As my car pulled into the parking lot this morning (yeah, I know my accounts of listening to Lord of the Rings are approaching epic and legendary and almost beyond belief, but just deal with it. I’m not messing around here) I heard one of my most favorite parts of it all. I’ve used it to mark J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday and referred to it in times of darkness.

This morning as I turned off the car I could only imagine Sam, looking up at the one bright star in the sky. We’ve all done that – paused outside coming in from the car, or after taking the trash out, long enough to look up and see a star or two and to have a small quiet thought with ourselves, then we can go in peacefully and more determined to do what has to be done.

…the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

~~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Book II, The Land of Shadow.

Tonight when I got back in my car, I rewound a bit and listened to that section again before going on, towards Mount Doom against impossible odds and with little food and water.