After misery and some close calls with cave trolls, Bilbo and the dwarves descend into the beautiful valley of Rivendell. There, Tolkien tells us, “they all came to the Last Homely House and found its doors flung wide.” Tolkien, a professor of medieval English literature, used homely in oldest sense of friendly. Today we might use the word “homey” to describe a warm and welcoming place. In the middle of this wilderness, this house was the last safe place—last house of healing and friendship.
This house of Elrond is Tolkien’s ideal home: “His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.” Christian story-tellers need a Rivendell. It is where we find Bilbo finishing his own writing in The Lord of the Rings. The elves of Rivendell treasured stories and songs and encouraged those who wrote them. Here no one was forced to make the false choice between stories and high adventure.
In Rivendell Bilbo and the dwarves are refreshed and re-equipped. Tolkien says, “Their clothes were mended as well as their bruises, their tempers and their hopes.” We certainly live in a time when hopes can be battered and torn. A hard economy is smashing the hopes of many young people. We live in a wilderness of worldliness that is toxic to marriages and families. Churches struggle and pastors battle depression. It is not just writers who need a Rivendell, we all do. In the midst of all this we need Homely Houses that greet weary travelers with songs and mend their hopes with joy and wise counsel. We need doors flung wide.
