Dear one,
J.R.R. Tolkien was once asked: “You have written of Hobbits and Elves: When might you write of supernatural creatures?” In response, Tolkien replied: “I have. They are human beings.”
In truth, I have not been able to verify this question-and-answer exchange, but I do believe it is more than a figment of my imagination. Nonetheless, I did recover the following from an essay written in tribute to Charles Williams. Tolkien wrote:
“Supernatural is a dangerous and difficult word in any of its senses, looser or stricter. But to fairies [or other fantastic beings] it can hardly be applied … For it is man who is … supernatural …”[1]
Although Tolkien wrote as a man of his time, his observation transcends early-to-mid twentieth century thought. Steeped within an Enlightenment world—where “reason,” “autonomy,” “nature,” “tolerance,” “optimism,” and “progress” were the essential lenses through which life was to be viewed—he believed, as evident in his writings, that human life was much more and far grander than the clock-work mechanisms posited by twentieth century “materialists.” For Tolkien, it was not that we human beings do not share common traits with those of the “animal kingdom”; rather, our nature supersedes our communal, biological, chemical, and psychological makeup. We are not merely “natural.”
Not in spite of but because of recent events: covid19, presidential elections, and racial/ethnic injustices, Tolkien came to my mind. At moments, we can become so fixated upon the present—so myopic—that we fail to appreciate Tolkien’s perspective: we are supernatural beings, and so our concerns for one another should be equally supernatural.
Admittedly, as I’ve written previously, these present issues facing us are truly problematic, and we need to address them; but we dare not allow them to eclipse the psalmist’s view:
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalms 8:3-5).
At times we hear or read the negation: “He/She is so heavenly minded but of no earthly good.” In my experience, those who have been most heavenly minded are indeed of greatest earthly good: they give freely and often, because they know that life and “human nature” are more than merely natural and will supersede any natural bounds.
Hopeful,
Stan
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ed. C.S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans’ Publishing Company, 1973), p.39.