Pages from the Archives of Cîr Imladris by Lferion

Cîr.Im-774-a-12v | In Love there is no Death

Written for the Silmarillion Writer's Guild January 2021 Resolutions challenge:
In honor of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday tomorrow (Jan 15), we offer a pair of quotes as a bonus for August's "Utopia/Dystopia" challenge:
“In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”
~Martin Luther King, Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, November 17, 1957
“[T]he absence of freedom is the presence of death. Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide."
~ Martin Luther King, Address at the Fiftieth Annual NAACP Convention, July 17, 1959

Double drabble text, single drabble commentary, not counting the headers

Text of Cîr.Im-774-a-12v

In love there is no death -- loss, yes: of form, of physical interaction with this world, of bonds with Men, but not of memory, not for the Eldar. Love has freedom at its core: freedom to join, freedom to stand apart from joining, freedom to observe and freedom to act.

Love takes responsibility for the freedom it upholds, just as freedom takes responsibility for action and inaction in its service. Consequences are part of freedom to act, to be, to do, and cannot be put aside, ignored, but must be taken, acknowledged, accepted, part and parcel of love, of life.

Unfreedom is death. Not the death of Men, Iluvatar's Gift, the going onward to whatever end, that the Eldar do not, cannot know. Nor the death of the body that sends the fea to Mandos' Halls, to be rehoused in time. Tis Death of the spirit, dissolution, unmaking, the Void. To be unfree, imprisoned, held in chains (forged of metal, will, manipulation of feeling, whatever might hold fast that which should be free) is to be dying, slain, constrained into oblivion.

Or mayhap I know nothing of what I speak. I have not died. I hope I have not killed.

Archivist's Note

This note, a careful copy in a scribal hand, was found with several other similar notes, tucked behind the bound pages and the back cover of Cîr.Im-774-a | Blue Miscellany, which internal evidence places as belonging to and largely scribed if not written by Findekáno Ñolofinweion. [See also Cîr.Im-H32a] These notes, in various hands and styles, appear to be intended to be copied into the book itself. This particular note cannot have been composed by King Fingon, for the mention of Men places the composition firmly after the Exile, though the style is similar to his. Another mystery among many such.