Geeky Catholic Dad

If you're even remotely familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , you know that Sauron is the bad guy. He's basically evil personified. So what could we possibly learn about holiness from him? "Just do the opposite of what Sauron does, and you'll be a saint?" Well, that's not exactly what I'm talking about.

Several months ago, my sister-in-law and her husband lost a daughter to miscarriage. When I heard the name they gave to their daughter - Maria Esperanza - I was inspired to write about the virtue of hope ("esperanza" is Spanish for "hope"). I have been struggling since then to put this post together. There are so many questions to answer. What does it mean to hope? How can you have hope in God when it seems like He only sends you suffering? Does a miscarriage prove that your hope was in vain? But after months of putting it off, I've finally put pen to paper (finger to keyboard? electrical impulse to web server?). I'd like to dedicate this post to Maria Esperanza and her parents.

Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been out for a few weeks now, and fans are divided. There are those (like myself) who loved the film. (See my review here. ) But a lot of fans have issues with the film, ranging from minor nitpicks to huge disagreements about the tone, the direction the story took, or the motivations of characters. As a result, a multitude of discussions are taking place across social media. The trolls of the internet resort to hyperbole and ad hominem attacks. Fortunately, most of what I've seen has been civil, even when fans have fundamental problems with what they saw on the screen. I will be addressing one of the many topics of discussion I've seen come up: Why was Luke on Ahch-To, the site of the original Jedi Temple, if he didn't even want to be a Jedi anymore?

Stories with happy endings aren't realistic. The real world doesn't work that way. So what value can a fairy tale like The Princess Bride possibly offer? A lot, actually. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up:

Source: Wikimedia Commons A few weeks ago, during an RCIA preparation class, we were discussing the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve. A catechumen - we'll call him Steve - asked me, "Isn't God responsible for everything that happened? He put the tree there." This is an excellent question, not because it represents a flaw in the Christian worldview (spoiler alert: it doesn't), but because it invites us to take a closer look at the nature of free will, and at God's Divine Providence.

You might recall from my Lord of the Rings post last month that I really like a literary device Tolkien uses, which he calls "eucatastrophe." I'd like to use this post to explore that concept a bit more, and tie it together with the meaning of Christmas.

My favorite books of all time are J.R.R. Tolkien's books about Middle-earth. I'm referring not only to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit , but also to The Silmarillion , and Tolkien's earlier writings about Middle-earth, collected in Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth . Tolkien created more than just a story, or a collection of stories, or even a mythology. In his works, he created an entire world, with its own history, geography, cultures, and languages.