Can an elf lord teach you how to see?

There's a moment in The Lord of the Rings that most readers rush past. Frodo, wounded and fading, looks across a river and sees something no one else can see: a figure of pure white light, while everyone around him, even Strider, even the hobbits, appears only as a shadow.

That figure is Glorfindel. And the question this session asks is simple: what did Frodo actually see, and what would change if we saw people that way too?

Part two of our three-part series, The Forgotten Characters of The Fellowship of the Ring. JP traces Glorfindel back through the fall of the hidden city of Gondolin, into a conversation about the border between the physical and spiritual world, and lands somewhere unexpected: an old idea from C.S. Lewis that there are no ordinary people, only immortals we joke with, work with, and forget to notice.

Part of our series working through the characters of The Lord of the Rings at Story Chapel, a Sunday morning gathering in Cincinnati where we read fantasy, sci-fi, and mythology looking for the Gospel hiding inside the story.

You don't need to believe anything to belong here. Just bring your curiosity.

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