“Our time is beginning to look black…. the Shadow takes another shape and grows again,” says Gandalf the Gray in the opening chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The situation in Middle-earth is so like our own today, I’ve turned once again to Tolkien for consolation and inspiration, rereading my old well-worn copies of the books.

Frodo the hobbit responds to the wizard’s dire news: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Old Théoden King feels the same when he comes out of the spell Wormtongue has put on him and agrees to take his part in the perilous Quest before him: “Alas! that these evil days should be mine, and should come in my old age instead of that peace which I have earned.” So say many of us. “And so do all who live to see such times,” laments Gandalf. “But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

But “how shall [we] judge what to do in such times?” asks Éomer of Rohan. “As ever [we have] judged,” Aragorn answers him. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear…. [But] none may live now as they have lived.”

Hour of the Little People

“I am not made for perilous quests,” objects Frodo. “Why was I chosen?” We may ask the same. “Such questions cannot be answered,” Gandalf assures us. “But you have been chosen and must use such strength of heart and wits as you have.”

Like Frodo, we may feel “very small and very uprooted, and well – desperate” when “the Enemy is so strong and terrible.” But how we feel doesn’t matter because in Middle-earth then as on earth now, this is the “Hour of the Little People.”

As Elrond Halfelven explains at the Council in Rivendell, neither strength nor wisdom “will carry us far” on the hard road that lies ahead, and those of us who feel weak may attempt it as well as the strong. “Such is oft the course of deeds that move the world,” he continues. “Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

Although Frodo is a little “halfling” and feels a sense of dread and an overwhelming desire to remain in peace and not take up the Quest, he agrees to throw the Ring of Power into the Cracks of Doom, although he doesn’t know the way.

In our own times, too, this is the Hour of the Little People, “when they arise from their quiet [lives] to shake the towers and counsels of the great.” The elven Lady Galadriel warns us that the stakes are high: our own quest “stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.” She also cautions us that we are not responsible for the whole effort and everyone involved: “You are only answerable for the doing of your own task.”

So, “Look not too far ahead!” Elrond counsels. It’s important to do our part, yes, to take our first steps, but one step at a time, pacing ourselves. “Cast aside regret and fear,” Gandalf tells Théoden after his return as the White Rider. “Do the deed at hand” – and only that deed. “If we fail, we fail. If we succeed – then we will face the next task.”

The Hour of Friendship

This is not only the Hour of the Little People, but the Hour of Friendship as well. Gandalf insists that it’s best to trust in friendship, even more than wisdom. The good news is that Frodo doesn’t have to go alone, nor do we, but connect with “such friends as are trusty and willing.” Elrond assures us of the numbers who are part of our Fellowship far and wide: “You do not stand alone. Your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world.” And he reminds us, “You may find friends upon your way when you least look for it.”

But “where shall I find courage?” we may ask with Frodo. Gildor the elf promises that courage, too, is “found in unlikely places” where we least look for it.

Hope without Hope

A major theme for Tolkien and in my own life is the question of hope. Elrond sums up his farewell discourse to the Company with these haunting words: “There is naught you can do, other than resist, with hope or without it.”

After Merry and Pippin have been captured by the monstrous orcs, Aragorn speaks of “hoping against hope” and following their trail “with hope or without hope.” As he and his companions are tempted to give up the search and Gimli the dwarf calls it a “bitter end to all our hope,” Legolas comforts him: “Do not cast all hope away.”

Why? Because “tomorrow is unknown.” And who can predict what we may find at the rising of the sun? “Dawn is ever the hope of men,” proclaims Aragorn later at Helm’s Deep when the battle seems lost.

The scene after Gandalf falls into the chasm of Khazad-Dûm fighting the Balrog is one of the most tragic for me and one of the most inspiring over the tumultuous decades that followed in my own life after I first read Lord of the Rings.

“Fly, you fools!” are the last words the Company hears from Gandalf. As they escape out of the mines of Moria and “came beyond hope under the sky and felt the wind on their faces,” grief overcomes them, and they weep long: “some standing and silent, some cast upon the ground.” Aragorn bids Gandalf farewell as he raises his sword and looks towards the mountains. “Alas… What hope have we without you?” But then he exclaims, “We must do without hope…. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.”

Rivendell Rest and Respite

We also have a long road and much to do. With hope or without it. Fearful, yes, uncertain of the way, longing for home and peace and the way things were. But in the midst of the struggle, not all is darkness and dread. Frodo finds comfort and rest at Tom Bombadil’s where he does “not feel either hungry or tired, only filled with wonder.”

In the respite he’s given with the elves in Rivendell, he doesn’t forget the future, “good or ill,” but for a while it “ceases to have any power over the present” so that “health and hope” can grow strong in him again as he experiences deep contentment with “each good day as it [comes], taking pleasure in every meal, in every word and song.”

Later, after even more harrowing trials along the road, Galadriel gives the Fellowship refuge in Lothlórien: “Here lay aside your burden for a while” and “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Worn out with sorrow and toil, “they did little but eat and drink and rest, and walk among the trees, and it was enough.”

We need to create Rivendell and Lothlórien times for ourselves, too, as we protest and resist the Ring of Power today, times that refresh us like they did faithful Sam Gamgee, times that feel “like being at home and on a holiday at the same time… [like being] inside a song.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places,” Haldir the elf reminds us. But “still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”  Love, like joy, is resistance.

The figure of Gandalf is a great treasure, sculpted for me by Sean McGrath in 1991 when we were both profoundly immersed in Lord of the Rings. Sean himself is Gandalf.