Keep Salt in Your Pack When the World Feels Broken
How Small Acts Preserve Civilization and Build the Kingdom
Gandhi famously said to be the change you want to see in the world.
But how can that advice possibly help when we live in a time when everything feels too broken to fix?
You can feel the unease in conversations, in the air, and in your bones. The great unraveling has arrived. The familiar things have become brittle. I suppose The Endarkenment must follow “The Enlightenment.”
Everyone is exhausted. Everyone is angry. And no matter who we vote for, the wars continue, the debt grows, the division deepens. It’s easy to feel small and powerless; for we’ve been handed a situation far beyond our individual capacity to repair.
We feel, like Bilbo Baggins, as “butter spread over too much bread.”
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” — Bilbo Baggins
We feel like our favorite hobbits must have felt: disheartened in the face of unbeatable odds.
Imagine: A hobbit is given the task of carrying an object of unimaginable evil into the heart of enemy territory. He must walk straight toward darkness, knowing that he cannot defeat it by force. Frodo doesn’t have an army. He doesn’t have special powers. He has sore feet, fear, and a thin thread of hope.
And he, like us, wishes it didn’t have to be this way.
Gandalf’s answer to Frodo is one of the most honest lines in all of literature:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Deciding what to do with the time that is given us: That’s the real conundrum.
Lamenting the impossible is just wishful thinking. So, what can we possibly do with the time that has been given us?
No single person can fix a broken world. Expecting that would be as absurd as asking a hobbit to overthrow Sauron by himself, or asking baby Harry Potter to defeat Voldemort with a rattle. The scale mismatch is obvious.
If we can’t save the world alone…what do we do?
This is where Samwise Gamgee enters the story.
Sam doesn’t carry the Ring. He carries something deeper: He carries cooking pans, fire-making gear, and, hidden at the bottom of his pack, he carries salt.
Salt.
On the road to Mordor.
Think about that.
In the middle of starvation, ash, and despair, Sam assumes there will still be meals. He assumes there will still be evenings. He assumes there will still be laughter. He assumes there will still be moments worth seasoning.
He assumes there will still be life.
Tolkien even gives us the inventory of Sam’s hope: two small pans, a wooden spoon, a fork, skewers — and that dwindling treasure at the bottom of the pack: Salt, carefully saved.
Sam carries civilization into hell.
Sam carries love into hell.
He brings love and companionship in the form of ordinary hobbit rituals: cooking, sharing food, tending to a friend.
When Frodo is close to breaking, Sam doesn’t lecture him about destiny or geopolitics. Sam, instead, talks about stories. He gifts hope to Frodo, telling him about how people will someday sing songs about their adventure. He shares dreams of returning to normal life, about gardens, and about laughter.
And Frodo realizes something profound: Sam is the real hero.
Not because Sam is powerful.
But, because Sam refuses to surrender his soul.
This is the part we often miss: The victory in these stories doesn’t come from dominating evil. It comes from refusing to become it.
We give up the true authority of our creator when we resort to violence; for then we are no longer, “in His Name.”
“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.” — Hannah Arendt, On Violence
Domination is only a simulacrum of power. Presence is power.
Sam doesn’t despair in the darkest moments. He keeps showing up. He keeps loving. He keeps imagining a future meal.
He keeps salt.
That’s the resistance. That’s what we can do.
We tend to think change comes from big acts; movements; revolutions. But The Kingdom isn’t built that way. That kind of thinking is the same mistake people made when Christ said, “The Kingdom is at hand.”
They looked for weapons when, instead, The Kingdom is built in kitchens, in conversations and in moments of attention. It requires choosing kindness when bitterness would be easier; in choosing love when everyone is choosing hate.
So, what can you do in troubled times, you ask?
Refuse to hand over your humanity.
Don’t give up your spiritual eye — the one that sees beauty in small things. Don’t surrender your capacity for wonder. Don’t lose your ability to cook a meal for someone you love. Don’t stop noticing light through windows. Don’t forget how to sit quietly. Don’t let bitterness replace tenderness. Don’t forget to play with the cat. Don’t foget to play your guitar. Don’t forget to hug your spouse. Don’t forget to dance. Don’t lose sight of The Kingdom.
If you can’t think about perfectly salted roast rabbit on your way to Mordor, then you are already lost.
Gandalf could have taken the Ring himself. He was powerful. He was the obvious choice. But, he didn’t. Instead, he looked to hobbits — to the ones who “love things that grow.”
Those little hobbits were the salt of Middle-earth.
How much salt is needed for a piece of meat not to go bad? Not much. Some. There should be at least some grains of salt in the earth for it not to go bad. Curse cannot override blessing. Blessing can override curse. It all depends on how much salt there is and whether it has retained its saltiness. – Eugene Terekhin
We are called to be the salt of this earth. Our small blessings can override the large curse the earth struggles under. The shadows of our actions are far taller than we realize.1
If you don’t keep some salt, just in case there’s something worth celebrating today, then you need a Sam. But the beautiful truth is this: there is a Sam inside each of us.
That’s the role available to you right now. And it’s a role that nobody can ever take away from you. Only you can choose to walk away from your Sam.
We are called, not to be heroes marching into battle, but to be stubborn carriers of light and ambassadors of The Kingdom.
This is how we resist.
This is how we embody the change we want to see in the world.
So keep some salt in your pack.
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Paraphrasing Led Zeppelin’s line in Stairway to Heaven, “And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our soul.”
Enlightening, elevating, and entertaining essay. Godspeed
The Sam passage stopped me mid-scroll. There's a version of that same defiance all over military history.
That scene was a very real thing. We've seen it many times throughout history. May 28, 1453: Emperor Constantine XI visits the Hagia Sophia for the final time for prayer. He asked his subjects for pardon and received his last communion. Clergy from both Greek and Latin rites, along with Venetian and Genoese nobles were present.
When the Ottomans besieged Malta, the Knights of Saint John maintained their scheduled prayer.
These and many others show the same thing: Samwise carrying the salt into Mordor, because there might a salted pork or a roast rabbit along the way.