Happy Monday to you fine crazy people who read this site.
I found this gem on social media and I wanted to share it with you, but I also have a few thoughts that might give you a kickstart this week, so come for the pictures and stay for some encouragement:
Yeah, that's AI-generated "Lord of the Rings" pictures in Byzantine style. As someone who has been really frustrated by the lack of illustrated LOTR material, I might just print these off and insert them into key places to use as I'm reading the books to my kids.
Of course, AI art has its downfalls...
But pretty dang cool if you ask me.
Now for a word of encouragement for your week.
There's a lot of tension in the world right now, and it feels like that tension only gets worse the further we go. A lot of people are trying to check out from it all, as if ignoring the problems will make them go away.
Those who still care are feeling more hopeless and more bitter by the day.
As I was reading through the "Return of the King" with my kids this weekend, we came to the part of the story where Lord Denethor, Steward of Gondor, gave into madness and abandoned the city of Minas Tirith to destruction as armies approached it.
"The West has failed," he told the hobbit Peregrin Took. "Go back and burn!"
'Farewell!' he said. 'Farewell, Peregrin son of Paladin! Your service has been short, and now it is drawing to an end. I release you from the little that remains. Go now, and die in what way seems best to you. And with whom you will, even that friend whose folly brought you to this death. Send for my servants and then go. Farewell!'
Denethor took the coward's way out, burning himself atop a pyre before the enemy could get him.
There were three things that turned this man's heart to bitter blackness.
- He had gazed long into the Palantír - one of 8 magic stones that allowed users to see across great distances and communicate with other users. The Dark Lord Sauron was the one often communicating hopeless visions to him.
- He had been fighting a skirmish war with Mordor his whole life. Denethor couldn't see anything changing the inevitable downfall of Gondor - anything, that is, except the power of the One Ring, a superweapon he believed he could wield.
- He couldn't stomach the return of the rightful king: "I will not bow to such a one, last of a ragged house long bereft of lordship and dignity."
LOTR is fictional, but its struggles and characters mirror our world. Tolkien lived through both World Wars, fighting in the first. He knew how history is stitched together.
Those of us who've survived the current psyop campaign to label everything "racist" and "colonialist" and "intolerant" look at the world today and see hordes of rainbow-flag groomers teaching our kids to castrate themselves on one hand and on the other, millions of migrants who share no common beliefs with Western civilization rioting in the streets with calls for the genocide of Jews. Somewhere in the middle, we have an unelected bureaucratic class led by an old crook who spends more time at his Chinese-funded beach house than in the Oval Office, and if we complain about his passion for sending our inflated money to a war between two corrupt regimes in eastern Europe, we get the IRS or ATF sent to our doors to shoot our dogs and throw us indefinitely in jail.
It's easy to be a blackpilled Denethor these days.
So if you follow that route, know you're taking the easy way out. The coward's way out.
See, Denethor didn't know that a few pages later, even while he was still preparing himself for immolation, that the battle outside his doorstep was going to be won by the good guys.
Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come.
The horsemen of Rohan routed the enemy hordes. A shieldmaiden vanquished the deathless Captain of Mordor. Prince Imrahil and his knights held the field. Aragorn, son of Arathorn returned with the sword-that-was-broken, leading a company of Rangers and the army of the dead.
Aragorn and Éomer and Imrahil rode back towards the Gate of the City, and they were now weary beyond joy or sorrow. These three were unscathed, for such was their fortune and the skill and might of their arms, and few indeed had dared to abide them or look on their faces in the hour of their wrath.
And beyond all that, far out of the minds of all save a few, two brave hobbits were carrying the One Ring deep behind enemy lines.
Friends, don't be a Denethor, so sure of your own wisdom, so certain of impending doom, so resistant to submit yourself to even the authority that is good. Don't be driven mad by looking into the crystal ball of social media. Don't believe locking yourself in your home and ignoring God Almighty will lead to anything good.
Be a happy warrior instead. The darkness will be broken. You have a part to play. Help will come - and not just for the West, but the whole world.
It just won't come how or when you are expecting it.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
"But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death. For God has put everything under his feet."
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