The Fellowship of More Than The Ring

By David Drury

 

In our day of newfound and surging evil collapsing our own Two Towers many will seek to salve their pain in the fantastic fantasy realm of Middle-Earth this December and beyond.  The life-work and written vision of British Author of the Century J. R. R. Tolkien is now re-introduced to us in what has become our Postmodern Book: the movies.  But beyond the story’s reintroduction the films may introduce to us another more consequential life principle wrapped around a concept enticing enough to draw a reader through a 1,000 page epic—or a studio into spending $300 million in bringing it to the screen.

 

Fellowship.  It is not a common term to see in lights on main-street.  I wonder how many of us would have gone to see “The Matrix Fellowship” or “The Fellowship of Austin Powers.”  But in reverence to the nearly-deified author this film will do more than bear that word as title.  The movie and at least the first part of the epic book is all about this fellowship.  So, then, you and I and soon the world may be asking, “What is fellowship?”

 

I don’t portend to know myself—for I am as lonely, unfriendly, and unfaithful as many in “the world.”  The question is only raised here.  But the question must be asked.

 

For sure the day has arrived in my country that people are considering their lack of fellowship.  People now have realized that what perhaps their grandparents had in their church or in their neighborhood or at their family they do not have themselves.  Events since mid-September have shell-shocked many into an introspective realization that they lack what they would not term as fellowship—but would express as a lack of some “thing” they can’t in fact express.

 

For sure the aforementioned films will arouse a keen admiration in viewers for The Fellowship which is to be dramatized for our entertainment.  Millions will connect with Frodo’s fear in the face of such a weighty task, and then fall in love with the devotion of Samwise his sidekick and likewise the honest friendship of fellow Hobbits Merry and Pippin.  Will we wish we all had a wizard like Gandalf to advise us?  A dwarf like Gimli or an elf like Legolas to protect us?  Human heroes like Boromir or Aragorn to surprise, test and inspire us?   Surely The Fellowship could not only visually entertain us but also spark in us the desire for a certain fellowship ourselves.  Indeed these may be the secret saviors of all Fantasy art and literature.

 

Far more unsure is who will answer the questions as to who our “fellowship” will be in real life.  Who will tell me who is to love, protect, advise, surprise, test, and inspire me?  Who will be my fellowship?  Who will be yours?  When I read the last page or when they scroll the credits who will be my fellowship of more than The Ring—the fellowship of my life?

 

 

 

 

©2004 David Drury

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