Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth: That the same Middle-earth is filled with sorrow and unrecoverable loss — that the work itself seems battered by time and change — only helps us believe that perhaps the sudden turn to the good may happen in our own fallen existence. A light springs in the shadows, a single star gleams high above the cloud-wrack, and we catch a glimpse of the joy beyond the walls of the world because it is real. We see a path toward a place not free of sorrow but in which tears are blessed without bitterness because beyond the circles of the world, there is more than memory. We find hope.

Art by Pauline Baynes