TOLKIEN'S ENTS: THE WOODS WERE HERE, BUT THEY MOVED.
Tolkien's concept of Oxford was surely informed very heavily by his deep relationship with God and with his guardian angel. Paul Tillich says "the first duty of Love is to Listen." Without discussion of Tillich's complex and complicated concept of God, we may admit that it is surely true that the Judeo-Christian God asks his followers to listen to him. The first command God gave to the Hebrews was "Shema, Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One."
At Engelblau College, whether participants believe in their guardian angel or not, we Learn to Listen to the Lava of Love, the Lyrics of Laetare, and the Literature of Life. Indeed, Uriel University often plays with Linguistics, as these are the playing fields of the Logos fatto carne, and the Vento of God.

While the art of listening is difficult in these noisy times, past eras also sometimes confused "din" with "divine". This is well illustrated by the story of the prophet Elijah who heard a great din upon the mountain, and following that, a "still small voice", which in fact was the voice of God. Ancient cultures often confused magnificent phenomena with the source of these, but the God of Elijah is a quiet, humble sort, counter-intuitive as it may seem.

In Tolkiens' conception of the woods, the Ents have their own language which we would do well to learn, but it requires attention and humility to do so. Similarly, a popular Boston area philosophy professor used to say that "God only showed up when Job shut up". The Levitical priest Zacaharia was rendered mute by the angel Gabriel when he did not believe the good news of the Messiah would be announced by his own son, and the priest was unable to speak at all until the Baptist was born. A famous line from Dante, "da me stesso non vengo" indicates the importance of evangelization both to speaker and to listener.