Photo by idreamlikecrazy. https://www.flickr.com/photos/purple-lover/13583362554

“You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

“Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

This is how Tolkien’s The Hobbit ends. In thanksgiving. The story of The Lord of the Rings, though, opens in ownership. “It is my own. I found it. It came to me.”

One may wonder, what would happen to the One Ring if, instead of being received as something one owns, it would be accepted as a gift over which one has no ownership?

One possible example: you “volunteer” for some activity. People come to you afterwards and thank you “for donating your time,” as if you HAVE time. But if you have time, if it is your own, you are no longer a little fellow in a wide world, but someone who own things and who, out of your mightiness, can donate them. “It is my own. I found it. It came to me.” It–time, I mean.

I once heard a story of someone who, by the time he was a teenager, knew that he would not live long because of a fatal disease. Nevertheless, he got married and, before he died in his 30s, had two children. His life knew of his condition from the beginning. He lived on “borrowed” time. But aren’t we all on borrowed time, not knowing how long or short this time will be? And if this time is borrowed and it is not ours, are we not only stewards that keep the place of the real King, the one who has gifted us this time?

Life often seems to be encompassed between these two attitudes: on the one hand, I can see myself as an owner of things that has the heart to give (or not) from these things to others; on the other hand, I can see myself as a steward, a borrower of things, who cannot give to others from my own, because there is nothing I own. Rather, in thanksgiving, I can “multiply” these borrowed gifts in using them for others–volunteering time, for example. Every attitude I have seems to take on a different color depending on where it is placed on the spectrum between the entitlement of ownership and the thanksgiving of stewardship.