Imagine no religion

[Puddleglum]

Originally Posted by TheGreatElvenWarrior

I reread Mt. Doom last night in hopes that I could find a passage where Sam looks to the skies in Mordor and sees one star. He said something that might have referenced Eru, but I didn't find the passage

It's there. It's in the preceding chapter "The Land of Shadow"

Originally Posted by Land of Shadow

Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. 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.

His song in the tower had been defiance, rather than hope, for then he had been thinking about himself. Now his own fate, even his master's ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the thicket, laid himself at Frodo's side, and cast himself at once into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Like most else in LOTR, explicit reference to Eru is minimal or omitted. Tolkien wrote once to the effect that this was intentional. That the, if you will, "religious" elements were subsumed into the story itself, rather than stated explicitly. Thus, the characters do not (except only rarely) refer to Eru but the story is predicated upon both his presence and his sovereignty over the unfolding story.

Hence, Sam's returned hope is based upon his recognition that for all his seeming power and menace and bluster, Sauron is (in the end) futile and passing. It is hard, often, to grasp such a thought in the middle of such travails (which is one reason why few characters "do" grasp it - even for a moment), but it serves to express (I believe) Tolkien's hope - not only for the story of LOTR, but also, by extension, for our times - that when the story has finally reached the end all the pains and loss will be redressed and seen as no more than growing pains - as a rock climber forgets all his/her scrapes and bruises for joy of the view seen once the cliff top has been reached.