Mystical Realms Newsletter for June, 2014
Jef Murray
Greetings!
And welcome to my newsletter for June, 2014! Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think would be interested in keeping up with me! To receive these newsletters regularly, please drop me an email or subscribe online from my website (http://www.JefMurray.com ) or at: http://groups.google.com/group/Mystical_Realms .
Pitchers ===============
• A new, revised, and expanded edition of Seer: A Wizard’s Journal has been announced and will be available for sale later this year. The 2nd edition of this collection of tales, poetry, images and reflections sports a new cover, many interior illustrations that are now reproduced in full colour, plus two “follow on” tales to the opening story, The Watchman, that more fully introduce characters that appear regularly throughout the remainder of the book. For more information, see: http://olorispublishing.mymiddleearth.com/2014/03/25/oloris-publishing-announces-expanded-version-of-seer-a-wizards-journal-by-jef-murray/
Prospects ===================
• The game is on for Tolkien fans in Kentucky! A Long Expected Party 3 (acronym AL3P) is completely booked, but you can still be put on the waiting list for lodgings on-site. You can also stay off-site and still register and join us. I’m delighted to announce that I will be one of three guests at the event, along with Dr. Michael Drout and Dr. Amy Sturgis. For more information, see: http://www.alep-ky.us/
Ponderings ==============
It’s humid, and in
the 90s (the mid-30s for folks who favour Celsius over Fahrenheit). There’s no
breeze. It’s too early for cicadas, but otherwise
I’d guess we were in August rather than June. Hills are hazy in the heat, and nothing
twitches at high noon save flitting flies.
These
are summer days in Georgia; when air is thick and breathing burdensome.
My old
high school once had a summer work program that allowed poorer students (or those who just
wanted extra pocket money) to earn some summer
change. There were paint crews that refreshed dingy dormitory rooms, cleaning crews that
stripped floors and washed windows. Pretty much
anyone could get one of these jobs, even overweight bookworms such as myself.
I was
in high school during the 70s, when the liberalism of the 1960s was coming home to roost. From
age 13 to 18, many of us found ourselves
in a culture that was retooling social, political, and sexual mores, and “do your own
thing” was the guiding principle. We were
cast adrift in a sea of hormones at a time when no one believed
in
solid land.
J.R.R.
Tolkien himself had just passed away, and on a hot, Georgia summer’s day, on a wooded
high-school campus that evoked images of the Shire,
I first opened the pages of The Fellowship of the Ring.
What I
encountered there was startling. This was not a simple story of good guys versus bad guys, but
a nuanced tale that stressed values that
perplexed me: values like the deep truth of human dignity, the need for restraint, honour, and
courage. Like the ghosts in C.S. Lewis’
The Great Divorce, I read for the “fun stuff,” but tried to studiously ignore those things
that went against all the rules of the Love
Generation.
Nevertheless,
the seeds were planted.
Over
the ensuing years, I lived out the itinerary of casual sex, gluttony, deceit, envy,
jealousy, and acquisitiveness that were all part
and parcel of the “if it feels good, do it” protocol. And if the lessons of Middle-earth didn’t
prevent this, they certainly provided a canvas
against which the depravity of our generation could be more clearly
discerned. Like so many teenagers in the 1970s USA, I was never given the grounding in
goodness that might have guided me more gracefully
through those tough years. Like so many teenagers then as now, I was taught _not_ to
believe in the seven deadly sins, and as a result,
I sampled them all.
But
Middle-earth always beckoned. And the stories of the Shire, as the stories of Arthur and the Round
Table, would whisper to me on muggy summer
days from the depths of deep green forests. Here Elves, like all noble creatures, continued
to walk the open glens, well beyond the reach
of the house-of-cards zeitgeist of the scoffing seventies.
In The
Return of the King, Eowyn says to Aragorn, "Too often have I heard of duty….may I not now
spend my life as I will?"
To
which Aragorn replies, "Few may do that with honour."
Today,
with so many of us, I see no belief in honour; I just see a continuation of the insanity of
the seventies. True virtue is hardly ever
modeled for young folk in our society, unless they are fortunate enough to be raised in a deeply
religious home. And even these men and maidens
are struck on all sides by a culture that seems to have collected
the worst aspects of the 1960s and 1970s and made them into a commodity; corrosive “truths”
that are pushed from every TV set, every
radio speaker, and every movie screen.
Eventually,
I can put it no more plainly that to say that Someone led me back to the Shire. And
J.R.R. Tolkien became, for me, that human being
whom I respected enough to listen to, even if my “listening” was to his letters, written decades
before to folk I would never know. Those
things that he treasured, I was eventually able to see as sound; those things that he found
unworthy, I became willing to discard.
And
now, on sultry summer days, I can intensely sense the presence of something greater, something
more stable, something richer…just past those
oak trees, and deep within the pooling shadows of the woods of summer. I can sense that True
Middle-earth trying to tease all of us away
from the porn sites and the shopping malls and back into an adventure that can only be
unlocked through virtue, patience,
sacrifice…and
prayer.
Take a
walk in these summer woods. Breathe the ripeness of earth growing and mysteries milling.
Model nobility, honour, courage, and restraint
for those around you; and I promise you that, some day, you’ll find that you, too, will
have found your way home to Middle- earth.