“Tolkien’s Six Keys to Happiness” by: Gregory Bassham
Outline by, Dan Baxter
I Delight in Simple Things
A Hobbits
a Enjoy eating, drinking, smoking, parties, farming
B Elves
a a Enjoy story telling, singing, craftsmanship, watching the stars
C Henry David Thoreau
a Spent more than two years of his life in the woods in order as he said, “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
D How does this relate to our theology class?
a Wonder and Awe
1 In so many simple parts of nature we are able to better experience God (example: rain)
b Aristotle’s ideas of real and perceived goods
1 In living a simple life, we are able to better understand what we really need in life, and what are perceived goods that we simply want.
II Make Light of Your Troubles
A Hobbits
a After Merry and Pippin escape from the orc camp their conversation does not convey the peril they had been in.
b In Mordor, amidst all the death and dust, Sam sees a star pierce through the darkness and realizes that there is “light and beauty for ever beyond [darkness’s] reach” (Return of the King 211).
B Quakers
a One of the twelve rules for living known as “the Quaker Dozen”
C How does this relate to our theology class?
a We must be happy while we can because as Marcus Aurelius said, all men die and, in death, all men are all equal
III Get Personal
A Hobbits
a no crime because everyone gets along so well
b Sam, Merry, and Pippin decide to join the Fellowship in an instant because of their friendship with Frodo despite the terrible dangers awaiting them
c Sam remains faithful to Frodo to the very end despite the horrible conflicts the two of them face
B Aristotle
a In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that friendship is essential to a happy life
C How does this relate to our theology class?
a Friendship was, in Aristotle’s view, the most important of his external goods required for happiness
IV Cultivate Good Character
A Good characters end up happy (Sam, Aragorn, Faramir) while bad characters come to bad ends (Gollum, Saruman, Wormtongue, and Denethor)
B In When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner states that “Human beings have a need to be good”
C How does this relate to our theology class?
a As explained in M. Scott Peck’s Choosing a Map for Life, we must constantly reexamine our worldview in order to develop good morals
b
In
V Cherish and Create Beauty
A Good places (Rivendell, Lorien, the Shire) are beautiful while evil places (Mordor, Minas Morgul, Orthanc) are dark and void of life
B Happy people throughout the book are also artistic or creative (example: elves)
C Tolkein explained our desires for creativity and beauty as “because we are made…in the image and likeness of a Maker”
a God is an artist and we are made in his image orienting us towards beauty and creativity
D How does this relate to our theology class?
a Wonder and Awe
1 Through the wonderful creations of nature we are able to experience and cherish true beauty
VI Rediscover Wonder
A Tom Bombadil and the elves are completely absorbed in nature and live forever but never succumb to boredom because their wonder and awe in the world is constantly renewed
B Frodo senses the life within the trees of Lorien and it leads him to a new realization of life which seemed to open up “a high window that looked on a vanished world” (Fellowship of the Ring 393).
C Tolkein refers to rediscovering wonder as “recovery”
a we must see the world with fresh eyes
D How does this relate to our theology class?
a Wonder and Awe
1 important because they leave us with feelings of humility and gratitude