Sittin' and Thinkin': a day for carrying the One - yes, with both hands

Today is the seventh day in the Octave of Christmas, and the feast of St. Sylvester II. Some others (like you perhaps) celebrate it as the last day of 2009, since tomorrow's date will be the first in 2010. It's kind of fun to think about what I was doing 10 years ago - just about a 1/3 of a billion seconds - laughing my head off about the famous Eetook Comet which had been predicted to hit the Earth just after 23:59:59 on December 31 1999. Very funny! (Actually I was in church, ringing the bells; we had just sung the Te Deum; awesome.) Of course, as all computer scientists know, the comet was averted, because someone left a whole bulb of garlic on his computer and so (by the magic of the "internet") the power of garlic seeped out into the e-cosmos and protected us! And so the predicted catastrophes did not occur, so the newspapers had to find something else to whine about the next day.

Oy, Eetook! What a joke. But that was 1999, and this is 2009. I know there is another rumour that another kind of terror is scheduled - supposedly by some guys who really liked carving dates into monuments, though they did not know to make a wheel... I don't think we'll even need a whole bulb this time. And it is a well-known dictum of theology (the study of God) that "God does not watch the odometer" - that is, he doesn't schedule big events just because some dial has turned all the way around and caused the machinery to carry the one - like your car's odometer, where the gear turns and a cog ticks over the next wheel to the left. Oh, but remember they didn't have wheels on this side of the Atlantic, just as the Italians had to do without tomatoes until Columbus got back... back then all their pizzas were white, like Christmas. Ahem.

No; as we read recently for Christmas, it was in "the fulness of time" [Gal 4:4] - when everything was just right, not when the dials read off the right string of digits! But the mere fact that numbers, like words, have to be spelled - oh, does that word bother you? It sounds like, magic, doesn't it? It is magic, one of the greatest of all (indeed, the one form of magic required as a prerequisite to get into Hogwarts, and even taught to Muggles!) but it is such a big kind of magic it does not get noticed. And as we Chestertonians know, in so many cases it is the big things that are good, that we count on (no pun intended) that we expect to be there always - and that therefore we ignore:

"Perhaps the weapon was too big to be noticed," said the priest, with an odd little giggle.
[GKC "The Three Tools of Death" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

Yes: today is a good day to sit and notice the big things, like days and years, the spelling of numbers, and something which GKC found "much more troublesome": I mean Right and Left.

Yes, in that strange world where I live and work, today might be called the Feast Day of Chirality: the day for recalling that we have two hands - a left hand and a right hand: so similar, and yet so different. (Note: "chirality" means "handedness" and among other things applies to chemicals like sugar - why do you think "dextrose" means "right-hand sugar"? Ask Dr. Pasteur about it when you have some time. "Chiral" comes from the Greek word cheir which means "hand".)

Our hands - what a gift. Please pause for a moment and take a look at your hands. (Or see here for a poem, or here for a book.) There they are - you have seen them countless times, almost since you were born, you began waving them so as to begin the training of your eyes to synchronize vision to reality... What a gift! They are two incredible marvels of mechanics and sensory technology: for each hand there are 27 bones and more than a dozen muscles which provide fine - no, exquisitely, terribly fine powers of control: these enable us to wave, to eat, to throw and catch - they enable motion for surgery or music, for knitting clothes or kneading dough, for moving the pen or the brush... And the hand is not simply for moving. We can grip an egg in one hand and a heavy hammer in the other, yet drop neither, because we can sense as well as act. How many senses are combined in the hand! We can detect texture, heat, cold, pressure, pain... and there are the very wonderful sensors called "proprioceptors" - which measure the degrees of pressure at the joints and in the tendons, to keep us aware of "where" our hand is - we might paraphrase our Lord and say "every finger on our hand is being monitored" Yea, even though we may not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing!

But as fascinating as the hand is, it is not its anatomy I wish to examine. No, it is a little-noted property of hands which I wish to call your attention.

We could call it the freight train property, or what the English call a "goods train". This property is a remarkable thing, very easily overlooked, and yet so terribly important - you and I are relying on it at this very moment! It is the true property which is possessed by certain things we play with countless times each day, and which we pay no attention to... even though it is as critical to the existence of those things as the two couplers on (say) a boxcar or a tank-car or a hopper-car are to the existence of a train. You know how a typical train car is coupled (connected or linked) with one neighbouring car towards the front of the train, and another towards the back of the train. No one has been insane enough to try to connect a tank car with the middle of a boxcar, or with the top of a hopper-car! It might make a funny picture, but it would not make a very good train. It would be better to call it a train-wreck.

Hey Doc (you moan) - What does all that have to do with Hands - and with New Year's Eve - or with the Octave of Christmas?

Why, you are paying attention. I thought perhaps you had run off to buy some garlic. (hee hee!)

You see, it is this chiral property of train cars - yes we could say they have a "right hand" coupler and a "left hand" coupler, even though they are quite interchangable, but let us just proceed. As I say, it is this chirality which permits the formation of trains. We might make a wreck of things piling car on top of car, but we won't ever get to Victoria, as the policeman-poet and Thursday-to-be, Gabriel Syme, alludes to in his argument with the anarchist Gregory. [See CW6:479]

But it is not only train cars which are chiral. [On re-reading this post, I feel I ought to consider them ambidextrous, as there is no inherent front or back to the typical freight car - but even the word "ambidextrous" emphasizes the chiral property for in Latin it literally means "both (ambo) hands are right (dexter) hands"!] As I hinted, there is something else, something far far more common than trains, which also is chiral, and which you rely on constantly as you deal with these things innumerable times every day - so much so that you are almost as unaware of them having that property as you are unaware of your hands!

I mean, of course, the letters of the alphabet, which we "couple" together to form words and sentences and paragraphs and essays or blogg-posts or books. (I defer for the moment any discussion of things like the "space" or punctuation or paragraph and other conveniences; these things have been added to make our work of reading simpler, but they also carry a similar chirality; another day perhaps we can talk about that. of course if you know ASCII, I mention the magic numbers 32 and 13 and 10, and the idea will be clear.)

Yes, if we are railroad people, we could call them "letter-trains". If we were chemists we could call them "literal polymers". As computer scientists, we use the word "concatenation" to describe this coupling, for the Latin catena means "chain" which is what we are doing when we bind the left-hand of one letter to the right-hand of its neighbour... and we do the same even when we are talking about what most people call "numbers", for the number "2009" is "spelled" that way because we use the base-ten scheme with Hindu-Arabic symbols. If we were writing Roman numerals we would spell it "MMIX", or in Greek numerals, ",bq’"... These number "words" are not words in the usual sense, but they are trains of linked cars, tied together left and right.

Very nice (you say) but what, o verbose Doctor, does this have about the times and the seasons?

Well... this linkage of letters might suggest the linkage of time. The moment of NOW has its left-hand to the past, and its right-hand to the future. The moments bind into seconds, which are strung into days and into years... It is a time for pondering that mystic notation from the Pascal Candle, and the words which go with it:

Christus heri et hodie
Principium et Finis
Alpha et Omega
Ipsius sunt tempora et saecula
Ipsi gloria et imperium
per universa aeternitatis saecula.
Amen.

which means:

Christ yesterday and today,
the Beginning and the End,
the Alpha
and the Omega,
His are the times
and the ages,
To Him be glory and empire
Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.

Yes, it is a time, as the great Sir Henry Merrivale (the detective invented by Carter Dickson) would say, a time for sittin' and thinkin'. It is a time to recall what our Lord said:

For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled. ... Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
[Mt 5:18, Lk 21:33]

It is the height of reason, to grasp - with both hands, as the Red Queen told Alice - that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us in time: He was willing to be bound like letters in a word, or cars in a train, just as He submitted to be bound in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem, or with ropes in Gethsemani - He is with us even now, as the train of time hurtles on.

May that Word - Who is bound with both hands - bound to us in our little world - grant you and yours a holy and peaceful New Year of 2010!

--Dr. Thursday

The "Cat" Poem

In the comments box of this post, Enbrethiliel asks which poem hints at Gilbert and Frances' ownership of cats? So, here goes. This is from the Collected Works Volume XB.

Ballade of the Returning Husband (page 394-5)

Happy who like Ulysses, yea that lord,
That found his home at least, returning tall
And terrible, he found his wife and board
Profaned by suitors swaggering in the hall,
But I, I do not find my wife at all.
I find no suitors even whom I might stab,
But only Her whom Not a Man we call
(I hear the ticking of the taxicab.)

I walk about the flat and wave my sword,
I sing my simple songs, I bleat and bawl,
Till Mrs. Whitehouse looks a little bored
And all my strains on Bonrick seem to pall.
I listen for your fluttering foot-fall
Bending the grass no deeper than Queen Mab,
And like the throb of conscience under all
I hear the ticking of the taxicab.

I came to answer questions, my mind stored
With business answers bright and practical,
But you, you fled and left me--blast you, Maud,
Thus to be out when your relations call.
Farewell--farewell--I leap from life's great wall.
Go bury me beneath a marble slab--
I hear the trumpets of death and courage call.
I hear the ticking of the taxicab.

Envoy

Princess, you hear Watt's voice all musical,
Or Dent, with all the devil's gift of gab,
But I, I hear a music sweet and small,
I hear the ticking of the taxicab.
(about 1904)

Notes: Not-a-Man, Mrs. Whitehouse, Bonrick and Maud were names of cats. Queen Mab is the Fairy Queen responsible for human dreams, Watt is A.P. Watt, Chesterton's literary agent, and Dent was a publishing house, notes thanks to Denis Conlon.

If You live near Rob (in Phoenix, AZ)

The Man Who Was Chesterton

(MONDAY EVENINGS 6:30PM-8:30PM)
Professor: Rob Drapeau, MAEd

Who was this guy and why haven’t you heard of him? Join us as we answer those questions and learn about G.K. Chesterton, the man some call the greatest writer and thinker of the 20th Century. Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared.

St. Thomas The Apostle (in central Phoenix)
2312 E. Campbell Ave Phoenix, AZ 85016 (602) 954-9089

H/T: Rob, a regular correspondent with a beautiful family and brand new baby girl, plus he's a HUGE Chesterton fan!

Chicago-Talk on Henry8 and Anglican Communion

Chris Check, Vice President of The Rockford Institute, to address Jan. 8, 2010 CCI Lunch Forum On The Impact of "Henry VIII, the Divorce"

Christopher J. Check is the Vice President of The Rockford Institute. He holds a B.A. in English literature from Rice University. Before joining the Institute he served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps, where he specialty was field artillery. He served as editor of The Family in America and is an award-winning commentator for Illinois Public radio. He has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, the Wanderer, National Review, New Oxford Review, Culture Wars, Touchstone and Defense Media Review. The subject: "Henry VIII, the Divorce" and the welcome "home" by Benedict XVI to Anglicans wishing to return to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.Pope Benedict XVI has extended an historic olive branch to Anglicans distraught over the collapse of the Church of England into moral anarchy. It is astonishing that Anglicanism has lasted as long as it has in light of the troubling tale of lust, deceit, and disobedience that is at its origin. Even C.S. Lewis, whose Ulster-bred prejudices kept him out of the Church of Rome, locates Henry VIII in deepest, darkest hell. If many Anglicans today admit that Henry VIII was a monster, they justify his cruel treatment of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, by arguing that the king's motives, while not necessarily admirable, were merely political: that the stability of the Tudor line and of the whole realm demanded a male heir. This lecture:
1. exposes the dishonesty of that defense,
2. lays bare Henry's true motives in divorcing Catherine,
3. identifies the sinister operators behind the scenes,
4. unwinds the convoluted legal arguments Henry attempted to justify his actions,
5. and names the painful and widespread effects of the divorce we yet feel today.
Henry VIII's divorce may be the worst tragedy to befall mankind since the Fall of Man.

Luncheons are at 12:00 noon at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago. The dress code for the Club allows casual business attire (collared shirt and slacks for men; slacks or skirt with blouse or sweater for women. Jeans, sweat shirts, or tee shirts are not permitted.)
Tickets are $30.00. For reservation, call Maureen at 708-352-5834.


H/T: Gramps, thanks John!

Through a Window

I came across this the other day, and realized the guy posting is a comment box visitor here. I love how he describes his early longing to be caught in a traffic jam--that resonated with me, and seemed very Chestertonian. Kind of like here now, how I long for snow storms, so I can visit with my neighbors and we can commiserate together about having to shovel snow, while secretly being glad of the chance to see each other and share some news.

So here, thanks to Maolsheachlann:

Through a Window

I can't remember the first time I heard of GK Chesterton, or the first time I read him. It may have been Lepanto, which I came across in an old school poetry anthology. But I do remember the first Chestertonian passage that spoke to me personally, that gave me that shock of surprised recognition which is a reader's greatest reward. I was flicking through his Autobiography, some nine years ago, and I hit upon this famous sentence: "All my life I have loved frames and limits; and I will maintain that the largest wilderness looks larger seen through a window."

We are often warned not to reduce an author or a philosopher to a single phrase, or a single idea. But are we really doing Chesterton and injustice in perpetually returning to that single word, wonder, as his essential message?

Coming across that sentence, again, while reading Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy has led me to think about the ideas, the sights and sounds, that spark my own sense of wonder. I'm boundlessly grateful for them, as they are entirely a gift. I could make become a millionaire far more easily than I could be shown the wonder in an everyday sight or sound, and I mean that literally.

Chesterton's mention of a window suggests the first example to me. I grew up in a high-rise estate, on the seventh floor of an apartment block. Sometimes I would have dreams about figures floating outside the window, like the vampiric boy in the miniseries of Salem's Lot. I grew up with the idea that for somebody to be outside the window of your home (a situation I often encountered in books) was exotic, miraculous, unearthly.

For about nine years now I've been on ground level with everybody else, but the marvel of the voice outside the window remains. It can be a group of little girls skipping on a Saturday morning. It can be a crowd of teenagers lurching home from the pub on a Saturday night. It can simply be the creak of a bicycle wheel. Even now, they all seem as wondrous to me as the sight of a mammoth or a Roman chariot. That mysterious Other outside my window is only feet away; but the sheet of glass between us divides us into separate realms. I know that this sense of marvel at a voice outside my window will follow me to my dying day, and I am unspeakably grateful for it.

Because that's the thing about wonder; its inexhaustibility. If I were to inherit a fortune tomorrow, I would probably get over the excitement of living in a mansion. But I will never get over the excitement of the lights going down in the cinema, or the sound of water gurgling in a drain, or the view into an upstairs bedroom as I pass a house on the bus, and marvel at the living dolls in the life-size dollhouse.

Because I could write on this theme forever, I will be stern with myself and only mention one more, perhaps because it illustrates another of Chesterton's aphorisms; namely, that an inconvenience is only an adventure, rightly considered. I can remember reading a pamphlet on stress, issued by some health authority or other, when I was a child. The pamphlet described the various situations that lead to stress, and gave chirpy suggestions on how to deal with them.

One was a traffic jam. If I had a Chestertonian memory, I could reproduce the passage verbatim, but the essence of it was: "Try to smile at another driver caught in the traffic jam."

I had never been in a traffic jam. My family had never owned a car, and I had rarely travelled in one. My school was within walking distance. To my naive mind, the thought of a traffic jam was immensely pleasing. I liked the idea of complete strangers thrown together, like the kids in detention in The Breakfast Club, or-- pretty much-- every set of characters in every adventure story whatsoever. It had all the charm of a desert island captivity. I wondered how anyone could help smiling in such a situation.

I'd like to pretend that I exult in traffic jams now, just as I thrill to the sound of a voice outside my window. Unfortunately, my imagination has been less helpful on this occasion; I've found myself becoming as cross, frustrated and aggrieved as anybody else in my (subsequently vast) experience of traffic jams.

The memory of the pamphlet only occured to me recently, when I had started to think-- partly spurred by Chesterton's writing, partly by the course of my own thoughts-- how much we miss inconveniences when they are taken away, and how much human drama they add to our lives. Do you remember breakdowns in TV transmission? "Here is some music"? Have you ever heard a thirty-something wax nostalgic over how, when he was a kid, loading a game on his Amstrad of Spectrum computer took longer than playing it? Have you ever noticed how twenty-somethings who detested having to wear uniforms in school flock to nostalgia discos where school uniform is compulsory? Have you ever felt sorry for a teenager with her own car?

So now I try to exult in the traffic jam, and savour the queue. Maybe I'll never entirely succeed in that endeavour. But at least I know the voice outside the window will always be a voice from fairyland.

Chesterton Home Mystery

I am currently trying to figure out if the Chesterton's had cats.

I know they had dogs, Quoodle was one of them, but in reading Chesterton's poetry, it would appear he might have also had cats, possibly even four cats.

If anyone knows anything about the pets at the Chesterton home, let me know.

Frats, Vitamin F, and the Fish - or, Revealing a Family Secret

(My special thanks to Nancy, our esteemed blogg-mistress, for the idea which germinated into this essay. It's very strange what you can find out here in the e-cosmos, isn't it? hee hee...)

Frat? What is a "frat"? A kind of fish, like "sprat" or "dace"? No; it's college-jargon, short for "fraternity", from the Latin frater which means "brother". You know - "the Greeks" - drunks, stunts, pranks and hazing and (drum roll) initiation? Swallowing goldfish? (There's that fish thing again, hmm.)

Not quite, my friend! I mean friendship, honor and dignity, depth of history, steadfast devotion to great principles, a campus home, a college family, and especially the true use of one's intellect... Yes, as you might have guessed, I was in a frat in college. (Oh, my yes: I went to my first ACS conference with a brother, and I met another brother there! He's someone you've read if you get the magazine, but I will not reveal more. No it's not Dale; he's another kind of brother to me.) I was very strongly involved in that frat - involved for quite a few years - rather extensively so, in fact. I won't tell you which one, since it is irrelevant (and in fact worse than irrelevant) now. But I will tell you a few things about these societies, since the idea of a fraternity touches us today in a very special way.

An aside: if you do happen to know which frat, and are wondering about why, you can just put it down to that old song:

They didn't like "Doc Thursday" playing ancient "frat boy" games...

After all, it's all a matter of going deep into history, and we all know how inconvenient that can be. Hee hee. See Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine for more on that sort of thing. Ahem. But let us proceed.

Anyhow, one of the more startling facts one learns about these Greek-letter organizations, once one is inside one (or once one actually bothers to inquire) is that they all work on more-or-less the same principle: the principle of the Family. The idea is that the typical college man of the 1800s was probably rather far from home, and he was very busy with his studies and with his aspirations to his future career - most often this was a Physician, a Lawyer, or a Clergyman, but there was the general sense of striving to become a well-rounded and honorable American Citizen. All very good. But he did get lonely, being far from home and without cell phone or e-mail or car, and also he most likely had a chivalrous sense of wanting to work together with friends at truly honorable activities...

Now, another thing we need to recognize is that these young men whose fathers or grandfathers had fought in the American Revolution were enthusiastic about trying out this new "self-government" trick. They knew they would be facing the real thing, either in their town or city, or state, or country (after all that was what the Founding Fathers wanted, you know) and these smart young men also knew that the typical college lecture was a time for learning - that is, acquiring knowledge from the professors. Their classes would not provide "labs" for things like public speaking, or learning how to deal with others - they were paying good money to attend those lectures, and they didn't expect to waste their class time on things they could do elsewhere, and under their own power. (So American of them - no, I should say so Subsidiarity of them!) Hence the young men started their own organizations, to practice things like public speaking (either debates or extemporaneous talks) and the running of meetings by parliamentary procedure, and the fair and just dealing with each other, especially with those who may not be in agreement with you. (Again we hear hints of GKC.) So, they founded clubs called "literary societies" - which were kind of like debate clubs (All Chestertonians now murmur "J.D.C.", of course) and they met after classes and they were really great things, and just about everyone joined, and had a good time, too. (Very fascinating, I wish I had time to tell you more, but just for an example you can read about them here.) Some of them survived for over a century, and in fact I met a member of one which had been founded in the 1830s, I was very impressed.

But these societies, as good as they are (or were) did not supply the "minimum daily requirement" of Vitamin F, the Family vitamin. They were a bit too large for such things, and of course they had a different motivation - that of literary endeavours and the practical experience of self-government, and so forth.

Now, back in 1776, a lot of things happened which I am sure you know very well. But there was something else that happened, in December, at a little college called "William and Mary" in Virginia. Some young men got together and started a frat. They called it "Phi Beta Kappa" - but it was at that time NOT a "honor society". No, it was like the typical "social fraternity" of today - it had secrets, it had a grip, it had a badge, and so forth. The handy thing about Phi Beta Kappa, however, is that many years ago it changed its purpose and became an honorary society, and at some point it did away with its secrets. Of course this abolished any possibility of having that Vitamin F, but as I said it is handy, since I can therefore tell you one of its former secrets, and thereby explain what it is I am trying to explain.

The name "Phi Beta Kappa" was what we now call an "acrostic" or an "acronym" like "NASA" (for National Aeronautics and Space Administration), or "ASCII", which stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange", which is the coding method by which you and I are presently communing! In the same way, those three Greek letters, Phi, Beta, Kappa, stand for three words. But the words, of course, were Greek words, and back in 1776 you had to be admitted in order to learn what those three words were! No longer. Here is what they are:

Phi - Philosophia = "Philosophy (Love of wisdom)"
Beta - Biou = "of life"
Kappa - Kubernetes = "guide"

That is,

Philosophia Biou Kubernetes,

which means roughly

"The Love of Wisdom is the Guide of Life."

(Need I remind you that in those days if you went to college you studied Latin and Greek? I should think you ought to, even today, but that's another topic for another time.)

These are great words, of course, and significant even as they stand one by one. The first is obvious to any philosopher, and the second gives us "biology" - but the third is literally "steersman" and from it we get both "government" and "cybernetics" - but we have no time for that today. It is Christmas Eve you know, even if you thought I had forgotten!

So yes, those odd Greek letter names of frats are nothing more than acronyms for Greek phrases which are kept secret for the sake of producing that elusive "Vitamin F". Why do I say that? Well, it will come as quite a bit of a surprise to outsiders, but not to Chestertonians, since we understand about the Three Great Reasons for Keeping Things Secret, as GKC told us in ILN August 10 1907 CW27:423 et seq. which I shall not quote here; you really must read it for yourself. The first, and best, is that one keeps things secret simply for the sake of revealing them at the proper time! For example, you see all those wrapped boxes under the Christmas Tree? They are being kept secret! And you may recall St. Paul writing this:

Now to him that is able to establish you, according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret from eternity; (Which now is made manifest by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the precept of the eternal God, for the obedience of faith) known among all nations...
[Romans 16:25-6, emphasis added]

Indeed! It would be hard for us to keep from wrapping our Christmas presents, since God Himself kept Christmas wrapped as a great secret, even from Moses and Abraham... But let us proceed.

Now, as I said, the frats keep their motto (the Greek phrase hidden within the letters of their name) secret, together with some other related matters, so that they can reveal all that at the proper time - that is, when they initiate their new members. This very simple, almost trivial trick, gives the members something they share in common: something no others - that is no OUTSIDERS - can share. And that sharing is one simple way of describing a Family! The nature of a frat is NOT to exclude - no, it is to INCLUDE, and include in a very special way... it's real hard to produce that Vitamin F without something very unique - something like marriage - which also connects to GKC's second Great Reason for Keeping Things Secret. (You'll have to check out the essay, and it will be obvious to you. I certainly cannot go revealing it here.)

Now (like Martha) you are probably busy with many things, trying to do your last-minute preparations, and you want me to get to the point. I have two points.

First, you will recall that last week I mentioned the seven ancient O antiphons:

O Sapientia = O Wisdom
O Adonai = O Lord of Israel
O Radix Iesse = O Root of Jesse
O Clavis David = O Key of David
O Oriens = O Rising Dawn
O Rex Gentium = O King of Nations
O Emmanuel = O God-With-Us

Now, if you have read my original series on these, you will know about the secret they contain... but if you haven't, you can apply the "frat" technique and learn something interesting!

Yes, the initial letters of the seven titles of our Lord spell out "ERO CRAS - which is Latin for "I will be here tomorrow"! (See here for more.)



Now, as you may also know I am quite enough of a biologist (I can spell DNA after all, and I even know a little of what is going on when the computer "boots up". It has to do with ribosomes, hee hee) and so I quite well understand that Jesus was already "here" - though for the past nine months He was hidden, kind of like those gifts under the tree, you know. The point is that, like the shepherds, on Christmas we are able to SEE Him! Gosh, you just need to remember what GKC wrote ... oh yeah. Well, I think that once you read it, you will understand that this Christmas thing really is a kind of frat effect of Vitamin F:

We all know that the popular presentation of this popular story, in so many miracle plays and carols, has given to the shepherds the costume, the language, and the landscape of the separate English and European countrysides. We all know that one shepherd will talk in a Somerset dialect or another talk of driving his sheep from Conway towards the Clyde. Most of us know by this time how true is that error, how wise, how artistic, how intensely Christian and Catholic is that anachronism. But some who have seen it in these scenes of medieval rusticity have perhaps not seen it in another sort of poetry, which it is sometimes the fashion to call artificial rather than artistic. I fear that many modern critics will see only a faded classicism in the fact that men like Crashaw and Herrick conceived the shepherds of Bethlehem under the form of the shepherds of Virgil. Yet they were profoundly right; and in turning their Bethlehem play into a Latin Eclogue they took up one of the most important links in human history. Virgil, as we have already seen, does stand for all that saner heathenism that had overthrown the insane heathenism of human sacrifice; but the very fact that even the Virgilian virtues and the sane heathenism were in incurable decay is the whole problem to which the revelation to the shepherds is the solution. If the world had ever had the chance to grow weary of demonic, it might have been healed merely by becoming sane. But if it had grown weary even of being sane, what was to happen, except what did happen? Nor is it false to conceive the Arcadian shepherd of the Eclogues as rejoicing in what did happen. One of the Eclogues [The Fourth] has even been claimed as a prophecy of what did happen. But it is quite as much in the tone and incidental diction of the great poet that we feel the potential sympathy with the great event; and even in their own human phrases the voices of the Virgilian shepherds might more than once have broken upon more than the tenderness of Italy... Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem... They might have found in that strange place all that was best in the last traditions of the Latins; and something better than a wooden idol standing up forever for the pillar of the human family; a household god. But they and all the other mythologists would be justified in rejoicing that the event had fulfilled not merely the mysticism but the materialism of mythology Mythology had many sins; but it had not been wrong in being as carnal as the Incarnation. With something of the ancient voice that was supposed to have rung through the groves, it could cry again, "We have seen, he hath seen us, a visible god." So the ancient shepherd might have danced, and their feet have been beautiful upon the mountains, [cf. Isaiah 52:7] rejoicing over the philosophers.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:307-8, emphasis added]

Did you catch that about the human family? I have no time to go into that bit about the "Household God" but I will try to do it next time. But I will tell you that the Latin quote is from Virgil's "Fourth Eclogue" and means "Begin, little boy, to know your mother by her smile."

Now, I have one more thing to mention, one more secret to unwrap for you.

You see, as a Christian, you are already in a frat - in a Family. This is one of the most obvious things to understand when you recall how often St. Paul uses the word "brother" - heck, after all Ananias called him brother! (see Acts 9:17) But there is something else, far closer to the Phi-Beta-Kappa effect, which you may not have ever heard about. One of the earliest Christian symbols is the Fish. which according to The Encyclopedia of the Early Church 803 "seems to have been used from the start" [of Christianity] and indeed "seems to disappear with the coming of the Constantinian era". Very curious. But of course they did not use the word "fish". They used ICQUS or "ICHTHYS", from which we get the word "ichthyologist" (student of fish). But the secret the Christians knew was what those five letters stand for:

I - IhsouV = Jesus
C - CristoV = Christ,
Q - Qeou = God's
U - ‘UioV = Son,
S - Swter = Savior

but then you already knew that. After all, as St. Paul wrote, Jesus was born "of a woman, born under the Law" [Gal 4:4] And that is what Christmas is all about.

In the next week, please try to read the chapter called "The God in the Cave" in GKC's The Everlasting Man - and even if you have already read it, read it again. Read it to your family, to your friends, and they will be enriched.

My very best wishes for a happy and holy Christmas to all my dear brothers and sisters in ICQUS.

God bless us, every one!

--Dr. Thursday

New Look for Blog and New Podcast

Yep, I changed the layout, let me know what you think. And there's a "Merry Christmas" podcast up if you'd like to hear it.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Show notes:
Merry Christmas to all Uncommon Sense listeners!
Christmas, being kind to difficult relatives and friends, books, Chesterton poetry.

Feedback Welcome uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com

http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
http://francesblogg.blogspot.com/
http://theduhemsociety.blogspot.com/
http://drthursdaysubsidiarity.blogspot.com/
http://joethecontrolroomguy.blogspot.com/
http://www.ignatius.com/ViewProduct.aspx?SID=1&Product_ID=3450&AFID=12&
http://www.gkchesterton.org.uk/blog/?p=88
http://www.music.mevio.com

Chesterton in 15 Minutes a Day

I wonder how many days it takes? Probably about a million, I'd guess.

This blog series--GKC 15 minutes at a time--has gotten good feedback so far from it's small but faithful and smart audience--I was wondering if you wouldn't mind plugging it on the Am Chest Society blog?

No problem, Jennifer.
Now everyone go check out her blog.

Chesterton Christmas Carol

H/T: Sara B.

I went to a festival of Lessons and Carols tonight based on the famous one at King’s College, Cambridge, and decided to check into the original.

Behold, every year, they commission a new carol, and this year’s is based on Chesterton’s poem “the Christ Child lay on Mary’s lap”. It’s broadcast on some BBC sites this Christmas Eve, but mid-morning for those of us in the Midwest.


http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/events/chapel-services/nine-lessons.html#carols

Commissioned carols
When Stephen Cleobury came to King's in 1982 he was keen to demonstrate a commitment to contemporary music for the College's liturgies. He decided that one way of doing this would be to commission a new carol each year for inclusion in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols; thus a new tradition was born.

The first composer to be commissioned was Lennox Berkeley, and amongst those who have followed him are, Thomas Adés, Judith Bingham, James Macmillan and John Rutter, to name but a few. A CD recording of the commissioned carols entitled, 'On Christmas Day: New carols from King's' was released by EMI in 2005.

Commissioned carol 2009
This year the composer Gabriel Jackson has used G K Chesterton's 'The Christ Child Sat On Mary's Lap' as the text for his carol. Gabriel is a leading composer of choral music who has written pieces for the BBC, the Tate Gallery and the National Centre for Early Music.

He said: 'While writing the piece I was thinking all the time about the wondrous space that is the King's Chapel, the special atmosphere of the service, the acoustic of the building, and the unique sound of the King's choir in that building. Now that it is finished I cannot wait for Christmas Eve, to be there in the Chapel at King's and to hear my piece quietly take its place in the age-old rite, as Stephen and his choir work their magic once again.'

The website also gives info about how to access the service on the BBC World Service and such.

Sara B.

Thanks, Sara!

Chesterton Literature Course-High School and Up

Sign up soon for this opportunity to take a Chesterton Literature class on line. I'll be taking the class, as I'm curious to learn as much as I can.

Chesterton and Christmas Talk--A Reader Sends a Report

I was made aware of Chesterton and Christmas: A Serious Affair thanks to your Chesterton blog. Last night I traveled from Philadelphia to New York City to attend this event. In gratitude, I offer you this report.
The event was a collaboration among The Crossroads Cultural Center, the G.K. Chesterton Institute For Faith and Culture at Seton Hall University, and Fordham University's Campus Ministry. Attendance was about two hundred.
Tony Hendra read Chesterton's The House of Christmas, The Nativity, and The Wise Men.
The Choir Of Communion And Liberation, under the direction of Christopher Vath, sang carols from around the world.
Father Ian Boyd and Dr. Dermot Quinn were luminous in Chesterton's Love For Christmas; A Conversation. What stays with me about their presentation is this: that the Incarnation was the foundation of Chesterton's wonder, gratitude, and joy. That God became a man to share in our humanity should be the basis of a lifelong celebration. 
Some GKC zingers:
"Dickens rescued Christmas from the Puritans."
On Shaw's criticism that Christmas is just an excuse for shopkeepers to sell their wares: "That's like saying the purpose of sex is for jewelers to sell rings."
Each Christmas GKC "celebrated the realization that he was not God."
This was a great event and well worth the trip.
John H

Thank you so much for this wonderful report, John. I felt like I got to share a little bit in the joy of this conversation.

And Father Boyd is going to be speaking at ChesterTen in August, 2010.

O! Holy unto the Lord: Trim Every Blessed Pot

(No that title is not a tech pun. I wonder if there are any other Chestertonians who know about trimming a pot: "pot" is tech jargon for "potentiometer" which you probably call a "volume control". Hee hee. But let us begin, we've got a lot to do today.)

Wow, according to the moon and the sun, today is Durin's Day - the first day of the last new moon before the Winter Solstice - "as all should know" it is New Year's for the Dwarves. (Of course such an astronomical specification for a feast sounds very Easter-y to me, but let us defer such things for a future post, hee hee.)

Today being December 17, it is also the first day of what the Church calls the "Greater Feria", the great count-down to Christmas - the last seven days before the Vigil on which we hear those seven lovely and ancient O antiphons: seven great titles of our Lord drawn from the Hebrew scriptures:



O Sapientia = O Wisdom
O Adonai = O Lord of Israel
O Radix Iesse = O Root of Jesse
O Clavis David = O Key of David
O Oriens = O Rising Dawn
O Rex Gentium = O King of Nations
O Emmanuel = O God-With-Us

As you can see, I have written elsewhere on these, but you can read them for yourself, since I have lots more to do today - I am busy as a Dwarf just now. Hee hee.

Of course, as we know, the Dwarves did not celebrate Christmas, or at least they had not done so in the time of Bilbo and Frodo, though I imagine there have been conversions over the last two millennia. Indeed, I speculate that the famous Boreal workshops of the Bishop of Myra (who, like Gandalf, is known by other names in different places throughout Middle Earth) are at least partially staffed by Dwarves, who are very good at making clever things - see for example Tolkien's comments about the "musical crackers" at Bilbo's famous "eleventy-first" birthday party. If St. Paul could state how the Gospel abolishes such distinctions as Jew or Greek, male or female, [Gal 3:28] I am sure that the long-standing division between Elf and Dwarf was likewise set aside once they heard (as the voice of an eagle made known) "the Black Gate is broken and our King has passed through, and He is victorious - and He shall dwell among us all the days of our lives..." [JRRT The Return of the King; cf. Luke 1:77-78, Hebrews 10:19 and John 1:14 among others] Yes, very Easter-y.

But let us not explore such issues today when we have decorating to do! Rather, let us take a take a look at another important class of folks, somewhat closer to our own selves: the Whos who live down in Who-ville, just south of Mount Krumpet.

You may have heard their handy little check sheet of how to decorate the home... just in case, I shall give my own transcription, apologising in advance for my misquotes of the technical terms used:

Trim up the tree with Christmas stuff,
Like Bloogle-balls, and Who-foo Fluff.
Trim up the tree with Goggle-gums and Bissle-dinks and Wungs!

Trim every blessed window and trim every blessed door,
Hang up Koo-goo-who Bricks,
Then run up and get some more!

Hang Pang-tookas on the ceiling,
Pile Pan-foonas on the floor,
Trim every blessed needle on the blessed Christmas tree.
Christmas comes tomorrow! To you! To me!

Trim up the tree with Fuzzle-fuzz,
And Blipper-bloops, and Wuzzle-wuzz,
Trim up your uncle and your aunt
With yards of Who-fa-flay!
Trim up the tree with yards of Who-fa-flay!
[approximated from T. Geisel's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"]

Your Uncle and your Aunt, huh? Hmm... But actually, it seems evident to me that the Whos read Chesterton, since this song demonstrates that "the greatest of poems is an inventory." [GKC Orthodoxy CW1:267] But there is something more important here than just the list, no matter how poetic.

Rather, I found this list suggestive of another very Tolkien-ian matter, what we might call the matter of the Tree. But I do not mean Telperion and Laurelin - nor yet Eden's famous Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with its forbidden fruit (no the Bible does NOT say it was an apple - check it out!) Nor, even, the far more terrible and glorious Tree of Calvary, hymned in the Improperia of Good Friday, though that is far closer to my topic.

No, I refer to a famous and almost forgotten tree, which I have only recently learned more about: the arbor scientiarum, the Tree of Sciences, known to scholars in the High Middle Ages. I learned of this famous Tree from a book called Science and Creation in the Middle Ages by Nicholas Steneck - this is a study of the work of Henry of Langenstein, a scholar who died around 1397. Steneck tells us that Henry assumes a certain attitude

in his investigation of nature. As a philosopher, scientist, and theologian, he works under the supposition that knowledge as "scientia" is one. He assumes, without ever specifically saying so, that there is some underlying and consistent truth to the universe that may be manifest in many ways but that ultimately represents only a single truth. Disciplines, as branches of the arbor scientiarum, can be spoken of as individual entities ... but none is ever totally separable from the tree. There is no reason to distinguish one branch from all others as an autonomous unit. More than this, there is no reason to limit one discipline exclusively to one method. This is not to say that some disciplines do not employ one method more than another. Certainly they do. But there is nothing to suggest that they ought to use only that method. If other disciplines have something valid to say about science, or the reverse, Henry is perfectly willing to go that route. Truth is truth no matter what its origin.
[NS Science and Creation in the Middle Ages 145]

Glorious! And here, my dear friends, my fellow Chester-who-tonians, we find the medieval antecedents for Chesterton's famous quote that "there is no such thing as a different subject" and its congeners. Hurray! So it seems that GKC really does revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth (and fourteenth) centuries to get things done. Wow.

But why (you moan) do you bring this up, Doctor? I thought we were going to talk about decorating.

We are. That's the point of my quoting the famous decorating song of the Whos.

You see, there really is supposed to be a unity in our decoration. We ought to somehow adorn each blessed thing in our home in a fitting way, to show its unity in the Creation, and to place it properly in the Christmas mode. For "none is ever totally separable from the tree".

Alas, I do not have time to lecture on how one can do this, and why one doesn't have to study the medieval scheme of the arbor scientiarum in order to prepare for Christmas - though, like Chesterton's point on the study of hydraulics, it is a most fitting subject to study when Rome is burning. [GKC WWWTW CW4:43] Yes, when you are struggling to grasp the correct scheme, don't go to the web, or to the "holiday issue" of a magazine. Go to Genesis One, and check off the list of the parts of Creation, the light, the water, the earth, the sun, moon and stars, the plants and birds and fish and animals, and the humans - and pay careful attention to the human part, which goes on into the rest of that book!

I have a couple of comments to make about this sort of "Tree of Creation" scheme. First, do not neglect the angel, who played such an important part in Christmas. However, you need not commit to any particular conclusion regarding the famous question of "when" they were created, hee hee. You have got to take them more lightly than that. Hee hee! Another curious difficulty comes about with the representation of "water" and how we might symbolise that on our tree. Simple: the curves of garlands (silver or blue, perhaps) might suggest the ocean waves, and the tinsel suggests icicles or rain - and of course you can always cut yourself some snowflakes, one of the best and easiest decorations to make at home. (See below for an important Who-like idea!) Another little issue arises in attempting to deal with the thousands of species of plants and animals - I shall not even attempt to mention things like minerals or stars, you will have to get by like I do, a light of each stellar type, and little ornaments in shape of the 32 crystal classes... But as a Chestertonian, I insist on having a tiny elephant, [see Orthodoxy CW1:266] and of course a giraffe which still looks like a lie [ILN Oct 21 1911 CW29:176]and "some considerable number of interesting fishes" ["The Queer Feet" in The Innocence of Father Brown] and some chairs [Orthodoxy CW1:238] and camels [Heretics CW1:167] and whales and peacocks and lampposts and pelicans and coats-of-arms... oh my, I think we may need at least two trees this year. And we still have to handle DNA, and proteins (I hope to get amino acid ornaments some day!) and all the prokaryotes, and the list goes on and on.

(No wonder the Holy Spirit dictated only Seven Days of Creation: imagine what a huge Bible we'd have if it listed everything in detail! But then we ought to be poetic in our inventory, which is the first thing the commentators on Genesis One forget. They ought to try writing their own version of Creation, and see how easy it is! Ahem.)

Oh, yes, I nearly forgot about what I call the "Human Part". There are two aspects to this. First, all human activities, from keys to clocks, from beef stew to rock-and-roll, from beer and burgundy and poems and plays to roads and computers and cell phones and theological texts - all these are our SUBCREATIONS, nevertheless, God's hand is at work in all of them! If we do something good, it is with His power, using His gifts, at His inspiration, and furthering His will. Hence the medievals classed all the various fields of art and engineering and "vo-tech" and menial chores of home and field within the Sciences - which they sometimes called "Arts" just to be fair. (Remember what I said earlier about St. Paul and the abolition of divisions? it's another paradox for another time!) But there is something else of the Human Part which is not to be forgotten here: the very special story called Salvation History: the Fall, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and the prophets... and the little towns of Nazareth and Bethlehem... all these also must take their places, and ought to be represented somehow in our decorating. (Maybe I will need three trees this year.)

After all - Chesterton thought it was important to go all-out in decorating. He had a very Who-like awareness that Christmas ought to touch all things in the home. Yes, you will be surprised:

...my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make a house really allegoric - really explain its own essential meaning. Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely the inscription was traced the better. 'Hast thou sent the Rain upon the Earth?' [see Job 38:26] should be inscribed on the Umbrella-Stand: perhaps on the umbrella. 'Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered' [See Luke 12:7] would give a tremendous significance to one's hairbrushes: the words about 'living water' [See John 4:10] would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while 'Our God is a consuming Fire' [See Hebrews 12:29] might be written over the kitchen-grate, to assist the mystic musings of the cook...
[GKC writing to FBC quoted in Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton 99]

As you see, the Who-decoration method is very Chestertonian! Let us hear just a little more:

These are, at least, the two types that we have to fear; the adventurer of commerce, who will be content with nothing except adventures, and the drudge of commerce, who may suddenly rebel against his drudgery. What is the cure for both; or is there any cure for either? The approximate cure exists, but it has been neglected so long that people call it a paradox. A friend of mine has made game of me in a recent book for saying that lamp-posts are poetical; [See e.g. Heretics CW 1:112-113] that common things, the boots I wear or the chair I sit on, if they once are understood, can satisfy the most gigantic imagination. I can only adhere with stubborn simplicity to my position. The boots I wear are, I will not say beautiful upon the mountains, but, at least, highly symbolic in the street, being the boots of one that bringeth good news. [See Isaiah 52:7] The chair I sit on is really romantic - nay, it is heroic, for it is eternally in danger. The lamp-posts are poetical; not merely from accidental, but from essential causes. It is not merely the softening, sentimental associations that belong to lamp-posts, the beautiful fact that aristocrats were hanged from them, or that intoxicated old gentlemen embrace them: the lamp-post really has the whole poetry of man, for no other creature can lift a flame so high and guard it so well. You may think all this irrelevant to the case of Mr. King and Mr. Robert. That is just where you make a mistake. This doctrine of the visible divinity in daily or domestic objects, this doctrine of the household gods, so old that it seems new, is the only answer to the otherwise crushing arguments of Mr. King and Mr. Robert. Our modern mistake has been, not that we encouraged the adventurous poetry that inflamed the soul of Mr. Robert, but that we have neglected altogether that religious and domestic poetry which might have lightened and sweetened the task of Mr. King. From the beginning there have two kinds of poetry; the poetry of looking out of the window, and the poetry of looking in at the window. There was the song of the hunter going forth at morning, when the wilderness was so much lovelier than the hut. And there was the song of the hunter coming home at evening, when the hut was so much livelier than the wilderness or the world. The first is expressed quite feverishly in modern literature; there is a mad itch for travel. We talk of the English as if they were the Gypsies. We talk of the Empire as if it were a vagabond caravan; as if the sun never set on it because the sun never knew where to find it. Our literature has done enough, and more than enough, for adventure and the adventurers; it has filled the soul of the Oriental Mr. Robert to the brim. But it has done nothing for Piety, for the sacredness of simple tasks and evident obligations. There is nothing in recent literature to make anyone feel that sweeping a room is fine, as in George Herbert, or that upon every pot in Jerusalem shall be written "Holy unto the Lord."
[GKC ILN July 24 1909 CW28:363-4]

Well? What are you waiting for? Run up and bring down your Pam-foonas and all the other stuff. And don't forget to trim your pots: even your kitchen utensils should announce, like the vessels of the Temple, that Christmas is "Holy unto the Lord".

P.S. If you or your visiting Who-relatives decide that you need (or want) something very unusual for your decorations, you can always make some seven-sided snowflakes. See here for instructions. And don't run with the scissors! I would post instructions for making "pang-tookas" and other such ornaments, but I can't seem to find them just now. Probably up in the attic under my great big ELECTRO-WHO-CARDIO-SCHNOOTS. Hee hee. I only have an "alto" one, it's not quite as big as the one you saw on TV, but it was a lot cheaper; it takes five people to play it. We'll get it out on Christmas when some friends come over, and we'll play some Who-tunes. It's loud - but then as GKC noted, "Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment." ["The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles] Hee hee. (If you want to know more about large musical instruments, check out this.)

Oh yes - I forgot to say how much I like that the Whos decorate on Christmas Eve - it's very Chestertonian.

Incidentally, next Thursday is Christmas Eve. Oh boy!

Podcast #14-Ready to talk about the latest Gilbert Magazine?

Interview with Master Blogger Mark Shea, aka Innocent Smith in the upcoming movie: Manalive. We discuss the latest Gilbert magazine, the "Conference" issue, 13.2

Feedback welcome mailto:uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com

Websites:
http://chesterton.org
http://www.gilbertmagazine.com
http://markshea.blogspot.com/
http://manalivethemovie.com/
http://www.ignatius.com/viewproduct.aspx?SID=1&Product_ID=3678&
http://www.thewordinc.org/
http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Well-Rounded-Life-Peter-Milward/dp/1555916511/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261012145&sr=8-1
http://www.catholic-convert.com
Twitter @amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com

Strange Use of a Chesterton Quote

(Click on the picture to enlarge)

But as I sat scrawling these silly figures on the brown paper, it began to dawn on me, to my great disgust, that I had left one chalk, and that a most exquisite and essential chalk, behind. I searched all my pockets, but I could not find any white chalk. Now, those who are acquainted with all the philosophy (nay, religion) which is typified in the art of drawing on brown paper, know that white is positive and essential. I cannot avoid remarking here upon a moral significance. One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen.

This quote is from the essay "A Piece of Chalk" from an essay in TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. The original essay appeared in the DAILY NEWS, November 4, 1905, according to the ACS web site.

I don't know, this commercialization of his words just seems strange, although given the long history of this company (started in 1892, the year Chesterton won his Milton prize for the poem St. Francis Xavier on Apposition Day), I suppose it's slightly better than finding his words on a StuffMart ad.

Podcast #13 Ready

If the Chesterton Society had an iPhone app, what would it be?

I'm thinking the American Chesterton Society should have an iPhone app. But what would it be?

1. A Chesterton quote a day?
2. A Chestertonian word or motif of the day? (Wonder, surprise, limitations, imagination, wit, etc.
3. Take a Chesterton novel like The Man Who Was Thursday and serialize it into daily bits?
4. Link to a Chestertonian video, like the clips found on youtube of the Apostle of Common Sense?
5. A where is Dale Ahlquist today map?
6. A countdown to the next Flying Conference?
7. A clerihew a day?

What are your ideas? Or if you like any of these, say so. Do you have an iPhone or Ipod touch? Would you like such an app?

Thanks for your input.

Ahlquist speaking on newest articles of Chesterton's found recently

Palin advised to use Chesterton as a role model

"I wish she would articulate the Paradoxes more. There are many, she has done some, but not specifically addressed. Case in point, ‘a Death Panel is part of Government Healthcare’ is a simple paradox that cuts to the core of one of the problems of Socialism and Medicine. The paradox is a simple and complex rhetorical tool, it encompasses “common sense conservatism” and requires the reader or listener to start thinking, something that the liberals really fear. It also drives the inteligentsia nuts, that Palin can master the paradox, and use it in a normal way, without using cocktail party nuances that are not paradoxes. To point out that there is a paradox, is the last part of the issue that is missing. or maybe that is deliberate?

GK Chesterton wrote a book related to the issue “Eugenics and Other Evils” that articulates the same sort of problems that England faced in 1922. it is a worthy read, and is free to download/view on Project Gutenburg, as per the link. Chesterton is considered the master of the Paradox, and would serve as a role model for how to clarify and discuss the common sense, almost so simple that it sounds like a child asking questions with simple wonder, but with the wisdom of a grandfather."

Interesting article. I've just read Palin's interesting and compelling autobiography over last weekend, and I liked it, and will talk more about it.

H/T: Dave Z. Thanks.

A call to return: tnevda fo nonaes eht

No, don't adjust your CRT or LCD, or call for tech support ... that's not data corruption from line noise. I really wrote "A call to return: tnevda fo nonaes eht" as the title!

(And all the ACS blogg-readers stare, mouths agape: oh, dear, Dr. Thursday has lost all his senses - not that he had very many to start with, but now they are all gone. He's typing gibberish, and will probably now wax eloquent with some of his abstruse technical gibberish.)

Oh, no, I am just doing what any good scholar of the Middle Ages would do: recognise that Truth is from God, and hence will be found even in the most unlikely places, even within pure mathematics! Remember?

You cannot evade the issue of God; whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him.
[GKC DN Dec 12 1903 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]

Yes - it's utterly and completely Chestertonian. It's also very medieval. But let me give you a clue to help you translate that cryptic title:

...return to me, saith the Lord, and I will receive thee. Jer 3:1

Go, and proclaim these words towards the north, and thou shalt say: Return, O rebellious Israel, saith the Lord, and I will not turn away my face from you: for I am holy, saith the Lord, and I will not be angry for ever. Jer 3:12

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Mt 3:3 quoting Is 40:3

Yes: it is a very simple idea. Here's how I got it. I happened to be playing with some prime numbers over the weekend. I have some nice toys, and primes are fun. They remind me of the stars... Some time ago I gave a tiny review of Burnham's Celestial Handbook (available from Dover) which contains these remarkable words:

"Considered as a collector of rare and precious things, the amateur astronomer has a great advantage over amateurs in all other fields, who must content themselves with second and third rate specimens. ... [he] has access at all times to the original objects of his study; the masterworks of the heavens belong to him as much as to the great observatories of the world." [BCH 5, emphasis added]

Yes. Well, like the stars, anyone can find and examine and study primes, even without a computer! In fact, you can make your own list of 25 very easily by jotting down the numbers from two to one hundred, then striking off every 2nd number after 2, every 3rd number after 3, every 5th number after 5, and every 7th number after 7 - and what's left are prime. (We don't count one, one is special.) It's fun - Eratosthenes did it about 2200 years ago, and so can you! (Later you can cut it up and make Christmas Tree decorations with it, since primes are very festive numbers, as you shall see.)

Here's mine, in case you'd rather not be bothered doing the work. The green ones were crossed off, the red ones are primes:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Anyhow, since I was feeling lazy, I had my computer do the work. I used a couple of tricks and found a few more than the 25 I have already mentioned. Some of them were very interesting, like the double star just past a billion - er, I mean twin primes 1,000,000,007 and 1,000,000,009. Very lovely - incidentally did I mention you can even do this in the daytime? Yes. Or on cloudy nights.

Why do I do such things? For one thing, I like to keep my computer busy over the weekend, and also I was pondering the famous dictum I often stated during my doctoral work, "Spies like big prime numbers".... And then - since it is Advent - I happened to think about DNA. (No I was not writing a spy story, but that might make an interesting one, hmm...) Ahem!

Yes, because Advent is when we recall the mystical preparations of Israel - and even of Rome - but also Advent is when we recall Mary's pregnancy and the unborn Jesus: the God-man as a single cell about 0.14 mm in diameter, the God-man as a blastula, as an embryo, as a fetus, and all the amazing stages of growth which we now know of and so can wonder at. It is worth borrowing a book like the one I have, Arey's Developmental Anatomy, and exploring the truth St. Paul told the Galatians: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law" [Gal 4:4] It was not only the law of Moses, but the law of Biology which Jesus obeyed, as He grew - no wonder the Church calls Mary the Ark of the Covenant!

It is during Advent that we also hear the cry of John the Baptist, quoting Isaias: "Turn back, O people! Return to God!" And as I thought of this, I recalled reading a profoundly high-tech design which we have found in use in the human ribosome:

...the cell's requirement for 5-10 million ribosomes in each generation, a human cell needs all 100 copies of the 45S pre-rRNA genes it has and most of these must be close to maximally active for the cell to divide every 24 hours.
[Darnell, Lodish, and Baltimore, Molecular Cell Biology, 357]

Can you spell "extremely high parallel processing", Mr. Cray? (Hee hee! Sorry for the tech here, but I think you ought to realize how profound this is, bringing together computing and life and the Incarnation...) But indeed, yes: the machinery of the living cell is extremely high parallel processing, but then we should expect to encounter such masterly work when we consider Who is the Master Designer of Life, as Copernicus suggested:

...the machinery of the world ... has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.
[Copernicus, translation by Charles G. Wallis in Great Books of the Western World 16: Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, quoted by Jaki in The Road of Science and the Ways to God Part 1 Chapter 3 footnote 60]

It's amazing to think that a single cell can churn out so many millions of exact duplicates, it sounds so mechanical - almost like some sort of computer, perhaps. Then I recalled how the ribosomes are built of RNA which are knit together - I have seen that verb used in a translation of Psalm 138(139)! - yes, knit together, by little loops which are called Watson-Crick palindromes....

Ah, palindromes!

Yes - like "noon" and "radar" and "A man a plan a canal - Panama", palindromes (from the Greek for "run back") can come in numbers, too.

And some of them are primes - like 30103 and 30203 and 30403 and 30703 and 30803 - or my own favorite, 11111111000100011111111 in base 2, which is 8358143 to us humans - yes, even primes come in palindromes. These numbers, like John the Baptist, remind us to turn back...

But Doctor (you complain, breathing very hard after all this tech and numerical jargon) This does not sound at all like Chesterton.

Oh. Very well, try this:

...this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:363]

Advent, you recall is for the ADVENTurous... Expect God everywhere, and you will always find Him:

"The Holy Of Holies"

Elder Father, though shine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries
Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?

Smaller than all lives that be
Secret as the deepest sea
Stands a little house of seeds
Like an Elfin's granary.

Speller of the Stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature's Crafts and Creed,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.

God Almighty and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim
Filling all Eternity.
Adonai Elohim.
[GKC CW10:48]

And this was true in the most profoundly literal sense, when the Word was one cell - and He used His own 100 copies of pre-rRNA to build ribosomes - and so He became flesh, and dwelt among us.

You look doubtful - but I must ask - what do you think it means, "was made flesh", huh? It means production of proteins, of enzymes and muscles and connective tissue and haversian systems to form bones and all the rest... That means ribosomes, and all that. Really. Born under the law, as St. Paul wrote.

Oh, yes! Advent and Christmas is a time for pondering the truths in biology and mathematics, just as much as it is for pondering the history of Israel and the literature of Dickens.

Let us return!

P.S. There is one other curious "palindrome" I wished to quote and somehow I missed the suitable point to include it. One of the more ancient hymns to Mary, dating at least to the 9th century, is called Ave Maris Stella. It contains the following verse:

Sumens illud Ave
Gabrielis ore,
Funda nos in pac,
Mutans Hevae nomen.

Or, in rhyme,

Taking that sweet Ave
Erst by Gabriel spoken,
Eva's name reversing,
Be of peace the token.

Another version in rhyme,

Ave was the token
By the Angel spoken,
Peace on earth it telleth,
Eva's name re-spelleth.

A more literal translation of the Latin:

"Receiving that Ave
from the mouth of Gabriel,
establish us in peace,
reversing the name of Eva."
[Britt, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal, 317-8]

Podcast #12-Chapter One of William Oddie's Biography

The Man with the Golden Key is the name of the chapter, and naturally, that means it discussed "Mr. Ed" or GKC's father, Edward Chesterton, who had a huge influence on his son Gilbert. The chapter also discusses the books Chesterton read as a child, his reading and writing ability from a young age, his mother, and more.

Book discussion of William Oddie's biography, The Romance of Orthodoxy, Chapter one-The Man with the Golden Key
How can we keep discussions light?
Thanks to Shaylynn for the cover art this week
Web sites:
http://chesterton.org/acs/oddie.htm
http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the Fourth Anniversary of this blog. Thanks for being here, and Happy Anniversary!

In addition, it is the feast day of Our Lady, The Immaculate Conception.

On this anniversary, I added the Tweetboard on the left. Now you can see our tweets from the blog.

If you want a look at history, here's my first blog post. December 8, 2005.

Happy New Year!

Yes, that's what I said: Happy New Year!

Huh?

Well, if I mean the Church's new year, I'm late - that was Sunday. If I mean as measured by the usual "civil" calendar, I'm almost a month early. So too if I mean the Dwarves' New Year, which begins on Durin's Day - which "as all should know" (so Thorin said to Elrond) is the day of the last new moon before the winter solstice, which is Thursday December 17 this year. (Hmm, Durin's Day is a Thursday - so expect something interesting that day, hee hee!) And if I mean the new year of the founding of this ACS blogg, I am still early - that is next Tueday.

So what did I mean? Actually, I meant all of them. It's a kind of shorthand trick we software guys use, sort of like what the Red Queen told Alice: "Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it saves time." I think it a priceless gift for software development, ranking up there with GKC's dictum about 13th-century metaphysics - yes, "Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it saves time" - those words are one of the greatest pieces of wisdom in that brilliant mathematical work. Ahem. But we are not doing math today, and I am sure you are grateful.

Though it is really as silly to say we are not doing math today as it would be to say we are not doing English today. Truth is one, and the work of the pursuit of truth comes in many forms - but in this life we almost never get those forms in their pure form. We find science mixed with our philosophy, mathematics mixed with our literature - but then we Chestertonians know better - we know that (let us say it all together) There is no such thing as a different subject. [See GKC ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126] And people as distant from GKC as Cardinal Newman (writing in 1850) or Hugh of St. Victor (writing about 1120) would agree. (But we cannot explore that fascinating topic today either - perhaps some other time.)

And so, since we have come to the beginning of the Church's New Year, it is now the season of Advent, and I wondered what GKC had to say about Advent. The simple search I attempted found over a thousand "hits" - but then I stared in shock at the file I had collected. Almost every "advent" was part of GKC's "adventure"!!! Wow, talk about fortuitousness. Advent is an adventure, and how fitting that as Bilbo reported for us, the Dwarves' New Year almost always comes in Advent! Hee hee. As one who has gone with Bilbo on his "There And Back Again" adventure in The Hobbit many times, I delight in reporting that I have also travelled another adventure many times: the adventure called "Salvation History". Certainly you know its chapters as well as I do - the Creation and its grand high tech conclusion of the Perfect Systems Engineer: "He saw the system - the All - which He had made and it was indeed very good!" The Fall - and the promise of the Woman whose son would crush the serpent's head... Abraham climbing the hill of sacrifice with wood piled on his son's back... Noah and Moses and David and the prophets.... And finally, "in the fullness of time" Gabriel was sent to a town of Judah called Nazareth to a virgin..." and - even funnier - the word from the Roman IRS of a census (Say: why don't we Americans celebrate Christmas on April 15? Hmm.) Then came another There And Back Again journey, from Nazareth to Bethlehem (with a detour into Egypt).

Yes... now if you want Chesterton on any of this, please go very quickly to your book shelf and get The Everlasting Man and read it. The whole first half of the book is about the "rest of the story" - not Gandalf and 13 dwarves and a hobbit, I mean the Israelites - but the rest of the action, what we should call the Pagan view. Full of big names from history: the cave man (and what he really did in the cave; Egypt, Troy, Rome - and Carthage. (Oh yes, there was a Dark Lord in the picture, quite evil... but you'll need to read it for yourself, it's scary. Witches, too, all very modern.)

It's very healthy to get the non-biblical perspective to the "B.C." side of history, it will help us keep the main thread of the Israelite adventure in focus. It even begins to suggest that the Israelites were not the only people "chosen" - clearly God was also at work with tools like Troy and Rome, but I must not give away the adventure if you have not yet read it. Here let me just mention one curious fact: the ancient Roman calendar of course did not run with a decreasing series of years, as our dates which we label "B.C." do. No, their years were counted from A.U.C. = anno urbis conditae = "the year of the founding of the city" [of Roma] - their years advanced from smaller to larger numbers just as ours do.

But!

But the days of their months counted down - their days were paid out, one by one, with eyes fixed on something Yet To Come - just as we count for the launching of a rocket. (I must here note, with some humour, that the very first of all rocket launches was preceded by a count-UP. It was the launch of the famous "Columbiad" of Barbicane in Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, which counted up to a very biblical 40, dictated by the mathematics of celestial mechanics. Curiously enough, that launch was on December 1 at 22:46:40, though the year does not seem to be specified - however December 1 often falls within Advent, so it is fitting to think of this too.)

Now that I have completely made a stew of my thoughts - and yours - let us hear Chesterton on Advent. As I tried to indicate earlier, there are only a couple of places where he mentions it in the precise sense of the season of preparation for Christmas. But this first one is so wonderful, so very "Everlasting Man" in tone, and so relevant to us today, perhaps you will read it slowly and with attention:

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.
[GKC ILN Dec 21 1935. A special thanks to Frank Petta and my mother for this.]

The following is from the very next essay, and has a rather different tone and topic, but is still worth pondering:

I take a grim and gloomy pleasure in reminding my fellow hacks and hired drudges in the dreadful trade of journalism that the Christmas which is now over ought to go on for the remainder of the twelve days. It ought to end only on Twelfth Night, on which occasion Shakespeare has himself assured us that we ought to be doing What we Will. But one of the queerest things about our own topsy-turvy time is that we all hear such a vast amount about Christmas just before it comes, and suddenly hear nothing at all about it afterwards. My own trade, the tragic guild to which I have already alluded, is trained to begin prophesying Christmas somewhere about the beginning of autumn; and the prophecies about it are like prophecies about the Golden Age and the Day of Judgment combined. Everybody writes about what a glorious Christmas we are going to have. Nobody, or next to nobody, ever writes about the Christmas we have just had. I am going to make myself an exasperating exception in this matter. I am going to plead for a longer period in which to find out what was really meant by Christmas; and a fuller consideration of what we have really found. There are any number of legends, even of modern legends, about what happens before Christmas; whether it is the preparation of the Christmas tree, which is said to date only from the time of the German husband of Queen Victoria, or the vast population of Father Christmases who now throng the shops almost as thickly as the customers. But there is no modern legend of what happens just after Christmas; except a dismal joke about indigestion and the arrival of the doctor. I am the more moved to send everybody an after-Christmas greeting, or, if I had the industry, an after-Christmas card; and in truth there is a craven crowd who escape by falling back upon New Year cards. But I should like to examine this problem of after-Christmas custom and festivity a little more closely.

Of course it is a mark of a commercial community that it thus advertises in Advent. The whole object of such a system is to deliver the goods. When once they are delivered there is a deadly silence; at least an absence of any burst of joy over the creation of new things; a comparative silence about morning stars singing together or the shouting of the sons of God. [See Job 38:7] In other words, when we have delivered the goods, it is not now quite certain that anybody has looked upon them and seen that they are good. [See Genesis 1:31] And the immense importance of announcement everywhere diminishes the corresponding importance of appreciation.
[GKC ILN Dec 28 1935. A special thanks to Frank Petta and my mother for this.]

There is only one more:

For the Futurist fashion of our time has led nearly everybody to look for happiness to-morrow rather than to-day. Thus, while there is an incessant and perhaps even increasing fuss about the approach of the festivities of Christmas, there is rather less fuss than there ought to be about really making Christmas festive. Modern men have a vague feeling that when they have come to the feast, they have come to the finish. By modern commercial customs, the preparations for it have been so very long and the practice of it seems so very short. This is, of course, in sharp contrast to the older traditional customs, in the days when it was a sacred festival for a simpler people. Then the preparation took the form of the more austere season of Advent and the fast of Christmas Eve. But when men passed on to the feast of Christmas it went on for a long time after the feast of Christmas Day. It always went on for a continuous holiday of rejoicing for at least twelve days, and only ended in that wild culmination which Shakespeare described as "Twelfth Night: or What You Will." That is to say, it was a sort of Saturnalia which ended in anybody doing whatever he would: and in William Shakespeare writing some very beautiful and rather irrelevant poetry round a perfectly impossible story about a brother and sister who looked exactly alike. in our more enlightened times, the perfectly impossible stories are printed in magazines a month or two before Christmas has begun at all; and in the hustle and hurry of this early publication, the beautiful poetry is, somehow or other, left out.

It were vain to conceal my own reactionary prejudice: which deludes me into thinking there is something to be said for the older manner. I am so daring as darkly to suspect that it would be better if people could enjoy Christmas when it came, instead of being bored with the news that it was coming. I even think it might be better to be the naughty little boy who falls sick through eating too much Christmas pudding, than to be the more negative and nihilistic little boy who is sick of seeing pictures of Christmas pudding in popular periodicals or coloured hoardings, for months before he gets any pudding at all.

At any rate, the proof of the Christmas pudding is in the eating. And it stands as a symbol of a whole series of things, which too many people nowadays have forgotten how to enjoy in themselves, and for themselves, and at the time when they are actually consumed. Far too much space is taken up with the names of things rather than the things themselves; with designs and plans and pictorial announcements of certain objects, rather than with the real objects when they are really objective. The world we know is far too full of rumours and reports and reflected reputations, instead of the direct appreciation by appetite and actual experience.
[GKC ILN Dec 23 1933, reprinted in Avowals and Denials. A special thanks to Frank Petta and my mother for this.]

I would like to add some comments to this but I am out of time, and must leave them for another day. Let us prepare, and be sure to have our Christmas Pudding on Christmas... let us try to understand Christmas as the Whos of Whoville did - they if anyone were Chestertonian. So, I am glad to say, was the Grinch - whose heart grew three sizes when he heard Christmas songs at dawn. Maybe that's why the Romans like children counted down the days... Hee hee!