Ben Domenech

I mean, you know, we, we talk about the shadow being a passing thing when you're facing something that may in fact not be a passing thing, right?

When you're facing the end, it's still a reminder that above all of that, there is still, there is still that hope.

There is still that beauty.

It's out of reach, that goodness, that,

That it may be that you only get to experience it for another week or another month or another year.

We all have that finite time in front of us, whatever the length of that time may be.

But to know that that continues and that what you're experiencing, that darkness or that sorrow or even that impending end, is not all in all.

It is not the everything.

And I think that's such a powerful reminder.

For me, that has been my number one.

It still is, but there's another one that comes to my mind.

I think when I was covering the Field of Cormallan episodes, we get the song of the bard that, you know, let me sing a Frodo the Nine Fingers and this wonderful story.

But there's a phrase at the very end that just really spoke to me about

how these things are intertwined.

He talks about, well, let me just read the line.

He's saying to them now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West until their hearts wounded with sweet words overflowed and their joy was like swords.

And they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together.

And tears are the very wine of blessedness.

And that hits every single time.

And it hits even harder because then you read in some of Tolkien's letters that that's the passage that Tolkien is writing in the Field of Cormelon when he cries, he weeps at this.