What Do You Say to a Weeping Stranger?

In September 2000 Valerie and I, with a friend, June, flew to Seoul, South Korea, the first leg of a trip to Siberia.  We spent the night on the campus of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, at 700,000 the largest church in the world. It was Saturday evening and a loud, all-night prayer meeting was going on in the sanctuary next door to the dorm. We slept, but not much. And watched a Nebraska University football game live!

Worshippers entering Yoido Full Gospel Church

After the early service Sunday morning, a hospitable young man from the church showed us around the city for a couple of hours before we took a taxi back to the airport to go on to Khabarovsk, Russia.

When we arrived at the terminal and got out at the curb we saw something curious. A young woman, surrounded by luggage and holding her baby, stood on the sidewalk, quietly weeping as crowds of travelers hurried by. No one seemed to notice her. But we were drawn to her.

“Are you okay?” June asked. And she told us her story, speaking in English with a Russian accent.

She and her husband, their twelve-year-old daughter and baby had flown all night from Moscow to Seoul. The family was moving to Korea where he had a job waiting. They had arrived at the other terminal, visible some distance away. They collected their luggage and went to the taxi stand to come to this terminal to catch their domestic flight.

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Tree and Leaf: What I Learned from J.R.R. Tolkien

This post is to introduce my readers to a little-known, powerful resource for anyone interested in writing. Or reading.

In March my wife and I were in Panama and I had occasion to recommend this little book to someone who identified herself as a reader of Tolkien. And I realized I should blog about it.

My friend and colleague Darrow Miller put me on to this volume that contains three lesser known works by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m writing here about the opening essay, “Tree and Leaf.” I thought I knew Tolkien until I read this astonishing composition. Reminds me of the first time I saw Crater Lake in southern Oregon and realized I had never seen the color blue until that moment. If you retain a sense of wonder and appreciate the careful use of language you need to read “Tree and Leaf.”

Tolkien begins very humbly. His first paragraph disarms the reader who, drawn into the charm of his prose, wanders into the essay heedless of the master’s spell. Too late, you realize you have been seized and carried off by beauty.

I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer (or trespasser) in the land, full of wonder but not of information.

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