The Heart’s Foundation

At the bottom of every person’s heart there is an uttermost foundation. At the beginning of The Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings movie, Gandalf battles the Balrog while they plummet down an incredible chasm— down, down, down, into the depths of the earth. The name of that place, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s terminology, is “the uttermost foundations of stone.” The uttermost foundations of stone is the bedrock, the bottom. You can’t go any farther down. Everybody’s heart, everybody’s identity, has an uttermost foundation.