Ruminating on the way Tolkien wrote hope and goodness has been such a Thing lately.
He wrote hope as this thing as everpresent and untarnishable. It’s the sun that cannot be poisoned like living trees, the light in the sky that is not a tower that could be cut down. It’s the sun that is alive and not a thousand, thousand light years away as a reflection of something beautiful that might already be dead and the darkness has not caught up to it yet.
Hope the way Tolkien wrote it is a living thing that races to show the light to every creature, that they may do with it what they will.
The sun does not set forever, and it doesn’t not burn forever at it’s zenith to wear down all that live and must have both light and sleep.
Hope is the thing that can be counted upon, even at a distance or under the watch and away from the light.
Hope is the sun that shines behind the clouds and past the storming mountain.
Hope is the star that cuts through the choking smog.
Hope is the gentle moon that soothes that dark and casts the soft light for the weary to see by.
Hope is the thing that carries the weak and the weary through the sorrowing dark into the brighter day, and lends them the strength to endure and the hardiness to take the violence of the reality of victory that came true - not without losses - without breaking under it.
Hope is the renewed strength in the hand that carries the sword and the heart that longs for the peace to lay it down.
Hope is the silly, foolish thing that sense nine people across the continent to walk straight into the enemy’s Capitol stronghold with the instrument of his greatest power and his final defeat… all nestled around the neck of a kind and gentle hobbit.
