"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door... You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."
--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

About the title

I've titled this blog "Shades of Ithilien" for two primary reasons.  The first is, very simply, that I love J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Ithilien is my favorite location in Middle Earth.  The descriptions of it are beautiful, and it's associated with my two favorite characters, Faramir and Eowyn.

The second is more about metaphorical resonance.  Ithilien is, to me, a liminal space.  Located between Gondor and Mordor, it's a contested space between the good and the bad.  While it's part of Gondor, it's also in some ways its own region.  "Shade," too, is an in-between idea too: neither in the light, or in the dark.

For the last several years -- and indeed, during most of the periods when I have primarily used this blog -- I have felt that my life too existed in a sort of liminal space.  In Spain and Nicaragua, I was living in the community, yet still not truly part of it.  Now, working at ECM, I am inhabiting the Albuquerque where I grew up and that I know, and yet working in an Albuquerque that is less familiar to me.  As a twenty-five year old who has lived abroad and in various cities around the country, and who is now living back at home with her parents, I'm straddling the line between "grown-up child" and "autonomous adult."

Beyond all those passing circumstances and stages of life, as a Christian, being "in the world yet not of the world" means I perpetually inhabit a liminal space.  So even if I reach a point where the stage of life I'm in feels less "in-between", I think the name "Shades of Ithilien" will be a reminder not to feel too much at home here in this world.

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