Wow - I'm sorry I've been away for a bit, I've missed a lot.
I do appreciate the prayers - I believe that good will is good will no matter what. But I am quite confident in my own faith as you are in yours.
When I read the Narnia books through the second time (because that was the time that gave me the twitches) I was in my teens and was well aware of the Christian allegory, and that's what hurt, actually. The Last Battle specifically (although I still find The Horse and His Boy kind of...if I dare say...racist, perhaps? Or at least intolerant of another culture). Because I went through a Christian phase prior to that. Had to - everyone I knew was Christian, it was sheer peer pressure; had to go to church to have a social life at all. My parents were very indulgent and dropped me off at the door and picked me up when it was over. I felt Spirit in church, no doubt. I met Jesus and still consider him a friend; I think we have an understanding. But none of the feelings I met in church were anywhere near as strong as the ones I felt in the woods, and the Voices there answered to other Names.
So anyway, all through high school and college I studied comparative religion and read many holy books and did much prayer and meditation, and that's how I came by the path I'm now on (fifteen years ago, that was). I'm very deeply convinced and no one will shake me of this: there is Truth in every path.
And as I was saying, that's why I still after all these years respect Tolkien so much: because he insults no one, and because people all over the world, of many faiths, have found meaning and beauty in his work. I have met Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and atheists and Pagans and Christians and Jews who love his books for deeply spiritual reasons that ring true for all of them in different but no less "right" or "wrong" ways, although Tolkien himself was a Catholic who remained always true to that. That is rare and important. That was what I was trying to say.
The theologian Matthew Fox once wrote that the most important difference between the demons and the angels is that Demons do not/cannot _praise_. But to be able to honor creation and its Creator: only those entities with a beauty of spirit can do that.
(BTW, I'm female. Not that it matters online. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] )
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