Deep in the Old Forest, 4 hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Mary, and Pippen followed a path beside the river with a windle. The afternoon sun beat down upon them, and a mysterious drowsiness began to steal over them. Soon all four hobbits had succumbed to the enchantment of a massive ancient Willow tree. Mary and Pippen leaned against its trunk while Frodo wandered toward the riverbank where the willows roots stretched into the water.
Sam alone remained vigilant. When he returned from gathering their ponies, he discovered Frodo partly submerged in the water, held down by a tree root. After pulling him free, they found to their horror that Pippen had vanished entirely into a crack in the tree's trunk while Mary was half trapped, his legs still visible outside. Their attempts to free their friends proved useless. In desperation, Sam suggested fire, and they began to build a small blaze against the tree's
trunk. The Willow trembled with rage, and Mary screamed that he was being squeezed tighter. Frodo, panic stricken, ran on the path crying for help. And then, remarkably, an answer came someone singing nonsensically, drawing closer. Suddenly a curious figure appeared, a man in a blue coat with battered hat, yellow boots and a long brown beard, carrying water lilies. Help, cried Frodo and Sam, rushing toward him. Whoa, whoa, steady there, cried the man, holding up one hand,
and they stopped short. Now, my little fellows, whereby you are going to puff in like a bellows. What's the matter here then? Do you know who I am? I'm Tom Bombadil. Trouble. Tom's in a hurry now, don't you crush by lilies. My friends are caught in the Willow tree, cried Frodo breathlessly. Master Mary's being squeezed in a crack, cried Sam. What? Shouted Tom Bombadil, leaping up in the air. Old Man Willow. Not worse than that, eh?
That can soon be mended. I know the tune for him, Old Grey Willow man, I'll freeze his marrow coal if he don't behave himself. I'll sig his roots off. I'll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Old Man Willow. Setting down his lilies carefully on the grass, he ran to the tree, began singing into the crack, broke off a branch and struck the Willow with it. You let them out again, old Man Willow, he said. What were you thinking of? You should not be waking.
Eat earth, dig deep, drink water, go to sleep. Bombadil is talking. He seized Mary's feet and pulled him free with a crack. Pippin sprang out as if kicked. The Willow shuddered from root to tip and fell silent. Thank you, said the hobbits. Bombadil burst out laughing. Well, my little fellows, said he, stooping to peer into their faces, you shall come home with me. The table is all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb and white bread and butter. Goldberry is waiting time and
answer for questions. Please set a supper table. You follow after me as quick as you are able. With that, he picked up his lilies and danced away along the path, beckoning the grateful Hobbits to follow.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the Life of Christ. Welcome to this special episode of the Imagination Redeemed podcast, which is also the kick off to our four week exploration of what the character of Tom Bombadil can teach us about vocation, calling, and mastery.
If you'd like to participate in the reading group and you're not with us live as we're recording this, head over to anselmsociety.org/bombadil to sign up because only this first conversation will be on the podcast. Before we get started, I have to thank Anselm's publications team, especially Caroline Williams, our associate editor and outreach coordinator, whose hard work and creativity made
this harebrained idea possible. This is what it is like to work with me. I read a book and I come charging out, brandishing and saying this is awesome. We should make people talk about it with us. And Caroline threw herself in and made it real. So we are joined by Pastor Chris Wiley, whose book In the House of Tom Bombadil inspired this series. CR Wiley, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Brian. I'm really glad to be with you.
So let's just start with the the the obvious question to me, which is you are a pastor, writer, grandfather, you've done so many things. What prompted you to put the time that it took into writing this particular book? Well, I think I just simply was puzzled and pleased with my introduction to Bombadil, and I wanted to learn a little more about him. I had some hunches when it came to what Tolkien was up to with the character, and I wanted to
see if those hunches were right. And also, I have a, a background writing on the theme of the household, and I thought Tom in particular added a dimension to the things I had written before that was worth exploring and could compliment some of the other things I had done. So that also played a role. So those things were pretty significant.
And I also think that there's some things going on, particularly with language and even metaphysics with Tom, that are really important for actually understanding Lord of the Rings, generally speaking. Have you found, as you've thought about this over the years, have you found that in your own conversations that people that have tended to have a lot of differing opinions as to not just why he's important, but even weather? Oh yeah, yeah. Well I think that there are two broad groups.
One group just is exasperated with the character and just wishes he'd go away and had never been in put in the story in the 1st place and they're just don't know why he's there. And then then there's another group of people who actually really, really like the character a lot and we'd like to know more about him. And he's enigmatic and he's enigmatic on purpose. Tolkien tells us he intends him to be that way, although I think he's a more fully developed
character in Tolkien's mind. He just gives hints here and there about what he's thinking about and what he's doing with the character. But those are the two groups, broadly speaking, of the first group, they're all about action and adventure, and they see this as a kind of a detour.
Maybe the best way to justify it is Tolkien didn't know what came next, so he decided to just waste a little time on this particular part of the book, you know, sending the hobbits into the forest and until he figured out what to do. But I, I know it's never satisfied with that way of thinking about it. Tolkey was a very fussy writer and he was known to throw out just vast reams of material if
it didn't please him. So, and then he, he did say in at least one letter that told that Bombadil served a purpose and that he was in the story quite he, he deliberately put him in for, for that purpose, to serve that purpose so that then he doesn't explain what it is. So you don't you're, you're, you're left guessing a bit. And I tried to, as I, as I explored the character, I tried to honor Tolkien's desire to keep him a little mysterious. So I didn't try to over explain
him or try to pin him down. I think that would have been presumptuous of me for one thing, but I also didn't want to spoil the fun because I think that there's just a lot of fun there. But I think I do think that, you know, they're a range of theories as to just what he is and why he's there and and so forth.
And, and they run everywhere from being just sort of a, well, a character that Tolkien made-up and actually is the oldest character in the story, not just in the sense that he says he's the oldest character Middle Earth, but he actually is the oldest character in the story because the Adventures of Tom Bomber, that was actually published before The Hobbit was published. So there's that.
But then, you know, to the other extreme where he's a Lou Vitar Incarnate, some people think that, you know, he's entered Middle Earth, but Tolkien put that to rest as well. He said no, he's not that. So he but then he doesn't go on to say much more. My, my, my one of my daughter's in law theorized that maybe he's Tolkas from the Sumarillion, which in a in a, in a strange sort of way can kind of work. If you're familiar with Tolkas, He's sick.
He's one of the Valar who is kind of a wrestler and is always laughing as he's wrestling. He's and even when he's pursuing Morgoth or Melkor, he's having a great time. So that was my that was my daughter in I don't. Yeah, well, I mean, if if you're if these are the kinds of conversations you're having, you're clearly marrying off your
children very well. OK, So and, and the, the Aluvitar theory, I mean, there's there's some good reasons that you cover in the book as to why that's probably not it, but there's also some solid initial thoughts as to why someone would start barking up that tree. Can you unpack that a little bit? Sure. Well, there's that point. Well, the the identity of Bombadil is something that Tom even brings up when he first meets The Hobbit. So he says, you know who I am?
I'm Tom Bombadil. Like, you know, there you go. And then he just keeps repeating it, you know, talking about himself and his name and so forth. But then when Frodo meets Goldberry and Thomas out of earshot, he asks her directly, you know, who is this guy? And then she responds, he is not. Anyone who knows Genesis and I'm sorry, Exodus and the Gospel of John would kind of get a very subtle nod to the self revelation of Yahweh to Moses and the burning Bush.
When he asked who shall I say send me? And he says I am. So the response is I am, I am that I am. So you know, that would be one reason why somebody could say, well, there you go. There's a hint. But I think that may I, I think that Tolkien was up to something a little different with that episode and I'm happy to get into that. But. But that's one reason why someone I think plausibly could suggest this is a Lou Vitar or a Roux, depending on what name you prefer.
OK, what are the other leading theories that you've encountered? Well, it I think it you know, a Valar Amaya, one of the one of the primordial kind of spirits of that was instrumental in creation. If you're familiar with the story recorded in the summer early to the creation of Arda or Middle Earth. So I I think that has a lot going for it.
But I do think we have reason to believe or reasons to believe that he knows the song or at least is familiar with the tune was the means by which the world was created. So I don't know if if people in our audience are familiar with that that creation story. But in the very opening scene of the Sumarillian, we have the creation of the world, and in that scene, a Louvitar, which is the one, or Aru, it's another name. He creates what really, you
know, is the angelic host. They're the offspring of his thought, and they sing before him. There's this marvelous description of how these angelic beings, the Valor, come to sing harmoniously in in concert with one another. And they sing before Aru. And he's pleased with that, with their singing. And then they sing a mighty song. And in the midst of that song, one of the valor, the mightiest of the the valor, of course it would be him.
Melkor introduces dissonance into the into the tune. And then that leads to cacophony and the series of of movements in the, in the total musical unfolding of this great concert of music. And then Aru, after they're done singing, tells them why. He says to them, behold, this is what you have sung. And they have they see in the distance Arda, Middle Earth has come into being through their song. So they they've actually told the entire story. So it's also a providential
sequence. Everything that occurs in the song will be, you know, sort of manifested or imaged forth in that world. And then some of the valor enter that world and they are the valor who are in the uttermost West in the in the course of the story. And I'd have to tell the whole story, I guess that to kind of fully, you know, do justice to what's going on. But but that's, that's the beginning.
And one of the things I, I have suspected is that the reason why Bombadil's singing is so powerful is that he recalls the nature of things. He, he calls back to memory what things were meant to be and what they were made for. So even in that little sequence that you describe the deliverance of the hobbits from, from Old Man Willow, it's worth noting that Bombadil tells the tree to behave like a tree again. So the tree was behaving very unnaturally. You know, trees weren't meant to
eat hobbits, right? So, so it's departed from its nature and he's calling it back to its nature, you know, you know, dig deep, drink water, you know, go, go to sleep, behave like a tree, you know, go back to your tree Ness. And so I, I think that's, that's an indicator that perhaps Tom was there when the song was originally sung. I don't know. It's, it's a, it's just a, it's a, it's a theory that I, that I, you know, present for consideration all. Right.
And, and yeah, for those of you who don't, aren't familiar with the Silmarillion or maybe haven't even read the books, and this is, this is your, your first foray to get past the, the movies into the books. This the, the, the, my art line of thinking kind of puts him in the same category as as Gandalf and Zara men. And so you know, above men, but not crazy far above men compared to some of the other options in the Silmarillion. Right. And the mire would have been there at the singing.
So they, they were there, you know, they're of the same nature as the Valor, but lesser in stature, you could say. So I, I, I don't want to spend too much time on the origins of Middle Earth peace, but one thing that I think is, is interesting to me is that the, the, the beginning is first of all, love. That's with both Lewis and Tolkien's mythology that the universe is sung into existence. But the, the song there, the way that the, the others are called
into the song. And then dissonance, sin, if you will, is introduced into the song. And he's even, he's even able to make that into a meta narrative and resolve it and how even your, even your dissonance can't ruin my song. It's gorgeous, but it's also very participatory. It's very right. Yeah, it's it's they're being called into the song, whereas Tom's singing. One of the one of the arguments that seems to me against that is that Tom's singing is very self
expressive. It's not he's this is, this is me. This is who I am. I am being who I am. He's not inviting other people to sing with them. Yeah, I think that's a fairpoint. My my thought is with respect to his musicality and even just kind of the lyrical quality of his speech, even when he's not singing, there's a kind of melodic feel to it that there's some sense in which the original song is being somehow bodied forth by Tom, you know, maybe in
the Tom Bombadil key. But, and I think I think the same is true for Goldberry. There's a kind of harmony that you see in terms of the relationship, even in the physical Dement aspects of it, the way they move and how they respond to each other's movements and so forth. And so I think that the, the underlying, I guess theme is harmony and that there is a kind of mutuality and harmonic interaction between Goldberry and Tom.
And I think that that is something you see in the very origins of the of the, you know, of Middle Earth in, in in the first section of summer early. We'll talk about that a lot more as we get further into your book in a couple weeks. But it's it's worth drawing attention to that early. The I, I think you do such a beautiful job in the book
drawing attention to this. There's so much about modernity that that conditions us to to view difference with suspicion that can that hierarchy with suspicion and get get real defensive about certain kinds of things because, oh, I, I know where that's going and I'm not going to like it. But Tolkien just seems Tolkien just seems fearless in portraying this picture of yeah, this complimentary hierarchy and difference. And these are not, these are not Goldberry and Tom are not the same.
And they each have these beautiful, beautiful strengths and powers. And this it's this seamless dance among them. Like, like you said just at the beginning. Any any speculations as to why that was such an important thing to Tolkien to put in this sort of this this part of the book that is kind of an aside from
the journey? Yeah, I, yeah, I, I think for one thing, Tolkien was a remarkably well educated person and he's able to, like Lewis, like many great thinkers and, and writers and scholars who are acquainted with the breadth and depth of the Western tradition, is able to do a lot of stuff simultaneously in ways that, you know, regular people just don't, don't, don't have, you know, an ability to appreciate.
But I think that there's so many things going on for, for example, knowing that he was a philologist and that, you know, even his in his own words, he started with the languages and then wrote the story after that, which just gets everything backwards from the perspective of a modern thinker.
But if you understand the relationship between language and and reality with a capital R, then you know, you see that, for example, in the opening sentences of John's Gospel, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. There's a lot going on there ontologically or metaphysically that I think just it goes right
past most people. But someone like Tolkien is attuned to this stuff and is thinking and, and there are very subtle ways that I think he's addressing modernity and its shortcomings throughout The Lord of the Rings. But in in this particular part of the book, I'm going to give away my my thesis here. I think Tom and Goldberry are the happy ending. They they personify the happy ending. So here's a here's a typical kind of contemporary take on on heaven.
It's going to be really dull. I mean, there were going to be, you know, how long can you sing? You know, this, this, this idea that, you know, that's right, this idea that, you know, there's just nothing to do. But when when you when you take a look at Tom, he's the oldest creature in Middle Earth and he's perennially delighted with everything that he encounters. He's appalled at certain points, but at at but in a way that's
not undone. You know, even when he's with the barrel white, there's no, there's no. Sense of anxiety or fear that he might not be able to pull off the deliverance of the hobbits. It's just like, OK, now it's just time to throw this Barrow white into the outer darkness. That's right. And then then then you can just stay here The the the trailing, you know, cry of this Barrow white is it and then it just like a door shuts and it's gone.
So is it this this this guy Tom is incredibly powerful. Never at a loss for what to do, but always interested in, you know, for example, he's interested in the hobbits. He he actually wants to commune with them. He delivers them and then doesn't say, oh, I'm got a few other things that I need to be doing. I hope you make it out OK. And we actually gives him an indication that he's been expecting them. You know that there's like, you know, tables ready, Goldberry's
waiting. I just happened to be going down this path at this time, knowing that you'd be caught by the tree. He doesn't say that, but but then he delivers them and he goes ahead of them and they trudge along and catch up and then, you know, have this delightful stay. But then throughout the course of the story, he pops up at different points and and at very
interesting points. For example, at the very end when Gandalf tells the hobbits that they've got an important task to accomplish in Hobbiton by the, you know, getting sorrowmen and his lackeys out of the Shire. And they asked him, you know, aren't you going to come with us? He says, no, I'm, I'm done, I'm retired. And then he says, I'm going to go and have a long talk with Bob Adel.
So it's as though he's in effect saying what I'm looking forward to is what Bombadil's been enjoying for a long, long time. And you know, my, my work is done. And now it's time for rest. And I think that that's what we see with time. We, we have a picture of kind of the blessed state of the, of the redeemed, where you could say the the Saints or, or just, you know, the holy ones or. What does that picture tell us about how we get rest wrong?
Yeah, that's great. That's a great way to put it, being Reformed. I'm a Presbyterian. We'd like, we like to put the emphasis on stop, but you know, stop. And then we say worship. And then what we mean by worship is reading the Bible, singing with people in church, those sorts of things.
But I think that there's a, a richer, fuller way of thinking about it. One of the ways to think about the rest of the of the Father in creation is that on the 7th day he sits on his throne and governs the world that he is. He's brought into being and we're told in scripture that we will reign with him, that will judge angels, that there are things that we'll be doing that have to do with rule and governance. I know it's really hard for us
to imagine these things. We have a hard time agreeing on on what to color to paint the bathroom at church, you know, and here we're going to be given these remarkable responsibilities. But that's what we're promised. That's what we're told. So I'd I think that that that dominion and rest come together in ways that I think are, I guess I'm familiar to us, but I think we see those things.
And Tom, you know, there's that then in that conversation that Frodo has with Goldberry, after Frodo asks, you know, you know, what is Tom or who is Tom? And she tells him he is, She goes on to explain that he's the master. And Frodo's response is the response most of us would have. And that is, do you mean this land belongs to him, this strange, crazy place? And she's puzzled at his response. And she says, of course not.
Her response is no, each of the things in the forest that belong to themselves, the trees belong to themselves. You know, everything belongs to themselves. But Thomas the master, as if that's answers the question. But this gets us back to that non competitive harmonic hierarchy that, you know, you've mentioned in the opening. And I and I do think that there's something that happened in, you know, the 13th, 14th centuries that really messed all that up. And we can dive do a deep dive
on that. But I do believe that Tolkien as well as Lewis were, as, you know, as Lewis said of himself, I'm a dinosaur. And I'm, I'm like, you know, if you, you want to study the past this look at me and ask me some questions. I, I, I don't think like you do. I think very differently. And I think that Tolkien was cut from the same cloth, and he's doing things that would make sense to a person whose outlook has been thoroughly formed by
the Christian faith. The world that we live in is in, just to large measure, a revolt against that, all of that. And we can I think it's fairly common to hear people blame some chapter or other of the progressive movement over the last 120 years. The to blame the Reformation, you you mentioned the 13th and 14th century. What's going on there? What you have is a really is a strange set of things that are going on.
What 1 is is the with the with the recovery of Aristotle in the West, there's a a new set of questions that are being
entertained and addressed. But at the same time, as there's been this recovery of Aristotle due to the interactions, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula between the Moors and Christians, there's also a response to this sort of way of thinking that in flex is is brought into the West and is in Christian world picked up on picked up by John Duns Scottis and William of Occam's. So those two Franciscan fellows have had a lot to do with the birth of the West as it's as we
think of it today. And I could go on to, you know, basically the thinking that lies behind that. But but I think that one of the things that comes out of that, and it's an unintended consequence. I don't think that either Scottish or or Arkham were trying to do this, but you end up with a competitive way of thinking about the relationship between God and human beings and
their freedoms. So you think about it this way, like when we tend to think about listen, you and you brought this up early in the in the episode where when we think about words like hierarchy or difference, we think of reality as a kind of pie and or pizza. And the more slices God gets, the fewer there are for me or the more slices you get, Brian, the fewer there are for me. There's this, this kind of competitive relationship that we are in. 0 sum game.
Four, yes, 00 sum game. So the more free you are, the less free I am, that kind of thing. And what you had with the older view is a kind of layered understanding of reality where each creature pursuing its calling is free. And there's a, there's a harmonious relationship between the various creatures and their freedom actually enriches the other creatures.
So there's this, this richer understanding of the relationship between, you know, God and man and, and men and men and men and women and and so forth. There's, there's not a, there's not a win lose kind of 0 sum game that's being played. And you definitely see that with Tom. So Tom is clearly the master. I mean, he he goes around freeing hobbits from trees and Barrow whites and he's clearly the most powerful creature
around. And there doesn't seem to be any doubt that he he has the power that's not needed to to do with what he wants to do. Nevertheless, he's not he's not Saron or Saruman, you know, who dominate. So I think there's a a really important distinction between and this is another rule that I think Bombedell places. He's a kind of a foil foil against which you can measure and evaluate characters like Saruman or or Saran.
I hadn't thought about it from that that perspective, because the at this point in the story, you don't know Gandalf all that well. You know him pretty much the same way that the hobbits know him, which is to say he's the magic guy who does fireworks and periodically appears to save us. And so your, your only picture of power dynamics thus far is total strength and total weakness is the the helpless,
the relatively helpless hobbits. And then this image of this dark threat looming in the East. And and then, yeah, we introduced this character who, yeah, has this authority, but it's not the same kind and it's not wielded the same way. Yeah, and I, and I think kind of the, the really pregnant portion of the story is when, you know, at the table, Bamba del Tom tells Frodo to hand over the ring and Frodo does so without a second thought or has any hesitation.
I mean, he didn't even do that with with Gandalf. Maybe even when Gandalf said to him, you know, give me the ring so he could throw it into the fire, there was this sense of hesitancy that that is described in the, in the, in the narrative. That's not the case there. And then essentially Bombadil makes fun of the ring for the next, you know, few paragraphs, you know, he's even making fun.
I think of Saron particularly. He puts the, the ring up to his eye and looks through it. He's he's mocking the eye of Saron. That's how I read it. So he, he knows all about the ring. He knows all about what's going on. He makes the ring disappear, you know, he have to flicks it in the air, remember, and it disappears.
And then he has, you know, it's just like your uncle playing magic tricks at the table with you, you know, at, you know, at Thanksgiving, you know, and having fun with you, having fun with his nephews, you know, that kind of thing. So he's he, he comes across kind of clownish in, in, in, in sort of the, the early presentation. But by the time you're done with and, and he's in the background, you, you get the indication then that he could take on Saron. He's got what it would take to
do that. Why? Do you think he is introduced in such a clownish way, given given that fact? I mean, you get it's such a primary colors sort of picture in a, in a story that's so full of Gray up to this point. Yeah, it's just so primary colors. And don't crush the water lilies in the singing. He's he's begging you not to take him seriously right before he bosses a Willow tree around.
Yeah, and and we're told that that Willow tree dominated the forest in the way the Saran and Saruman dominated their domains. But then Tom steps in and puts them in his place. Yeah, I, I the the fact that the primary colors are present, yellow boots, blue jacket, red cheeks, you know, that's fun. And I think that there's AI think that actually speaks to what you're getting at with this.
So with, you know, it's sort of the larger, I guess narrative arc when it comes to the whole story of Middle Earth is a kind of graying. Things are getting grayer and grayer as time goes along. And you know, there are certain places in Middle Earth where something of the past has been preserved and you actually feel like you've entered into an earlier phase of things like Loft Lorraine or Rivendell.
And what we learned by the end is that that's actually the case because, you know, Elrod, Elrod and, and Galadriel, they both had rings, the rings, the three of the three Elvin Lords, they had two of them. So by the way, the third was Gandalf. Gandalf had one. And so you don't get that until the very end, kind of like, like
a big reveal at the end. But I, I think that the point is that there's something about Tom that is primary, you know, that is that sort of fundamental sort of basis for all color, you know. Yeah, OK. I have so many questions. You kind of think about you,
yeah. You kind of think about like, you know, like a Wizard of Oz, you know where the, the, the, the film starts off, You know, the, the film version starts off in black and white and then they end up in Oz and everything's a Technicolor. Right. Oh, and Anita makes a good distinction. Merriment, not clownishness. Yeah, I think that's right.
Yeah, as a side note, we'll, we'll probably send this out over the the substance guys, but the Theopolis Institute ran a great blog post a day or two ago on merriment. That's absolutely beautiful. Lots of Tolkien in it. Oh, nice. Great. So. OK. There's a bunch of places I could go and there's a bunch of good questions that have come in in the last couple of minutes. Before we drop the the merriment, couple things on
that. First, he when he sends the hobbits off, he he teaches them a song to sing if they need to call him again, which a shows that he kind of knows they're going to need to, but B why? But why does he teach them to sing as opposed to just call me, which is what they did before? Yeah, that's a great. That's a great question.
I don't have a any real, you know, insightful thing to say concerning that, apart from the fact that Tom likes singing and, you know, that's his mode and he wants them to sing. Now when they start singing, you know, in, in that tomb. So that's what they're what they're in. There's this sense in which they they can hear a response or it's just Frodo, right, You know, it's right. It's Frodo's the only one who sings, but there is a response
almost immediately. And it's as though the sound of Bombadil travels through the through the actual ground to, to them in that barrel. And I actually think that that that barrel white sequence is a kind of inspired by the, the resurrection kind of it that generally understood. So like, you know, the, the, the, the face or the the door, the opening to the tomb itself faces E We're told that because as the sun is coming out, we see Tom's head pop in and the sun is
rising behind his head. So that's pretty significant. And they're in a tomb after all, and they're as good as dead. And then you have what you could be, you could say a kind of a kind of a foreshadowing at the final judgement with the barrel white being cast out and the Hobbit's being redeemed. And then they run naked on the grass. It's just this marvelous scene of Deliverance A. Little while ago, Lindsay asked in the chat the the master
versus owner distinction. What do you think the his his lack of fear has to do with that? Do you think that's that's a key distinction between master and owner? Yeah, we're told repeatedly that Tom has never been caught. And you're like, what is that supposed to mean? One of the things you could say about temptation is that it is a trap. It's something that is intended to catch you. So it's you're lured into something, right? You're a promise is made to you that's false.
And you you step into the trap and you're caught at that point. There's something about Tom in his behavior that is masterful in the sense that he isn't trapped, he isn't taken advantage of by any other creature. Now, if you think about it like that, this The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, the poem which actually predated, as I noted earlier, The Hobbit, it was published, I think it in one of the papers that was published at Oxford.
Yeah, as a as a side note, sorry for those of you that haven't read that, which is probably most of you. Like I got that in in this book, Tales from the Perilous Realm, which is a collection of Tolkien's shorter things. It also includes Roverandam, Farmer Giles of Hams, Mitchell Smith of Wutan Major leaf by a niggle, like a whole bunch of Tolkien's just absolutely gorgeous short stories along with this extended adventures of Tom Bombadil.
So like that's that's worth the purchase by itself for for any one of those things in it, let alone all of them together. But sorry, keep going. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, no, yeah. Those are great stories. My favorite is Smith is Smith with the major. That's that's a great. We did an event a couple of years ago entirely built around that story. Oh, neat. Oh, that's great. So beautiful.
Yeah, it's it's super. But in in the the poem and the adventures of Tom Bomber, each of the creatures in the forest, including Goldberry, tries to trap Tom. And there's this marvelous episode with with Goldberry where Tom is looking into the Withy Wendell and she she's under the water and she reaches up and grabs his beard and pulls him in. It's a very flirtatious move.
I mean, it's, it's the sort of thing that, you know, is easy to interpret as this gal really likes this guy and is trying to send the message. And so she steals his hat and she swims down under the, you know, deep into the into the, into the water. And she's at the door of her mother's house, you know, the the river woman. And Tom gets his hat back in and says to her, I'm not going to come and live with you, implying that there's some place else to live. And at the, at the very end, he
catches her. But you get the, you get the, the, the, the sense that she wanted to be caught. Yes. She's sitting out on the side of the, of the, of the, the, the river, combing her long golden hair, essentially waiting for time to come by. That's my read, but it's not a it's not a stretch. It's this is very, this is a, a very fun, romantic, kind of amusing set of encounters between the two of them.
But you could say at that point he's finally caught, but you could also say that he caught her. And in this, in my book, I get into some legends of some folklore from Finland that I think I, I, I suspect actually inspired Tolkien and, and, and the creation of the character Goldberry. But, but he, there's the badger that tries to catch him. Willow tries to catch him, the Barrow White tries to catch him, Goldberry tries to catch him. And each time they can't. And that's kind of the way the
story unfolds. And then finally he catches Goldberry and they live happily ever after. They get married. But I, I think that that that idea that there's, we live in a world full of traps. And that we and then Thomas successfully eluded the traps, you and I, as descendants of our original parents, they were caught. And we've all been dealing with the with that ever since. I've often thought, you know, if I was there that day, I would have whispered into Eve's ear.
Ask him what it's what's in it for him. If you eat from the tree, because obviously that's what it was all about. You know, he there was something that the serpent was after and and he just seduced her spiritually into to taking the fruit. But that that's that's the sort of thing that Tom succeeds in eluding. So there's something about that. I think that says something about our even human beings made the image of God our natural, our original state.
I I also think that time is a picture of what what could have been the case. This is a counterfactual, but could have been the case. If we hadn't fallen, we would all be a lot more like Tom and Goldberry. Another, another random question I had not related to that, but will those come up a lot these kinds of stories, Tolkien uses them in both uses Old Man Willow twice in the the original poem and then in the Lord of the Rings itself.
Somebody in the chat pointed out that in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, though, there's the Whomping Willow that's also very destructive. What is it about Willows in these these stories where they're, they're consistently cast as the in these villain kind of roles? I don't, I don't know. Do you have any guesses on that? I guess maybe aesthetically there's something about him that's a little weird. When I was in college, I played
varsity. I played soccer for my college team, for my college, and the entire soccer field was surrounded by Willow trees. It was the weirdest thing, you know, just dozens of them and you would go under the trees. I don't know, you know the term, the name weeping Willow. You understand when you're sitting under your Willow tree, where the term comes from, the SAP just literally drips from those long vines down on to the ground.
And if you're under there, you get a bath, whether you're looking for one or not, but kind of a sticky bath because it's tree SAP. But, but maybe that's something to do with it. I they're just an unusual tree. They're just kind of kind of strange in in those ways. I don't have anything more significant to offer than that. No, I might, I might turn my wife loose on that one.
She's she's a gardener. We actually have a dappled Willow in our front yard that she planted recently, which does not behave the way a weeping Willow does, interestingly enough. But there's there's always a reason with with with that the. Symbolism of the. Created order. There's always something when you dig into those old fairy stories.
Well, there might be something with the name too that I just didn't look into that that you know, Tolkien would have known right the the words that informed the the name Willow tree. Nicole says they grow really quickly and steal water from all the other plants. That's interesting. Oh, there you go. That's an interesting. That's, I didn't know that this is they're thieves, Yeah. He knows nature inside and out.
Yeah, yeah. And we'll get into that more as the, the conversations go on, because Christopher did a great job touching on all of this as he delves more into the, the, the characters and the, well, the interplay with them in the story. I've a couple more questions, but it's worth mentioning as an aside that whether you live in Colorado Springs and are locally a part of the Anselm Society or whether this podcast is kind of your your connection with us.
We're doing a lot not just with these four weeks, but but building on Converse topics from Bombedell over the next six months or so. Next month, we're going to talk more about what rest really looks like, what stillness really looks like. What's what's the difference between just holding still and and true rest and what does Sabbath have to do with that? We're going to talk about the Pride and Chronicles in that context. We've already recorded an episode on pipe smoking with
Malcolm Gite that will. Air Oh, Malcolm Gate. So yeah, we just, we spent an hour and a half just smoking pipes and talking about how. How? Habits like that training us to be still and but then as as we turn from summer towards fall, we're going to get more into feasting and joviality. And one of the, one of the pinnacle points of, of that will be you guys mark this on your calendar, September 20th weekend.
We're going to have a whole weekend of workshops and singing and culminating in, I don't know if we're going to call it this or not, but basically the great Middle Earth Feast. Doing. Doing the sorts of, you know, crazy things that weird people like us do when we get together, singing at the top of our lungs and telling old stories and
eating really, really good food. So, so think of today as as a kick off to an extended collective meditation on what does it look like to really be a part of the will of God in this this place of this posture of rest, but this leaning in towards his will and participating in his will. There's a lot to be done with it and it's way bigger than one character or, or one of these little topics.
So but this this book was just such a great way to to kick off so much of it. And it's well, it's created an excuse for me to cause all kinds of trouble. Let's just leave it at that for now. Chris, one thing that that strikes me about Bombadil is, you know, there are those passages in Scripture that are just so weird that most people just instinctively push past them. You know, whether it's the whatever, whatever it is that strikes you as odd.
You know, I could be, maybe I was, I was raised Baptist and was taught that all alcohol is a sin. And so I missed the 70 verses that say otherwise. Or it's the OR, or it's the, oh, that's a really, really odd story. Why is that in the Bible? Moving on. There's just something about the discomfort that makes us push past it. I've heard more than one theologian say no, no, no. You should have the opposite instinct.
If something strikes you as that weird, that's your signal to pay very close attention, because it probably means something very important. Do you? Do you? Do you see something simple? Similar with Bombadil? He's just so weird. You want to push past him to the next part of the story, but there's so much going on. No, yeah, I think that that
comparison is really a good one. Sometimes people like to compare Bombadil to Melchizedek, just this weird figure that pops up and, and you know, the biblical narrative and then you discover while he's really, really important, but it's just this very brief episode. You don't know where the guy is from or you know, you know how to interpret, you know, who and what he's up to, who is what he's up to.
But I think that's, that's true. And I, so I, I tried to read the Lord of the Rings with Bombadil in, in mind. And as I did that, I, I found, as I noted earlier, these allusions to Bombadil at, at significant points. Let me just give you one another example. So Frodo, when he's in Bombadil's house, he's sleeping. He has a, has a series of dreams.
He dreams about Gandalf, of course, but he also has a dream about a ship and being on the sea and a swift sunrise and rain being kind of pulled back like a curtain. And there's a land in the distance. And then he wakes up. And then at the very end of The Lord of the Rings, that's what we actually see happen. And Frodo's on a ship and he's sailing into the innermost West.
And there's a reference to the dream at that very moment in the in the story and you realize, OK, there's something about Bommadil that connects to the end. That was the connection that I made. There's something about Bommadil that in some sense is a pre sages or a dumb braids. The, the end of the, not just the story, you know, the Lord of the Rings, but I think in a larger sense, the story of, of, you know, the world, our world.
There's something that we are looking forward to and we've already talked a little bit about it. We're looking forward to rest understood in ways that maybe we have a hard time appreciating today. Guys, we're going to wrap up in a, a couple minutes, so if you've got any more questions, pop them in the chat and I'll I'll throw them in one, one good one is this one here. How did Tom inform your views on the productive household? Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.
I I think that the thing that I came away with when I was thinking about Tom and the productive household cause I've I've known for that theme and other books I've written is his disposition to obviously that, you know, the hobbits. He's a marvelous host. So that there's a, a strong emphasis on hospitality just in then in that part of the story. But I I also think that there's a lot said with regard to his relationship with his wife as well.
There's this marvelous harmony between the two of them and then his relationship to the larger world that surrounds the house. So he's, he's between the forest and the tombs, which I think was an interesting place to set up a, a house. And in other words, you got, you got the perilous land on one side and you've got death on the other. And really that's a picture of the Christian household.
We're in a perilous place between, between this the, the world that is filled with dangers and the tombs that await us. And we're here making the best of things, putting things in order, enjoying the good, the good things of the, you know, the good fruits of the earth, cultivating our gardens. Tom wasn't a hippie. I mean, he kept a well manicured yard. You know, there's this description that even the forest itself seemed like it have been trimmed like a hedge.
There was a sense of it that there was this bound, this boundary between, you know, his, his domain and the things that were around it. And he exercised authority not just inside, but beyond outside, as I already noted, in the forest and also in the tombs. So I, I do think when it comes to deductive household, that's the emphasis is so much on productivity as it is on rest and delight.
And kind of our what might seem paradoxical situation that we find ourselves in a little bit of heaven on earth in our households, but it's that our households are situated in some dangerous territory. Absolutely. Last question about the book is, as we go into reading through the rest of your book and discussing it together, do you have any particular thoughts you want to leave us with? I, I think there's mostly we're just going to follow what the book does and what the book covers.
But I think there, there are so many takeaways about the Christian language and there are so many takeaways about our own understandings of how, how do we as the imago Dei pursue rightly understood dominion, mastery, vocation. What would your advice to us be as we tackle some of those big scary words, some of those things we might have a lot of preconceptions about and and and dive in? Well, I think you've set it up really well.
I, I think that, you know, your comment earlier about passages of scripture that, you know, unnerve us being the very things that can enrich us most. I think that's true. You, you know, with those words too. I think that when we think about words like authority or dominion, I think that because we live in a fallen world, necessarily those things are going to be expressed in fallen
ways. And, and because that's the case, you know, as the saying goes throughout the baby with the bathwater and not have a sense of what was originally intended and not have any sense of it or being know how to identify it. I think that one of the things that this particular character is really helpful for is helping us to see things from a from an angle that I don't think we have anything, you know, in our lived experience, except maybe maybe
family members we've known who if embodied these things. You know these things well. But I think that when you see dominion exercised in the way God intends, it's a beautiful thing. And it's the same thing is true with authority. When you see it done right, you realize, wow, you know, this is great. This is the way it should. This is the way it was intended to be. This is the way it should be.
Yeah. And they're all sorts of people who do don't do it well or, or twist it or distort it, distort these things. But they started off with something good and distorted it. That's the thing to keep in mind. And and, you know, story like Lord of the Rings and in particular, you know, this, the example of this character Bombedell, gives us a way to look at those things and maybe see some things in those scary words or scary doctrines that maybe we've missed up to this
point. All right, a couple last quickies from the chat. What is 1 go to book or resource that has shaped your understanding or practice of REST? Oh wow. Probably Leisure, The Basis of Culture by Joseph Peeper. Well timed, Sir. That's that is. That is, that is. We're literally recording an episode next week that'll air first thing in July. It's mostly a discussion of that. So. Oh, wow, Great.
Well, that's great. Well. Timed We also have some desire in the chat for you to write a sequel to The Purloined Boy anyway. Yeah, I get that. Like every week. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Is that so, you know, just just keep a few things in mind. You know, the time that it took Tolkien to write The Lord of the Rings? What was it, 14 years? I've still got some time left. This is true. This is true. All right.
First of all, thank you. Thank you again for your time and thank you for writing the book. Yeah, well, you're welcome. It's a pleasure to write it, and I'm glad you folks are studying it. Well, we're, we'll probably have a question or two at the, the end of four weeks that are still still hanging, hanging out there. And if if there are, I'll pass them along. OK, great.
So everyone else, just a reminder that this is week one of our four week exploration of not just the character Tom Bombadil, but what his character and story can teach us about vocation, calling and mastery. If you're not already signed up for the reading group, head over to anselmsociety.org/bombadil to sign up because this is the only part of it that will be on the podcast. 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, 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. Join us next time as we pursue a renaissance of the Christian imagination together.