Start with the Ending, End with the Middle

notes from a spiritual time traveler

This month, movie theaters are re-releasing the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Do we have tickets to see what is for me the closest thing to a sacred text that’s not the Bible? You bet. But thanks to some conflicts in the family calendar, we’re seeing the first movie (Fellowship of the Ring) tomorrow and the third movie (Return of the King) on Monday. We won’t see the second installment, The Two Towers, for another two weeks. While this order is by happenstance, I’ve decided it’s going to be a great experience. Here’s why.

Recently I snuck up to New York and back to see the revival of Merrily We Roll Along, Stephen Sondheim’s oft-maligned musical flop from 1981. The superb new production stars Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez as a composer, lyricist, and author, respectively.

Lindsay Mendez, Katie Rose Clarke, Jonathan Groff, and Daniel Radcliffe

Merrily We Roll Along tells the twenty-year story of these friends, but the story goes in reverse chronological order. The show begins in the 1970s, with one character at the pinnacle of his career but with a life devoid of meaning. The musical proceeds back through time, and the audience sees the consequences of each fateful decision—affairs, breakdowns, resentment, selling out—before seeing the decisions themselves. The show ends on a high note, as the trio first meet when they’re in their 20s and full of plans and idealism. It’s a powerful, poignant place to end. 

I can see why previous productions struggled: the format makes it tough to pull off. Sondheim’s music is famously demanding of its performers (I’ve been there myself), but the reverse storytelling requires a lot of the audience as well. We have to suspend our usual linear way of experiencing a story. Ending with the friends’ optimistic beginnings sends us out on a high note, but also gives us a little hope that maybe, those promising young people are still in there somewhere and can find their way. It’s a risky narrative device… but so worth it. 

And frequently devastating. The song Not a Day Goes By¹, sung by one of the trio’s spouses as the couple divorces, is one of the most gutting expressions of heartbreak you’ll ever hear. When it’s reprised later in the show, it’s at the couple’s wedding, and the lyrics are totally different, full of love and potential (though with a third character singing along, harboring a secret love). With the echoes of the tragic version in our ears, the emotionality is ratcheted up to 11.

Starting with the ending can be clarifying. The Stoics call this memento mori: the frequent contemplation of our own deaths, not as morbid fatalism, but as a way to embrace the precious fleeting nature of this existence. What’s more, as Kierkegaard reminds us, life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. It’s in hindsight that we better appreciate the arc and the contours of our lives: the twists and turns; the compromises and the lines in the sand; the losses that crushed us, and the ones that cracked opened opportunities; the victories that blew in on a flurry of unearned grace, and the ones that didn’t live up to the hype. But even at the “end,” we see only in part. Even at the deathbed, assuming we get that time of bittersweet closure, we don’t know the true impact of our lives, and some loose ends are never tied up.

So, back to The Lord of the Rings, and my out-of-order viewing experience in which I’ll see the middle installment last. For me, and for many of us who love this trilogy onscreen and on the page, the stories are a touchstone, full of quotes and scenes that speak to hope and perseverance despite everything. There’s something deeply satisfying about that final movie—the ultimate triumph of good over evil, despite what it cost many of our heroes. It’s the vision that many of us live for, whether we consider ourselves Jesus followers or not: the idea that the world can be new and beautiful again, that all of this is going somewhere. It’s a vision so beautiful and redemptive that, as Rachel Held Evans put it, I’m willing to risk being wrong about it. 

But here in the 2024 of it all, what’s powerful to me is the gritty middle, when the full weight of the task bears down on us all. There is so, so, so much work to do, and ultimate victory feels so far away. So what we need is Sam’s speech, words that ring out at the absolute bleakest point in The Two Towers. Sam reminds us that the great stories were full of ordinary people who could have given up but kept going, not because success was assured, or perhaps even likely, but because they believed the good was worth fighting for. Visiting the conclusion of our story early points us in the right direction, but it’s too far away to feel real. So I like ending with the middle, because that’s where I live—that’s where we all live, and always will. 

And here’s the thing about Merrily We Roll Along and those cynical, broken characters: they’re in the middle too! At the beginning of the musical, when everything has fallen apart, they’re barely in the throes of middle age, just 45 years old. It’s not too late for them; of course it’s not.

Friends, today is a new opportunity for each of us, no matter our age, to begin again in whatever small way we can muster. With the end in mind—that great, unreachable end—we are set free to live with joy and purpose in the great middle of things. 

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Your Turn

• How do you think the story ultimately ends?

• And what does your “middle” look like in this season? Today?

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What I’m Up To

I’m preaching this Sunday June 9 at 10:15 a.m. at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon. Join us in person or via livestream.

My Substack buddy Ed is doing a read-through of Hope: A User’s Manual, featuring his beautiful photographs. Here’s the latest installment. And while this photo isn’t part of the hope series, I’ve been agog about it all week:

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Link Love

And here’s this post in acoustic form: the incomparable David Wilcox, singing Start with the Ending. 

1. That link is to Bernadette Peters singing it in concert. With all respect to Katie Rose Clarke, nobody does Sondheim like Bernadette.