I read Carpenter's biography on Tolkien recently. It was marvelous. It wasn't very long. It wasn't exceptionally detailed. But it stirred my heart and thoughts.
The biography covers the history of Tolkien's young life: the death of his parents, his time in the war, the challenges of marrying his sweetheart (his guardian forbid J.R. to see Edith for several years while he finished school).
And then came the following line: "After this, you might say, nothing really happened."
The year was 1925. The "this" in the above sentence referred to his receiving the "Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford."
Tolkien was 33 years old.
Between the "nothing really happened," Tolkien would write books and compile stories that became beloved the world over.
His life was not terribly adventurous in the way you might think the author of one of the greatest fantasy stories of all time might be.
He loved words and language, smoking his pipe, being with his friends (the famous Inklings), working in his garden, raising his family. In the book of his compiled letters, he speaks so tenderly at times to his children, you can almost feel his love for them through the pages as he encourages, teaches and occasionally corrects them. He was an active father and husband.
Though he could have bought a car, he chose to ride his bike to work and church. He kept up a correspondence, writing hundreds of letters.
He didn't travel much. He worked full time as a professor. He didn't have tons of time to write. In fact, there were weeks, even months, where no writing got done (the letters of apology for delays to his publisher and editor are rather amusing).
But he always returned to his writing, mostly in the margins of the life.
I think we have some sort of notion, encouraged by romantic movies and rags-to-riches stories, that to do something great or finish a significant project, one must throw everything aside, shirk all responsibilities, and bury oneself away for months.
And yes, we hear about people like that. I know a few people like that. You do too, I'm sure.
But those stories are quite rare, outliers really.
An incredible amount of good things happen when people create and make and build and work in the margins of their lives, living within the limits of everyday living.
Maybe the work happens hours into the night when the family has gone to bed. Or while the toddler naps. Or in the early morning hour. Maybe it's once a week or only during certain months. Maybe it's in small increments of time every day or a few hours on Saturday.
It is easy to get distracted by distractions, fatigued by work, depleted by excessive screen time, overwhelmed from the drama of life, and overall too-pooped-to-party from the daily grind.
But what we do in the margins of life is not an obligation – not something we reluctantly do- but the things that water the deep places of our souls.
For Tolkien, the stories he wrote were deep within him. He loved moving his work from his head and heart to telling them to his children and then to the page. I imagine the hours of the night flew by while he wrote.
And he kept at it, year after year.
There is a mystery that unfolds when we commit to something and keep at it, even when we only have the margins to work it out in.
We don't have to know why it happens or how it happens. All we must do is keep at our work in the margins, the work of our hearts and hands. It will all come together, eventually.
What is in your heart to do in this spring season?
Spring is the season of starting, of dreaming and daring, of trying something new or restarting something that was shelved years ago. Spring is the time of experimenting and believing for something beautiful to come out of your heart and head and hands.
I know the raging pace of life. It is overwhelming. But I take great encouragement from Tolkien who, though he battled discouragement and the frustration of not being able to get to work on his writing, persevered in those margins.
We can too.
There is something about working through a beautiful project in the margins of life. When one looks back on the season, the margin work stands out like stars twinkling on a dark night, reminding us of the beauty we were able to share in.
There is time. Maybe not a lot. Maybe not all at once. But there is time to do what is in our hearts.
What might you do in the margins of your life?
Probably none of us will have work that influenced lives like Tolkien's work did and continues to do. But each of us has a sphere of influence where our hearts and work ripple out, touching the lives of others as well as our own. It is enough to add to the beauty of the lives around us, whether those lives are few or many.
And a grace enters our own souls as we work out our giftings in the margins.
May your work in the margins be blessed this spring!
"It is a strange paradox, the fact that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are the work of an obscure Oxford professor whose specialization was the West Midland dialect of Middle English, and who lived an ordinary suburban life bringing up his children and tending his garden."
-Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: a biography
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