the nazgûl
“In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.” JRR Tolkien from The Return of the King
Dark and menacing, dark and fiery, dark and evil, dark and powerful, dark and dangerous. Darkness has long been the acceptable theme used to describe evil, wrong, enemies, anything and anyone not of the light. This use of dark to describe evil permeates everything that is our understanding of the world. Darkness is a limited amount of light, yet there is still light. With darkness portrayed as our enemy we naturally are predisposed to see things that are dark as dangerous, evil, to be shunned. I embraced this view most of my life. I grew up in an affluent monotone suburb, went to a monotone high school, had monotone friends, my life was a celebration of monotone. The thing is that the monotone was invisible to me and those closest to me. I went about my day to day without regard for the dynamic beauty that surrounded me. I was too focused, too consumed by maintaining my monotony.
Along came a boy, beautiful, bi-racial, vibrant, needy and filled with promise. I sat on my couch reading a book by James Cone entitled “God of the Oppressed” with that boy in my arm and my world shook. Years later as that boy along with other dynamic children that had entered my life sat, me reading aloud Lord of the Rings. I read this passage about the Nazgûl my world shook a little more, no it was knocked off its foundations. As I read about the evil darkness I gazed at my children bright eyed and content. The world that demanded them to be something less than they should be was waiting. The words cut through my pretense, my superiority, my privilege and landed on my heart. My heart broke that day, broke for the person I was and had been, broke for the children that surrounded me, broke for a world enslaved by perception.
That day I made a choice to take a stand for my children, to take a stand for myself, my friends, my world. That choice was to change, change the way I spoke, change the way I saw, change the way I acted, change the way I lived. That change is a process, constantly taking wrong turns, sometimes u turns, sometimes straight ahead with purpose. I started reading, started researching, started learning. I consumed books by Cone, Bell and others. Read stories about overcoming and strength, stories of hate and violence. As I was transformed by my mind being renewed I came across the idea of color theory. Color theory #1, which looks at color as light, states black is not a color and white is a color, theory #2, which looks at color as pigment states black is a color and white is not a color. Theory #3, which looks at perception in larger context states this, color exists as a pigment, color is transmitted, color is received. This last one, is how we people receive information about color. How we receive anything is directly linked to what we learned, what we were taught, what we believe to be true. If you believe the Nazgûl are evil and that being dark is part of that evil then you see other things the same way. If this belief goes unchecked, unfiltered, unchallenged it becomes truth.
When I read the words about the Nazgûl I was confronted with the influence my world had placed on me. I was confronted with the pain I had caused others and my children, confronted with my limited view of people, confronted with my hate. We all have a choice what we believe, what we read, what we watch, what we do, what we consume. We live in a world where conformed views of darkness are changing, we live in a world that sees a need for change, we live in a world were some rebel at any hint of transformation, we live in a world where some are regressing back to the monotone world they understand. Evil is real, hate is real, fear is real, darkness is real, light is real, truth is real. Our perception of what is real is just that; a perception and those perceptions can and must change. When the end comes and there is a new heaven and a new earth we will not be going back to any garden, we will be pushing forward to a new country, a country filled with color. The one thing that will be different is that our perceptions will no longer be bound to a monotone view. Our minds, our eyes, our hearts will be transformed and in that transformation love will win. This new world will be a dynamic color filled place full of diverse beings, diverse sounds, diverse eyes and all those eyes will see this new world the way we should have seen the old one. Why do we have to wait for this new world, this new heaven, why wait for what will come, why not start to create it right here, right now. Stop evil in its tracks by refusing to believe its lies, its warped monotone vision and embrace what you are meant to be.