What's your ring?

Frodo and the One Ring

Recently (Lent had already begun), my youngest son spent some time with me in my office at church. Fortunately, I have so much stuff in my office to entertain him that i didn't have to pay much attention to him. Whenever he needed help solving one of the many mysteries he was uncovering I'd help him. Like when he discovered my former "office chair" - a gigantic bouncy ball I had deflated and put back in its box because I had reached my bouncing quotas for a non-traditional office chair. Of course, he took it out and spent all that ever-flowing energy inflating it again.

Once that mission had been accomplished and still armed with time on his hands to look at everything he could, there came a point when he called my attention to my old copy of The Lord of the Rings sitting on one of my shelves. I must confess I had forgotten about it. He asked me why I had bought one of his brothers the book just a few weeks back when I already had a copy. All I could answer was, "Son, I forgot it was here."

That copy of LOTR is of sentimental value to me. It had been lying around the house for the longest time until I realized I had to actually remove it from utter destruction. My boys would have made sure of that. I took the different separate parts (it had come to that) and put them back into a coherent whole and brought it to my office. The book had been thoroughly read and used. Its spine had been cracked in more than a few spots. This paperback copy lived in that hallowed level of existence that describes a once been brand new book turned into the envy of books never cracked open.

I bought my copy of LOTR at Barnes and Noble in Valencia, California, a few months before the first installment of the Peter Jackson movies came out in 2001. I read the book throughout the course of the three years that it took for all movies to come out finishing shortly after The Return of the King in 2003.

For some reason the book caught my attention once my office invading son made me lay eyes on it. I asked him to take it off the shelf and give it to me. Embracing my inability to stay focus on the task at hand, I started scanning the book and came across many sections I had highlighted early on in my reading many years ago. When I got to chapter two, Book 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring, my eyes stopped scanning and started reading again. Chapter 2 is titled The Shadow of the Past. It contains a striking dialogue between Gandalf, who had just come back to the Shire for a visit, and Frodo concerning the ring. I'll quote that part of the dialogue here,

'How long have you known this?' asked Frodo at length. 'And how much did Bilbo know?'

'Bilbo knew no more that he told you, I am sure,´ said Gandalf. ´He would certainly never have passed on to you anything that he thought would be a danger, even though I promised to look after you. He thought the ring was very beautiful, and very useful at need; and if anything was wrong or queer, it was himself. He said it was "growing on his mind", and he was always worrying about it; but he did not suspect that the ring itself was to blame. Though he had found out that the thing needed looking after it did not seem always of the same size or weight; it shrank or expanded in an odd way and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.´

'Yes, he warned me of that in his last letter,' said Frodo, 'so I have always kept it on its chain.'

'Very wise,' said Gandalf. 'But as for his long life, Bilbo never connected it with the ring at all. He took all the credit for that to himself, and he was very proud of it. Though he was getting restless and uneasy. Thin and stretched he said. A sign that the ring was getting control.' P. 46, 1994.

Ah, control. What a lovely word. Especially now during Lent when we do our best to let go of things we consider having too much control over us. I think it was God´s grace in the form of a nine year old that drove me to the text from the LOTR quoted above. Precisely because we all struggle, like Bilbo and eventually Frodo, with letting go, relinquishing control is an excruciating endeavor for most of us. And then comes Lent to remind us precisely that we need to let go even more. Don't get me wrong. I thank God for Lent. It is one of my favorite seasons in the church year, but not for the reasons one might think. I relish the opportunity and welcome the call to self-examination and repentance that Lent invites me into. I thank God for his free gift of the Holy Spirit to work continually in me to make me into the image of his Son Jesus Christ. I am humbled by his superabundant grace when I know I come up short, particularly since I'm not good at keeping the disciplines I eagerly set out to keep during the season.

It´s not the drastic, cataclysmic things in our lives that usually gain control over us, although they may. It´s the small continual things that seep through the tiny cracks in our souls without us noticing them over time. As Gandalf noted to Frodo regarding Bilbo and his beautiful ring, 'A sign that the ring was getting control.' This "getting control" happened over a lifetime. Think about it. Bilbo credited his longer than usual lifespan to anything and everything save the ring. The paradox is that the real cause for the length of his life was actually the thing that was ultimately destroying it. The only thing that saved Bilbo's life was relinquishing the ring, the thing he loved the most. The only way he did it was by actually going as far away from it as he could. He left for a safe place, his refuge became the House of Elrond in elven country.

It is always a struggle to challenge those things deeply rooted in our souls which we know we have to uproot. Sometimes it's way easier to let them alone, undisturbed. But the question is "Can we afford not to disturb them?" Lent is a continual calling not just for a season but for a lifetime to disturb those things in us that have become cozily settled gaining control over us without paying attention to what's happening to us in the process. We need to be unsettled this Lent and always because we are on a collision course with the most unsettling event in the history of humanity, the Crucifixion - the war to end all wars, the death to end all deaths. Will we be ready when we get there?

May God grant us grace to allow ourselves to be unsettled, shaken from the bounds of fictional control unto the spiritual and physical reality where it is the Holy Spirit of God the one who actually holds the reigns of our lives and calls all the shots making us truly free. God who delights in being merciful may send some unsuspecting nine year old to help us in the process. So whatever they maybe, Lord grant us the strength to take our rings of power off.