Evening

EVENING

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

[GKC, The Notebook quoted in Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton 62]

New Year's Chimes by Francis Thompson

Although it is Sunday, I thought it best to post this today. As a meditation for the transition from 2006 to 2007, I wish to offer an amazing poem by a mystic poet - one who was greatly admired by GKC:

With [the passing of] Francis Thompson we lose the greatest poetic energy since Browning. His energy was of somewhat the same kind. Browning was intellectually intricate because he was morally simple. He was too simple to explain himself; he was too humble to suppose that other people needed any explanation. But his real energy, and the real energy of Francis Thompson, was best expressed in the fact that both poets were at once fond of immensity and also fond of detail. Any common Imperialist can have large ideas so long as he is not called upon to have small ideas also. Any common scientific philosopher can have small ideas so long as he is not called upon to have large ideas as well. But great poets use the telescope and also the microscope. Great poets are obscure for two opposite reasons; now, because they are talking about something too large for anyone to understand, and now again because they are talking about something too small for anyone to see. Francis Thompson possessed both these infinities. He escaped by being too small, as the microbe escapes; or he escaped by being too large, as the universe escapes. Anyone who knows Francis Thompson's poetry knows quite well the truth to which I refer.
[GKC, ILN Dec 14, 1907 CW27:603]

Perhaps, after you read this deep, amazing, and very moving, poem, you will understand...

Best wishes for 2007, on this seventh day of Christmas!
Dr. Thursday

New Year's Chimes
by Francis Thompson

What is the song the stars sing?
(And a million songs are as song of one)
This is the song the stars sing:
(Sweeter song's none).

One to set, and many to sing.
(And a million songs are as song of one)
One to stand, and many to cling,
The many things and the one Thing,
The one that runs not, the many that run.

The ever new weaveth the ever old,
(And a million songs are as song of one)
Ever telling the never told;
The silver saith, and the said is gold,
And done ever the never done.

The Chase that's chased is the Lord o' the chase,
(And a million songs are as song of one)
And the Pursued cries on in the race;
And the hounds in leash are the hounds that run.

Hidden stars by the shown stars' sheen;
(And a million suns are but as one)
Colours unseen by the colours seen,
And sounds unheard heard sounds between.
And a night is in the light of the sun.

An ambuscade of light in night,
(And a million secrets are but as one)
And a night is dark in the sun's light,
And a world in the world man looks upon.

The world above in the world below,
(And a million worlds are but as one)
And the One in all; as the sun's strength so
Strives in all strength, glows in all glow
Of the earth that wits not, and man thereon.

Braced in its own fourfold embrace
(and a million worlds are but as one)
And round it all God's arms of grace,
The world, so as the Vision says,
Doth with its great lightning tramples on.

And the thunder bruiteth into thunder,
(And a million sounds are as sound of one)
From stellate peak to peak is tossed a voice of wonder
And the height stoops down to the depths thereunder,
And sun leans forth to his brother sun.

And the more ample years unfold
(With a million songs as song of one)
A little new of the ever old,
A little told of the never told,
Added act of the never done.

Loud the descant, and low the theme,
(A million songs are as song of one)
And the dream of the world is dream in dream,
But the one Is is, or nought could seem;
And the song runs round to the song begun.

This is the song the stars sing,
(Tunèd all in time)
Tintinnabulous, tuned to ring
A multitudinous-single thing
(Rung all in rhyme).

[Quoted from the wonderful anthology Return To Tradition, which also contains GKC's "Lepanto" and excerpts from his other works; I mention this because this book played an important role in my own "discovery" of GKC. I should also note that the RTT version differs slightly from that in the 3-volume collection of FT's works. -- Dr. T.]

Chestertonian New Year's Resolutions

1. Simplify your life. Here.
2. Get smart. Here.
3. Add humor. Here.
4. Give. Here.
5. Go back to school. Here and here.
6. Watch. Here.
7. Help the next generation. Here.
8. Join. Here.
9. Invite. Here.
10. Make new friends. Here.
11. Comment. Here. (I mean here, right where you are.)

There you have a nice round number of ideas for 2007. May your year be prosperous, healthy, happy and blessed.

Fighting for Christmas - a Chestertonian Battle

A Very Merry and Happy and Holy Christmas - the fourth day, feast of the Holy Innocents (also called ChilderMass)!

For your enjoyment, I give you two related excerpts from our Uncle Gilbert...

God bless us, everyone!

--Dr. Thursday.

Prepare for battle! Click here to enter the fray...

Bold warrior! Rejoice, for Christmas is worth fighting for! Now, read on...


It is said that in the somewhat sickly Victorian revival of feudalism which was called "Young England," a nobleman hired a hermit to live in his grounds. It is also said that the hermit struck for more beer. Whether this anecdote be true or not, it is always told as showing a collapse from the ideal of the Middle Ages to the level of the present day. But in the mere act of striking for beer the holy man was very much more "mediaeval" than the fool who employed him.

It would be hard to find a better example of this than Dickens's great defence of Christmas. In fighting for Christmas he was fighting for the old European festival, Pagan and Christian, for that trinity of eating, drinking and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, for the holy day which is really a holiday. He had himself the most babyish ideas about the past. He supposed the Middle Ages to have consisted of tournaments and torture-chambers, he supposed himself to be a brisk man of the manufacturing age, almost a Utilitarian. But for all that he defended the mediaeval feast which was going out against the Utilitarianism which was coming in. He could only see all that was bad in Mediaevalism. But he fought for all that was good in it. And he was all the more really in sympathy with the old strength and simplicity because he only knew that it was good and did not know that it was old. He cared as little for mediaevalism as the mediaevals did. He cared as much as they did for lustiness and virile laughter and sad tales of good lovers and pleasant tales of good lovers. He would have been very much bored by Ruskin and Walter Pater if they had explained to him the strange sunset tints of Lippi and Botticelli. He had no pleasure in looking on the dying Middle Ages. But he looked on the living Middle Ages, on a piece of the old uproarious superstition still unbroken; and he hailed it like a new religion. The Dickens character ate pudding to an extent at which the modern mediaevalists turned pale. They would do every kind of honour to an old observance, except observing it. They would pay to a Church feast every sort of compliment except feasting.

[GKC, Charles Dickens CW15:131-2]


We might well be content to say that mythology had come with the shepherds and philosophy with the philosophers; and that it only remained for them to combine in the recognisation of religion. But there was a third element that must not be ignored and one which that religion for ever refuses to ignore, in any revel or reconciliation. There was present in the primary scenes of the drama that Enemy that had rotted the legends with lust and frozen the theories into atheism, but which answered the direct challenge with something of that more direct method which we have seen in the conscious cult of the demons. In the description of that demon-worship, of the devouring detestation of innocence shown in the works of its witchcraft and the most inhuman of its human sacrifice, I have said less of its indirect and secret penetration of the saner paganism; the soaking of mythological imagination with sex; the rise of imperial pride into insanity. But both the indirect and the direct influence make themselves felt in the drama of Bethlehem. A ruler under the Roman suzerainty, probably equipped and surrounded with the Roman ornament and order though himself of eastern blood, seems in that hour to have felt stirring within him the spirit of strange things. We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of a mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Every one knows the story; but not every one has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of men. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him, filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.

Unless we understand the presence of that Enemy, we shall not only miss the point of Christianity, but even miss the point of Christmas. Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But, like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique note is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama. It is not only an occasion for the peacemakers any more than for the merry-makers; it is not only a Hindu peace conference any more than it is only a Scandinavian winter feast. There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won. All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savour is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw's den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might in that sense have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.[see note below]

[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:311-3]

[Note from Dr. Thursday: Cf. The Lord of the Rings II:2 page 288 "This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great."]

Favorite Chesterton Christmas Poems

Here's my favorite. What's yours? Put a link to it in the combox.

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,

His hair was like a light.

(O weary, weary were the world,

But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast

His hair was like a star.

(O stern and cunning are the kings,

But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,

His hair was like a fire.

(O weary, weary is the world,

But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,

His hair was like a crown,

And all the flowers looked up at Him,

And all the stars looked down.

Gilbert Magazine

I hope your Christmas was memorable, joyful and peaceful.

Speaking of the Gilbert magazine Sword Edition, did you read that interesting mini-biography of Hilary Pepler? Anyone interested in Distributism should. He was a printer, who lived Distributism as a way of life. He also wrote, authored articles for the New Witness and G.K.'s Weekly, as well as his own work, including puppet plays, a true Chestertonian feature. Oh, I forgot to mention that after Chesterton died, Pepler was in charge of G.K.'s Weekly and Secretary of the Distribustist League.

Online, you can read about Pepler here. read about the predecessor to the Ditchling Press hereand here. Anyone living near Ditchling, can visit the Ditchling Museum, where children can make their own Pepler Puppets and put on a puppet play. Notre Dame (Indiana) Library has quite a Pepler collection.

Merry Christmas--last of the game

Merry Christmas from the American Chesterton Society. We wish you and yours all the blessings of the day.

Now here are Gilbert's answers to the remaining questions of the Christmas game.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Any guesses? click here.

Celebrating Christmas on December 25 - which is a tradition.

I cannot see why a similar shifting of numerals should make the legend of Christmas cease to be Christian. For that matter, it would probably be easy to find examples of traditions that really did turn upon errors of detail. [...historical details about Trafalgar, Bastille Day, the Primrose League, and the changes resulting from the dates of these events being altered upon new discoveries...] But these images are in no way more absurd than the image of Santa Claus ceasing to be a Christian saint quite suddenly, because some Higher Critic has told Mr. Arnold Bennett that Christ may not have been born on Dec. 25. The tradition of Trafalgar exists, whatever be its date; the French Revolution is a fact of gigantic range, whenever it began; even the
Primrose League would be a fact in its way, although it were also a fiction. And considered in the coldest sense of secular history, Christmas is a fact, and could not possibly be dissociated from the
two words that make it up. But there is another fact, equally obvious from a secular and even sceptical standpoint. You cannot select a particular day without selecting a particular subject. You cannot have a day devoted to everything; it is contradicted by the very word devotion. You cannot have a festival dedicated to things in general; it is contradicted by the very idea of dedication. No religion, so far as I know, has ever had a Feast of the Universe; and Robespierre did not really get very far even with a Feast of the Supreme Being. It is too simple to be sensational; and a festival must be a sensation. A man will not be happy about all things, except in the sense in which he can be happy on all days. To produce the special psychological condition called rejoicing it is necessary to have something to rejoice over; something that can be hailed like a signal or received like a message. Hence, apart from anything else, any attempt to generalise a thing like Christmas is at war with a fact of human nature.
[ILN Dec 30 1922 CW32:512-14]

17. What tops your tree?

The house Frances and I live in:

Now, as Gilbert was reading to Frances and Mildred, he suddenly broke off and, looking across at the opposite field, said: "I would like to build a house on that field." Frances said: 'Well, why shouldn't you, when we have the money?" Gilbert went on: "I should like to build it around that tree." Not long afterwards, they bought the field, and first the studio, later the house, was actually built around the trunk of the tree he had chosen. Thus Top Meadow came to be - the Chesterton's home for the rest of their lives...
[Maisie Ward, Return To Chesterton 127]

I cannot recall what Frances used last year, whether it was a Star or an angel, or just a candle. But your question reminds me of something someone asked me about Germany, recalling the difficulties of the 1914-1918 War, and expressing concern about her future:

...one does not love experts; especially experts in poison-gas. One may fear them, and, in consequence, one may fight them. But international idealists are even now talking of Germany as the land of science and industry and technical improvement. Now Germany is not as bad as all that. It has temptations of barbarism, and especially of mythology, but it has touches of the better mythology which is not a myth. My examples of small things would doubtless sound very small indeed. Summoned before the International Peace Conference, I should cause general disappointment if I said: "The Germans have produced one particular kind of Christmas Card which is unlike anything in the world. It really mingles the natural mystery of the forests with the preternatural mystery of the Christmas tree, and truly sets the Star of Bethlehem in a northern sky. To look at the best of these little pictures is to feel at once like a man who has received a sacrament and a child who has heard the whole of a fairy-tale. And when I look at those queer little coloured pictures, full of a sort of holy goblins, I know there is something in Germany that can be loved, and that perhaps is not yet lost."
[ILN May 5, 1934; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

18. Which do you prefer - giving or receiving?

I prefer thanking, for thanks are the highest form of thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder [A Short History of England]

The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
[Orthodoxy CW1:258]

But you raise an important matter, to which I must also respond:

It is more blessed to give than to receive; which an artist will always tend to translate as meaning that it us better to create even than to criticise. The curse that withers the world, in our particular period and state of culture, is that ordinary people do not give what they used to give or crate what they once created. They do nothing but receive; at the best they are critics, and at the worst very uncritical. The Wireless and the Cinema, the newspaper and the newsreel, a score of such enormous modern machines of publicity, pour down their throats, or into their ears and minds, a flood of suggestion in which they have no co-operation, which they do not criticise, and to which they cannot reply. The old output of popular opinion, which came from the talk in the tavern, and began even with the tales in the nursery, has been reversed and silenced; and Governments are ready to give anything and everything, if they can only be reassured with the soothing certainty that the people will give nothing. But I believe that Men, whether or no they were meant to be Masters, were at least all meant to be Makers; or something more like it than that.
[ILN Sept 8 1934; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?

Well, (Ahem, Frances, my dear, you won't mind my mentioning... no? Thanks, my dear.) Frances permits me to tell you that it is her very own "How far is it to Bethlehem?"; but of course there are so many others...

There is a grand and even gigantic gusto, which is never found in modern moral and religious poetry, or only very seldom, and in people of the same tradition. The good news seems to be not only really good but really new. It is hailed with a sort of shout, not with a mere chorus of congratulation, like a recognised occasion of rejoicing. One of the carols has for a sort of rowdy refrain the more or less meaningless halloo of "Ut hoy!" Even in reading it on a printed page after five hundred years, it is impossible not to have a sort of illusion that we are hearing the loud but distant hail of some hearty shepherd far away upon the hills. If it is ever sung, that chorus can hardly be sung too loud. I will not attempt to inquire here why the mediaeval carol, as distinct from the modern hymn, could manage to achieve the resounding reality of that shout. I should be inclined to suggest that some part of it [226] may have been due to men really believing that there was something to shout about. But certainly the spirit of Christmas is in these songs more than in any other literature that has since been produced; and if I am forbidden by good taste to express myself in theological terms, I will confine myself to saying in a loud voice, "Ut hoy!"
[ILN Dec 25 1926 CW34:225-6]

20. Candy canes?

I am not familiar with this form of sweet; ah, perhaps you mean a treat associated with Christmas...

A play may be as bitter as death, or as sweet as sugar-candy, it matters nothing - but a play must be a treat. It must be something which a mob of Greek savages, a thousand years ago, might, in some ruder form, have uttered passionately in praise of the passionate god of wine. The moment we begin to talk about a theatre or a theatrical entertainment as "dissecting life", as a "moral analysis", as an "application of the scalpel"; the moment, in short, that we talk of it as if it were a lecture, that moment we lose our hold on the thin thread of its essential nature.
["The Meaning of the Theatre" in Lunacy and Letters]

...the cave has not been so commonly or so clearly used as a symbol as the other realities that surrounded the first Christmas. And the reason for this also refers to the very nature of that new world. It was in a sense the difficulty of a new dimension. Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sight-seer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight; and that is an idea very difficult to express in most modes of artistic expression. It is the idea of simultaneous happenings on different levels of life. Something like it might have been attempted in the more archaic and decorative medieval art. But the more the artists learned of realism and perspective, the less they could depict at once the angels in the heavens and the shepherds on the hills, and the glory in the darkness that was under the hills. Perhaps it could have been best conveyed by the characteristic expedient of some of the medieval guilds, when they wheeled about the streets a theatre with three stages one above the other, with heaven above the earth and hell under the earth.

But in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth.

[The Everlasting Man CW2:305]

The old Trinity was of father and mother and child and is called the human family. The new is of child and mother and father and has the name of the Holy Family. It is in no way altered except in being entirely reversed; just as the world which is transformed was not in the least different, except in being turned upside-down.
[The Everlasting Man CW2:187]

More Christmas Game

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?


To read Gilbert's answer to this, as well as see how he decorates his tree, what he likes about snow, and whether he can ice skate or not (imagine Gilbert ice skating!) click here.

Could you mean before Christmas Day?

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes, as I am doing in this article. It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is. Up to a certain specific instant you are feeling ordinary and sad; for it is only Wednesday. At the next moment your heart leaps up and your soul and body dance together like lovers; for in one burst and blaze it has become Thursday. I am assuming (of course) that you are a worshipper of Thor, and that you celebrate his day once a week, possibly with human sacrifice. If, on the other hand, you are a modern Christian Englishman, you hail (of course) with the same explosion of gaiety the appearance of the English Sunday. But I say that whatever the day is that is to you festive or symbolic, it is essential that there should be a quite clear black line between it and the time going before. And all the old wholesome customs in connection with Christmas were to the effect that one should not touch or see or know or speak of something before the actual coming of Christmas Day. Thus, for instance, children were never given their presents until the actual coming of the appointed hour. The presents were kept tied up in brown-paper parcels, out of which an arm of a doll or the leg of a donkey sometimes accidentally stuck. I wish this principle were adopted in respect of modern Christmas ceremonies and publications. Especially it ought to be observed in connection with what are called the Christmas numbers of magazines. The editors of the magazines bring out their Christmas numbers so long before the time that the reader is more likely to be still lamenting for the turkey of last year than to have seriously settled down to a solid anticipation of the turkey which is to come. Christmas numbers of magazines ought to be tied up in brown paper and kept for Christmas Day. On consideration, I should favour the editors being tied up in brown paper. Whether the leg or arm of an editor should ever be allowed to protrude I leave to individual choice.
[ILN Jan 12 1907 CW27:370-1]

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?

With gifts.
Every tree was a Christmas tree bearing gifts...
[The Poet and the Lunatics]

11. Snow?

Ah... snow.

Mr. Oldershaw remembers that on one occasion on a very cold day they filled his pockets with snow in the playground. When class
reassembled, the snow began to melt and pools to appear on the floor. A small boy raised his hand: "Please Sir, I think the laboratory sink
must be leaking again. The water is coming through and falling all over Chesterton."
[Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 22]

XMAS DAY
Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not;
It is a track of feet in the snow,
It is a lantern showing a path,
It is a door set open.

["The Notebook" quoted in Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 65]

I was riding on an omnibus yesterday and it was snowing hard, when I realised a great idea. It occurred to me that I was very fond of you. I
hasten to communicate this thought. It seems to me strangely true. I can only vaguely hope that were you on the outside of an omnibus
when it was snowing hard (a position which I understand you seek out and enjoy) you might hit upon a parallel truth. It may seem vain and grasping, but I certainly hope a good deal that you don't mind me....
[A letter to Frances, his wife, quoted in Maisie Ward, Return To Chesterton 38]

Myths are not allegories. Natural powers are not in this case abstractions. It is not as if there were a God of Gravitation. There may be a genius of the waterfall; but not of mere falling, even less than of mere water. The impersonation is not of something impersonal. The point is that the personality perfects the water with significance. Father Christmas is not an allegory of snow and holly; he is not merely the stuff called snow afterwards artificially given a human form, like a snow man. He is something that gives a new meaning to the white world and the evergreens; so that snow itself seems to be warm rather than cold. The test therefore is purely imaginative. But imaginative does not mean imaginary. It does not follow that it is all what the moderns call subjective, when they mean false. Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.
[The Everlasting Man CW2:236-7]

12. Can you ice skate?

Yes, in a literary sense:

I can break through the forest of Browning and skate on the thin ice of Henry James, and I once distinctly saw a meaning in one of the poems of one of the French Symbolists.
[ILN March 1, 1913 CW29:454]

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

One of them is distance:

I have found out how to make a big thing small. I have found out how to turn a house into a doll's house. Get a long way off it: God lets us turn all things into toys by His great gift of distance. Once let me see my old brick house standing up quite little against the horizon, and I shall want to go back to it again. I shall see the funny little toy lamp-post painted green outside the gate, and all the dear little people like dolls looking out of the window. For the windows really open in my doll's house.
[Manalive]

Another was a shilling paint box:

When I was a child and had a shilling box of water-colours, I used to think that French ultramarine was purely French; I used to think that Prussian blue was really Prussian. Between them I used to make historic fights, such as Sedan or Austerlitz. One colour in the box told a tragedy in itself. It seemed named after the sacking of a splendid Italian town. It was called Burnt Siena.

[ILN Aug 25 1906 CW27:265-6]

14. What's the most exciting thing about the Holidays for you?

Everything.

The drawing [GKC's cartoon "Bringing in the Bore's Head"] recalls Christmas at Christmas Cottage. The name of their house suggests how much this feast meant to them, the Memory of his many Christmas articles remind us how much it meant to Gilbert. Frances too would break into verse at Christmas and almost no other time, and all their neighbours recall how the two of them would go from house to house with small gifts and great good wishes. On one occasion they both had dinner at Christmas Cottage on Twelfth Night. Clare writes:

We always made a great feature of our table decorations and used to compete with each other to think up new things every year. This particular Christmas the table was a concerted family effort. We made them wait in the hall while we arranged the final dramatic effect. When the door to the dining-room was opened, the room was in darkness except for the firelight. In the middle of the table was a seascape (the big looking-glass from the hall) and a ship in full sail towards a high rocky harbour (representing the cobb at Lyme). On the edge of the harbour wall was a toy lighthouse. A nightlight inside made the windows revolve so that the miniature beams shot through the darkness and lit Up the sea and the ship, its sails full set for home.
We of course expected pleasure and surprise and plenty of appreciation of our labours. What we were not prepared for was G.K.'s reaction. He came in last, being "taken into dinner" by one of us. He said no word at all, but paused in the doorway and stared and stared. And the sister whose arm was in his was stirred out of all proportion and heard herself muttering her thoughts aloud to G.K. (one of his rarest qualities was that one could literally think aloud to him without fear or self-consciousness). "It reminds me," she said, "of the Salve Regina." And G.K. said below his breath, "Yes - nobis, post hoc exsilium ostende..."

[Maisie Ward, Return To Chesterton, 315]

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?

Christmas Pudding.

Glancing down a newspaper column I see the following alarming sentence: "The Lancet adds a frightful corollary that the only way to eat Christmas pudding with perfect impunity is to eat it alone." At first the meaning of this sentence deceived me. I thought it meant that the eater of Christmas pudding must be in a state of sacred isolation like an anchorite at prayer. I thought it meant that the presence of one's fellow creatures in some way disturbed the subtle nervous and digestive process through which Christmas pudding was beneficent. It sounded rather mad and wicked, certainly; but not madder or more wicked than many other things that I have read in scientific journals. But on re-reading the passage, I see that my first impression did the Lancet an injustice. The sentence really means that when one eats Christmas pudding one should eat nothing but Christmas pudding. "It is," says the Lancet, "a complete meal in itself." This is, I should say, a question of natural capacity, not to say of cubic capacity. I know a kind of person who would find one Christmas pudding a complete meal in itself, and even a little over. For my own part, I should say that three, or perhaps four, Christmas puddings might be said to constitute a complete meal in themselves.
[ILN Jan 12 1907 CW27:375]

David Zach, Futurist

My brother-in-law recently heard a futurist speak, and he thought of me because the guy kept quoting Chesterton. Sure enough, David Zach has even attended a Chesterton Conference. I may have even met him. Isn't it interesting all the different ways people find to make Chesterton practical for today?

December Gilbert went to press...

Preparing for the Party

AN INVITATION

Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
requests the pleasure
Of humanity's company
to tea on Dec. 25th 1896.

Humanity Esq., The Earth, Cosmos E.

As some of you may already know, these famous words from GKC appeared in "the Notebook" and were quoted by Maisie Ward in her biography, Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

Some of us have made attempts at interpreting this "Cosmos E." term. The philosophers have consistently urged (even in their journal articles!) the Thomistic view that it is the initial of Ens - and thus is a Chestertonian shorthand for "the Cosmos that Is".

OK, then: all together, slam your fist on the table (don't crush the mouse!) and say (yes, in Latin if you insist):

"There is an IS!"

Whew, now that we've gotten them out of the way...

And, from the other side of the Universe, excuse me, I mean the University, the techhies with their lab coats full of bits and bytes, or smelling of DNA, have insisted that this is a pre-tech misprint for "E-Cosmos" - that is, the world of communication which AMBER built, where Gilbert is a force to be reckoned with - and which has lent its hyphenated prefix to mail, business, and other pre-technical nouns. They, of course, have their own cheers, uttered by none other than the Master Designer, who each morning says (as GKC noted) "Do it again" to the sun... (It does happen to be one of the official cheers of Chesterton University!)

Yes, yes; oh, very well, you may use recursion, as long as you don't forget your terminating condition...

"Do it again!"+

Oh, quite clever, and you kept it all on one line. I'm sure Father Michael (from The Ball and the Cross) would delight in that notation.

But. I have not brought up this invitation to perform a syntactic dissection, nor begin an inquiry into its philosophical ramifications. (I just wanted to see how many large words I could use in one sentence.)

And I could easily say that since we are all very busy just now, and even GKC is playing a game, I thought it might be time for a bit of game for us. So, here's an ACS Christmas Game for you to think about:

You have just received a very fancy envelope; you have opened it, and found an elegant embossed card, printed in gold bearing the above invitation - except that the date is THIS Christmas! The signature and enclosure gives you no room for doubt or speculation that the ACS is playing some kind of game. (hee hee)

For in the envelope is an itinerary with round-trip plane tickets and all travel arrangements for you to attend this party!

Question: What will you do to get ready? What will you bring? Who will you see, and what will you do there?

But I won't say it. For we've already received that invitation. We could be together - in fact, a Christmas is coming where we shall all be together and PARTY in the fullest sense of the term.

We ought to be preparing. That's the meaning of Advent. That's the fullest sense of that invitation, which has already been extended to us, and it comes from a far greater dwelling than Top Meadow.

For the One Who sent the invitation has kept the good wine until then. There might be some discussion (by the philosophers!) as to whether we will be celebrating a birthday or a wedding, but I for one won't be concerned that the wine might run out.

(And the nice thing about THAT party is we won't have to be worried about losing the return half of that "round trip" ticket. It's the outbound half we can't afford to lose.)

More Christmas Meme

4. Do you hang mistletoe?

Yes.

To read a tantalizing explanation of how mistletoe has more philosophy in it than all of Forel's "Sexual Ethics", click here.

This nameless northern element in the first landscapes of Christianity has had a certain effect on our own history. As the great creed and philosophy which united our fathers swept westward over the world, it found its different parts peculiarly fitted to different places. The men of the Mediterranean had, perhaps, a more intimate sense of the meaning of its imagery of the vine. But it succeeded in making its own imagery equally out of the northern holly, and even the heathen mistletoe. And while the Latins more especially preserved the legends about the soldiers, we in the north felt a special link with the legend of the shepherds. We concentrated on Christmas, on the element of winter and the wild hills in the old Christian story. Thus Christmas is, in a special sense, at once European and English. It is European because it appeals to the religion of Europe. It is English because it specialises in those religious customs that can make even our own landscape a holy land.
ILN Dec. 25, 1920 CW32:146-7

Take, for instance, our friend Forel and his "Sexual Ethics." Now, what is wrong with Forel's sexual ethics is quite simply this: that they are not tall enough to reach up to the mistletoe. The two first facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. While all the philosophical Forels go floundering about in a world of words, saying that this is wrong if it disturbs your digestion, or that that is right if it does not disturb your great-grandchild, all plain, pleasure-loving people have an absolutely clean instinct in the matter. Mankind declares this with one deafening voice: that sex may be ecstatic so long as it is also restricted. It is not necessary even that the restriction should be reasonable; it is necessary that it should restrict. That is the beginning of all purity; and purity is the beginning of all passion. In other words, the creation of conditions for love, or even for flirting, is the first common-sense of Society. In other words, there is more serious philosophy in the sprig of mistletoe than in the whole of "Sexual Ethics."
[ILN Jan. 9, 1909 CW28:251-2]

5. When do you put your decorations up?

We begin with Advent, but see my answer to #9 below.

The musical critic, or student of the stages of harmonic development, may distinguish between the quality of a good ancient carol or a bad modern one. But he knows that, even in this timeless time, it is only somewhere about the beginning of Advent that little boys in the street begin to sing the carols attached to Christmas. Like all little boys, they are in advance of the age; but at least they do not begin to sing Christmas carols on Midsummer Day. In short, wherever anybody observes Christmas forms at all, they are still to some extent limited by the idea of a Christmas ritual, and the recurrence of times and seasons.
[ILN Dec 21, 1935; thanks to Frank Petta and Dr. Thursday's mother]

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?

Turkey. I even put it into a play, which is far too long to quote here. ['The Turkey and the Turk" in CW11]

I do not know whether an animal killed at Christmas has had a better or a worse time than it would have had if there had been no Christmas or no Christmas dinners. But I do know that the fighting and suffering brotherhood to which I belong and owe everything, Mankind, would have a much worse time if there were no such thing as Christmas or Christmas dinners. Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob Cratchit had experienced a lovelier or more melancholy career than that of less attractive turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even conjecture. But that Scrooge was better for giving the turkey and Cratchit happier for getting it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two feet. What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. Nothing shall induce me to darken human homes, to destroy human festivities, to insult human gifts and human benefactions for the sake of some hypothetical knowledge which Nature curtained from our eyes. We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty. If we catch sharks for food, let them be killed most mercifully; let anyone who likes love the sharks, and pet the sharks, and tie ribbons round their necks and give them sugar and teach them to dance. But if once a man suggests that a shark is to be valued against a sailor, or that the poor shark might be permitted to bite off a nigger's leg occasionally; then I would court-martial the man - he is a traitor to the ship. ... A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
[ILN Jan 4 1908 CW28:17-18,21]

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child:

I will mention two: crackers and the toy-theatre.

Crackers are, indeed, a singularly perfect symbol of this permanent joviality, this feast that has gone on from the beginning of the world. For crackers, like bonfires, are beautiful because there is about them one touch of the dreadful beauty of fire. They are loved by children and by all people who are simple and unarsenicised (a jolly word) because they combine a promise of pleasure with the very faintest suggestion of catastrophe and fear. The chief glory of crackers is not that they contain mottoes (I am not old enough myself to care for the mottoes yet), the chief glory of crackers is not even that they contain coloured caps and very shrill whistles, priceless as these things are; the chief glory of crackers is that they crack. A cracker combines the virtues of a large treasure-chest and a small pistol. And although it may be said, and said truly enough, that crackers are not eternal things like bonfires, that in the course of time Mr. Tom Smith and his giant collaborators will disappear like old patterns for hats and coats, yet even here we see the main truth to which I have drawn attention. Even here the comedy of mankind is more constant than the tragedy of mankind. For there has been only one type of cracker ever since I was a child. And there has been rather more than one type of quick-firing gun.

[ILN Feb 10 1906 CW27:124-5]


When I was a child, I had a toy-theatre, illuminated in those days by candles (to which perhaps the psychoanalyst will trace my subsequent downfall into ecclesiastical crypts and cloisters) and in the ordinary way I was quite content with this type of illumination, the candles seeming to my barbarous mind to be themselves like a forest of fairy trees, with flames for flowers. There were also yet more rich and rare delights, which were sufficiently rare to those not sufficiently rich. It was sometimes possible to purchase a sort of dark red powder, which when ignited burst into a rich red light. Fire was wonderful enough - but red fire! But then I was only a dull Victorian infant somewhere between five and seven; and I only used red fire rarely; when it was effective. Living under such limitations, my immature brain perceived that it was more suitable to some things than to others; as, for instance, to a goblin coming up through a trap-door out of the cavern of the King of the Copper Mines, or to the final conflagration that made a crimson halo round the dark mill and castle of the execrable Mad Miller. I should not even then have used red fire in a scene showing the shepherd (doubtless a prince in disguise) piping to his lambs in the pale green meadows of spring; or in a scene in which glassy gauzes of green and blue waved in the manner of waves round the cold weeds and fishes at the entrance to Davy Jones's Locker.
[The Well and the Shallows CW3:416-7]

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

What truth could you possibly mean? The Truth about Christmas?

Santa Claus, of course, is only St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children; but he has, in some ways, become more of a goblin than a saint. There have been many thousands of Christmas cards and Christmas books printed to depict him; and I doubt whether five of them depict him with a halo. We talk of Christmas as a kind of peace that reconciles everybody. Yet the two syllables of which Christmas is made are the two words that tear Europe from end to end more fiercely than any others.
[ILN Jan 7 1911 CW29:18]

The tragedy of the spiritualist simply is that he has to know his gods before he loves them. But a man ought to love his gods before he is sure that there are any. The sublime words of St. John's Gospel permit of a sympathetic parody; if a man love not God whom he has not seen, how shall he love God whom he has seen? [see 1 John 4:20, also John 1:18, 6:46] If we do not delight in Santa Claus even as a fancy, how can we expect to be happy even if we find that he is a fact?
[William Blake 102]

And if you care to know more, please read Manalive (the chapter called "The Burglary Charge") which reveals even greater truths about him. (Another excellent reference is provided in "The Shop of Ghosts" in Tremendous Trifles]
More again on Friday.

Another Humorous Moment in Gilbert

Chestertonian mentioned the humorousness of Kurt Griffen's "Lunacy to the Editors" in the comboxes below, but another seriously humorous episode occurred on page 43, titled, "The Best Introduction Yet."

This is a review of Dale Ahlquist's latest endeavor to introduce us to the work and person of G.K.Chesterton in his new book, Common Sense 101--Lessons from G.K. Chesterton.

Here is the funny stuff:

"Over the last few years, I have periodically asked Dale Ahlquist what the best book is to introduce G.K.Chesterton to enquiring minds who'd like to know. I'm looking for one of Chesterton's titles, but Dale always answers, "David, that's easy--it's my book, The Apostle of Common Sense."

That had me laughing out loud! As you can guess, the humble Mr. Ahlquist would not recommend his book first, he would have a Chesterton title to recommend. However *I* do recommend Ahlquist's books to newbies, and often. And this new book is highly recommended.

GKC takes time out to play a Christmas Meme

Ah, a Christmas Game! Before I plod into this amusing collection of interrogatives, I must say something about my own view of Christmas.

It may be only because I am silly, but I rather think that, relatively to the rest of the year, I enjoy Christmas more than I did when I was a child. Of course, children do enjoy Christmas - they enjoy almost everything except actually being smacked: from which truth the custom no doubt arose.
[ILN Dec 27 1913 CW29:605]

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?

Egg nog; anything rather than that other, for:

"Cocoa is a cad and coward"
[The Flying Inn also CW10:475]

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Wrapped.

I never doubted that the human beings inside the houses were themselves almost miraculous; like magic and talismanic dolls, in whatever ugly dolls'-houses. For me, those brown brick boxes were really Christmas boxes. For, after all, Christmas boxes often came tied up in brown paper... [Autobiography CW16:135]

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?

Coloured.

It was not a question of [the Puritan] preferring light to darkness; it was a question of preferring a colourless light to coloured light.
[Chaucer CW18:352]

Well, the view of that illuminated garden from that unfinished bridge was the right view of it. It was as unique as the fourth dimension. It was a sort of fairy foreshortening; it was like looking down at heaven and seeing all the stars growing on trees...
["The Mirror of the Magistrate" in The Secret of Father Brown]

The art of coloured glass can truly be called the most typically Christian of all arts or artifices. The art of coloured lights is as essentially Confucian as the art of coloured windows is Christian. Esthetically, they produce somewhat the same impression on the fancy; the impression of something glowing and magical; something at once mysterious and transparent. But the difference between their substance and structure is the whole difference between the great western faith and the great eastern agnosticism. The Christian windows are solid and human, made of heavy lead, of hearty and characteristic colours; but behind them is the light. The colours of the fireworks are as festive and as varied; but behind them is the darkness. They themselves are their only illumination; even as in that stern philosophy, man is his own star. The rockets of ruby and sapphire fade away slowly upon the dome of hollowness and darkness. But the kings and saints in the old Gothic windows, dusky and opaque in this hour of midnight, still contain all their power of full flamboyance, and await the rising of the sun.
[Alarms and Discursions 5-6]

...you will find in a railway station much of the quietude and consolation of a cathedral. It has many of the characteristics of a great ecclesiastical building; it has vast arches, void spaces, coloured lights, and, above all, it has recurrence or ritual. It is dedicated to the celebration of water and fire, the two prime elements of all human ceremonial.
["The Prehistoric Railway Station" in Tremendous Trifles]
More answers tomorrow.

Neck Ties

Kurt Griffen's discussion of neck ties in the Lunacy & Letters section of the latest Gilbert magazine was, well, probably more in the "lunacy" part than the "letters" part. Anyway, it seems Kurt is anxious to prove that he owns more than one tie. OK then, since I'm a Star Wars fan, I'd like to see that Star Wars tie at the next Chesterton event, Kurt, ok? Very Chestertonian, I agree, to have character neck ties. But then, I wouldn't know much about that, not ever having worn a tie yet in my lifetime.

The Sword Issue

One of the really cool features of the latest Gilbert magazine is the little "Sword Scenes" feature, mini pictures, mostly drawn by Gilbert, reproduced here and there in the pages of Gilbert. There were also lots of sword quotes, and two great features, one by Dale Ahlquist and one by Kyro Lantsberger, on an interesting sounding place in Minnesota that is sort of a museum for old swords.

And, I never noticed before, as editor Sean Dailey quotes Dale Ahlquist in the Tremendous Trifles section, that Chesterton's signature formed two swords.

What was your favorite feature or article in the sword issue?

Last Minute Gift Giving Ideas

Naturally, we hope that we are on your Christmas list. To make it easy, just click here. Thank you for your past generosity, and please know that you are supporting an excellent cause. Clear thinking has never been so needed in this world. Gift Memberships make great gifts, too.

Innocent Again

by James Bruen, Jr.

I just read it.

Oh wow. Yes. Wonderful.

If you don't have a subscription, it's time to order one, and ask for the Oct/Nov 2006 to start, so you won't miss this. Especially if you are married. But even if you aren't.

G!

Well the infamous "sword" issue of Gilbert magazine finally arrived at my door.

Maybe some of you wonder why The Flying Stars, a fairly OK, and sometimes downright great column, mentioned nothing, nothing at all, about swords.

Well, I have a very good reason. Here's what happened.

Deadline for column approaches. Nancy scrambles. Picks topic out of thin air, and writes deeply and concentratedly for at least 1/2 hour, knowing that she will be well paid and compensated overly much for all such efforts. She finishes her column and says to herself, "It is good."

Suddenly, Nancy realizes that the column is actually due TODAY. She e-mails it in, with a reminder to the editor-in-chief (an anonymous worker in some den or cave somewhere in South America) that maybe he should remind the other columnists that today is the actual DUE DATE for these things. He writes back and says, "Oh yeah, thanks."

A few days later, when Nancy considers her column "put to bed" as they say in our business, an e-mail comes through (now remember, this is a few days AFTER the stated and written due date) and this e-mail says, "Hey! Someone reminded me that the due date was a coupla days ago (not giving me ANY credit, you see, for being so Hermione-ish {wait till I draw up schedules and color code them, ha HA!}) and so get your columns in. By the way, this issue is going to be our "sword" issue, so if you have anything to say about swords, say it now." Or Forever Hold Your Peace somehow finishes the sentence in my mind.

Nancy now thinks, "Hmmm. What did I end up writing that was so gosh darn brilliant? I can't change my column now, not when it is about...something....something that has nothing to do with swords! And it's past the due date. Just forget it. I'll write about swords some other issue, probably when they get to the "umbrella" issue, I'll have a good "sword" column. And then just when I finally get a good "umbrella" column, they'll have moved on to "the Jewel" issue.

*Sigh*

Such is the life of a Gilbert columnist.

But don't worry too much. We are highly paid professionals. We know what we are doing.

More interest in Chesterton's Plays

The Storm Theatre in New York put on Chesterton's The Surprise May 16-21, 2003. And they are thinking of reprising it for next (2007) Christmas. If you live in New York, stay tuned! (After you click on the link, scroll down a little to see the information on the 2003 production of they play.)

Hat tip: Kevin

GKC: Christmas Preparations

While I am busy with work and other preparations, I hope you will enjoy hearing from GKC on his own preparations...
-- Dr. Thursday

Christmas, which the calendar assures me is coming, has been the crux of more controversies than most people remember when they take advantage of the fortunate fact that it has so often been saved from its enemies. But, like any other good thing, it has suffered much less from the heat of fanatical foes than from the coldness of frigid friends. Fanaticism only encouraged the devout to be defiant, and they resolutely repeated it as a ritual; it was much more in peril of death where people only repeated it as a routine. Now, a ritual is almost the opposite of a routine. It is because the modern world has missed that point that the modern world has in every other way fallen more and more into routine. The essence of real ritual is that a man does something because it signifies something; it may be stiff or slow or ceremonial in form; that depends on the nature of the artistic form that is used. But he does it because it is significant. It is the essence of routine that he does it because it is insignificant. It is the whole point of the ritualist that he knows what he is doing. It is the whole point of the routine worker that he does not know what he is doing. It may be an advantage that he should perform such dull tasks in such a detached way; it may be argued that it is better for the work or for the world that it have routine that is only routine. It may be better, for those who like it, that a man should work in this unconscious fashion; it may be better that he should be an animal; it may be better that he should be an automaton. But it is not the same thing as the man expressing some idea by performing certain acts, even if we think they are antics. It is not the same thing as a man practicing the sacred and solemn art and craft of a mummer, even if we dislike all such mummery. The principle of ancient ritual is to do certain useless things because they mean something. The principle of modern routine is to do certain useful things, but to free ourselves from that degrading slavery by doing them as if they meant nothing.

The forms of Christian festivity are often said to have begun in the old pagan world, and heaven knows they have survived into a new pagan world. But anybody, whether he is a new pagan or an old pagan or even conceivably (for you never know your luck) a Christian, is in fact observing this sort of significant mummery in observing any form of Christmas celebration at all. The professor of ethnological ethics may attribute the tradition of the mistletoe to Baldur or to the Druids. But he must recognise that certain ceremonies were performed under the mistletoe, even if ethnological ethics have permitted other professors to perform them in many places elsewhere. The musical critic, or student of the stages of harmonic development, may distinguish between the quality of a good ancient carol or a bad modern one. But he knows that, even in this timeless time, it is only somewhere about the beginning of Advent that little boys in the street begin to sing the carols attached to Christmas. Like all little boys, they are in advance of the age; but at least they do not begin to sing Christmas carols on Midsummer Day. In short, wherever anybody observes Christmas forms at all, they are still to some extent limited by the idea of a Christmas ritual, and the recurrence of times and seasons. The thing is done at a particular time so that people may be conscious of a particular truth; as is the case with all ceremonial observances, such as the Silence on Armistice Day or the signal of a salute with the guns or the sudden noise of bells for the New Year. They are all meant to fix the mind upon the fact of the feast or memorial, and suggest that a passing moment has a meaning when it would otherwise be meaningless. Behind the opposite notion of emancipation there is really the notion that we should be more normal if all moments were meaningless. The old way of liberating human life was to lift it into more intense consciousness; the new way of liberating it is to let it lapse into a sort of absence of mind. That is what is meant by saying, as many journalists actually do say, that a civilisation of robots would be more efficient and peaceful. One of the advantages of a robot is the complete absence of his mind.

Thus I will admit anything against old customs, except the idea that they are dead and meaningless. It is the society without customs that becomes dead and meaningless. If the professor says to me frankly: "I do not want to kiss a girl under the mistletoe because it makes me think what I am doing, whereas I can now kiss any number of other girls anywhere without thinking what I am doing," then I think he is an honest fellow, and I can debate with him about the real facts of ethnological ethics. If the little boy in the street says: "I like bawling at any time of the year, and I don't see why I shouldn't bawl all the year round," then I am quite ready to admit that it is the nature of boys to bawl, and that there is a certain sympathy between us, because I have been a boy myself. But if either of them say that there is less significance in ritual salutes or ritual songs than in the hearty human instinct to kiss anybody or bawl anything, then I disagree with them upon a purely intellectual issue. It seems to me that human life tends of itself to become much too monotonous and mechanical; and that this is just as true of lax social habits as of stricter ones. If the object is to make life more intense and intelligent, to increase imagination, which is a sense of the meaning of things, then I think it can be done much better by keeping dates and seasons and symbolic actions, than by letting everybody and everything drift.

[GKC, ILN Dec 21, 1935 (his last Christmas on earth).
Special thanks to Frank Petta for providing me with the ILN essay, and to my mother for assisting with its transcription]

Game Players respond to the ACS Anniversary Game

RESPONSES still coming in, so I'm keeping this post up. Check out the links, they are fascinating.
I had lunch AND supper on the floor. Surprising how much better it tastes and how much more fun it is. We didn't go out to the roof at it was really too cold and windy today.

First game respondent, is my own blog, Flying Stars, where the most interesting thing I learned about Chesterton is something I've never heard before, anywhere.

Dr. Thursday has a very interesting post, and his unusual fact about Chesterton is most surprising!

In the combox, Todd recalls the little known fact that Chesterton once played a cowboy in a short film. Now, where is that film? I'd love to see it. They should play it at ChesterCon if it's available and restored.

Ria at ChesterTeens encourages her fellow teens to play along, and she has too many favorite Chesterton books to name. I like that. (It's not a meme, Ria, it's a GAME...tee-hee!) Lewis the Editor and mapaz, two other ChesterTeens responded in the Combox of Ria's post.

Send in your game answers and I'll post them here.

UPDATE: Paul at Alive and Young, Alicia at Studeo, and The Queen of Carrots have joined the game-thanks for playing!
UPDATED UPDATE: Jeff the Curt Jester and Adam are playing, too.

Update of the Updated Update: Kyro's and Justine's answers are in the combox of the game post below. Trubador has an entry here on his blog. Trubador is a new member of the ACS (welcome) and Justine will be if no one gets her a membership this Christmas (that's a hint, Justine's friends!) Kevin, actor extraordinaire plays along and has a very interesting answer about what he's read of Chesterton's just recently.

UPDATER to the Update of the Updated Update:Denny just sent in his answers to the game, and Chestertonian has answered in the combox of the game post below. I like Denny's way of celebrating:

In fulfillment of the first requirement, I have eaten a roast beef sandwich and quaffed the last of a bottle of Merlot (both remaining from a Christmas dinner party last night with old friends) and ended my repast with a toast to the American Chesterton Society (and its fine blog) and a short but sincere prayer for their good work to continue.

In addition, the Omaha Chesterton Society sounds very cool, and makes me wish I lived near them. Or else, that I stole their ideas and did them here, where I am. Which is in the middle of nowhere. But hey, if you build a toy theater, they will come, right?

Father Brown TV Show to be released on DVD

January 16, 2007, the old Father Brown series from 1974, made for TV will be released on DVD. It looks like you can pre-order it now.

Hat tip: Chris.

Happy Anniversary Blog of the American Chesterton Society!

Yes, today is the FIRST Anniversary of our Blog, Happy Anniversary to EVERYONE!!

To celebrate, we thought we'd play a game, as Chesterton was quite fond of games; and like Chesterton, we've completely made it up our of our heads.

Here's how you play. You answer the following questions on your own blog (if you've got one--if not, answer in the combox). Then you send me the link, and after we get all the players' answers, I'll make a big post with all the links. I'm pretty sure this is an original idea. ;-)

So, get out your thinking caps, and answer the following:

1. When did you first read a Chesterton book, story, or poem, and which was it?
2. What was the most recent of GKC's writings you read?
3. Which is your favorite book, poem - or quote?
4. Which would you recommend to a beginner?
5. What is the most unusual fact or quirky detail you know about G.K.Chesterton?

In addition to playing our game, you are required, yes- required, to celebrate in one of the following ways: have a party on the roof, eat a meal on the floor, go outside your house and knock on the front door, entering it as if you've never been there before, play a long round of gype, go out your front door, traipse around to the back door, and knock. See who answers and ask if you may come in. Have them serve you cake and ice cream. (For all Catholics-FYI-, the usual Friday abstinences are waived in lieu of the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception--so eat hearty). In honor of the GKC BLog, have a nice glass of claret, a tall glass of beer, a nice side of beef, a big plate of sausages, and *clink* toast in honor of our biggest friend, Gilbert, without whom we wouldn't be here together.

Send me your answers, then, after you've had your parties.

GKC on Logic and Truth

A friend asks about logic and truth. I have turned to GKC to provide an answer. His mathematics, logic, and science is superlative, and this excerpt ought to be required reading for anyone who expects to use such words in work or play.
--Dr. Thursday

Logic and truth, as a matter of fact, have very little to do with each other. Logic is concerned merely with the fidelity and accuracy with which a certain process is performed, a process which can be performed with any materials, with any assumption. You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as about sheep and pigs. On the assumption that a man has two ears, it is good logic that three men have six ears, but on the assumption that a man has four ears, it is equally good logic that three men have twelve. And the power of seeing how many ears the average man, as a fact, possesses, the power of counting a gentleman’s ears accurately and without mathematical confusion, is not a logical thing but a primary and direct experience, like a physical sense, like a religious vision. The power of counting ears may be limited by a blow on the head; it may be disturbed and even augmented by two bottles of champagne; but it cannot be affected by argument. Logic has again and again been expended, and expended most brilliantly and effectively, on things that do not exist at all. There is far more logic, more sustained consistency of the mind, in the science of heraldry than in the science of biology.... There is more logic in Alice in Wonderland than in the Statute Book or the Blue Books. The relations of logic to truth depend, then, not upon its perfection as logic, but upon certain pre-logical faculties and certain pre-logical discoveries, upon the possession of those faculties, upon the power of making those discoveries. If a man starts with certain assumptions, he may be a good logician and a good citizen, a wise man, a successful figure. If he starts with certain other assumptions, he may be an equally good logician and a bankrupt, a criminal, a raving lunatic. Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding truth; on the contrary, truth is necessarily an instrument for using logic - for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth and for the profit of humanity. Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

GKC, Daily News, February 25th, 1905
Quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox
(Emphasis added by Dr. T.)

New Year's Infinite Loops

New Year's? Yes, we are now in Advent: this is the new liturgical year, and we remember how God gave us the sun and moon to "regulate" time (Gen 1:14-18) - that is, to give an unmistakable arrangement to our experience of life. In the day and night, in the spring and summer and autumn and winter, we get a hint of a larger reality: life and death - but even more, Creation and Judgement, which might also be called Fulfillment.

Click to Enter the Infinite Posting

Well, now you've done it... we're stuck here until somebody turns off the computer. Did you bring any snacks? Ahem.

There are so many glorious analogies which reach across the Great Chasm between the tech side and the "liberal arts" side of the University - I am always amazed at the struggles (if not downright warfare) between them. But then, you see, long ago I read Newman's Idea of a University and saw that he faced them too. So, (like Newman and GKC) I work on the bridges. After all, during the Middle Ages it was considered a work of mercy to build a bridge, and Aquinas pointed out that it was a good reason to beg for money, placing this task even before the building of a church!

So. I have hinted about infinity at great length, though of course not all that long, hee hee. And this is an important idea when one wants to talk about science. Dr. Jaki spends six chapters of his great Science and Creation considering the six major ancient civilizations, all of which got stuck in the idea of a Great Cycle, by which all things would eventually repeat. Every one of them failed to produce a viable science because they were stuck on something or other philosophically contrary to science. It was only when a civilization held to the idea of a creation in time, and a created universe, in which Jesus was the Monogenes (the Only-Begotten) and NOT the universe - there, in Christian Europe, science began the life we now see.

But this idea of infinite loops comes up in computing in a very different way, and for a different reason - so much so, that it shares in that Christian character which one expects to find in every part of science.

To put it simply, the infinite loop, of which I gave two forms in a previous posting, is far from being a bug or piece of nonsense arising from lack of knowledge. Rather it is the heart and symbol of the whole other realm of computing, the realm which is called "operating systems". This subject is an important part of a college course of study in computer science, and it provides two dramatic links across the chasm I mentioned earlier.

1. The "end" of an operating system is to NOT end. That is, its purpose is to be there, ready to serve, and never to stop - until someone outside turns off the computer. Deep within every operating system worthy of the name is the "last" instruction at which the system "rests" (cf. Genesis 2:2). Its technical name is the "interruptable program stop" but in FORTRAN or BASIC it looks like

10 goto 10

(Real systems don't use that form for another very technical reason but I have no room to explain it now.)

2. The operating system is to computing what liturgy is to the Church. We have our "Great Cycle" - the loop aroundthe year by which we recall ALL of history from its beginning (Advent) to its conclusion (Christ the King) - and we do it every year since it will never end - until "Someone from Outside" turns it off. Analogy? Well... when I was in graduate school, I served on the admissions committee. I had to read over the transcripts of prospective students to verify that they had taken the required preliminary coursework. Once I had the transcript from someone who had gone to the University of Athens (in Greece!) - it had both the original and a translation, and I thought it would be useful to learn the Greek terms for computer science classes.

I was utterly and completely astounded when I read that "Operating Systems" was taught under the term leiturgika = leiturgika.

But even more astounding was this from A Miscellany of Men (Ah, you sigh. Finally we're getting to the Chesterton quote!):

In the course of a certain morning I came into one of the quiet squares of a small French town and found its cathedral. ... There were already a great many people there when I entered, not only of all kinds, but in all attitudes, kneeling, sitting, or standing about. And there was that general sense that strikes every man from a Protestant country, whether he dislikes the Catholic atmosphere or likes it; I mean, the general sense that the thing was "going on all the time"; that it was not an occasion, but a perpetual process, as if it were a sort of mystical inn. [GKC, "The Conscript and the Crisis"]

Well. There you see. GKC certainly did not intend this in the technical sense we use it now, but then again, the bridge is solid. For every operating system is a perpetual process, it is truly "going on all the time" ... for the user's programs (correctly called applications) it serves their every request, as "if it were a sort of mystical inn". Make mine a lager, please?

Then, to complete the unity, I recall two other lines. The first, from The Napoleon of Notting Hill: "'For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother,' said Wayne, in his strange chant, 'there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of the world'." The second, from the Gospel of John: "But thou hast kept the good wine until now." [Jn 2:10]

Happy New Year!

Catholic Best Sellers

What's amazing is all the dead guys on the list. Including #25.

The Chestertons

In preparation for a speech, I am reading The Chestertons by Mrs. Cecil Chesterton, aka Ada Elizabeth Chesterton. (And my first question is was Cecil pronounced "See-sill" or "Cess-il"?

If you've read this book, let me know what you thought of it. Ada was a member of the family, a sister-in-law to Gilbert and Frances, married, however briefly to Cecil. It would seem she had a good look into the Chesterton home, and knew what was going on there. It is amazing that she, too, is a writer, along with Gilbert, Frances, and Cecil.

She calls Gilbert, in her Foreword, "the prince of good-fellowship" which I like.

Anyway, if you've read the book, let me know your thoughts on it.

Quietly and Patiently Waiting

Advent. That's what it's about, quietly and patiently waiting for the coming of Christ.

The teens at Socrates Cafe yesterday had a good discussion about Christmas, the commercialism, Santa Claus (should you do it or not? If you had kids, would you?), the gifts, trees, lights; what is Christmas all about? Is there a "war" on Christmas? Etc.

The topic that caused the longest discussion was Santa. The kids aren't that far away from believing, and being self-conscious teens now, they look back and feel a little silly that they have videos and such of themselves saying, "Look what I got from Santa!" so it was really fun to hear from them on the topic.

Oh, getting back to the title of this post, what am I waiting for? My Gilbert. I guess it's hung up in printing somewhere, no one knows exactly why. Well, maybe the printers do, but they're too busy trying to fix things to explain little delays like this. There are some things in this world are difficult to explain, like printers, the mail system, and why we wait quietly and patiently for Christ to come 2,000 years ago.

New Edition of Chesterton's book

Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading, with Introduction by our own Sean Dailey. Publication date: December 21, 2006. Congratulations, Sean.

O God of Earth and Altar

In searching for the words to Chesterton's hymn, "O God of Earth and Altar," two sites came up that have not only the words, but musical accompanyment.

This one has an organ backgorund and this one has piano.

Hat tip: Sean

Chesterton defended on the pages of Touchstone

Apparently, last issue of Touchstone magazine had someone saying that Chesterton admitted the possibility of natural selection in a discussion about Darwin.

Touchstone reader Peter Hala from Alberta wrote a letter to the editor to correct this falacy.

William Kilpatrick's assumption in "The Wild Man" (September 2006) that Chesterton freely admitted the possibility of natural selection is inaccurate. Chesterton, while careful not to wade into a scientific quagmire, was quite clear about his views. His main objection was that Darwinian natural selection is completely separated from will, and it is thus reduced to millions of highly improbably accidents, which are simply "not like life." It is on this point that he agreed with G.B.Shaw:

But it is not only that the natural selection is not natural at all; it is the whole point of it that it is not selection at all. Nobody selects; and nothing cannot select. It seems to me in the largest and most luminous sense a matter of commonsense to say that, if there was not a clear design from above, then there was some sort of design from below; and it is quite possibile, of course, that there was both.

Good work, Mr. Hala.

Word of the Day: Clerihew

The Word of the Day for December 01, 2006 is:
clerihew • \KLAIR-ih-hyoo\ • noun
: a light verse quatrain rhyming aabb and usually dealing with a person named in the initial rhyme
Example Sentence:

My favorite of Edmund C. Bentley's clerihews is the following: "What I like about Clive / Is that he is no longer alive. / There is a great deal to be said / For being dead."

Did you know?
Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) was an English writer whose book Biography for Beginners was published in 1906 under the name E. Clerihew. It was a collection of simple, humorous four-line verses about famous people. Bentley had begun writing them as a bored high school student. He didn't call them clerihews himself, but his readers began to do so after the book appeared. How soon after, we can't be sure, because so far we've unearthed nothing earlier than a 1928 description of clerihews as "nice slack metres and sly points." In any case, people have been having fun writing their own clerihews ever since Bentley shared his.

Hat Tip: Blogger and Gilbert reader Dan

Holy Economics

I just received the latest from Touchstone magazine, which I thought all of the Distributists here would be interested to read. There is an article on Solidarity, which they've been kind enough to put on line here.

There is a short article, though, not on-line, which I thought worthy of writing up here.

Title: Holy Economics
Author: S.M. Hutchens

I have never been excited about the "capitalism versus socialism" paradigm, for it appears to me that much of what is called capitalism is simply what one might call the natural economic order--what people do when they trade in relative freedom--and much of what is called socialism is an attempt to correct the injustices that arise within it. (A notion with which I think Chesterton would be comfortable.)

Christians, I believe, need to be careful to distinguish between, on one hand, "capitalism" as a natural order fueled by human desire for prosperity (which is itself benign, but subject to evil through human sin) and the apparent "socialism" that is in fact charity working upon it over the objections of the capitalist, and, on the other, capitalism and socialism as economic theories encouraged or enforced by civil power. We should be very careful about appearing to endorse one or the other of the latter, for as theories they are both flawed and in earnest practice inhumane.

The Christian, I believe, should be working critically on these matters, but keep his feet fixed firmly on pre-theoretical ground, on the conceptual background of "mere economic activity" and the goods and evils that arise from it, never becoming a partisan of any theory or school, but always remaining at arm's length from them.

Just as many evils can be laid at the door of one as of the other, when viewed in the light of the same strength, the problem with socialism is its tendency to harm the individual in favor of the common good, and with capitalism its tendency to harm the common good for the enlargement of the individual. Both--as theoretical and practical systems--are to be avoided.

The historian Phillip Schaff said of Calvinism and Arminianism that the Bible was more human than the first, more divine than the second, and more Christian than either. Of capitalism and socialism as economic theory and practice it might be similarly said that holy economy is more selfless than the first, more interested in the individual than the second, and kind than either.

Naturally, I think distributists will agree with this, and maybe you will feel distributism is that "mere economic" way. But I think something holds over, too. I believe "mere economic activity" is a good idea, but if we need to be "working critically on these matters" then we must talk about economics as it applies to our society, too. Naturally, economics begins at home. But our world needs to run, and it will run in some way, and if we are not involved with how it runs, it will run away from us with, usually, either form which Mr. Hutchens describes as capitalism or socialism. Some people are called to be those "working critically on these things" and so they should.