…was it, maybe,
a frost that had turned its sap to ice,
and so it stood,
bitter-sweet,
still fair to see,
but stricken,
soon to fall and die?
~J.R.R Tolkien from Return of the King
Any hint of spring
is frozen in place,
buds encased,
unable to swell,
their future
suspendedand stricken,
bitter in
their beauty.
Immortal brilliance of presage
In any dark day’s iron age
May come to lift the hair and bless
Even our tired earthliness,
And sundown bring an age of gold,
Forged in faerie, far and old,
An elsewhere, and an elfin light,
And kings rise eastward in the night.
~Robert Fitzgerald “For Epiphany”
The night sky was still dim and pale.Â
There, peeping among the cloud wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains,
Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.Â
The beauty of it smote his heart,
as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.Â
For like a shaft, clear and cold,
the thought pierced him that in the end
the Shadow was only a small and passing thing:
there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
~J.R.R. Tolikien, The Return of the King
The star represented a hope
too long elusive;
so weary and with so much need
they headed out for unknown lands
to follow a light seemingly
beyond their reach.
Yet they found its source;
they could touch His earthliness.
No shadow cast of darkness,
and no iron nails
could quell the beauty
of its brilliance.
After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth…
The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch.
The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze.
The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet.
Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her…
In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.
~Elizabeth George Speare from The Witch of Blackbird PondÂ
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien from The Fellowship of the Ring
“So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter’s chill.”
~ J.R.R Tolkien
Clear and sunny skies on the second day of spring were full of deception today — no warmth emanates from a dimming sunlight stark with shocking briskness from a chill wind.
It’s all show without actually delivering the goods. We have clawed our way out of winter, trying to shake off the frost and leave it far behind, seeking out encouraging sightings of buds and blooms and blossoms.
Maybe tomorrow morning, or perhaps the next.
Just maybe.
Or not.
I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair
I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see
For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green
I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know
But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door
— J.R.R. Tolkien
To whatever end. Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountains. Like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the west. Behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this?
~J.R.R Tolkien
Some days start dark, stay dark, end dark. There is no reprieve, just impending loss.  There are so many who live out their days in the shadows, unable and unwilling to do what it takes to find the light again.
How did it come to this? How far back was the turn that led to being lost? How did we abandon a clear sense of direction, struggle to find purpose for getting up each day, forget to feel gratitude for the tiny things?
If we are to follow the path out, it must be with a sense of utter need and conviction.
We must give ourselves up to the rescue.
To not give up the fight.
To climb out of the shadows high enough to see the light again.
To be touched by light again.
To whatever end awaits us on the other side.
“It’s a dangerous business… going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Every day it appears I embark on adventure, like it or not. The moment I wake from dreams and acknowledge a new morning, when my eyes and ears open and take it in, when I first step onto the floor and start my journey–I pray the road rises to meet me and leads me where I need to go.
Inside my head and inside my house, all is routine and certain. The moment I walk out the door, down the steps and make my way into the day, there awaits an unpredictable and often hostile world.  Rather than armor myself, girding for disaster, I want to “keep my feet.” If I know where I’m about to step, I’m more likely to be ready for the one after–less likely to stroll blindly into a deep ditch, stumble oblivious into a hornet’s nest, disappear unexpectedly into a hidden crevasse, swept completely away in a gust of wind.
It’s a dangerous business, this waking up and living.
But someone has to do it.
“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead! Is everything sad going to come untrue?”
J.R.R. Tolkien, Samwise Gamgee waking to find his friends all around him in The Lord of the Rings
“The answer is yes. And the answer of the Bible is yes. If the resurrection is true, then the answer is yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue.”
Pastor Tim Keller’s response in a sermon given in an ecumenical prayer service memorial in Lower Manhattan on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11.
In our minds, we want to rewind and replay the events of a tragedy in a way that would prevent it from happening in the first place.  We want to bring the dead and injured back to health again. The major devastating earthquake becomes a mere tremor, the flooding tsunami is only one foot, not over thirty feet tall, the terrorist hijackers are prevented from ever boarding a plane, the shooter changes his mind at the last minute, lays down his arms, disables his booby trap bombs and calls someone for help with his distress and anger.
We want so badly for it all to be untrue. The bitter reality of horrendous suffering and sadness daily all over the earth is too much for us to absorb.  We plead for relief, beg for a better day.
Our minds may play mental tricks like this, but God does not play tricks. He knows and feels what we do. He too wants to see it rewound and replayed differently. He has known grief and sadness, He has wept, He has suffered, He too has died. And because of this, because of a God who came to dwell with us, was broken, died and then rose again whole and holy, we are assured, in His time, everything sad is going to come untrue.
Our tears will be dried, our grief turned to joy, our pain nonexistent, not even a memory. It will be a new day, a better day–as it is written, trustworthy and true.
May it come.
Quickly.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. Revelation 21: 4-5
“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien
What happened last night in Aurora, Colorado is not fair. There could not have been a darker place than a theater where a masked gunman gassed, then shot and killed escaping movie goers at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie. I’m not a fan of the genre of troubled superheroes but my children and their friends and many of my patients are. They like to attend first movie showings at midnight in big batches, celebrating an anticipated release together. The young people who were killed and injured are just like them. It is so unfair, just like so many violent tragedies instigated by a desperate person wanting to prove a point through random killings, then make the news in a “suicide by police” gesture.
The media has just released information that the young shooter is a neuroscience graduate student withdrawing from his program–someone whose motives are still unknown but whose struggles were undoubtedly apparent to his family and mentors. He must be a bright and talented individual to have made it into a PhD program so this somehow compounds the tragedy.  One of the stark realities of our time is that before a shooter is identified by the media, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who wonder if and fear their family member (or patient) could be the one.  There are so many struggling with dark impulses and those around them often have a clue and have tried to help.  I’ve seen students in my practice with such thoughts and it is a heavy burden for them and for me to sort out how best to reduce the risk of them acting out their impulses. There have been times when hospitalization isn’t possible, when meds aren’t effective or not taken, when counselors are ignored, when families are non-existent support.  That is when I can only pray on my own for light in my patient’s darkness, that he will not become the next headline, the next suicide, the next mass shooting.
There must be unfathomable grief today on the part of the families of the killed and injured, and on the part of the family of the shooter, and the recent University administrators and others who may have tried to help him.  There is no response possible except to love these hurting people as deeply as possible, surrounding them with hope and prayer.  They will never be the same. The shooter has made certain of that.
The shooter didn’t extinguish the light nor has he extinguished himself, no matter how hard he hoped to. We need to make sure he failed in his goal. The media needs to draw a curtain around this tragedy and limit exposure.  To dwell on it only encourages this and the next mass murderer in their quest for infamy.
Our grief mingled with love grows the light brighter than ever;Â prayers for mercy can effectively flood and extinguish the darkest of places.
Perhaps the last thing James Holmes might expect is that there are people who will pray for him as well.
It is only fair.
Barnstorming 