A Word Against the Winter

Wisdom from The Two Towers that hit hard this year

It’s cold out. Unprecedented cold for all of my 36 years. Outside my door is half a foot of ice, not snow, ice. It wanes and creaks beneath me day after day when I go out to let the dogs play. The novelty has passed. This happens every year around the start of February, and the hopelessness becomes all-consuming. I have a message for you all today about that despair and a word of hope for you from The Two Towers.

“Now, lord,’ said Gandalf, ‘look out upon your land! Breathe the free air again!’ From the porch upon the top of the high terrace they could see beyond the stream the green fields of Rohan fading into distant grey. Curtains of wind-blown rain were slanting down. The sky above and to the west was still dark with thunder, and lightning far away flickered among the tops of the king of the golden hall and hidden hills. But the wind had shifted to the north, and already the storm that had come out of the East was receding, rolling away southward to the sea. Suddenly through a rent in the clouds behind them a shaft of sun stabbed down. The falling showers gleamed like silver, and far away the river glittered like a shimmering glass. ‘It is not so dark here,’ said Theoden. ‘No,’ said Gandalf. ‘Nor does age lie so heavily on your shoulders as some would have you think. Cast aside your prop!’