I began reading these books with my mom when I was ten years old. Ever since (I'm 23 now), I've read them at least once almost every year. They've been a foundational part of my development as an artist, a thinker, a Christian, and overall as a person. It's a powerful story in every way. When the movies came out, books and shallow sermons talked about blatant types, like Gandalf as Christ, Sauron as Satan (which, he's only a servant of the one that's really a type of Satan, according to the Silmarillion), etc. etc. Just like the Chronicles of Narnia, though, the real depth is elsewhere.

The depth is in finding myself in Aragorn, as the light from the shadows that springs, seeing the power that lies in him, Gandalf, various Elves, and others who see themselves as servants of something beyond themselves. Knowing the story of the Silmarillion, that something is a type of Yahweh. The awesome thing is that Tolkien's never cheesy about his faith, never outright about it, but it weaves itself naturally through everything in the story. That's a powerful thing.

While I'll obviously never live many of the specifics of the life of Aragorn, or anyone else in the story, there are powerful principles. I admire the way he, and the rest of the Rangers for that matter, walk in the shadows of the Wilderness, defending the lands of people who know nothing about them, and who are afraid of them and gossip about them when they even know of their existence. There's a power in that hidden sacrifice. There's a power in knowing the darkness so well, but being entirely other than that darkness. I love the idea of the appearance of a dark, mysterious man who walks in the shadows, but while he looks foul, he feels fair; and proves himself to be so by his actions, and his words, and the radiance of something other than his surroundings. That speaks volumes of how I want people to see me, and how I want to live my life.