There was a touching story in the Santa Barbara Independent today. Lyle Hillegas was the former Westmont College President and El Montecito Presbyterian Church Pastor who sadly passed away this week after a battle with cancer. Tom Schmidt, a fellow religious professional, carried him to his garden - a little corner of England nurtured by his own hand and read to him. Lyle’s choice for his last story was JRR Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle,” the tale of a modestly talented painter who wants to finish his large canvas of a grand tree but suspects he will not have time before his death. After he dies, Niggle finds himself in a kind of workhouse for a long time, but eventually he is released and given a bicycle. He pedals away into the countryside, marvelling at the sunshine and green turf. With his eyes on the path, he suddenly encounters a great, green shadow. “Niggle looked up, and fell off his bicycle. Before him stood the Tree, his tree, finished. All the leaves he had ever painted were there, as he had imaged them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. ‘It’s a gift!’ he said.”
Lyle treasured this vision of completion beyond life.