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If you haven’t heard or seen, I am starting a read-through of The Lord of the Rings with friends. This will be my fourth time reading through the book in the last six years and I wanted to do something different this time — not just slowing down to highlight and make notes in the book by myself, but read along with a small community of friends. The journey is always more rewarding with friends!

So far, we have people joining in who are deep Tolkien fans and people who are reading the books for the very first time! You don’t need to be an expert to join in. The Lord of the Rings can be an intimidating read to start — so it’s my hope that if you have ever had the desire to read it one day, this would help nudge you into the adventure!

If you want to join in, all you need to do is have a copy of LOTR and become a paid subscriber (link below) and you are all set. We start June 14th but you can join in anytime. For all those who are already paid subscribers, I will be including some helpful tips below for getting started, a sort of FAQ for this journey, as well as the downloadable reading plan I created!

What makes this read-along different?

Great question. The main difference is that this isn’t just about nerding out over deep lore and Middle-earth facts, though I’ll certainly be drawing on Professor Tolkien’s own insights along the way. My drive is something else entirely.

I want to be a guide for helping this story connect to our actual lives. Tolkien wrote that the power of myth and fairy-stories is that it helps us recover a way of seeing — it lifts the veil of familiarity so we can encounter the wild world again with awe and wonder, and therefore see ourselves within it more truly. Stories like his help us make sense of our own lives in profound ways as we begin to recognize ourselves in the different characters and situations. I want this experience to not just give you cool facts about the story, but real depth for your life that you can carry with you. That has happened for me, and I want to help you have that kind of meaningful experience as well.

What this journey will include:

• A custom monthly reading plan (avg. 20 pages / week)

• An exclusive paid-subscriber chat for sharing questions, quotes and meaningful moments

• A monthly deep dive article from me on what we’re reading

• Helpful questions and insights for understanding the story from Tolkien himself and other resources

Join the Fellowship!

Below you will find the official plan for this adventure and how to best engage…

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The conclusion? Every reread has only brought out more beauty, truth and wonder.

Ever since I finished the last read, I’ve been planning to dive back into it, this time with a pen and highlighter in hand. I want to be intentional in noticing things I’ve never noticed and slowly lingering over things that pierce my heart and stop me in my tracks. But I’ve recently thought of another wrinkle to this. I think it would double my joy and wonder if I did this next read through with a small community of friends...

The Idea: A Fellowship

What I am not imagining is a rigid book club with deadlines and pressure to keep pace. More like a slow journey through Middle-earth for people who have busy lives and yet still want to make time to enjoy a good story. Some months we may move quickly, some slowly. The point isn’t speed, but attentiveness to the things that stand out, hit home, and make you think. And the beauty wouldn’t be in just reading these things alone, but in sharing what we are seeing and discovering together, adding to the richness of the whole journey.

To keep the community small and focused, I’m asking those who want to join to become a paid subscriber ($5 / month or $50 / year) — this group will include a monthly reflection/article on what I am reading and finding meaningful and a subscriber chat where we can share passages, discoveries, questions, resources and moments of wonder as we journey through the story together. The goal isn’t to analyze every word, but to connect what we are reading to this world and our lives as we follow the adventure.

If this sounds like something you would enjoy, I’d love to have you join us. Let me know below by becoming a paid subscriber, and we’ll kick things off together in June.

PS, here is the LOTR edition I will be using to read-through. This set is my favorite.

Join the Fellowship

Edmund jogged down the cobblestone street of Elm Hill, dodging dark puddles and the occasional horse-drawn carriage. The narrow street ran parallel to the River Wensum, which powered the local watermills. From where the street laid, you could hear the slow current of the water rush past like marbles dancing over stones.

Edmund quickened his pace as he reached the end of the street. His Uncle William had drilled it into him at a young age that you weren’t properly on time unless you arrived before the other guests with your pipe already lit and smoking. He shook the water off his umbrella and caught his breath as he walked up toward the paneled building. An old wooden sign swung and creaked in the wind above his head, depicting three stags painted in white. Edmund looked up and grinned, the familiar haunt settling over him like home. He pushed through the door and headed toward a round table with two seats a few feet in front of the lively hearth.

The small room was lit by the dance of candlelight and flame and held the rich scent of tobacco and well-lived life. Each of the blood-red bricks on the floor was laden with centuries of secrets and stories: from flowering love to bitter betrayal, salted tears to crackling laughter. The Three Stags had been the hub of communal life in the village since the 15th century—a kind of chapel for the ordinary man, where the daily mass was a torn hunk of hot brown bread and foaming ale. This homely establishment proved that not every roof needed a steeple to be a place where you encountered the sacred.

“I knew you would already be here,” said Alden, taking off his wet coat as he sat down. He stretched his cold hands toward the leaping flames, trying to take the sharp edge off the English winter.

“It is only proper, my friend.” Edmund smiled, lifting his mug. “Besides, I knew the best ale runs out fast on Friday nights, so my motives were not purely honorable.”

Alden leaned in close and whispered in a nervous tone, “I was beginning to get worried. I sent you two letters in the post and never heard back from you. What happened?”

Edmund’s eyes flickered as he reached into his coat and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in butcher paper sealed with wax. He looked around the room before placing it down and pushing it slowly across the wood.

Alden looked down at the table, then quickly back up at Edmund. His hands trembled as he picked up and turned the brown parcel over, his eyes widening as they fell upon the scarlet-inked word stretched across the top: “BANNED.”

Underneath that word there was more writing in a smaller script, this time in black ink:

Prohibited Register: Class III - Gramarye

By formal decree, this volume is forbidden to be unsealed by any reader from this date forward, except under the express authority of the Chancellor and select Faculty of Cambridge, and solely for academic inquiry. It is to be held in secure keeping within the R.S.

Lord Arthur Cay
23 August, 1705

Edmund’s face was still as stone as he met the eyes of Alden. They sat there in a prolonged silence, both saying more than they could with words. Alden quickly took the wrapped book and placed it in his coat, making sure no other eyes would notice. Their hearts were racing and both felt as though a bolt of lightning had shot through their blood. They felt more alive than ever before and yet also more afraid.

“I didn’t want to have a paper trail in case something went wrong. That’s why I burned up your letters when I received them. I knew you would understand. It was too much of a risk.” Edmund leaned back in his chair and took a slow sip of his ale.

Alden nodded in sober agreement and stared blankly into the fire. A thousand thoughts flew through his mind all at once. He had never been part of anything this dangerous in his life, but he felt like he had to. Like it was a responsibility — no, a calling. Something was certainly calling to him. The voice rang from a depth he didn’t know existed. He felt he had no choice but to see the whole of it through, no matter the consequences.

Small like a pebble stuck in your shoe. Small like a seed buried in the cold dirt. Small like a spark against dry kindling. But it often is the smallest of things that turn out to be the biggest…

The people of Norwich would have sworn adamantly that there was no such thing as magic.

They were far too grown up and educated to be fooled by such a childish ploy. They had commutes and deadlines, appointments and taxes, classes and books. Ah, books... you must know that not all books are written the same nor have identical effects. Many of the ones resting on their wooden shelves, with all the well-calculated information they had to offer, did nothing more than close off their minds; like metal doors shutting out the sun in the name of progress.

But there was that occasional rare book, ragged and worn by the hands of time and love, passed down with care like a secret or a diamond — held tightly until it was safe in another’s hands. That kind of book was a dangerous thing to have lying around. For if someone dared stumble upon it, they would find it near impossible to return to any sense of decency. Indeed, it would gnaw at all sense of reasonableness until one was driven to the edge of madness itself.

At least that was what their friends and family members reported after. But it is not always a bad thing to be called mad in a world that has long lost its sense of wonder.

And on a cold, midwinter day in January, the people of Norwich would come to find out that there was more to this world than what they had been told in their books and classes. Yes, far more than what they were told, but for some, no more than what they had secretly longed for and hoped to be true.

Alden sat with his back pressed against the scarred wooden bench as his professor waved his hands sporadically against the blackboard. The wisdom of Socrates and Aristotle stretched across the top half in bright yellow chalk as he scribbled his own personal musings below in faint blue. Philosophy at Cambridge was not for the faint of heart, at least not when Mr. Cudworth was teaching. In his own words, it was not a successful lecture unless his students left with a figurative nosebleed from engaging in thought at such dizzying heights. And on most days, that was the observable evidence as student after student exited the lecture hall with a blended look of perplexity and curiosity.

Mr. Cudworth was not at all your average professor, though on the outside he certainly looked the part. He had a large head of wispy white hair with a few rogue strands, a leathery face that was outlined by a pair of oddly bent black spectacles and an aged body that was draped with the customary black robes, one size too large. Yet those who paid close enough attention knew this was all just a disguise, a mere facade for something much more wild and unpredictable underneath.

There were a few students who were not so easily fooled by the appearance, Alden being the most keen. Over time he began to pick up on the subtle shifts in the professor’s voice and the glinted spark in his sage green eyes when he looked out through the window near his desk. It was as if he was recalling a long lost memory, pulling up some archaic wisdom from a dreadfully deep well. It was obvious to Alden that Mr. Cudworth knew something that he was working very hard to restrain and keep in. But his strength was fading with age and time, the dam began to crack, and Alden was determined to catch every drop of gold that slowly trickled forth.

Delight and joy are not a luxury for me.
My heart is often at risk of pumping cold blood. 
I find in myself a great need to see the world smiling,
as I smile back at it in wonder.

Joy is an ancient blade that must be brandished.
What else can slay the dragon of gloom?

And so I gaze at every sunrise
and chase down every sunset.
Mouth gaping like it was the first time.
Because to me, it feels like the first time.
And this tells me I am safe from the gripping,
cold, calculating, clutching hands of this age. 

The poison that says this thing is just this thing.
That a star is just a flaming ball of gas,
and nothing more.
I fear analyzing that doesn't lead to amazement.
I fear reducing Heaven down to a thesis.

Stopping to smell the roses is not a luxury for me.
I need to remind myself of how alive this world is,
and how alive I am to this world.

Every blade of grass, holding a drop of rain,
holding a world of things to know and love,
glimmering with the glory it is held by.

This is not a luxury.
This is a necessity.
Oxygen to my lungs.
I breathe in glory
and exhale wonder.
And my heart stays warm.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

— Tolkien, On Fairy-stories (Epilogue)

The grill is on and the smell of propane and fresh sausages assaults my senses as I hear the echoes of a woodpecker on a distant tree. I’m thinking about the idea of mystery and how we grow as people. We just got finished fasting and praying for three weeks as a church and I recall the common thoughts and questions that would come up: “How does this really work?” and “What if I break my fast? Does it mean I ruin the whole thing? Will God still bless me…?” They are honest questions, but they reveal something about how we think about how we actually change and grow as people.

Humans are so quick to try to put everything into a box. Everything needs a formula, an answer, an explanation. If 1+1=2 then shouldn’t me doing this certain action automatically lead to a specific response. Well… not really. Not with this life and certainly not a life with God. We want Ikea manuals for everything; for how to pray, for how to read the Bible, for how to raise our kids, for how to grow in being compassionate. But those don’t exist. There are no easy and quick steps for how to grow. No clear, straight path for maturity. The only path that exists is the wild one through fire, up hills, through strange forests that make us get a bit lost and down in the valleys where we barely see the light.

I don’t want a faith that is plug and play. That is like thinking we can fit Niagara Falls into a Ziplock bag. It’s like trying to make God into an AI chatbot where we input questions and He spits out ready-made answers. No. We need the journey, the struggle, the wrestle, the mystery. We need the liturgy, the practice, the long-obedience in the same direction. This is what makes us. The mystery of it all is actually beautiful — and it’s in this tension where we get to put our real faith in the real Jesus and trust Him as we put one foot in front of the other.

If you are bored with life, it might be because you have sucked out all the mystery and have an answer for everything. Let it all be bigger than yourself, than what you can understand or wrap your neatly-tied theology around.

Jesus is so much bigger and so much better. He is the mystery and the journey; the way, the truth and the wild life!

I sit here under blue skies littered with a thin haze of white clouds. The tobacco smoke from my pipe floats weightless away in the air, reminding me that my life is a lot like that.

Here today, gone tomorrow.
A breath. A mist. A vapor.

And somehow, that wild truth frees me.

It frees me to live. To enjoy this moment. To delight in the small things and not fret over what I can't control or fill my mind with anxious thoughts. Jesus said you can't add even an hour to your life by worrying, so I guess I should just spend the little hours I do have attentive. Attentive to the birds, the warmth of the sun on my skin, the books on my shelves, the kids running through the backyard laughing. 

Another wisp of smoke floats away and I breathe slowly, lifting my gaze upward. That's where I want my eyes to be, but if I am honest, most of the time they can tend to be on myself. How I came off in that moment, what others think of me, how well I did, etc. But I've sensed a change over the years. It's been slow, but I am becoming more comfortable in my skin, more confident, more awake to who I was created to be. 

That's the journey, isn't it?

Becoming who we already are. Not having to create some new identity up for ourselves but discovering that unique person that God had made us to be all along. That person is there. They were always there, often just buried under the rubble of performance, insecurities, and the mixed propaganda of a culture that says fit in or be left behind. I've caught myself saying to my wife a few times this last year "I really like who I am becoming." I don't think that comes from a place of pride. But I am proud. And I feel God's smile over my life. And that's everything to me.

And so I lift my gaze upward.

The tree that was barren all winter with a skeleton outline has now exploded with green leaves and white flowers, reminding me that good things take time. You can't rush the process. There is no shortcut around the valley. We all need seasons of death and dormancy. Just a few weeks ago the tree looked lifeless. Now it looks like it's bursting with more life than it knows what to do with.

I think we grow more like trees than we realize. There are seasons in our lives. Seasons of things being stripped away, seasons of stillness, seasons where new seeds need to be planted, and seasons where the branches are laden with ripe fruit.

We all want the fruit, but we don't want to wait. But patience is the name of the game. I don't really like being patient. But all the good stuff of life is on the other side of it. Of waiting. Of deep work done slow over long seasons. And so we wait, but not without hope. We wait with expectancy.

The little tobacco that is left in my pipe is now just ash. The sun is moving slowly in the sky and now I sit under a cool canopy of shade as planes and birds both fly over my head. I read over what I have written to my kids and they give me wide smiles and I am reminded of the words from Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

“What can a fictional story say to my pain, grief, work, parenting, singleness, and dreams?”

It turns out the answer is: quite a lot...

This is why it’s always a thrill for me to see someone’s eyes light up for the first time when they suddenly become aware that this grand narrative actually has the ability to not only map onto their own life, but also speak into it in a profoundly deep way.

I just experienced this with a good friend this past week. He knew how big of a Tolkien nerd I was and would often take the comical jabs at me for it. So when he randomly asked to borrow the books to start reading, I was pleasantly surprised. A week later, as he was already deep into book two, I received this text from him as he was processing his current season of life:

I feel like Sam, I just want to go back home where everything was good. Journey started cute, but some days I feel like I’m solo and post fellowship disbanding.

Dry marsh, rapidly changing friend groups…

Hobbits are gardeners, they have no place in Eastern lands, but they were selected to bear the journey through that land to complete something much bigger.

I have to continually remind myself why I left the comfortable, where I fit the mold, and come expectant that the bigger thing is truly ahead, and it is better.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was quoting LOTR that brought me joy, it was the fact that I was witnessing him make sense of and navigate his own story through this lens. It not only put words to his journey, it gave him comfort, courage and vision for what he was experiencing and how he needed to move forward.

This is why I love reading Tolkien. Not just because I enjoy Middle-earth, but because it has been a source of clarity to my own life and story.

This is really the way I think life is designed to work. It’s really hard to understand your own story, let alone figure out how to live in it, without the presence of another story. We are storied people. Humans have been this way since the dawn of creation. It’s the way God made this world. It’s why music, movies, plays, and books are so powerful. We have a great need to immerse ourselves in another story and let it overlap, jab, poke, reveal, expose, comfort and strengthen us. No amount of reasoning or logic can do this. Myth is the native language of the soul.

Read good literature. Fiction is not a waste of time. A good story with real human depth is a prophetic voice. It speaks wisdom and warning into our lives. It calls us out, lifting our eyes, and inviting us further into the life we were meant to live.

What do elves, dwarves and magical lands have to do with your life? Everything.