Frodo. Frodo lives. Lives - not lives. It's time to talk about the Frodo lives we're living.

Do a restrictive search of "Frodo Lives" and you get 37,200 hits. But just about none of these are relevant to our Frodo lives. On the way to talking about what I mean, here are few examples of what searching for Frodo lives gets you.

You can find a genealogy of hobbits, including Frodo. You can explore reminiscences of a youth spent reading LOTR and the impact of seeing The Fellowship of the Rings.

You can read an academic discussion of J.R.R. Tolkein in English and Italian.

At Frodo Lives . . . within us now, you can find links to all things LOTR.

You can find a Salon movie review of LOTR, and you can find the Top 7 Movies for "Frodo Baggins Types.

You can even find marketing advice gleaned from LOTR: Frodo's Journey: What It Can Teach You About Marketing Your Small Business - Here are 10 things you can learn about marketing your small business from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

. . . . O . . . kay. . . .

But I'm talking about lives - not lives.

These past few years, who among us has not been living Frodo lives?

Whether you read the book or saw the movie or both . . . multiple times, the things that made the greatest impression on most of us was the despair Frodo and all the Fellowship of the Ring felt at undertaking their mission. They faced deadly challenges in troubled times. They could choose not to take the challenge, but if they did, evil would rule the world.

Or they could take up the challenge, try their hardest but be killed or wounded in body and spirit, and evil would overtake the world. Or they could take up the challenge, endure horrors, be wounded in body and spirit . . . and just maybe evil would be destroyed. Through their efforts the world would go on, not quite as before, though. The world would be left with less magic and less wonder, but regular people could live their lives outside the shadow of evil.

Admit it. During your darkest moments these past few years, doesn't that feel like what we have been going through?

Frodo constantly wishes he had never been burdened with The Ring, wishes someone other than he, better than he could destroy it, wishes he had never been eye to eye with true evil. He longs to give The Ring to someone else, to go home and hide.

But Gandalf constantly reminds him - and us - that we are not allowed to choose the times we live in. All we can choose is how we act in the troubled times we have.

Frodo's woes and challenges feel like ours today.

Tolkien wrote LOTR in the midst of WW II. As he told the Frodo's story of evil overtaking the world, he lived with the reality that evil was in the process of taking over the world.

But all was not dark then, nor is it now. Tolkien's message to us is: As strong as evil can be, even stronger are the virtues of love, faith, friendship, fellowship, honor, duty, loyalty, nobility of spirit, music, and art, and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the good of others - even when those others are silly, imprudent, and wholly undeserving.

This is not all. LOTR has additional messages for our time.

Throughout the book evil creeps in when people turn away from truth and duty and beauty and, instead, listen to fear and compromise, when they turn from doing what is right to doing what seems expedient or prudent. I'm not namin' names, but I think we all can think of examples . . . maybe even the way we are living.

The slogan "Frodo lives" tells us that when confronted with evil we must live Frodo lives.

Frodo's time is past. His duty is done. This is our time. Frodo must live within us all now.

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