Chicago Area Performance of GKC's The Surprise

From the renowned 20th Century writer G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy, The Man Who Was Thursday), The Surprise is full of jubilant humor, provocative ideas and captivating characters. Come and see this rarely produced gem, written by a man with a unique genius for illuminating profound truths through delightful and entertaining stories.

THE SURPRISE will be performed in a beautiful meadow in Big Rock, IL (just west of Aurora).
Two weekends, Thur-Sat: July 23-25 and July 30-August 1. All shows start 7:45 PM.

TICKETS are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Seats are provided and refreshments are included in your ticket price.
Call 630-876-2351 for tickets and information. (Reserve TODAY to get a good seat!)

DIRECTOR: Dan Roche

CAST:
Randy York
Kurt Bullis
Damon Winters
Anthony Ritchie
Peter Frost
Sarah Aulie+
Lisa Enoch*
Rosheen Bell+
Luciana Poulterer*
Mark Frost

+July 23-25 performances only
*July 30-Aug 1 performances only

Original music is scored by Jennifer Spacek and performed by Thomas Ritchie, Annie York, Ritchie Dettman, and Daniel Spiotta.

The Bird and the Baby Theater Company is a new theater troupe in the West Suburbs of Chicago. The name is derived from the pub-house backroom meeting place of a group of British writers who came to be known as The Inklings; among this group, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. The company is under the artistic direction of Dan Roche, who led the Wheaton-based Stone Table Theatre in the 1990s, and has since produced and directed professionally in Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando and NYC.

H/T: Bob C.

Miriam Marston: Innocent Smith Song

Miriam Marston, who has a lovely voice and plays piano well too, has written a song about Innocent Smith. Click here, and click on her playlist till you find the title "Innocent Smith".

I wonder if the Manalive movie people have a credits song to play yet? (Hint....)

H/T: Bob C.

Chestertonian Music

An interesting find: a very young music group with an album based on The Everlasting Man, the band's name A Hope for Home is Chestertonian, as well.

The band's description is interesting, too: Oregon-based post-hardcore band, this is the first I've heard the term "post-hardcore".

The music is hard for this oldster to listen to, but I like the effort and the idea.

There is an old saying that claims time brings change. No one would know this better than A HOPE FOR HOME, which has seen drastic change and growth since the band's inception in early 2006. What began as an emotional outlet for a group of friends during a season of loss has blossomed into a dedicated project that finds them on the road supporting their newest album. A concept record based on G.K. Chesterton's novel of the same name, "The Everlasting Man" tells the story of mankind's fall and awaiting redemption. It is A HOPE FOR HOME's second album, following 2007's "Here, The End"...

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Amps of "Spinal Tap" May Go Up to Eleven, but Ours Go Up to Twelve

I have just completed a book which combines humor, books, work, a shipwreck, magic, crime, music, cloistered Carmelites, cable TV, Latin, computers, secret passages, food, boredom, beer, Mass, death, and a few other things of interest to Chestertonians. Joe, its main character, likes rock-and-roll, and hopes one day to buy an electric guitar. Yes, like Joe, I also like rock and roll - at least some songs, and some bands. (My instrument, however is the bass.)

Certain people may find this musical taste just as sinful as liking stories about magic, or about murder (some of which I also like.) Obviously, there are times and places for all things, including loud music, whether it be the 1812 Overture or - uh - you choose the band. But whenever the topic of loud music comes up, Chestertonians should recall these famous words:

I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [Luke 19:40] With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed.
["The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles]

OK, He didn't say the very rocks would cry out, but still... (hm, feels like a St. Peter joke in there somewhere...) No, I am not going to get into the various issues of rock today. I mean rock music. Yes, there are lyrics of some songs which come right out of hell. But on the contrary (hee hee) there are others, even from hard rock songs, which might pass for something from Aquinas.

So. If Pope Benedict XVI can quote Nietzsche in his first encyclical [Deus Caritas Est 3, note 1], and Aquinas can quote the gods-and-goddesses-worshipping, slave-approving, milky-way-from-swamp-dreaming Aristotle [e.g. Summa I Q5A2 and many other places], and St. Paul can quote pagan poets [Acts 17:28] we too can quote rock lyrics when they assist us in understanding Chesterton, which is to say in understanding reality: God, the Universe, ourselves.

The paradox we shall encounter today, however, is the reverse: when rock musicians quote Chesterton.

The hero of the story I mentioned earlier grew up in a small town on the Atlantic shore, and though he works in cable TV, he still thinks of himself as a "beach boy" - which is also the name of a famous surfer rock band from California. Today we shall learn that they happen to have written a song which quotes GKC's Orthodoxy - one of the greatest and most powerful and mystical quotes of the entire book, and one which happens to unite God, the Universe and ourselves...

Click here to find out more.
We are, as you may recall, fairly far into the chapter of Orthodoxy called "The Ethics of Elfland" and we have seen some very strange things. We have learned that we are living in a marvellous, magical world. (If that second "M" word bothers you, let us say "unexpected") and the marvel gives rise to two important things: a sense of gratitude, and the very important thing GKC calls "the Doctrine of Conditional Joy": the idea that we are given this marvel on certain strange conditions. Now, as we are starting to come toward the conclusion of the chapter, GKC provides a kind of review, stunning in its implied recommendation:

Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter for important comment was here: that when I first went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world, I found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. The really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.
[CW1:261-2]

Ah... it is like something DONE. I had a resonance in my mind as I read this, and it took some work to find out what, as I do not know French. Some time ago, a friend (who does know French) was speaking about a matter of philosophy, and used the term donné meaning something given (that is, a starting point of discussion, or a matter not presently under debate, something taken for granted). But this is quite apt: the green grass is a donné, something given - it is something DONE. It was chosen to be that way, and so it is. We cannot debate it, even if we might be color blind or have our eyes closed, or be out at night... it is that way and no other. Green grass is so poetic (which means something MADE; see GKC's Chaucer CW18:155.) But we are not being poets here; we are simply observing. Someone else already was a poet, when He made the grass, or we could not even be its critics. (Some joke ought to read: if a critic doesn't read any books, or watch any movies, what does he write about? This strongly hints at the contingent ontology of evil, but we cannot go into that now.)

Here, my own discipline compels me to mention, we find the great and glorious mark of Doctor Chesterton, the true scientist: he approaches Reality in humility. He does not "expect" the leaf to be green, for it might have been something else. He takes the leaf as something "done" - which reveals his true understanding of experiment, which comes from the same root as "experience", and for a very good reason: an experiment is performed so that we might experience what occurs. We seem to think "experiment" means "test". It doesn't. It means "live through it, experience it, witness it". Which is why some branches of science, like astronomy, weather, archaeology and geology, have such a hard time with experiments: you cannot RE-experience what has already happened. All you can do is look at what's left over. Ahem. But that's going too deep into that very interesting side trail called "epistemology of the sciences" and we cannot go there either; we're not equipped for such strenuous work. (Whew.)

But, as GKC emphasizes, and I repeated, these things - like green leaves and so on - have this feeling of something that has been done. Someone good waved a wand, made a choice, and made it to be SO. Sure, it might have been done differently! That's the nature of a choice. Here's the moment for that delicious quote from the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But God did decide. He chose the green leaf and it was so. He saw it, and it was good. [See Genesis chapter 1.]

Are you feeling a strong wind, buffeting us here on the trail? Yes, we are rather shocked to discover that we happen to stand on a very high point indeed, and some of you may be horrified. We are seeing that somehow we are getting at the supreme matter of the Divine Will here. Yes, oh, my, yes. But isn't that what we are supposed to do: "Jesus saith to them: My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work." [Jn 4:34 emphasis added; cf Mt 12:50; see also Mt 26:39]

Divine will? How can this be science? I mean Physics and stuff like that! Are we not confusing the disciplines? Shall we not be criticised by the great student-of-study, Cardinal Newman:

If they certainly would resist the divine who determined the orbit of Jupiter by the Pentateuch, why am I to be accused of cowardice or illiberality, because I will not tolerate their attempt in turn to theologize by means of astronomy? And if experimentalists would be sure to cry out, did I attempt to install the Thomist philosophy in the schools of astronomy and medicine, why may not I, when Divine Science is ostracized, and La Place, or Buffon, or Humboldt, sits down in its chair, why may not I fairly protest against their exclusiveness, and demand the emancipation of Theology?
[Newman, The Idea of a University IV, 14]

No, we are not doing that. We are in elfland, and we are observing its wonders, in awe of the wizard Who put them here. Haven't you heard that song, which seems to be quoted sometimes at Mass:

If ever, o ever, a wiz there was, the Wizard of Oz is one because...
Because of the wonderful things he does.

Confer:

All Your actions show Your wisdom and love. [Eucharistic Prayer IV]

Yes. Well? Don't you wonder how it happens? GKC tells us. It's not what you expect. And the funny thing is, these next two paragraphs give us the true foundation - no, even better, the license - to practice "science" (meaning physics, chemistry, and so on) - even while they speak so gloriously about will, and about God and His free choices of His creation.

A warning before you proceed. In previous postings I warned you to finish your drink or snack, before making you laugh. And there is a bit of animal humour coming, so you ought to finish it anyway. But this time, my warning is more profound. You may possibly feel the urge to genuflect. This is one of the Great Heights of this book, and perhaps one of the most important insights of the last century. If you read it with humility, you will be moved. Then please read it again, and take it to your lab, or your workplace, or your classroom, or your home, and act upon it. It may seem too technical at first, or even third reading, but it will surely seep in, once you do it again...

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.
[CW1:261-264]

Before we proceed, a few notes to assist:

* Islington: a borough of London. GKC uses it in a number of places as a general-purpose town. (See below for a sample.)
* Thames/Sheerness: The Thames is the river of London. Sheerness is a town on the mouth of the Thames. (American translation: "as regularly as the Mississippi goes to New Orleans".)
* encore: a French interjection, meaning "again!" or "once more!"
* "signalling with all its fingers": yes, you get five points if you recalled the Professor de Worms' code from The Man Who Was Thursday.
* "if the sun were alive it would dance": this was some nine years before Fatima where the sun danced. See Jaki's God and the Sun at Fatima for a very interesting study of that event.
* "incantation": You wonder why this is elfland? But do not forget the root of "incantation" is the Latin word for "song". No wonder Sam Gamgee, in awe of the singing of the Elves of Rivendell (or was it Lorien?), talked about being "inside a song"; that's almost a literal translation of the word.

Now... (Ahem!) Speaking of songs...

Yes, "Do It Again" is the title of a song by the Beach Boys. And yes, "Do It Again" is also the Official Cheer of all sports teams at Chesterton University. (It was selected by one of our Favorite Chestertonians at a Conference some years ago.) Actually there's just the one, the Gype team. They're undefeated since no other school has one. If you don't know about Gype, you need to read GKC's Autobiography (see CW16:211-2).

An aside: It might be argued, by the critics who have nothing better to do, and certainly nothing creative to make, that this argument of lively repetition is rebutted by GKC himself in the story called "A Somewhat Improbable Story" in CW14:91 et seq about how Bumpton Street goes to heaven for justice against a dull man. But that is an error caused by a failure to read the story carefully. The story is actually the usual instance of an idea of GKC's non-fiction appearing in GKC's fiction. Another, simpler counter-example to these critics is provided by the threefold repetition (which is, of course, not a repetition at all) of what we might call "Magic By Iteration". Here is one:

There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in her sameness. There is a weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until the shape shall turn terrible. Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as "dog," thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like "snark" or "pobble." It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition.
[GKC, "The Telegraph Poles" in Alarms and Discursions]

Another aside: Father Jaki has done important work on Islam and its view of the Divine Will, noting its historical underpinnings and showing how its theology makes modern science impossible, because of its emphasis on the freedom of the divine will. [See e.g. chapter 9 in Science and Creation or his booklet called Jesus, Islam, Science] As GKC shows in his Heretics a heresy is an exaggeration of a truth, to the neglect of even related truths. Here, this single paragraph of GKC spells the fullness of defeat for such a heretical view of God, for if God's will is free, He is also free to repeat Himself, even vast numbers of times, even always. When one day a new Summa is written, it will surely cite Chesterton on this matter.

There is much more to say about all this, but it will have to be said another day, when God says "Do it again" to the sun. Crank up the amps, for He approves natural noisiness at a great moment, and surely this is one. Yeah!

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Here is the promised sample about Islington. I think you will find it very instructive.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, [See Mt 22:39 quoting Lev 19:18] and also to love our enemies; [See Mt 5:44] probably because they are generally the same people. And there is a real human reason for this. You think of a remote man merely as a man; that is, you think of him in the right way. Suppose I say to you suddenly - "Oblige me by brooding on the soul of the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington." Perhaps (now I come to think of it) you are the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington; for this journal has a wide circulation. In that case substitute some other unknown address and pursue the intellectual sport. Now you will probably be broadly right about the man in Islington whom you have never seen or heard of, because you will begin at the right end - the human end. The man in Islington is at least a man. The soul of the man in Islington is certainly a soul. He also has been bewildered and broadened by youth; he also has been tortured and intoxicated by love; he also is sublimely doubtful about death. You can think about the soul of that nameless man who is a mere number in Islington High Street. But you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o'-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one.
[ILN July 16 1910 CW28:563-4]
My goodness what a great post. Read it, and be amazed.
P.S. Your blogmistress has read Dr. Thursday novel, mentioned above, and thinks it Wonderful. Dr. Thursday needs some encouragement from the peanut gallery here to go for publication, which IMHO this novel needs. What do you think?

Chesterton Set to Music

Nancy,

I've just learned of a recent recording of a choral work by British composer Kenneth Leighton called The World's Desire, which includes a setting of Chesterton's poem "The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap". The music-lovers among your readers may find it interesting.

I've given more information at my web log.

Cheers, Craig "The Hebdomadal Chesterton" Burrell

Pope B16: The Mozart of Theology

"Pope Benedict’s sensitivity for the beauty in music and art as much as his particular affection for Mozart’s style may well be one of the explanations not only of his well-rounded style, but also of the intellectual architecture of his theological writings, which are characterized by a high degree of perfection, with a rare combination of simplicity, clarity, depth, and both logical and persuasive power.

That’s why Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner calls Pope Benedict the “Mozart of Theology.” Cardinal Meisner developed this further in a homily that he gave on the occasion of the Pope’s 80th birthday in St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin:

“Pope Benedict XVI has the gift of pointing out to people the sanctifying message of the Gospel in its beauty, fascination and harmony, so much so that he is called the ‘Mozart among the theologians.’ His theology is not only true and good, it is also beautiful. His words sound like music in the ears and hearts of people. He manages masterfully to transform the notes of the Gospel into thrilling music. That’s why the stream of pilgrims that flock to his audiences is growing every month.”

Something we have in common. Mozart is my favorite composer, too.

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

The Wind: Setting the Volume to Max

As I have mentioned in last week's posting, there are a lot of memories connected with September. It was in September of 1969 when I first picked up a bow and began to learn the bass fiddle, also called the double-bass or string bass, the largest of the orchestral strings.

It was a lot of fun... I was never very good, but I did play in the high school stage band, and also in the string ensemble at college. That first practice we began with Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and it was so awesome that I forgot to play, I was just so amazed by being "inside" the orchestra.

But my playing the string bass had another outcome: a good friend who is now the organist of a cathedral. He provided the musical talent when I built the pipe organ in my basement, and played at its first (and only) recital. From him, from our music teacher at high school, from a number of books, and from direct experience, I learned a lot about pipe organs, which have some strange associations with computers. Computer scientists aren't the only ones who care about numbers like 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1 - but organists must also deal with two-and-two-thirds and one-and-three-fifths, the so-called "mutation" stops, which we can talk about another time.

The first thing one learns about the pipe organ is that it is two major parts: a collection of pipes sitting on a box full of compressed air (the "wind chest"), and machinery to control them (keyboards, stops, and so on). One must have at least five dozen pipes - because each pipe can make only one sound. An organ pipe is not like a flute or clarinet, which has a number of holes, and various keys covering those holes. In an organ, the music comes by having a "rank" - a set of 61 pipes, each made as similarly as possible to the others, except for its size - one for each of the 61 keys of the standard organ keyboard. (That's five octaves and a note, from the "C" 2 ledgers below the bass clef to the second "C" above the staff.)

Most organs have several ranks of pipes. Each rank will have its own shape, which gives that rank its particular "timbre" or tonal quality... again this amazing topic is something for another time.

But I tell you about this very high "system" view of the pipe organ for this purpose: all the keyboards and other various switches (called stop knobs or tabs) are arranged simply in order to control getting the "wind" (the compressed air) to each single pipe. The particular key pressed determines which size pipe - what pitch. The stop knob selects which rank of pipes - what tonal quality. Obviously, when you press several keys, you play a chord, and notes sound in harmony (let us hope!). And, when you pull out more than one stop, you get an increased and mixed tonal effect. This is the origin of the phrase - "pulling out all the stops" - which is called "full organ". In rock and roll, it is called setting the amps to "ten" ("eleven" if you are in "Spinal Tap"). The first album of the rock group "Rush" directs the listener to "set the volume to maximum for best results" (See here for more on that.)

Now it may seem surprising to go into such details about music on a Chesterton blogg. It is said that he was nearly tone-deaf: "Yet it was all but impossible to teach Gilbert a tune, and Bernard Shaw felt this (as we have seen) a real drawback to his friend's understanding of his own life and career. Music was to Shaw what line and color were to Chesterton; but to Chesterton singing was just making a noise to show he felt happy." [Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 276, my emphasis] Father O'Connor, perceptive and careful, applies the scholastic distinguo: "[He] was tone-deaf, though most sensitive to musical rhythm or tempo. [O'Connor, Father Brown on Chesterton, 21, my emphasis]

But as usual Chesterton understood a lot more than we think.

To hear more about this, pull out all the stops and click here...


I think GKC would have greatly approved of the instructions from "Rush", or the "eleven" on the amps of "Spinal Tap" - because - of all things - he understood just what really happened on Palm Sunday.

Now, if that sounds like a Father Brown riddle, perhaps you have not yet read Tremendous Trifles, which is again available! Here is the solution:

I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [GKC, "The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles, quoting Luke 19:40, my emphasis]

As usual, there is something more to be discovered, if one takes the time. This is an example of where saying the Rosary can pay off - careful reading of Scripture, or real attention at Holy Mass have equal effects, but the Rosary is designed (ah, let use keep to our musical theme) to compose variations on a basso ostinato.

On that Sunday before Passover, as the palms were strewn and the children raised their voices, there was something more than just making noise - there was, to use a modern term, an advertisement, an attention-getter. Specifically the cheers and cries of "Hosanna!" called attention to something going on - to a piece of news - to a new event.

And, if one takes a look at the events exactly eight weeks later, one finds the exact same thing happening. But this time, the sound had a rather different origin:

And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, [the Apostles] were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming: and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. [Acts 2:1-2, emphasis added]

Wow. Talk about setting the volume to max!

Here we see that Someone has controlled the wind! The master Organist of the Universe has "pulled out all the stops" in order to call attention to something new. ("Behold, I make all things new." [Rv 21:5])

This new wind is so powerful, and yet so subtle that Chesterton could not help but call upon it in his own writing:

"How The Great Wind Came To Beacon House"

A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor with some professor's papers till they seemed as precious as fugitive, or blowing out the candle by which a boy read Treasure Island and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama into undramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world. Many a harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at five dwarfish shirts on the clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy; it was as if she had hanged her five children. The wind came, and they were full and kicking as if five fat imps had sprung into them; and far down in her oppressed subconsciousness she half remembered those coarse comedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt in the homes of men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which she might have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent the waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon, and showed her shapes of quaint cloud far beyond, and pictures of bright villages far below, as if she rode heaven in a fairy boat. Many a dusty clerk or curate, plodding a telescopic road of poplars, thought for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes of a hearse, when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good wind that blows nobody harm. [GKC, Manalive, first chapter]

As you may have expected, I bring all this up for a purpose. For in just over a week, the date of October 7 shall again occur on a Sunday, as it did in 1571, when the young Don John of Austria defeated the galleys of the Turks in the historic battle of Lepanto. That Sunday morning, he had small hope for victory - the Turkish fleet was far larger; the forces of the West were hodge-podge, barely united under Don John's command. Their hope, such as it was, was based on the plea of the Pope, who had asked for prayers to be said - in particular, the prayer of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, wherein the various mysteries of the birth, life, death and glorification of Jesus the God-Man are recalled.

The records tell of the dramatic moment after Holy Mass, soon after sunrise, when the forces of the West rowed into the wind, towards the sun, in the battle-array of a cross - facing the west-sailing galleys arranged in the Crescent of the Turks....

But then! Ah, how to make this pivot dramatic... Then as the historian Beeching puts it in a paragraph of just five short words:

And then the wind changed.

The wind swung into the west (as it did on Beacon Hill for Innocent Smith!) aiding Don John and thwarting the Turks - and hope sprang up for the forces of the Cross.

Yes, that battle was won. But we must still face evil - not fearful galleys on a sunrise sea - but the hidden Powers of Darkness. They continue to assault our world, our country, our cities, our families, our own lives - not with swords or guns, but with every spiritual weapon, to destroy peace, wipe out hope, darken faith, quench love.

Where can we go for aid?

"And they came to him, and awaked him, saying: 'Lord, save us, we perish'." [Mt 8:25]

We must pray - we must ask for the Spirit of light, of strength, of love. We must again appeal to the One Who directs the wind, Who came upon the Apostles in tongues of fire!

And Jesus saith to them: "Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?" Then rising up, he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm. But the men wondered, saying: "What manner of man is this, for he winds and the sea obey him?" [Mt 8:26-27]

So, please join in the nine day novena of the Rosary, starting this Saturday, September 29, and continuing to Sunday October 7.

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

Last week - it being the week containing that date "among the most famous in history" - I recounted, in a half-fictional form, my own memories of that day in 2001. I prefaced it by saying that "September is rich in memories, for many reasons..." It is the month when many of us went back to school - even if, once we were in college, we had to return in August. For me, it is connected with work (I mean employment) in one very special way - yesterday, September 19, marked the thirtieth anniversary of my starting work in computing. I left that job long ago, and the company was sold back in the 1980s, but so many of my best memories of work are there. Some real triumphs, some horrible failures, some rude awakenings - as usual for most of us.

Ahem. But this is NOT my blogg - if you wish to know a bit more you can go here where I tell a bit about that first day.

Four years before, September was the month when I first began to write computer programs - punching cards on the old keypunch machines at the school-which-must-not-be-named, with their two-million dollar computer designed by Seymour Cray (a name as great to me in computing as GKC is!)...

But there is another memory which is recalled by September - a memory from much further back than 1977, and which was renewed in me by another blogg-item (to be mentioned at the very end of this post). It was that day in 1962 when, just after lunch, my second-grade teacher told us she was going upstairs to the third grade, and the third-grade teacher was coming to teach us. This was something new.

So the third-grade teacher came in, and she picked up some strange little something (I did not really know what it was) and went up to the blackboard and moved her hand...

And there appeared not ONE line - but FIVE lines at once.

Then on top of those she drew a something, a strange shape, a wonderful shape, something I had never seen before - a shape, as I would now say, which is NOT an ASCII character, so I cannot type it. It was the shape we call the "treble" or G-clef.

As you know, the word "clef" comes from the Latin clavis or key. The "key" is key to all kinds of things, not just music, not just computing. It was important to Chesterton also.

To read more, press your mouse "key" here...

The key is the framing symbol to GKC's autobiography. The second chapter is called "The Man with the Golden Key" and the last is called "The God With the Golden Key". It will be best if I let GKC speak here:

The very first thing I can ever remember seeing with my own eyes was a young man walking across a bridge. He had a curly moustache and an attitude of confidence verging on swagger. He carried in his hand a disproportionately large key of a shining yellow metal and wore a large golden or gilded crown. The bridge he was crossing sprang on the one side from the edge of a highly perilous mountain chasm, the peaks of the range rising fantastically in the distance; and at the other end it joined the upper part of the tower of an almost excessively castellated castle. In the castle tower there was one window, out of which a young lady was looking. I cannot remember in the least what she looked like; but I will do battle with anyone who denies her superlative good looks.

[all the intervening chapters are here omitted]

This story, therefore, can only end as any detective story should end, with its own particular questions answered and its own primary problem solved. Thousands of totally different stories, with totally different problems have ended in the same place with their problems solved. But for me my end is my beginning, as Maurice Baring quoted of Mary Stuart, and this overwhelming conviction that there is one key which can unlock all doors brings back to me the first glimpse of the glorious gift of the senses; and the sensational experience of sensation. And there starts up again before me, standing sharp and clear in shape as of old, the figure of a man who crosses a bridge and carries a key; as I saw him when I first looked into fairyland through the window of my father's peep-show. But I know that he who is called Pontifex, the Builder of the Bridge, is called also Claviger, the Bearer of the Key; and that such keys were given him to bind and loose when he was a poor fisher in a far province, beside a small and almost secret sea.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:39, 330-1]

It would be futile for me to attempt an analysis of the word "key" in all its wonderful senses, even if I merely limit my study to the works of GKC. If one is curious to read more, especially in the application of "key" to things like the Petrine Commission in Matthew 16:19, I would advise consulting Fr. Jaki's wonderful little book called The Keys of the Kingdom: a Tool's Witness to Truth available from Real View Books - yes, as a careful scholar and deep Chestertonian, he quotes GKC to advantage!

But there is one powerful Chesterton quote which Jaki does not mention. Perhaps because it comes in the masterwork which forms the "head of the corner" to GKC's conversion, and Jaki's work, dealing with the Papal office as it does, did not require this particular analysis. I should here point out, as GKC does in his preface, that "It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject, above all this subject, without showing that he is a Catholic; but this study is not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant. Much of it is devoted to many sorts of Pagans rather than any sort of Christians..." [CW2:141] And those of you who have suffered through my lengthy ramblings may perhaps sense how I've tried to proceed in that manner. Ahem! In any case, let us hear GKC's keynote discussion of the keys:

Christ founded the Church with two great figures of speech; in the final words to the Apostles who received authority to found it. The first was the phrase about founding it on Peter as on a rock; the second was the symbol of the keys. About the meaning of the former there is naturally no doubt in my own case; but it does not directly affect the argument here save in two more secondary aspects. It is yet another example of a thing that could only fully expand and explain itself afterwards, and even long afterwards. And it is yet another example of something the very reverse of simple and self-evident even in the language, in so far as it described a man as a rock when he had much more the appearance of a reed. But the other image of the keys has an exactitude that has hardly been exactly noticed. The keys have been conspicuous enough in the art and heraldry of Christendom; but not every one has noted the peculiar aptness of the allegory. We have now reached the point in history where something must be said of the first appearance and activities of the Church in the Roman Empire; and for that brief description nothing could be more perfect than that ancient metaphor. The Early Christian was very precisely a person carrying about a key, or what he said was a key. The whole Christian movement consisted in claiming to possess that key. It was not merely a vague forward movement, which might be better represented by a battering-ram. It was not something that swept along with it similar or dissimilar things, as does a modern social movement. As we shall see in a moment, it rather definitely refused to do so. It definitely asserted that there was a key and that it possessed that key and that no other key was like it; in that sense it was as narrow as you please. Only it happened to be the key that could unlock the prison of the whole world; and let in the white daylight of liberty. The creed was like a key in three respects; which can be most conveniently summed up under this symbol. First, a key is above all things a thing with a shape. It is a thing that depends entirely upon keeping its shape. The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness. That is where it differs from all that formless infinity, Manichean or Buddhist, which makes a sort of pool of night in the dark heart of Asia; the ideal of uncreating all the creatures. That is where it differs also from the analogous vagueness of mere evolutionism; the idea of creatures constantly losing their shape. A man told that his solitary latchkey had been melted down with a million others into a Buddhistic unity would be annoyed. But a man told that his key was gradually growing and sprouting in his pocket, and branching into new wards or complications, would not be more gratified. Second, the shape of a key is in itself a rather fantastic shape. A savage who did not know it was a key would have the greatest difficulty in guessing what it could possibly be. And it is fantastic because it is in a sense arbitrary. A key is not a matter of abstractions; in that sense a key is not a matter of argument. It either fits the lock or it does not. It is useless for men to stand disputing over it, considered by itself; or reconstructing it on pure principles of geometry or decorative art. It is senseless for a man to say he would like a simpler key; it would be far more sensible to do his best with a crowbar. And thirdly, as the key is necessarily a thing with a pattern, so this was one having in some ways a rather elaborate pattern. When people complain of the religion being so early complicated with theology and things of the kind, they forget that the world had not only got into a hole, but had got into a whole maze of holes and corners. The problem itself was a complicated problem; it did not in the ordinary sense merely involve anything so simple as sin. It was also full of secrets, of unexplored and unfathomable fallacies, of unconscious mental diseases, of dangers in all directions. If the faith had faced the world only with the platitudes about peace and simplicity some moralists would confine it to, it would not have had the faintest effect on that luxurious and labyrinthine lunatic asylum. What it did do we must now roughly describe; it is enough to say here that there was undoubtedly much about the key that seemed complex; indeed there was only one thing about it that was simple. It opened the door.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:346-7]

Indeed - no relativistic view of words can by any means whatsoever permit access to your computer if you press the wrong key when you type your password! As in DNA, as in music, as in computers - "not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter shall pass away..."

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Just in case you are wondering what it was that linked all these thoughts together, please see the lovely picture on Nancy Brown's blogg, which shows Pope Benedict XVI at the keys...

Orthodoxy Inspired Music

I really enjoy Philip Yancey, Donald Miller and C.S. Lewis. G.K. Chesterton may be my great beacon of a favorite, though. His book Orthodoxy changed my life. It’s a terrible title that makes it sound very boring, but it’s one of the most exciting books I’ve ever read. Yeah, I’m a nerd, but it’s where a lot of my songs come from.

My great beacon of a favorite I like that phrase.

Iron Maiden and GKC??

From David:

I watched the Father Brown BBC dvd tonight. In the biography on GKC, they mentioned that he was a major influence on C. S. Lewis (we know that) and that Neil Gaiman based one of his characters in his Sandman series, Gilbert, on GKC (some of us know that). Then it stated that Iron Maiden excerpted one of GKC's hymns in their song "Revelation" from their album Piece of Mind.

The song is on iTunes and I was able to listen to the sample of 20 seconds. God willing, I will not have to listen to the rest of it. Perhaps there are some head banger Chestertonians who will do so and tell us about it.

Anyone willing or able to tell us more about this?