[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

davem, I have to smile sometimes how you communicate with the rest of us on this and other threads, as if you have found the Gospel According to Tolkien and are trying with all your might to communicate the evangelium, trying to get us all to believe.

I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe you're right. I'm not consciously trying to convert anybody, though. I just say what comes to me.

I for one wish I could go back to the way things used to be for me, and just believe, but it's not in me to do so anymore. I'm going to have to struggle through to the next "whatever". I sense that maybe Fordim and Bêthberry may be facing the same dilemma as I? A pure guess, that.

I think that happens when you try too hard. I think enchanment happens when you stop trying to be enchanted - when you stop analysing yourself, & the story, & the author - all the whys & wherefores, the metaphors & tying yourself up in knots with textual analysis & deconstruction & sundry other forms of literary mumbo jumbo. I can't help thinking of Tom & Goldberry, laughing, singing & dancing, living in a constant state of wonder & enchantment. No 'evangelium' there, no desire to convert. Try to analyse Tom, to 'explain' him, & he'll vanish with a wink & a laugh, but accept him, follow him, &

'You shall come home with me! The table is all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter.

Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them:
Now let the song begin! let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leaf, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, lilies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!
And with that song the hobbits stood upon the threshold, and a golden light was all about them.

(See that? I'm doing it again....