Tolkien & killling?

[DaughterofVana]

If we translate the divine to the mundane we must lose something.

Yet it's better than not trying to understand it at all. I didn't say that it is not understandable. It is. It is just not understandable outside of the human heart and mind. When we try and put it into words, to try and explain it, *then* that's where the trouble lies. I'm not really sure about gravity. I know that there are some complicated laws pertaining to it, but I don't need to know these laws inside and out to walk along the ground. But when I want to know more, to know the answer to the famous question "why," then I need to turn to the formulas. And, in the same way, the formulas can't really measure the force of gravity itself, only its effects on other things, so the formula in itself isn't giving me what I really need to know. But the truth of it is still there. I can feel it pulling me downwards, even though I'm not really sure why. But it's so much better than not knowing at all.

I think we can't truly understand them anyway. Who's to say we are getting the right meaning from parables and metaphors anyway? I have heard numerous interpretations of most, if not all, of the ones you allude to.

Actually, the interps of the "alluded" metaphors are all very similar, inside the sphere that it was meant to be interpreted. It is elsewhere that the "sects" who base their truth on these laws differ, and only in very, very, very superficial ways. The ultimate "truth" is still there, and the rest is just intellectual debate, and not really instrumental in the actual definition of the truth in the first place.

-'Vana