Goodfellow hosts National Prayer Luncheon 2016 Published March 1, 2016 By Senior Airman Scott Jackson 17th Training Wing Public Affairs GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- The Event Center hosted the annual National Prayer Luncheon with participation from base leadership and San Angelo leadership and featured a Lord of the Rings theme Feb. 25. Goodfellow hosts the event every year to honor the nation, its leaders and its members. The luncheon started with an invocation, a singing by Patriotic Blue, and four prayers read by volunteers for leadership, military families, deployed service members and Goodfellow itself. The event center decorated the ballroom in the theme of The Shire, a region located in the fantasy world of Middle Earth set in the Lord of the Rings. Chaplain (Maj.) Craig M. Forsythe, 17th Training Wing chaplain, introduced the guest speaker. “Imagine if you will a man who has a complete understanding of suffering,” said Forsythe. “Imagine having dinner with this person who experienced it first hand and saw it in others. What would they say? What would sitting down for dinner with them be like?” The guest speaker, Chaplain (Lt. Col.) John F. Tillery, 17th Training Wing chaplain, spoke as J.R.R. Tolkien and spoke with a British accent. He spoke about the use of metaphor and myths so prevalent in his stories were devices to describe the indescribable. “So how do you describe the indescribable?” asked Tillery, role-playing as Tolkien. “Well, you can’t. I chose to write what I saw in myth. The power of myth has been used time and time again throughout history to tell the stories of man. The Hobbit’s real name is There And Back Again! Because there was over the trench, and we would never know if we would ever go back again.” In between his dialogue clips from the Lord of the Rings movies played to emphasize his point. For the ‘there and back again,’ a clip from Return of the King was used. Tillery closed his speech on the power of hope to keep us going through the challenges that life brings us. “We need a hope,” said Tillery. “A hope that pulls us through adversity, a hope that never diminishes.”
