LMP, Bethberry,
So, we have Frodo 'repenting'. I wondered at first. Then the question got too big. Has Frodo anything to repent of? If he claimed the Ring in full knowledge of the implications, then, yes. He is, like Job, broken - but broken by his own 'sins', or by God, or by the way things are in the world?
Julian of Norwich wrote 'Our life here is penance'. For what? If our whole life is penance, then not for something we as individuals have done or not done. So penance for what? Being imperfect? Yet that's how we were made. Yet, if our life was not a penance, we could not be remade through suffering into something wholly different - as Tolkien says of Frodo. So, we repent of what we are - no matter who is responsible, or how it came to be that we did not appear already perfected. The 'wrongness' we feel - about the way world is, is because we are 'wrong'. We see as in a Glass, darkly. So everything seems dark. Till the Light shines - or until we can see it, till our eyes are opened. And Lewis said that pain is what opens our eyes, wakes us up. Suffering is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. So, we are awakened, & see beyond this little world, the 'Shadowlands' as he called them - always in shadow because the 'light' seems always to be shining somewhere else, over the next hill, around the next corner. We seem forever to be chasing that light, never realising that the reason it seems far away is because our eyes are darkened. The Light is everywhere, but we see it only in other people & other places. Chasing after God, without realising He is right here. Frodo feels lost, confused, broken, because he can't see himself as we or as God (thanks for that, Helen) see him. And his 'healing' will come when he is finally able to open his eyes & see what's really there,
who's really there. So, it all seems 'wrong' simply because we're not able to see that its 'right' - or at least that its well on its way to being so.
Frodo's story cannot be completed - not till our own is completed. Because till ours is completed we won't be able to see Frodo's complete. Or perhaps that should be we cannot hear the Happy ever after of Frodo's story, till our own is told to its end.
On a personal note, I remember, many years ago, walking by a river on a foggy day. Suddenly I had this sense that our lives are 'stories' God tells us, stories that while they are being told, seem absolutely
real. But when they're finished we can step back & laugh, or cry. But the stories will go on till the final word of the tale is spoken. And then we shall live 'happily ever after' beyond the stories, whether or not the story itself ended happily, because, after all, it is only a story. As Lewis put it, '
real life has not begun yet'.
And now I'm so far off topic I expect this to be removed not just to another thread but to another site altogether
