They Stand Tall in Our Dreams

‘I need no map,’ said Gimli, who had come up with Legolas, and was gazing out before him with a strange light in his deep eyes. ‘There is the land where our fathers worked of old, and we have wrought the image of those mountains into many works of metal and of stone, and into many songs and tales. They stand tall in our dreams: Baraz, Zirak, Shathûr.

‘Only once before have I seen them from afar in waking life, but I know them and their names, for under them lies Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, that is now called the Black Pit, Moria in the Elvish tongue. Yonder stands Barazinbar, the Redhorn, cruel Caradhras; and beyond him are Silvertine and Cloudyhead: Celebdil the White, and Fanuidhol the Grey, that we call Zirakzigil and Bundushathûr.

‘There the Misty Mountains divide, and between their arms lies the deep-shadowed valley which we cannot forget: Azanulbizar, the Dimrill Dale, which the Elves call Nanduhirion.’

—Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord of the Rings: One Volume (p. 283). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Deep into their hearts and minds the Dwarves engraved the images and names of these special peaks, the mountains where their fathers worked in days long past, so much so that Gimli didn’t even need a map, though he had only actually seen these lands once from afar. They did this through the arts of metalwork and stonework, as well as oral tradition.

In our world, remembering is something we no longer work very hard to do. We have technology to do our thinking. Google it. Ask Siri. Ask Alexa. We can retrieve information in seconds. To be honest, it’s annoying at times. Anyone can act like an ‘expert’ after reading a detailed online article. (I’ve been guilty of this myself, so I’m not pointing fingers.) But, how quickly that information disappears from our minds! Heck, I’ve even memorized scripts, maps of locations, and pieces of foreign languages, but now I forget them. I guess they weren’t that important.

Where am I going with all this? We remember the things we love, and we find ways to honor them. 

The Dwarves loved their mountains and they stood tall in their dreams. What stands tall in your dreams? Who, what, or where would you never need to ask Siri about? How do you honor those things in your life?

This small portion of The Fellowship of the Ring has reminded me to honor the things I love and to cherish them through the arts. God gave me the desire to draw and write and speak and he has gifted me in those things. Through them, I think I can do more to show honor. So often, I am focused on creating new things or fresh ideas. This has given me a new approach to art: to honor and memorialize what I love and to share them with my family and friends. After all, those will be the remembered things, the mountains that stand tall in our dreams.