What Are We Fighting For?

Ahhh!  September 22nd, marked another successful hobbit party. My son creates space each year for friends to gather and honor the hobbits of middle earth. It is always a delightful gathering of young adults who dress up and enjoy chicken legs, mushrooms, potatoes, and radishes. The shire music is in the background as they eat their lembas bread with herbal tea. They make speeches, sing music and have trivia contests. Two blow torches lit the 144 candles on the cake that honored both Bilbo and Frodo together.  (The blow torches were this years brilliant innovation!) 

Perhaps my favorite moment is at the very end of the movie when, Sam, Rosie, and their children go inside their adorable hobbit home and shut the door. And that is one of the incredibly poignant messages!  Right there. All the sacrifice, battles, difficult journeys, and all the soul-wrenching decisions and desperate attempts against all odds, and all the willingness to plunge into darkness and evil to save middle earth, was so the family could reunite and be safe and happy at home. And that moment at the conclusion of the movie, is the culminating event that justifies all that has just transpired. That small scene answers the question: "What are we fighting for?"  Home. Family. Happiness. Two ordinary hobbits; Sam and Frodo played major roles in saving both Middle Earth and the Shire and the home. 

Sam: And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for. 

- Sam and Frodo in Lord of the Rings

Similarly ordinary people in every country on every continent play major roles in saving their families every day, so that there can be happiness at home when the door closes. It is the good worth fighting for.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Hobbit_House.jpg