Tolkien Pop! and Friends
A Digital Fellowship
Happy Sunday Tolkien Poppers!
I hope that you have been able to find rest and maybe a semblance of solace this weekend. It is easy in these times to isolate ourselves in an attempt to keep out the grotesque of the world and its happening. Like many great stories, the villains want their resistors alone and hopeless. It is in true community, friendship, and fellowship that can really lift us up and bring us together to face the oncoming wave of destruction. It feels paradoxical, but it with arms linked in moving forward that cultivates wisdom and simultaneously fosters a fool’s hope to go on.
I’ve spent time with many of my friends across the digital sphere reminiscing, talking Tolkien, and also lamenting our current moment in the United States. Below, I provide links to the podcasts of friends that I was invited to talk in the hope that you satisfy your itch for curiosity, experience levity in the heavy political moment, and maybe meet some friends to form a fellowship with to “assist in the “effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation” (OFS, “On Fairy-stories” 79).
My book Tolkien and Pop Culture: Volume I is now available on Amazon! This book is a selection of my Substack posts from the past couple of years, cleaned up, and formatted for publication. For the first time, you can get all these essays in print or in your Kindle library. It’ll look great on your shelf and be available for your own Tolkien purposes! Use the QR or the link to pre-order your copy: https://a.co/d/eBE7jiH
In The Geek Stage at Theology Beer Camp livestream,
got a bunch of us nerds together that went to Theology Beer Camp back in October, where presenters, attendees, and performers got to reminisce about the event and talk about why something as trivial sound as Theology Beer Camp or The Greek Stage is so meaningful that we keep gathering every year. Featured are the dudes from Systematic Gee,kology, Ryan from Across the Bifrost: The Mighty Thor Podcast, James McGrath, and Samantha Perez.In the latest Tillich Today episode I got to hangout with Taylor Thomas to talk about my new book, Tolkien and Pop Culture, Paul Tillich, and how The Lord of the Rings teaches us to endure and overcome.
Last month I got to hangout with Matt Distefano on the Heresy After Hours show for Heretic Happy Hour, where we get nerdy on some aspects of Tolkien’s legendarium, philosophy, and how the power of story can shape our lives.