A sword of blessing and peril

'The Lady of Lorien! Galadriel!' cried Sam. 'You should see her, indeed you should, sir... I'm not much good at poetry -- not at making it: a bit of comic rhyme, perhaps, now and again, you know, but not real poetry -- so I can't tell you what I mean. It ought to be sung. You'd have to get Strider, Aragorn, that is, or old Mr. Bilbo, for that. But I wish I could make a song about her. Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, slender like. Hard as diamonds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass that I ever saw with daisies in her hair at springtime. But that's a lot o' nonsense, and wide of my mark.'

'Then she must be lovely indeed,' said Faramir. 'Perilously fair.'

'I don't know about perilous,' said Sam. 'It strikes me that folks takes their peril with them into Lorien, and finds it there because they brought it. But perhaps you could call her perilous, because she's so strong in herself...'

Just thinking tonight about those who practice violence against Christians and then blame the Christians. Or, those who practice violence against women and then blame the woman for that violence: "Oh, she was too beautiful...and she dressed that way, etc." ad infinitas, ad naseum.

Those who blame women for their own sinful thoughts and actions, and those who blame Christians for their abuse of Christians, have taken their own peril with them into a land so fair, a land so compelling and wonderful that it reveals their innermost thoughts and calls forth their true character; and yet, for all that, it is a land about which they know nothing.

Their doom is sure.

Selah.