The Greatest Feast

Here are two quotes from Tolkien, which taken together illustrate a very profound theology of the Eucharist and wonderful food for thought in the Lenten season.  


"And yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.”  - Lord of the Rings, Book VI Chapter 3, Mount Doom.

"The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children - from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn - open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand - after which [our] Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.)"-The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Gift-nature of art

I have an on going (at this point about 5 year long) discussion about what art is with a friend. My current working definition is that art, at least good art (I know that phrase brings up an entirely new discussion, but for my purposes here I mean art that had the ability to speak to and touch some people beyond their own time), must do three things; it must draw on or respond to art that came before it, it must address or speak to issues of its own time, and it must contain something from the artist, a spark of their own creativity.

This last component however, implies that art is something more, that it transcends mere technical skill. As Tolkien puts it in "A Leaf by Niggle" it is a gift. The nature of the gift however is complex. It is a gift from Niggle to others; in a utilitarian sense his neighbor Parish uses the canvas to patch his roof. However, his painting also touches some people, changes them and how they see the world, and so is a gift to them as well. Yet the picture is a gift to Niggle as well. While he could not fully capture it, what he was painting was a vision of somewhere that touched him, a perfect place that to which he had never been. This place does eventually becomes real and provided healing for Niggle and his neighbor. Discussing the painting Parish says, "But it did not look like this then, not real." "No, it was only a glimpse then," said the man; "but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try." As a glimpse of somewhere else, of something else that surpasses the human experience, the picture was a gift to Niggle, changing him and how he viewed the world.

In Tolkien's work this sense of gift is not confined to art--the world itself is a gift and the people in it bound by gift giving,/gift receiving relationships. One of the most explicit is Galadriel's parting gifts to the fellowship. Everything she gives to the fellowship was made by her and her household and is something particular to her, things the fellowship could not have found elsewhere. The cloaks were made by her and her weavers, the light caught from her mirror, strands of her own hair--all of these are gifts which contain a bit of herself. Moreover, they were all given freely, they do not put the recipient into debt nor does she ever expect repayment, and by their nature they serve to help and at times free their owner.

So art in some way is meant to serve others and not advantage the artist, for it was a gift to him as well. I am not totally sure where to go with this thought, or exactly how it fits into my overall definition of art. That is part of what makes art so powerful-can can touch and effect us so strongly, yet it is difficult to articulate where this power comes from. As alluded to before, it mirrors the order of the world, which in creation contains something of its Maker and was intended as a free gift to humanity.