Bilbo and the Dragon
Today is Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, in the church calendar. I didn't grow up celebrating this feast day, but its significance has grown on me over the years for all sorts of reasons. I adore autumn. I am one of those odd ducks that celebrates the cooling temperatures, the necessity of sweaters and coats, the still-sharp pencils of a newish school year, and the fireside colors of fall. Michaelmas Term is the name of the October to December stretch of the academic year at Oxford (and elsewhere), and I stumbled across it first in that context while reading Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night. (If you are curious, I also wrote about Michaelmas years ago for the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture. Although the essay's photos have gone wonky, the text holds up well.)
This morning, I revisited Malcolm Guite's sonnet for Michaelmas. Do scroll down to hear him read it aloud, and take in this stirring image of the archangel, with a "subdued and bound" dragon at his feet. Subdued and bound, but still lurking, always looking for an unwitting or tempted soul to deceive, torment, or paralyze with doubt and fear.
For months, our youngest and I have been slowly reading through Tolkien's The Hobbit. I've never read it before, although I have attempted it over the years. Reading aloud, in short, bedtime stretches, to a squirmy young soul has helped me enter the story, despite earlier failed attempts. Children are fantastic literary pilgrims. The sails of their imagination so easily catch the wind of a narrative. Having missed the childhood window to grab ahold of the story myself, I can attest that middle-aged readers are in a perfect season to take up the tale afresh. Indeed, I have been very surprised at how much I identify with Bilbo. His character has not only grown on me but revealed some things to me for which I am grateful.
The basic narrative of the story, if you've never read it, is an adventure tale with a humble, homebody anti-hero, Bilbo the Hobbit, as the protagonist. A middle-aged hobbit, Bilbo prefers comfort and routine, regular and abundant meals, and quiet, non-adventurous, puttering plans. Gandalf the Wizard calls Bilbo up for service alongside a baker's dozen of dwarves. This pilgriming posse is commissioned to recover and reclaim the lost land of the dwarves' ancestors, a mountain overtaken by Smaug the dragon. Two-thirds of the book is just the group getting to where they need to go to do what they need to do and getting waylaid in all kinds of brambly misadventures and tricky spots.
Bilbo is distinct from the rest of the dwarf tribe, and they often wonder (usually aloud) why Gandalf selected Bilbo to go with them. When he first gathered them all together at Bilbo's hobbit hole of a house, Gandalf called Bilbo a burglar and the perfect hobbit for the job. But it is plain both to Bilbo and the dwarves that there's nothing "burglar-like" about Bilbo. He bumbles, at best. He is not, at all, clearly perfect for the adventurous mission.
What is clear, though, is that the journey forms the bumbling Bilbo for the bigger battle ahead. It's a formation he needs and doesn't particularly want. The dwarves need him too, for they bumble along as well. They don't really trust Gandalf's long-game wisdom nor Bilbo's capacities. Indeed, they seem most trusting in themselves and the legacy of their ancestors. They love imagining the splendor of their industrious, glorious forebears, but they themselves seem just as hapless and helpless in the rugged demands of their mission. Bilbo's being a hobbit, a lonely foreigner in the larger dwarf pack, makes the dwarves doubt that he is good for anything. But his foreign-ness is a saving grace for them all: Bilbo cannot relate to or easily indulge in the proud cultural nostalgia of the dwarves, and that helps him to keep his wits a bit better. So none of them are equipped very well for the journey. Yet as the adventure unfolds, it is also clear that nothing is wasted. Their mistakes, fogginess, and failures build, toughen, and propel them forward, as reluctantly, vulnerably, and improbably as they go.
At last, with them, my reading companion and I reached the dragon in the story. As dragons do, Smaug believes in his own cleverness. He is a deceiver who is himself deceived, but is still quite skilled at instilling doubt and fear among those tempted to dragon-like deceptions. His tyranny of fear ensures that he reigns securely from the mountain, dominating the area's inhabitants with his fiery presence. They have given up any attempt to fight. A hobbit and thirteen dwarves have journeyed all this way to pick the fight back up again. They are a strange little army of dragon fighters.
In an early encounter with Smaug, alone, Bilbo is obscured from the dragon's view but talks with him at length, and he feels fairly clever in how he handles their conversation as well. While Smaug knows the smell and taste of dwarf from experience, he has no knowledge of hobbits (Hobbits don't do stuff like this! No adventures! No dragon experience!) and cannot figure out what kind of a creature he's dealing with. Bilbo enjoys some protection in Smaug's ignorance, but he also risks falling quickly into the dragon's deceptions because of his own. Their dialogue does its work, and each learns enough to make them both a little wiser and warier of the other. Of course, dragon-wisdom is fearsome and violent, briefly blazing but ultimately foolish. Conversely, hobbit-wisdom is forged by mistakes, dark doubts, courageous attempts and spectacular failures, and persevering in the strange call upon his life.
We humans are more hobbit than archangel. As much as Bilbo never sheds his bumbling hobbit-ness, we never shed nor escape our vulnerable and tempted humanity. Even our best-planned adventures proceed as Bilbo's does; mine certainly do. I burgle and blunder more than battle or blaze. Somehow, the journey propels me onward (not always plainly forward!), and forms me in its circuity. Nothing gets wasted.
To that end, thank you to all of you who prayed for me as I journeyed to Belgium for the annual doctoral colloquium and for my oral examination. Your messages meant so much. I am happy to report that I passed. The week was full of such good gifts -- getting to know people, having long, meaty conversations, and lots of good, strong feedback as well. It was nice to "pass," yet I remain in a posture of discernment, even doubt, and ask for your continued prayers for my way. God knows what I need and is capable of even using my bumbling and backtracking to supply it.
Peace to you on your own way, in the bright light of this day, even if it may be full of doubt, deceitful dragons, and even darkness. Hobbit-like we make our way, and a larger story unfolds and even involves us. We can trust the author. Indeed, as I once wrote about today, "Merry Michaelmas, dear, weary, image-bearing immortal. Take comfort in the other reality that this forgotten Feast celebrates."