Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast. I'm Sarah Howell, one of your hosts. Earlier this fall, the Anselm Society had the privilege of gathering for our fall retreat. Part of this retreat was focused on extended workshops, a time to be filled, to grow in knowledge or craft, and to connect our vocations to the life of God. What you are about to hear is one of our speakers from that morning, Amy Bakley. Amy considers what a feast
signifies during troubled times. We are excited to share this incredible talk with you all today. And if you want access to the other 5 1/2 hours of content from that morning, consider becoming a monthly partner at any level and we will send you the complete video recordings as a thank you. Check the show notes for the link or just go to anselmsociety.org/fall Giving. We hope you enjoy this talk from Amy Bakley. Thanks for listening and thanks for helping make this work
possible. Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the Life of Christ. Good morning. I think we're going to go ahead and get started. This is making room for Kairos in an age of efficiency. 3 feasts from the Lord of the Rings and our practice of fellowship. If I may ask you to exercise your imaginations for a moment, it is the end of September and you are far from home.
The arms of the apple trees are laden with a rich red cheeked bounty. The smell of wood smoke lends A savory earthy note to each of your outdoor meals and these green and golden days seem the perfect time to go searching for mushrooms. But these are not days of leisure for you. No, you are tasked with a burden compact enough to carry in your pocket and yet too great to
comprehend. In these mellowing days of autumn, you are being pursued by agents of a dark Lord who is amassing an army to take over the world. And the further you go, the more you understand what the failure of your mission will mean. So naturally, when you are rescued by a mysterious yet jovial personage in the forest, you and your friends choose to spend the night in his home one night. Why not 2? Your hosts are captivating and the fair is hearty.
Never mind for a minute that there are snuffling black writers hot on your trail, or that you took 17 years to leave Bag End after Bilbo's Ring came into your keeping. 17 years during which the Dark Lord might have had time to make a wee bit of progress. This talk could be said to stem in part from my reaction as a 17 year old when I read The Lord of the Rings and wondered at the stops that Frodo and company made. Two nights in Tom Bombitil's
house weren't so much. One can believe a character on a life or death errand deserves a little break now and then. But I did pause when, a few chapters later, I came across the sentence. The hobbits had been nearly two months in the House of Elrond. Later still, after the Fellowship emerged from Lof Laurian, I read along as Sam looked up at the moon and wondered why it was in the wrong place. Surely they had only been about three nights in Lof Laurian, he guessed aloud.
Perhaps we stepped outside of time, Frodo suggests. But Aragorn sets them both straight. The old moon passed, and a new moon waxed and waned in the world outside while we tarried there. And so it was. They dwelt in the land of Lurian, eating and drinking and resting for a full month.
Meanwhile, I was fully in the grip of that marvelous phenomenon of readers, that second hand anxiety that strikes when a stubborn protagonist decides to go into an abandoned house on her own or a Hobbit decides to have one more meal on the road to Mordor. Pausing to feast is not a regular rhythm in our culture. Thanksgiving Day is perhaps the closest thing we have to a widely observed feasting
practice. Aside from this holiday, the dinner party is probably one of our most recognizable forms of feasting. We host them or hear of them as a backdrop for business deals or networking. If you are a part of certain circles in New York City these days, invitations to certain dinner parties or private restaurants act as social currency.
Meanwhile, articles about hosting gatherings talk about the pressure that many feel to make things perfect, or the dreaded tension of strained conversations that might take place, or simply the lack of time to prepare such events. We have jobs to do, and it often seems difficult to make room for spreading A festal board without some kind of benefit, social, financial or otherwise, to motivate us. We are in the middle of the action, and we have precious
little time and energy to waste. The Fellowship of The Lord of the Rings knows something about what it means to be in the middle of the action, and yet they stop along the way. I'd like to draw your attention to three of these stops today, one in the House of Tom Bombadil, one in Elrond's house in Rivendell, and one in La Florian, because I believe they have something significant to say about how we might approach the concept of time as we live our lives.
I believe that they powerfully suggest to us a different way of living in time. The ancient Greeks, as you may already know, had more than one concept of time. Two of these were called Kronos and Kairos, and both are used to refer to time in the original Koine Greek New Testament. Kronos time is time in its practical, measurable, ordinary form, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, etcetera.
Kairos time is the time that refers to the ripe or fitting moment, as when Jesus says the time has come, at last the Kingdom of God has arrived, you must change your hearts and
minds and believe the good news. Kairos time is thus also said to be a sort of transcendent time, the moments in which God brings situations to their fulfillment, where eternity intersects with Kronos. We have a sense of both Kronos and Kairos in our English term time, our single English term time, we say what time Is it referring to Kronos or it's time we picked those flowers referring to Kairos?
To the modern person pressed to live time according to the ticking of hands and the scheduling of online calendars, Kronos may seem like the main kind of time. Kronos runs in one long straight line, and the modern person's encounters with the eternal, if he perceives them, breakthrough here and there, perhaps one when he is 16 and again when he is 23 and 40, etcetera. The Kairos moments seem to be more or less unrelated, isolated events in our world.
Rightness, ripeness, maturity and eternity are not the main measures by which we view the development of time. Children don't graduate from college when they become men or women. They graduate, on average four years after matriculation. We don't ask our coworkers to bring the project back when it seems to be in its most excellent form. We ask for it by close of
business. On Friday, the CEO of a tech company wrote this summer that artificial intelligence is poised to make the world better by driving faster scientific progress and increased productivity. Perhaps nothing is quite as significant as the fact that we can use advanced AI to do faster AI research. If we can do a decade's worth of research in a year or a month, then the rate of progress will obviously be quite different. The rate of technological progress will keep accelerating,
he forecasts. This is Altman from Open AI, by the way. And it will continue to be the case that people are capable of adapting to almost anything. There will be very hard parts, like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand, the world would be getting so much richer so quickly that we'll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before. Faster, quicker, more production, acceleration.
These are words that reflect a certain philosophy driving the tech sector, to be sure, but they are also a mirror of our awareness of mortality of Kronos time ever running out. This CEO himself has invested millions of dollars in a biotech startup that is trying to develop drugs to extend the human lifespan, and he has reportedly joined a waiting list to preserve his brain after death by uploading it to the
cloud. In a world of progress run by mortals, we adhere to Kronos as our main reality, and thus often our only priority. But this is not the only way, and certainly not even the most accurate way to understand time and eternity. Christians believe that we live in a world where history curves around the divine, breaking in of eternity into time, the incarnation.
This poses a bit of a problem if we want to view time only as a line that keeps going and going, of days that we must continually seize in order to have meaning beyond our life spans. Here's what I mean. In his book How to Inhabit Time, James KA Smith walks the reader through Kierkegaard's
philosophical fragments. In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard wonders whether a person alive during the 1st century, during Jesus's ministry was closer to Jesus simply because he was there at the same chronos time. Am I not more removed from Jesus since I live in the 21st century, so many centuries after he walked this earth? Isn't that 1st century citizen less distant from him simply for having breathed at the same time? No, he is not, is what Kierkegaard concludes.
Because of that first century man or woman saw Jesus and did not know him for who he was, did not believe that he was the Incarnate God, then there is no confrontation with the eternal on his part, as Smith puts it. Even if that man did happen to glance up as Jesus strode by, Smith continues, historical proximity is not the same as an encounter with the God who
arrives in history. God calls us to follow him and makes our first hand encounter of Him available no matter what age we live in. In Smith's words, God is as near to the 21st century disciple as to the medieval St., and the medieval peasant is as near to God as the 1st century apostle.
If this is true, then our Kairos moments of experiencing the fullness of time are not pieces of eternity such that you encounter this piece at 16 and that piece at 23 and that piece at 40. They are encounters with the same thing, the same plane, the same fabric as it were encounters with eternity and the one whose nature defines eternity. This brings us back to the three on the Way Feast of the Fellowship.
I believe these feasts are occurrences of Kairos time for the hobbits and the other members of the Fellowship. For the purposes of this talk, by the way, I am counting the full stay in each of these three places as a multiple day feast. Each feast has a different focal point.
I would argue that the feast in Bombadil's house focuses on the past primarily through story, that the feast in Rivendell focuses on the present largely through song, and the feast in Lathlorian focuses on the future, especially with the giving of objects. And if I had more time, I would spell out the details. But the commonality between them all is that they are all Kairos moments.
What marks a Kairos moment? You might remember a time when it seemed like you were getting a foretaste of eternity. Let's look at 5 hallmarks of Kairos demonstrated in these three feasts, the way Kairos affects the people as they experience it, and see if they resonate. The first is a sense of timelessness. In Bombadil's house, the text tells us whether the morning or evening of one day or of many days have passed. Frodo could not tell. He did not feel either hungry or
tired, only filled with wonder. The stars shone through the window, and the silence of the heavens seem to be round him. Later that day, after listening to Tom, the hobbits find that under the spell of Tom's words, they may have missed one meal or many. This is a big deal for hobbits, as you know, but when the food was before them, it seemed at least a week since they had eaten in Elrond's house.
Bilbo tells Fredo. I can't count days in Rivendell, and as the Fellowship makes their way under the golden malorn trees of Lofleurian, we are told Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness when he had gone and passed again into the outer
world. Still, Frodo, the wanderer from the Shire, would walk there upon the grass among Eleanor and Nifidel in fair Lofleurian. Lorian, if you remember from the passage I quoted earlier, is where Sam loses passage, loses track of the passage of time altogether. Kronos time still flows, but they are caught up in something that eclipses the movement of the sun.
That sense of timelessness is a mark of the best feasts I have personally known, those gatherings when all the children are elated that their bedtimes have slipped unheated into the late night hours because conversation, laughter and sometimes healing tears have filled up the souls of those in attendance. Cairo satisfies us with its fullness. The second is the experience of
refreshment and rest. Frodo is so rejuvenated at Bombadil's house that after his first night stay, he wishes to linger when it rains all day the next day. He is glad in his heart and blesses the kindly weather because it delays them from departing. In Rivendell he wakes as a Hobbit, renewed. He found that he no longer felt in need of rest or sleep, but had a mind for food and drink, and probably for singing and
storytelling afterwards. The Lord of Lofleurian, Kelaborn, extends an invitation to the fellowship with this particular end in mind, saying You are worn with sorrow and much toil. Even if your quest did not concern us closely, you should have refuge in this city until you were healed and refreshed. Now you shall rest, and we shall not speak of your further Rd. for a while. And so they rest. It isn't a complete healing, remember that Frodo's wound will trouble him for all his days on
this side of the sea. But the restoration that the Fellowship experiences is still a mark of sojourn in Kairos time. There's a little aside. I don't think I'm going to be able to get to this, but it's wonderful to track. See if you can do this next time that you read The Lord of the Rings.
The many times that the hobbits or members of the Fellowship are confronted with the sound of running water as they're going through their journey, it comes to light in a lot of different places, but especially during these feasts of the Fellowship. I think it Harkins to back to the Silmarillion, to Ulmo, who is the valor in charge of water, I believe. And he's associated with the sound of water.
And I think one of the loveliest passages from the Silmarillion is that says, and it is said by the Eldar, that in water there lives yet the echo of the music of the inor more than in any substance else that is in this earth. And many of the children of a Lou Vatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the sea. And yet no, not for what they listen. So in the sound of running water there is this beckoning to eternity. And we can talk about that and Zane Zuked and the inconsolable
longing. If you would like to come up afterwards. We'll see. But thirdly, on to our third feature. We see reorientation happening within the minds of our travelers. I love that Grace mentioned Sojourner Truth saying what time of night is it? Because reorientation is when we figure out when we are, when we are where we are. In these feasts in The Lord of the Rings, our travelers understand that they are part of a larger story, and they understand where they are in the
larger story. Tom tells the Hobbit's remarkable stories that began at the Old Forest and course back, and then further back to the kings of ancient kingdoms, and further back still, into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought. Into times when the world was wider and the seas flowed straight to the western shore. And still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient Starlight when only the elf sires were awake.
Later, as they listen to Goldberry songs, they perceive greater expanses, the sky and pools and waters in their minds, which seem to have a similar effect as when Job considers the cosmic work of God. The Council of Elrond brings the danger of the Ring and the plight of the surrounding lands to the forefront of the Fellowships attention so that they know what role they must each play in the journey to
come. In Loflaurian, as Frodo looks into Galladriol's mirror, he sees swift scenes that he in some way knows to be parts of a great history in which he has become involved. In Kairos we see more clearly what we miss as we go through our daily routines. We see where our lives fit in the great tale of creation, fall, redemption and restoration, and we have a sense
that our faithfulness matters more than we think. 4th There seems to be something in the nature of Cairo's time that gives its participants a desire to create. Around the table at Bombadil's house, the hobbits find themselves drawn into the musical language of the place, the narrator observes. They became suddenly aware that they were singing merrily, as if it was easier and more natural
than talking. In the Great Hall in Rivendell, Frodo finds Bilbo intent upon making up a song, and in Loft Laurie and Frodo himself begins to put something of his sorrow into halting words. His thought took shape in a song that seemed fair to him, yet when he tried to repeat it to Sam, only snatches remained, faded as a handful of withered
leaves. In this way, Cairo's time itself seems to be generative, which is Makoto Fujimura's term for a contribution that over time recognizes, produces, or catalyzes more beauty, goodness and flourishing. We might recall Hannah and Mary's songs from scripture which are born of their separate encounters with the Almighty. It seems that being in the presence of the Eternal Creator sets a resonant sub creative desire ringing in our own souls.
Lastly, and this 5th aspect is mainly shown in Frodo, the three feasts show us that entering Cairo's time puts us in closer connection with other times and places. In Bombadil's house, Frodo dreams about Gandalf being rescued from a tower by an eagle, an event that actually takes place about 9 days prior. When he nods off while listening to Elvis songs in Rivendell, Frodo seems to be swept along by
their power almost. It seems that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened up before him, and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then he falls asleep, and there he wandered long into a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice. It seemed to be the voice of Bilbo chanting verses.
Later, in Lathlorean, Frodo sees an image in Galladriol's mirror that looks very much like Gandalf, although surely this could not be as Gandalf fell in Moria. A figure clothed not in Gray, but in white, A white that's shone faintly, faintly in the desk, and in its hand there was a white staff. He has no explanation for the image, but the vision is clear. Kairos, by its very nature, allows us a glimpse outside of Kronos time.
And we find, as Kierkegaard reflected regarding the contemporaries of Christ, that some events are more closely related and intertwined in the work of eternity than clocks and calendars would have us believe. The whys of Middle Earth know the importance of Kairos time. Bombadil, Elrond and Keliborne and Galadriel counsel their guests to leave when certain circumstances have ripened and the time is meet. Not, as my husband noted, on such and such a date at 6:00 PM.
They are living with an awareness of Kairos even though urgent matters in Kronos time press upon them. All the feasts they host in their troubled age may be one of the most important things we witness in reading The Lord of the Rings today. As creatures who are made to live in Kronos time, we do not control Kairos. We cannot force the situation to rightness the way we force forsythia or Tulip bulbs to flower in winter.
We cannot dictate when eternity should break in and bring its timeless refreshment and reorientation and creativity and connection to other points and Saints in history. But feasting is one of the few active ways that we can make room for Kairos, through which we can invite eternity in and ask our Eternal King to do his work.
I think of the feasts I've had the honor of attending, Thanksgiving meals, dinners with friends, birthday gatherings, retreats or conferences where relationships were deepened and priceless memories were made. If the hosts hadn't taken the initiative to host them. If the Anselm Society staff hadn't planned this weekend for months and months. If our churches shuttered themselves on Sunday, none of those gifts would have come into being.
Imagine such a feast with me then, patterned after both the three feasts we have been discussing and the example of our God who prepares a table before us even in the presence of our enemies. We begin with preparation. The guests of our feast are given the opportunity to feel clean and rested and dignified again, like our own master who Stoops to wash his disciples feet. Bombadil cries. Come now, my merry friends, and
Tom will refresh you. You shall clean grimy hands and wash your weary faces, cast off your muddy cloaks and comb out your tangles Before the evening meal at Rivendell, Frodo finds laid, ready, clean garments of green cloth that fit him excellently. Our table is laden with good food, something more than bare rations. The very definition of a feast is that it is more than necessary, which reminds me of Wendell Berry in his poem The Mad Farmer's Manifesto, about making more tracks than
necessary. Not excess for the sake of excess, but a joyful expression of abundance that sets this occasion apart from the usual. At Bombadil's table the hobbits partake of yellow cream and honeycomb and white bread and butter, milk, cheese and green herbs and ripe berries. It was a long and merry meal, we are told. Though the hobbits ate as only famished hobbits can eat, there
was no lack. The drink in their drinking bowls seem to be clear cold water, yet it went to their hearts like wine and set free their voices. This is simple, but plenteous and pleasant, fair, and is redolent of the wine. At the wedding of Cana, which was also good and abundant. Our imagined merrymaking is held
to mark some notable occasion. Whether is it is momentous, as when Gandalf says at Rivendell. Soon there will be feasting and merrymaking to celebrate the victory at the Ford of Brewingen, and you will all be there in places of honor, or more along the lines of ordinary miracles, as when Goldberry says the rain has ended and new waters are running downhill
under the stars. Let us now laugh and be glad Kelleborne and Galadriel hold their parting feast to build to bid their last farewell, and in their words to the fellowship to speed you with blessings from our land. The feast prescribed in the Old Testament mark the provision, redemption and rescue of God's people. So we celebrate and find occasion for celebration.
And so our imagined feast is also a place for reminding ourselves of what is old and enduring and good truths that we already know but need to hear again, so that we meet them as the Church meets the folds of the liturgical calendar with a newness that is yet steeped in history year after year. In such a feast, conversations weave between members of multiple generations for, as Smith suggests, and how to inhabit time. If you want to transcend time, build friendships across generations.
Though you can't stand outside your season, you can hear from those who've lived through such seasons. Friendship, in this respect, is akin to time travel. One gets the sense that when the hobbits ask Tombadil, Tom Bombadil, excuse me, all sorts of questions on their first night, or when Frodo watches Elrond, Gloerfendel and Gandalf seated together. That courage woven by wisdom and respect between the old and the young and the very, very old is
not a cloth easily torn. And of the elements of our feasting, perhaps most arresting of all is the art that we have to offer each other. That is more than the knowledge or skills that we can pass on. Stories and songs and dance and visual art invite us into the reality of a wider story, whether in Middle Earth or on present day earth.
Come, be still and listen. The sharing of art reminds us that we still have hearts that can be broken, tears that can be shed, and nobility hidden in our neighbors. Still, At a feast like this, it is a gift to realize that there is more goodness in the world than you had thought. We raise our glasses to our lips and find the bright nourishment
of hope flowing into our souls. When Frodo and Sam and all the rest of the Fellowship find themselves in Italian after the War of the Ring, and they are rested and washed and clad, a minstrel of Gondor begins singing the tale of Frodo of the 9 Fingers and the Ring of Doom. And all the hosts laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment, in tears, the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold.
And all men were hushed. And he sang to them now in the elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed and thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together, and tears are the very whine of blessedness. We still live in Kronos time.
It is right that we should be mindful of Kronos and even embrace it, because this is the time in which we are given to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and the work that each one of us has been given to do. The fellowship had their road to travel as the apostles had theirs, and we have ours, but it is in Cairo's time that we are strengthened to do our work. Remember Lucy Pevensey burying her head in Aslan's mane and lifting her face, no longer
afraid. Remember the example of Christ at the last, at the Last Supper, with his friends, making ready for what was to come. We are giving Kairos stops to remember who we are and who walks with us, especially when the days are dark and the progress is hard. Sometimes those stops do not last as long as we'd like, but what is important is that we accept their welcome. When Samwise Gangi draws near to the end of his time in L'athe
Lurie and he confesses. I've often wanted to see a bit of magic, like what it tells of an old tales, but I've never heard of a land better than this. It's like being at home and on a holiday at the same time. If you understand me, I don't want to leave. All the same, I'm beginning to feel that if we've got to go on, then we'd best get it over. He has been made ready. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, but encouraging one
another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near. The book of Hebrews urges us, and so, even if it should prove hard, to gently rise and softly call good night and joy be to you all as the song, the parting glass ruse. Let us raise our cups, look to Him who is head of both our body and our table, and make room for the Kairos feast. Thank you for the honor of your time. The Imagination Redeemed podcast is a production of the Anselm Society.
It's easy to see this world as disenchanted and to give up hope that there's more. But you were made to see the world with the eyes of heaven and to live a bountiful life that participates in the life of God, like in the great stories. To help make the show possible, go to anselmsociety.org/podcast
25 and make a donation. The Anselm Society is a place where you can come in and experience that beauty, joyful celebration, and ancient wisdom and go out renewed, bringing that life to your vocation, home, and church. Learn more at anselmsociety.org and join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the Christian imagination together.