Rekindling An Old Light

"There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued."   Letters, #45, page 54 Heaven is difficult (impossible for me) to imagine. The best I can do is to associate it with supreme joy, goodness, health and fulfillment. But Tolkien's reference here to heaven seems entirely imaginable, completely reasonable, wholly comprehensive.  It makes me long even more for heaven.

Tolkien and The TCBS: Some Spark Of Fire In 1911, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was about 19 years old. He and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Smith and Christopher Wiseman formed themselves into an unofficial and semi-secret society. They referred to their group as "the T.C.B.S.", standing for "Tea Club and Barrovian Society". (They had a fondness for having tea in their school's library, without permission, and in Barrow's Store near the school.) The four friends kept closely in touch, and in December 1914 they held a "council" at Wiseman's home in London. The group shared ideals and mutual encouragement, and Tolkien found himself inspired to begin to devote much energy toward writing poetry. Scarcely six months later, Wiseman was in the Navy, and Gilson, Smith and Tolkien found themselves in different parts of the Somme just as the Allied offensive of July 1, 1914 was beginning. Rob Gilson was killed in action on that day. Two year...