Tolkien’s Trees and Wonderful Transformation

This article is part of the Eucatastrophe “Top Ten” sent out to all new subscribers.

If I had the privilege of serving as executive producer for an upcoming Tolkien flick—either big screen or television—I know how I would craft the opening scene. Sunbeams would swiftly rise over a mountain peak. This leading camera shot would roll our vision into a shimmering, green-grass field with morning mist. The shot would then take us up close on a lone tree in the center of the dew-dripped, steaming field. The stately tree would be beautifully shimmering with golden leaves. Suddenly, the pervasive steam would wisp upward into a smoke-like ring. Then, with gathering momentum, it would rush with rapid descent into the stump of a pipe. Viewers would discover the pipe to be in the mouth of a middle-aged author seated on a felled log, sketching words in Elvish script…

Louis Markos, Ph.D., is a professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University and hold the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. Dr. Markos is a respected and widely requested speaker on C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Christian worldview as well as the arts, education, the new age, apologetics and Ancient Greece and Rom. He is the author of several books and numerous lectures and articles. His most recent book is On the Shoulders of Hobbits: the Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis.

This talk is part of the April 2019 bundle available here.

Sam Gamgee: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?“

The resurrection is the answer to Sam Gamgee’s question. Yes, everything sad is going to come untrue…

There is a great scene toward the beginning of the extended movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring. A table of hobbits are sitting together enjoying each others company when one of them says, “There’s been some strange folk crossing the shire I heard. Dwarves and others of a less than savory nature. War is brewing…