Sunday night, the stay-up-late-reading part of my family was reading through The Fellowship of the Ring. Everyone should read about Tom Bombadil while sitting around a fire pit. Bombadil is one of those characters that separates real Rings fans from novices. He is not in the movies. He is a mysterious force of nature—or maybe he is nature itself personified. He helps the Hobbits as they are fleeing from Black Riders on the way to Rivendell. It has been a few years since my last reading of the Rings and this time I was blown over by something that slid right past me on the other reads. Frodo gives the Ring of Power to Bombadil. This Ring, the One Ring, has special powers. It corrupts and destroys all who hold it eventually turning them into creatures like Gollum who shakes his fist at the sun and retreats beneath the mountains (asking them to fall on him) or they turn a more powerful being into something like the Dark Lord himself. This corruption comes from all of the evil power vested in the Ring.
People possessing it are corrupted by its power—although they constantly long for it whenever it is taken from them. The Ring also make its wearer disappear. It makes people become, like Augustine’s conception of evil, an absence. It does this throughout the Trilogy. It does this in the prelude called The Hobbit. Its powers do not work on Bombadil. Frodo entranced by Tom’s tales and presence gives the Ring to Bombadil. Tom laughs at it, plays with it like a child’s trinket and then with a little slight of hand makes the Ring disappear for an instant—much to the chagrin of Frodo. When Tom hands the Ring back to Frodo, Frodo is not sure that it is the real Ring. He has to try it on to make sure that it is the Ring that will make him disappear. He figures that Tom like everyone else desire the Ring and it power. When he slips it on, he finds that it is the real Ring because his friends can not see him. To Frodo’s shock, however, Tom does. The Rings power and allure hold no hold on Bombadil.
That got me thinking about the modern quest for power, power and more power. The modern world is mesmerized by power. Iran is trying to build nuclear missiles so that they can have power. President Obama is trying to push through Healthcare to increase his power. Educators keep telling us that education is the key to making money—and money of course is nothing more than the ability (under most circumstance) to make your wishes incarnate. I am afraid, however, that this Will to Power as Nietzsche called it has its down side. Our need for our ring makes everyone else look like a threat or a sales opportunity. We are afraid that others will try to take advantage of us or diminish our power or we see them as possible people that we can have power over. What is lost in all of this? Love. The world is dying because our love has grown cold and we have craved power (this is an approximation of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost). As we lose love, we grow increasingly distant from each other. We climb under our own mountains and shake our fists at the sun.
How can we escape this terrifying pattern when the whole world has its heart set on the Ring? I think that Bombadil gives us a good starting point. I think that the spell has to be broken. I think that contact with nature is a good way to do this. Dig your fingers in the dirt or go for a walk amongst the oldest trees that you can find. That dirt was probably there when Washington was crossing the Delaware. Some trees, the redwoods at least, were standing when Pilate condemned Christ. Men have warred under their shade intent upon heaping up power. As we grasp for it, it slips through our grasp and the love and joy of life are set aside. We have to learn from the trees and the rocks that all of our struggles are passing. All of our great weapons and trials are, to them, a matter of little importance. That does not excuse us if we are not faithful. It does, however, begin to put our world in its place.
