We have been creeping ever so slowly toward what may possibly be the election of our lifetime – just like it was last time, and even the time before, but those are the halcyon days of yesteryear compared to the fierce urgency of now. Today we are convinced – yes, I am convinced - that we are in a fight for our lives, if our lives mean living them in the country to which we have become accustomed – not in the sense of hot and cold running water and trash collection, but those are important too. I mean in the sense of being or becoming the good guys. Our past is more than a little shady, but bit by bit it has seemed to some of us, anyway, to be stepping out of the shadows. Now the shadow may be back. So how can we face the shadow, if needs must? How can we hope, if all hope seems lost?
J.R.R.Tolkien had a couple of words for hope. Amdir is the hope of the moment, Amdir is finding a way over the mountains, running down a band of orcs, or even consulting your budget before buying that new thing. Estel is the hope for the future, Estel is lining up before the Black Gate when you have no real hope, no real Amdir, for the outcome. Your hope is all bound up in Estel. It’s the hope that somehow things will, in the end, turn to the good. That your side, the erstwhile good guys, will prevail.
Amdir is the hope of the possible.
Estel is hope in the face of the implausible.
I do have Amdir for the coming election. I have every reason in the world to believe that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will win the office of President and Vice President. It may be a bit implausible that the votes for Congress will follow suit, but as the fat lady likes to say, hold on there, I haven’t sung yet.
Still and all, it may be that the Shadow once again encroaches and declares a victory that no manner of vote counting and recounting can discount. Wherein then does our hope lie? Well, in Estel, of course. Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us that the arc of history bends toward justice. I think he’s right, but not without help it doesn’t. That arc is bent by the tread of people filled with Estel, hope for the future, hope for the good life. And what, then, is the good life?
At its best, I suppose, it has hot and cold running water and trash collection, but more than that it has generosity and loving kindness expressed in your household and toward your neighbors. Estel wears a smile, because it knows that it is stronger than the Shadow. The Shadow has no generative power. It can only exist in the absence of light. So the more we persist in smiling our hope for the future, in laughing at Shadows, in refusing to hate or mistrust, the shorter the Shadow will become. So long as we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and comfort the sick and grieving we will win out eventually. Amdir is still there as we sing our redemption songs. Estel is a light in the gathering darkness that shows us the way to go.