Middle Moot 2024 Registration
In Tolkien's seminal essay 'On Fairy-stories', he writes: "The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn'....is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."
Join us for MiddleMoot 2024, as we follow the beams of splintered light that beckon us forward and illuminate our path in an ever-darkening world.
Held at the World War I Museum & Memorial in Kansas City, we will not only explore how fantasy and fairy-stories give us "a window in a western tower, That opens on celestial seas", but will interactively be reading and sharing our favourite works that bring light, and inspire us to Hope. This year at the museum we will also have a chance to experience the exhibit "Charmed Soldiers" - an exhibit that contains many objects and stories that soldiers held on to in the midst of the unimaginable violence and horror of the Great War; objects that helped them discover magic, renew their faith, witness miracles, and hold on to hope.
Just as they helped soldiers in their darkest days, fairy stories help our souls recover, restore our hopes, and give us the consolation of "Joy beyond the walls of the world".