place my hand on the smoothness
of a trunk and feel its coolness and
the life within, that is a healing act.
The forest of white columns could
have been a sanctuary from heaven
or Lothlorien—the elven kingdom of
Middle Earth.
When his eyes were in turn
uncovered, Frodo looked up and
caught his breath. They were
standing in an open space. To the
left stood a great mound, covered
with a sward of grass as green as
Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon
it, as a double crown, grew two
circles of trees: the outer had bark of
snowy white, and were leaf less but
beautiful in their shapely nakedness;
the inner were mallorn-trees of great
height, still arrayed in pale gold. . . .
The others cast themselves down
upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo
stood awhile still lost in wonder. It
seemed to him that he had stepped
through a high window that looked
on a vanished world. A light was
upon it for which his language
had no name. All that he saw was
shapely, but the shapes seemed at
once clear cut, as if they had been
first conceived and drawn at the
uncovering of his eyes, and ancient
as if they had endured for ever. . .
He turned and saw that Sam was
now standing beside him, looking
round with a puzzled expression, and
rubbing his eyes as if he was not sure
that he was awake. “It’s sunlight and
20 Solutions
bright day, right enough,” he said. “I
thought that Elves were all for moon
and stars: but this is more elvish than
anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as
if I was inside a song, if you take my
meaning.”
Yes—all this shall be ours, a
breathtaking world waiting right
outside our door when all the earth
is restored to its full glory. The return
of Jesus may come with the trumpet
blast, but what musical score will
accompany the restoration of all
things? Will it begin quietly, a single
oboe, piercing and beautiful and
poetic? Will it swell and crescendo to
a mighty orchestra?
Perhaps you have walked by a pond
or mountain lake and seen in it the
ref lection of the trees, meadows,
and mountains, dappled, shifting,
like an impressionist painting. Then
you look up and see the real thing,
the substance of it, the clear, shining
reality of it all. It is not something
“other,” and yet it is more real, more
true to itself. What do the fjords of
Norway look like when they are
completely unveiled? What of the