Forward Eorlingas!

The theme for the Riders of Rohan just came up on my LOTR:TTT album (found again, oh happy day!) and I found myself tearing up once more. There is something in that theme that expresses to me grim determination to do what is right despite overwhelming odds. It is the battlehymn of the everyman.

And Lord knows, we need a battlehymn. Passion this week, and nothing's changed in our job situation (for Dad), and Fr. Larry retiring, and Lent beginning, and this dumb issue on-going and.... Mom said it felt like two trains heading straight towards one another; two equally huge trains.

But one of them isn't, I reminded her. One of them is simply a facade. Its strength comes only from that which we give it.

There is an empty power in sin, damnation, this dumb issue, the world today, etc. - it is an empty power, hence no power at all except our own to fall into it. Sometimes to fall quite politely and quietly into it. But its power is only our fall.

But look at the power of Christ, at His sacrifice, at His triumph over the grave, at His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. Christ draws all men unto Him. Should we ignore Him, yet even creation will cry out (and to think of that in terms of AIDS, etc...). As Mom wrote to me years ago, when I was in college, "GOD IS ABLE." He wasn't wiped out by the flood, creation didn't use up all His juices, the parting of the Red Sea didn't knock Him out, the felling of Jerico wasn't His last hurrah, He didn't give up after the Resurrection, He hasn't left us after the Ascention, He hasn't deserted us after the Early Church Fathers, He hasn't abandoned us after Christendom, He hasn't forgotten us now either. GOD IS ABLE.

We need a St. Joan of Arc. We need a warrior saint - perhaps not with swords but with common sense, with words, with that inner fire that does what is right and chances the consequences. We need a St. Joan to show all those who are pushing the facade of the train that they are not as great as they have convinced themselves they are. We need the strength of St. Joan who asked for a crucifix to be held before her - only in this way, she said, could she bear to undergo martyrdom. We need the prayers of St. Joan.

Perhaps you were created, as Esther's uncle Mordecai says to her, for such a time as this.

For such a time as this.

And auspiciously, the battle theme of the Lament for Gandalf has just begun! Yes, Lord! Turn our sorrows to song! Forth Eorlingas! For Rohan and the Red Dawn! Forth Men of the West! For we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses....

Mood: How long, oh Lord? How long?
Music: Helmsdeep
Sorrow: So this is Rachel mourning for her lost children....