Mechtild's

I like to discuss anything Tolkien here, so it's a perfectly good place to discuss it.

Well, as for "sexually and/or romantically based interest in Frodo", I plead guilty. It's not the only way I think about him, but becoming a film fan definitely added that dimension. Hence the manips, for instance. If I hadn't become besotted, I would never have thought to make the manips at all. They began as an homage to his beauty, like an artist in love with his subject. You'll note I never made a manip of anyone else in LotR, lol: no Sam, no Aragorn, no Gandalf, no Boromir. Just Frodo. I love them, but I am not *in* love with them. I love Frodo, too, but now I am also *in* love with him. Not surprisingly, I only wrote a fic about Frodo, not the others.

But it's the source story -- and the Frodo in it -- that holds by deepest love. If romantic/erotic Frodo didn't remain connected to *that* Frodo, Tolkien's Frodo, I couldn't maintain my interest in making manips, screencaps, or fanfics, even if romantic/erotic love is providing the inspirational fire.

No harm given or taken.

Christianity has been struggling for ages with asexual Jesus but it ought not to have done. I think a Jesus who was sexual but abstinent is what would be nearer the mark. A devoted contemplative priest or nun is nevertheless a sexual being, unless they have the very rare gift of true chastity. Most struggled, making a continual, willed effort to pour all the energy and passion that would have been given to a sexually-expressed love and the raising of children, to a life devoted to prayer or service to others. Religious people are often very passionate people, hungering and thirsting for ultimate intimacy. And it can get them in a lot of trouble when they are unsuccessful remaining abstinent as celibates. Most people seek that in its most natural venue, erotic love. But not everyone. Some people simply don't have the opportunity. Others feel they have a mission which fulfilling that sort of love would compromise, whether it's a profession, being an artist or a consecrated religious.

Erotic desire, healthily redirected, can provide tremendous impetus to do many, even great things. The problem is that it can push people to do a lot of bad things as well, especially if it's merely denied or suppressed as something alien and wicked in itself. I think this second way is what has earned the church its bad name in relation to prohibitions about sexual expression. The party line all seems to be, "Give up or refuse to enjoy sexual intimacy because it is sinful or leads to sin." Rather it should be, "if it is your calling, forgo sexual intimacy in order to serve God in some sort of vocation that benefits from that sacrifice."

I think what Jesus did was to forgo sexually-expressed love -- and the getting of children and descendants to follow after him. Not because he was asexual, but because he had something else he needed to do which such a love would hamstring. He needed to remain unattached to do that. And, he needed to remain unattached so that he would not belong exclusively to any one person in love, for his mission was to make manifest the love of God to all, not just to particular individuals.

In the history of Christian spirituality, there is much beautiful, prayerful poetry drawing from poetry written by the Jews who came before them, a lot of it borrowing heavily from neighbouring religions, with the erotic love portrayed between the male (dying and rising) fructifying god and the female god of the earth. This imagery works for me, too, and always has, for it touches my deepest desire: which is for ultimate intimacy.

Yet I know the language is metaphorical. God can't really love me with a physical love. With my love for Frodo, although he has so much in common with the sacrificial god who forgoes personal happiness (including erotic love and its fruits), such as Jesus manifested, Frodo was a small, imperfect, mortal being, not God incarnate, and suitable for imagining fulfilling the role of mortal male lover. It's all AU, of course, but not implausible for the reader who loves him to imagine, "What might have been Frodo's life had it not been his duty to bear the Ring? Would not love have come to him -- the fruitfulness he bequeathed instead to Sam?", or, "What if, even as Ring-bearer, Frodo had managed to respond to love when Love came to him, in the person of one of the people he knew?"

You were in a monastery? How wonderful, even for a time (considering it was a good experience). May I ask which order? I have a Tolkien-friend whose elderly aunt is a Trappist nun and seems to be happy with her life choice. Were you a regular retreatant or an actual postulant/novice/or whatever level you entered into?

Your last paragraph was very interesting too. Can God love us with a physical love? I wouldn't say it's impossible. Isn't that the meaning of the Church as the "body" of Christ, you know, his feet, his hands. I think we can broaden the meaning of the incarnation to mean also that God is somehow present in physical reality through the good deeds we perfom as a service to others. For me God is in us as well as outside of us, and being inside us God might act from there.

I know that the church is Christ's hands, and that God works through means (nature, people and their actions) to show Christ's love and mercy. And I know that mortal spouses or lovers can manifest a degree of the intimacy described between God and Israel (as Daughter Zion, God the lover's wayward Bride), or Christ as Bridegroom to the church. And individuals can experience very intimate union with God in contemplation that has no physical medium at all.

But what I meant was that what was described in stories like 'The Da Vinci Code' -- bodily union with God incarnate -- is not possible. One might make love and experience an intimacy that seems to touch the divine, but it is experienced with a living, mortal partner, not God directly. That is what I meant.

And, as mortal partners go, I personally can't think of one preferable to Frodo. Too bad he's fictional. Yet even if he's fictional, I think in many ways he stands for the best that is in any of us, in spite of our great frailty. To be able to love him, I think, is to draw that much nearer to loving each other, and our own selves, with the same sort of love: passionate and warm, and shot through with mercy.

Pearl, it's not the most elevated remark but right off the bat I want to say I ADORE your icon. I know it's from the FotR EE scene watching the Elves, but the person who made the icon did wonderful things with it. Thank you so much for posting it here -- twice!!!

You know I agree with the image of Frodo as a pilgrim (rather than as an actual Christ figure), although he shared much with the self-sacrificing heros that went before him in literature, legends and religious accounts.

(Somebody once wrote a very funny fanfic about Book Frodo meeting about ten versions of the luscious-lipped, huge-eyed, dark-curled, smouldering Frodo who features so prominently in Fanfic World.)

Do you remember what it was called or who wrote it? It sounds very funny!

I know about Taizé from the liturgical music, although I have heard somewhat about it, all good. Our liturgy professor (this was twenty years ago) spent several months there and loved it -- but not enough to give up his wife and children! (Sound familiar?)

Hey, what happened to my icon? Maybe because I changed the word settings on my user pics ... sigh.

Here it is again. :)