordor itself. While Aragorn and Gandalf and their confederates are standing up to Evil in the world of Middle Earth, Frodo is standing up to the evil that he has found within himself.
     This is the task for each of us today--to be conscious of this lust for Power that exists within ourselves, but without letting it take us over, without letting it ever spill out again into the world, as it has already more than once in our own Age of Man.

OUR OWN AGE OF MAN

     Tolkien's story of "The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King," as Frodo has called it, is a wise and powerful teaching story, perhaps the greatest ever told.
      Each of us can find a Frodo and a Sam and all the other Hobbits within ourselves. Each of these Hobbits is an archetype of the ego. The other characters--Gandalf, Aragorn, the High Elves, the Dwarves, the Kings and the Wizards, the great warriors, Saruman, Sauron, Tom Bambadil, the eldest, and all the rest--are each archetypes of the Soul, come to play their roles in the individual and collective crisis of our time, this Age of Man right here in our own Middle Earth.
     These archetypal forces function to aid the Hobbit that exists within each of us to overcome the evil that we are now facing, both within ourselves and in our collective lives. When Tolkien wrote this tale, this evil collective shadow had just burst into stark and terrible reality in Nazi Germany under Hitler and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. There were millions upon millions killed. There was horror everywhere. There were no innocents.
     Humankind has not yet dealt with this collective evil. We have continued to act it out upon others, while denying its existence within ourselves. We have seen it reflected only in our enemies. Many, perhaps most of us, have sought in this manner to avoid the dark sword of evil that pierced through Frodo on Weathertop. None of us have wanted that terrible wound, the knowledge that this evil shadow, this lust for power, exists also within ourselves.
     Yet try as we may, we can no longer remain comfortably in our peaceful Shires while the rest of the world burns. With our old forms of consciousness and ways of being shattered and no longer useful, each of us has been challenged to create a new and more viable reality, one that includes the knowledge of the evil that each and every one of us is capable of doing.

THE RING OF POWER

     This isn't just a matter of academic or literary interest nor yet a thing of the past. Look around today. There are the constant Mad Max Wars. There is a United States president today, like his father before him, who would try again to trash our last remaining wildernesses for oil and their other hidden resources.
     This is a plan worthy of Sauron himself. Tolkien's image of Mordor describes just what our wild lands would become if the coal and the oil companies had their day. In Mordor, there is always black and suffocating smoke everywhere, a pall across the sky. The Hopi and others in the Southwest have already seen this pall. As Frodo and Sam enter Mordor, all about them seems "ruinous and dead, a desert burned and choked." There is no life except for the massed armies of the night. This could describe Iraq after the senior Bush had led his oil hungry hordes to the attack--or Afghanistan and Iraq again after his son has finished there.
     This attitude, that we have the right to destroy Mother Nature and all her beauty for our own short-term and personal greed and convenience, is what has always been behind the dark power of the Ring. Bilbo and Frodo do not have this attitude towards nature and can thus be trusted to bear the Ring. However, the folks in power in the world today have no such compunction.
     In the Council at Rivendell attended by the mighty and the wise, it is agreed that the only safe course would be to return the Ring to the Crack of Doom in Sauron's stronghold Mordor to be destroyed by the fire that made it. There is no other way.
     Thus Frodo starts out with his eight companions for Mordor and the Crack of Doom, for the heart of evil. And at the end he will be alone and desperate, surrounded by horror upon horror. Yet he will persevere in his task, refusing always to use the power of the Ring. And by his refusal he will save his world--and become a shining example for ours.

THE WHITE TOWER

     When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I identified with Aragorn and Gandalf. I saw myself as either the Hero King or the Wise Sage. But, in my life, I am neither. I'm just an ordinary Hobbit person, trying to live my own life and be kind to others.
     Most of us would be content to live our simple and fulfilling lives quietly and at peace. Some, though, are discontent and seek to improve their position in life through aggression and conflict. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these folks have achieved positions of great power in the various governments and multinational companies of our time and have been able to keep the rest of us on their negative and unfulfilling trip.
     These folks are of the Dark Tower, the leaders and warlords of those fighting for control of Mother Earth's energy resources-and using their wars to distract us from seeing how much they have polluted our environment, how much they have ruined our economy, and how many of our freedoms they have taken away.
     We all know about the White Tower too. It's where the White Magician lives and works his magic for good. The White Tower is fragile, yet still powerful, and will always prevail over the Dark. In our world, it is made up of the collective effort of all of us ordinary folks who are at peace with ourselves and the world and who wish the same for all life. It is our common sense, the collective wisdom of our species. It is our collective joy and love. It is those of us who have been challenged by the Dark Tower and, like Frodo, have grown beyond ourselves.
     And today, in our own Middle Earth, it is time again for the White Tower to do battle with the Dark, with all the good people coming together to defend the White Tower and to neutralize the negative and destructive energy of the Dark. It is the end of one age and the beginning of a new. Most likely the future of the world depends upon each of us now--as it always has.

(© 2002 Eugene Marks)

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