[MD] Boromir's Journey

[Steve Peterson]

Hi All,

I was thinking about Boromir of Lord of the Rings. He was the great  
warrior from Gondor who betrayed the Fellowship and tried to steal  
the ring from Frodo causing Frodo to flea and continue the quest  
alone joined only by Sam.

Boromir's Journey was the failure of the Hero's Journey. Boromir  
answered the call but was not fully committed himself to the quest.  
The others were devoted to the quest regardless of the chances of  
success. Boromir did not lack any belief that the others had. There  
is no talk of belief in a higher authority where Boromir did not  
believe or did not believe as strongly as the others in that higher  
authority to set things right. When he argued that their task was  
impossible, none of the others could disagree. I don't think he had  
any different assessment of the probability of success for the  
Fellowship's task as any other members of the Fellowship, yet he was  
in great despair, and the others were not--at least not to the degree  
that Boromir was. I think the others had faith and that Boromir's  
lack of faith destroyed him and that his lack of faith was not a lack  
of belief. The difference was not the presence of absence of an  
intellectual structure but an attitude toward the world or trust in  
the process of life.

Though he is a fictional character, the self-destruction of Boromir  
rings true to me. There is something to faith that is not about  
belief but about something else that needs to be better articulated.  
It is something that is important to both believers and nonbelievers.  
I think the opposite of the sort of faith that Boromir's story is an  
allegory for is not disbelief but despair and that faith of this sort  
is not assenting to factual claims but letting go and being  
comfortable with not being in control of everything. It is possible  
to believe that God exists and that the Bible is true and still  
despair. So even religious beliefs do not exhaust faith. I think it  
is also saying "yes" to life. It is possible to not believe in a  
divine authority and still feel that the universe is unfolding  
exactly as it should be often in spite of the facts. It is an  
attitude tied up in beauty. It is the understanding that the world of  
our desires--the world that does not include illness, death, and  
conflict--is not as beautiful and perfect as the world as it actually  
is.

I don't think it is a stretch to say that the story of Boromir is a  
story about faith since Tolkien was a Christian and is viewed as a  
Christian writer, so faith is the sort of issue that we may expect  
him to address in his fiction.

What do you think? Is faith the same as factual belief as  
fundamentalists seem to be saying it is? Or is faith something that  
is independent of belief as in the case of Boromir? Can you help me  
articulate what it is?

If belief is a habit of action, as the pragmatists say, is all action  
best described as some belief? Is faith--the aspect of faith that  
does not concern factual belief--something that could benefit from a  
pragmatist's re-describing now that religion fails to speak to so  
many of us?

What does any of this have to do with the MOQ? I don't know, maybe  
you can tell me?

Could I be any more geeky than to philosophize about elves, dwarves,  
and hobbits? Probably not. Can you think of any parallels to  
Boromir's story in less nerdy culture?

Best,
Steve