Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Friday, September 2, 2022

Tolkien Heads: the Man, the Mythology, & Middle-Earth: Sessions 4 & 5 + Middle-Earth Lore





TOLKIEN HEADS: the Man, the Mythology, & Middle-Earth:
Sessions 4 & 5 + Middle-Earth Lore


Tolkien Heads with Chris Vaccarro
Streamed live on Aug 22, 2022 

Christopher Vaccaro is Senior Lecturer at the Universty of Vermont where he has been teaching English since 1999. Earning his Ph.D. from the City University of New York in 2003, he has been teaching a variety of courses for the English Department and the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program. Some of his courses include British Literature Survey, Introduction to Old English, Beowulf, Queers of Color, Women of the Middle Ages, Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Queering the Middle Ages, History of the English Language, and Written Expression.
Professor Vaccaro has been organizing events at UVM for almost as long as he has been here. He began the Tolkien at UVM conference in 2004 and has been running the conference and bringing important scholars in the field to UVM every year since then. Publications include two edited collections on Tolkien, The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium (McFarland Press, 2013) and Tolkien and Alterity (Palgrave, 2017) with essays included in those volumes, and essays published on Tolkien. He is currently working on a monograph exploring the intersection of pleasure, same-sex love, and death in Beowulf and lesser known Old English texts. In addition, he has been asked to co-edit a collection on Queer Tolkien and has tentatively agreed to edit a collection for Brill’s Exploration of the Middle Ages series titled Painful Pleasures: Sadomasochism in Medieval Culture.


Tolkien Heads: Tolkien’s Creation of Middle-earth w/ Stephen Yandell
Streamed live on Aug 29, 2022 

Dr. Stephen Yandell is an English faculty member at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and teaches courses regularly on J.R.R. Tolkien and medieval literature. His earliest Tolkien research, “‘A Pattern Which Our Nature Cries Out For’: the Medieval Tradition of the Ordered Four in the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien,” appears in the 1992 Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, Keble College, Oxford, and more recent work is included in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia and Tolkien and Alterity. His research interests include medieval prophecy (he is co-editor of Prophet Margins: The Medieval Vatic Impulse and Social Stability), Middle Welsh literature (his translation of Math, Son of Mathonwy appears in Medieval Literature for Children), and medievalism (with chapters appearing in The Disney Middle Ages and Mass Market Medieval). His work also extends to other Inklings, most notably C. S. Lewis, with research included in C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy and C. S. Lewis, Views from Wake Forest. He currently serves as Director of the University Scholars Program.


* * * * * * * *


LotR Timeline: Part I
A lot of people who read the Lord of the Rings for the first time not only get confused by the large amount of names and places but also of the many storylines and switches that occur during the book. In general the first book: The Fellowship of the Ring starts pretty much chronilogical and follows the actions of Frodo and the other Hobbits. A mayor turning point is the Council of Elrond where the Fellowship of the Ring is formed and the company sets out on its quest. The End of the First Book and the beginning of the Second Book concern the Breaking of the Fellowship and from that point the story gets more complicated as there are three major groups to follow. During the Second book and the Third book the story switches from group to group while often going back in time.
We have created four Timelines that give a chronological summary of the major events that concern the main characters. Each character has his own coloured line that can be followed as the characters gather and disperse. The First Timeline follows the actions of some of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring from the moment that Gandalf visits Frodo in Hobbiton until the Council of Elrond.
For a Portugese Version of the Timelines go to: Duvendor


The next part is the timeline from The Council of Elrond where the Fellowship of the Ring is formed untill the Breaking of the Fellowship.

LotR Timeline: Part II
Below is the timeline that follows the actions from the moment that the Fellowship of the Ring sets out on its quest untill the Breaking of the Fellowship.


Note: Gollum follows the Fellowship of the Ring closely in Moria, thus his timeline is drawn beside the members of the FoR. The next part is the timeline from The Breaking of the Fellowship until the Battle at the Pelennor Fields. 
LotR Timeline: Part III 
This part of the timeline and the book are the most confusing as a lot of different characters are doing a lot of different things. Below is the timeline that follows the actions from The Breaking of the Fellowship until the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

 
The next part of the timeline is the last and it shows the events from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields untill the Frodo, Bilbo and the Three Keepers leave Middle-Earth.

LotR Timeline: Part IV
Below is the timeline that follows the actions from The Battle of the Pelennor Fields until Frodo, Bilbo and the Three Keepers leave Middle-Earth.


The Third Age ended with the departure of Frodo, Bilbo and the Three Keapers at the Grey Havens. Note worthy dates in the Fourth Age:
  • S.R. 1482 : Rose dies, Sam leaves Middle-earth as the last of the Ringbearers.
  • S.R. 1541 : King Elessar dies, Gimli and Legolas leave Middle-earth together and so ended the Fellowship of the Ring in Middle-earth.




Publication Order of The Lord of the Rings Books
Publication Order of Middle-Earth Universe Books
Publication Order of The History of Middle-Earth Books
Publication Order of History Of The Lord Of The Rings Collections
Publication Order of Tales of Middle Earth Books
Publication Order of Later Silmarillion Collections
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Publication Order of Picture Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Publication Order of Anthologies


About the Author, J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is a highly acclaimed fantasy writer. J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Orange Free State, Bloemfontein in South Africa in the year 1892. He is known as the father of high fantasy. He is the one who is credited for the revival of the fantasy genre in 20th century and making it very popular among the readers. The Times magazine has ranked the author among 50 greatest writers since 1945. Two of his most famous books are ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and ‘The Hobbit.’

J.R.R. Tolkien spent his early life in a Birmingham Village called, Sarehole in England where his mother had moved after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien’s father, Arthur Tolkien, who died of rheumatic fever. While in Sarehool, Tolkien was bitten by a baboon spider. One may link the mention of spiders in his books as an effect of this particular incident. Many of the scenes in his books seem to be inspired by the scenery of Sarehole where he frequented to places like Sarehole Mill, Moseley Bog, Malvern Hills and other places. In his early childhood, Tolkien’s mother took charge of his studies and taught botany to him. However, Tolkien was very keen with the languages. Keeping thin in mind, his mother taught him Latin. He could read at the age of 3 and write at the age of 4. He read many of the famous fantastical works in English literature such as ‘Alice in the Wonderland’ as a child. His keen interest in fantasy seems to inspire his books.

In 1904, mother of the author died after which he was brought up by her close friend, Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan. Morgan had task to raise him as a good catholic. Later in his life J.R.R. Tolkien went to Exeter college in Lancashire from where he did his graduation in the Germanic languages and classic literature. He joined the military as a lieutenant with Lancashire Fusiliers. He fought in the war of Somme but later he was released from his duties from military because of his illness. All this while, J.R.R. Tolkien continued with his writing as he has a deep interest in it. While serving in the military, he married, Edith Mary Bratt in 1916. Their meetings were opposed by Morgan because she was a protestant but their love for each other kept them together and later on Bratt got converted as a catholic.

J.R.R. Tolkien continued his studies in linguistics and later in his career, he joined as a faulty at the University of Leeds, After that, he joined Oxford University as a professor of Anglo Saxon at Pembroke college. At the Oxford University he started a literary group called ‘Inkling’. Inkling had some illustrious members which included CS Lewis and Owen Barfield. J.R.R. Tolkien kept on working in his profession till 1959. While he was at Oxford, he wrote one of his most popular books ‘the Hobbit’. After that he published an essay and poetry collection and wrote ‘Smith of Wootton’ which is a fantasy. His wife died in the year 1971 and he died in the year 1973 at the age of 81. A year before his death, the author was honored by queen Elizabeth as ‘the commander of the order of the British empire’ in 1972. The author is survived by four of his children. J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher has published a series of books based on the notes and manuscripts left by the author.

Two of the most popular books written by the author are ‘The Hobbit’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy. These books sold millions of copies worldwide. Tolkien’s one of the most famous books ‘The Hobbit’ was published in the year 1937. It was considered to be a children’s’ book though Tolkien did not describe it as a children’s book. One of the great features of this book is the 100 drawings in the book created by the author. The main character of the book is Bilbo Baggins. The book is all about the adventure of its lead character, Bilbo.

The masterpiece of J.R.R. Tolkien is ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy which is considered as one of the best fiction work in the 20th century. This work strengthened the fantasy genre. Strong reflection of ‘Lord of the Rings’ can be found in other works of fantasy. It was a series of three books and one of the most popular ones in the modern times. The book is inspired by European myths. The there books of the trilogy are the ‘Fellowship of the Ring’, ‘The Two Towers’ and the last one ‘The Return of the King.’ These three books were published in the year 1954 and 1955. The author had spent almost 10 years just writing the narrative of the book. Originally, the author had intended it as a book for children but as he went on writing, it became more serious and dark. The trilogy is a rich fantasy and you will find characters such as talking trees, elves and Goblins.

The characterization has been superb in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and many of the characters have become fictional legends. Two of the most famous characters in the book are that of Gandalf and Gimli. Gandalf is considered to be one of the strongest characters in the book. Gandalf, for many is the best and most powerful character ever in a fantasy novel. Other popular characters from the book are Legolas, who can shoot five arrows in one go. Many consider the character of the Aragorn as the best. His nobility and humbleness is loved by the readers and movie goers. The character of Gimli is lovable as well. He is short and stocky but very stubborn. He will do what he likes.

‘The Lord of the Rings’ has received rave reviews. In a BBC survey the book was declared as the ‘most loved’ book ever. Amazon.com customers termed the book as ‘best work of the millennium.’

‘The Lord of The Rings’ trilogy has been adapted as a movie by the director, Peter Jackson which had some of the most popular Hollywood stars in the film. The film has been one of the most successful films ever and has won several academy awards. Peter Jackson also adopted another popular book by Tolkien, ‘The Hobbit’ in a movie. This movie has three parts.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkein has helped revive the fantasy genre not only in books but in movies as well. ‘Lord of the rings’ is one of the most celebrated book and a movie ever.



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