I have never been an exceptionally skilled gardener. I have killed succulents! But one of my literary heroes is a talented gardener. He also happens to be a hobbit, something my five-foot-tall self cannot help but admire. I am writing about Samwise Gamgee of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien outright named in a letter that Sam, not Frodo, was the true hero of his epic tale. Like all good things that grow, Sam’s cultivation of curiosity is rooted in love. He loves his friend Frodo. His abiding love for Frodo means that Sam never leaves his side, even walking into Hell’s gates (Mordor) to find his friend. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Let’s first discuss this saga: in a nutshell, it concerns a ring that can control all the world by the hand of one tyrant, with the help of servants of that tyrant, who breeds armies of sameness. The only way to destroy this ring is to cast it into the fires from which it was made, on Mount Doom, in the dismal land of Mordor. A diverse fellowship undertakes the quest to destroy this ring, and ultimately, it comes down to two hobbits, Frodo, the ring bearer, and Sam, the constant gardener.
Now let us talk hobbits for a moment: they are creatures of comfort and home, simple folks who love a simple life, living in cozy hobbit holes under the ground. Few ever venture very far, and Tolkien gave any sort of inquisitiveness on the part of a hobbit a name: queer. While Tolkien likely did not mean queer in the way we use it in our time, this descriptor did signal a difference that was to be admired and not feared. Bilbo and Frodo are named queer because they come from a line of hobbits from the other side of the river who have more than a tiny taste for adventure. They’re also known to welcome all creatures, including wizards and dwarves. Early in The Fellowship of the Ring, just after we’ve learned about hobbits who live in cozy holes in the ground, we learn that Bag End, home to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, is a queer place with queer folk. These are not your typical hobbits. But that queerness ends up being a cause for celebration, as the hospitality of Bag End and the strange hobbits within are praised. There is even the suggestion that the Shire needs more queerness, welcome and curiosity.
Sam’s dad praises Frodo and Bilbo’s admirable queerness. He does not fear their curious, adventurous ways or the strangers who come to their door. It seems from Tolkien that Frodo comes by his curiosity somewhat genetically — it’s in his blood, coming from a line of wild hobbits who came from the wrong side of the river and dared to go out on the water. This inherent queer curiosity undoubtedly aids Frodo in his quest to save all of Middle Earth from certain destruction.
But Sam is different. Sam does not come by his curiosity as naturally. As the constant gardener, he cultivates it. Sam encourages curiosity to grow within him, even in the most dire and frightful situations. Ultimately, Sam’s curiosity saves the world. And, make no mistake, Tolkien did not imagine Middle Earth as another world from ours. He imagined it as long before our time, writing, “It is my own mother-earth.”
Ultimately, Sam’s curiosity saves the world.
Tolkien also claimed that The Lord of the Rings was a Christian story. As Fleming Rutledge in The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings argues, “Tolkien designed the story so that the attentive reader would discern the workings of an active transcendent agency.” This active transcendent agent was sometimes called the “Writer of the Story,” “the Great Author” and the “supreme Artist.” In this epic tale, I prefer to imagine God as the Good Gardener, patient, working behind the scenes, cultivating curiosity and life.
Sam can connect with this Good Gardener in key moments that would prove pivotal to saving the world. He does not access this source of curiosity and wonder in a place of ease and delight; Sam, like many of us, connects with this Good Gardener in his most shadowed moments. At one point, he is carrying the ring for Frodo. And the ring tempts Sam in the best way it could. Tolkien cared deeply about his story not being a simplistic tale of good versus evil but of how corruption can overtake anyone and turn them toward selfishness and greed, given the right temptation. And so Sam’s temptation, of course, takes the form of a garden. The ring conjures a garden for Sam in the midst of that wasteland. If Sam puts on the ring of ultimate power, he is promised that all he touches will blossom with green life and that his dominion will be an unending garden over all the earth, belonging only to him.
But Sam’s love for Frodo saves him. He reminds himself of the deep, rich soil of his hobbit sense. That sense reminds him that he is not meant to rule the whole earth, even if it were a garden. He is intended to have his tiny free garden, lovingly tended by his own hands and not by the hands of coerced labor. He doesn’t need a kingdom; he needs only a humble patch of good earth, his own hands, and the love of his Mister Frodo. The temptations of the ring fail in the face of these.
The season we are in
Just in case the Lenten parallel isn’t immediately springing to mind, consider now the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4:1-11:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
The death of curiosity is not certainty. It is fear of difference, and then the will to have command – power over – all things, a power that consumes and corrupts like a ring filled with malice.
The death of curiosity is not certainty. It is fear of difference, and then the will to have command – power over – all things, a power that consumes and corrupts like a ring filled with malice.
Sam’s unconquered (and unconquering) hobbit sense overcomes his temptation: a single Edenic garden, lovingly tended by his own hands and not by hands commanded to do so, is all Sam needs in this life. He is curious, and he is content.
Jesus’ temptation is overcome by a refusal of the too-simple answers of the one called Satan. He will not use his considerable power for mastery. Though he could, he did not even command the stones or the angels. When those angels come to his aid, they are as unconquered free beings, tending to him as lovingly as Sam tended to a Frodo whose curiosity had run out. Frodo did not complete his quest. He could not. He was perhaps never meant to — not on his own.
But Sam, the constant gardener, whose love for his Frodo watered his cultivated curiosity, sees them through to the end of all things and a new beginning. He refuses the too-easy answers of power, and even in the valley (or mountain) of the shadow of death, he feels that curious spark of something beyond within him, perhaps of the Good Gardener. Sam is with Frodo at what they take to be the end of their world. Even there, Sam refuses to give up. He listens to that inner curiosity beckoning him to what may come.
It is finished. Death, destruction, a regime to eradicate difference with absolute command and an army of sameness are ended. But on the other side of that is something else. Sam, who has so lovingly tended the soil of curiosity, senses it, right under the shadow of death. This is why Sam is my favorite gardener and one of my favorite theologians.
The something beyond that sustains us
As Stephen Cherry in God Curious: Exploring Eternal Questions argues, “Good, interesting, lively compelling theology doesn’t grow on happy trees in jolly gardens. It tends to spring up from the ruins of some kind of lost hope or shattered vision. … Theology never grows out of smugness but comes out of perplexity and the need to find answers to the questions that keep us awake at night or which occur to us when life (or death) stops us in our tracks.”
Some of us naturally come by our spiritual curiosity — perhaps it is woven into our tradition or our experience of God, like Frodo’s adventurous ways were part of his makeup. But I suspect most of us are more like Sam, and we need that nudge out the door to see where the road may take us. We long for the comforts of the familiar and the simple. We must cultivate curiosity, meeting differences with delight rather than fear. Here, we need the help of the Good Gardener, watering even the most impossible situations with the whisper of that something beyond that sustains us, love that not even the end of all things can conquer.
The Good Gardener in Tolkien’s work gave Sam the wisdom to meet the temptation of conquering the earth and its creatures with simple and contented curiosity. Jesus confronted the one called Satan’s temptation to command all things with abiding trust in that something beyond, and angels tended to him, preparing him for the winding, painful road before him. I believe God gifts us companions of curiosity, inspiring us to dare to believe beyond borders and boxes, whether theological or ideological. Many of these companions come by their curiosity via a hard road. Some live in bodies that others do not try to understand. Some of them are considered small, insignificant or strange. They are God’s gift to us in this quest for curiosity. Many of them are our queer siblings. Their lived experience of difference, queerness and otherness is not a curse but, instead, a gift to the church and theology.
Fr. Shannon Kearns describes this gift in the post “Your Queerness is a Gift,” writing, “Being queer and/or transgender is a gift. It is a gift to see the world through different eyes. It is a gift to have to work to discover yourself, to learn to love yourself (because when you do your love is so much stronger and more deeply rooted). Our theology is not cheap because we have worked for it. Our faith is not cheap because we have fought for it. There are no rote traditions here because we have worked for the ones that we have and we have kept the ones that give life. We are a gift to the church because we see differently. We understand resurrection in ways that are intimate and profound. We read Scripture with eyes that are wide open and see hidden things.”
The death of curiosity is not certainty
The death of curiosity is the impulse to meet otherness with fear and then command and seek to control that otherness.
We Christians worship the One who refused command and control at every turn, ultimately mocking that sort of weaponized power on the cross. Our Good Gardener wept in a garden in the wake of such violence and then faced it, not because of God’s wrath, but because of that soil from which all hope grows: love.
But then what happened?
I can’t leave you without sharing the end of the story. When Sam, Frodo and their friends return to the Shire, all is not well. Their cozy hobbit village has been overtaken and ruined. They take it back. And then Sam, the constant gardener, uses a precious gift given to him by the wise elf Lady Galadriel. She gave him soil from her orchard, which Fleming Rutledge takes to be parallel with the Garden of Eden. Only in Tolkien’s work it is not called soil. It is called dust. Sam takes that dust and does what he did best: he dares to imagine and create a better world. His friends urge him to use it to make his garden alone the best in the Shire. But Sam once again refuses command and control.
Sam does not hoard this gift of good earth, of holy and precious dust. Instead, he puts a single grain of that dust in all the ruined places and the desolate forests where favorite trees were felled. The dust resurrects those trees with such splendor that people make a pilgrimage to see them. They journey to see the elvish mallorn tree in the center of the hobbit’s Party Field, lush with verdant leaves and honeyed flowers. After the great suffering of Middle Earth at the hands of a regime of sameness, the leaves of this tree do, in a Revelation 22 way, heal the nations. They heal the peoples of Middle Earth. Dust that resurrects.
There are many ways we can undertake Lent’s journey. But every way I know begins and ends with dust — beloved, remember you are from dust, and to dust you shall return.
Maybe that dust isn’t the dust of death, or at least not a death where decay has the final word. Maybe this is the dust of curiosity, daring to believe that even the smallest grain can build a new world if only we will imagine it. If only we would trust in the Good Gardener to help us cultivate it. If only we would see difference for the gift it is. If only we will resist command and reject control.
Destruction is not the end
This curious gift of dust – of our miraculous mortality through which the something beyond peeks – dares us to believe that it is never too late for God to bring life. We always have the choice to meet otherness and difference with wonder rather than fear, even within ourselves. The road continues for those curious enough to travel it together.
