tolkien
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Happy Birthday Professor T
He would have been 120 years old today, but when he passed in 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien was just getting started. I think he would tell us that Heaven is a far nicer place than earth—or Middle Earth. Of all the quotes I’ve ever collected (aside from Scripture) the one that rang most personal came from…
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Because of Bob
Bob Ayala was singing the very first time I darkened the tent flaps of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. Some friends from Seattle has discovered the Christian tent-venue in Orange County and invited me to tag along. I was stunned. Bob was a Christian balladeer who sounded like a mixture of Jose Feliciano and Neil…
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A Light in Mordor
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower 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…
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The Eucatastrophe of History (Merry Christmas)
Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien declared, “The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write…” (italics in the original). But later on he tried. Here is what he wrote… “The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy stories.…
Jay McCarl 