Voice of Ukraine

From Maia Mikhaluk in Kyiv (557th day):

J.R.R. Tolkien died 50 years ago. In the universe he created the orcs were defeated and Mordor was destroyed. Powerful evil was overcome not with strength, but determination, commitment and courage. During the past 557 days many images and quotes from Tolkien’s books became especially relevant to our reality and our experiences.

“Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.”

“Courage is found in unlikely places.”

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

“There are many things in the deep waters; and seas and lands may change. And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.”

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“Frodo and Sam gazed out in mingled loathing and wonder on this hateful land. Between them and the smoking mountain… all seemed ruinous and dead, a desert burned and choked. They wondered how the Lord of this realm maintained and fed his slaves and his armies. Yet armies he had. As far as their eyes could reach, along the skirts of the Morgai and away southward, there were camps, some of tents, some ordered like small towns.”