Frank Petta

Frank died yesterday afternoon, March 3rd, at 4:15 PM. May his soul rest in peace.

And now, something from Dr. Thursday.

In Memoriam Frank Petta.
by a recipient of his generosity.

Frank sent me photocopies of the GKC "Our Note-Book" essays from the
last five years of the Illustrated London News, and my mother
read them to me so I could type them into AMBER, as they are in such
poor shape they cannot be scanned.

Thanks, Frank. Please pray for us. Ask my mom about the fun we had doing
them.

--Dr. Thursday, sometimes called the AMBER Collector.

More Petta Wine, Please
by Dr. Thursday

The Midwest[1] gang of G. K. Chesterton,
Who G.K. read, drink beer, and bacon fry,
Who ponder paradox which some still stun,
Have met to thank God rightly[2], mugs to ply
Though we now miss our friend, a G.K. guy,
Who cheered them too, with jokes preserved in brine
And friendship rich; but they heave a sigh:
If only we could get more Petta wine.

This man, Frank Petta, totes no wedding gun[3]
He found (I don't know how or when or why)
An Illustrated London News full run
And reaped the columns written on the fly
So by the Grim Recycler they won't die.
Ignatius pressed the word lodes of Frank's mine,
Then the Midwest drank; still for more they spy:
If only we could get more Petta wine.

Now Frank for eighteen years shared that same sun
Which through old England's fogs did strive to pry
And light Top Meadow where was sown the fun
In essays kept by Frank's observant eye.
At Midwest meetings he is never shy:
Frank, who with a friend[4], still does reap the vine,
So that the G.K. meetings don't go dry:
If only we could get more Petta wine.

Frank, the earth spins on, the years go by,
God says "again"[5] the rising sun does shine;
Your fruitful vines have spread - they reach the sky...
If only we could get more Petta wine.

__________________
notes:

1. This poem was originally written for Frank's birthday in a time
before the ACS. In the interest of history I have not altered this term.
Then again the ACS meetings are still in the Midwest, so it really did
not need to be altered anyway.
2. See OrthodoxyCW1:268: "We should thank God for beer and
Burgundy by not drinking too much of them."
3. See Autobiography CW16:43 "I stopped on the way [to his
wedding] to drink a glass of milk in one shop and to buy a revolver
with cartridges in another."
4. Ann Stull, whom he married after a LONG courtship.
5. See Orthodoxy CW1:263-4: "It is possible that God says every
morning, 'Do it again' to the sun."
Here is Frank at the very first Chesterton Society meeting, 27 years ago. He's towards the front with an orange shirt. Ann is second from the left, sort of across from Frank. He attended every single one of them for 26 years. We'll miss him this year.

Frank Petta's Death Notice

Elgin Courier

Frank A. Petta

Frank A. Petta, 89, of Elgin passed away Monday, March 3, 2008 in his home. He was born March 12, 1918 in New York, NY, the son of Victorio and Rosa Maria Petta.

Frank was Baptized at St. Anthony of Padua and received first communion at the Church of Transfiguration in 1929. he graduated from St. John's University in Brooklyn and served two years in the US Army Air Corps. He then attained his Masters Degree from Columbia University. Frank was a teacher and taught in New York and Chicago for many years prior to retirement.

He had a life long interest in the ideas and writings of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, an English journalist and author of many books. With others, he founded the Midwest Chesterton Society, and helped start an annual conference. Frank had been a member of several Pro Life organizations, and was director of Elgin Birthright for several years.

He was a member of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Elgin.

Survivors include his wife, Ann, whom he married on March 23, 2002; a sister-in-law, Ethel Petta of New York; along with niece, Theresa Catherwood; and nephews, Fredrick, Joseph and Robert Petta; and many cousins and family.

He was preceded in death by his parents; and his brother, Louis Petta.

Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 10:00 A.M. in St. Thomas More Catholic Church, Elgin with Rev. Geoffrey Wirth officiating. Burial will follow in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Elgin. Visitation will be on Thursday from 4-8:00 P.M. at Laird Funeral Home, 310 S. State St. (Rt. 31), Elgin, IL 60123, 847-741-8800, and on Friday at the church from 9:30 A.M. until the Mass. Memorials directed to St. Thomas More Building Fund.

Ann's Obit

Ann Petta of Elgin A funeral Mass for Ann Petta (nee Stull), 82, formerly of Hyde Park, will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 12, at St. Thomas More Catholic Church, Elgin. Read more. Burial will follow in Mount Hope Catholic Cemetery. Visitation will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, at the Laird Funeral Home, Elgin, and from 9:30 a.m. until the time of Mass Thursday morning at the church. Born Dec. 3, 1926, in St. Louis, Mo., the daughter of the late Wilfred and Irene (Taylor) Stull, she passed away Sunday, March 8, 2009. Mrs. Ann Petta was born Ann Stull in St. Louis, Mo. Mrs. Petta moved to Chicago after graduating from Webster College, a Catholic women's college at the time. Mrs. Petta, or Ann, moved to Chicago to work at Friendship House, an organization dedicated to improving race relations. Mrs. Petta taught English at Kelly High School in Chicago for 30 years. In addition to teaching, Ann was interested in solar energy and became very involved in the Pro-Life Movement as well as promoting and enjoying the writings of G. K. Chesterton. Mrs. Petta was a founder of the Hyde Park/Kenwood Pro-Life Association in 1984, and the Respect Life Committee in 1980. Mrs. Petta was a board member of the Illinois Federation for the Right to Life and the Illinois Right to Life Committee. Mrs. Petta worked with other Pro-Life and pregnancy help organizations including the Pro-Life/Pro-Family Coalition, where she worked closely with Dr. Hiram Crawford Sr. and Dr. Hiram Crawford Jr. Mrs. Petta was a founder of The Midwest Chesterton Society and active in The American Chesterton Society. A daily communicant at her Catholic parish, St. Thomas the Apostle in Hyde Park, then St. Thomas More in Elgin, Mrs. Petta's Catholic faith filled her with joy and gratitude. Her joy was engulfing to those who met and knew Ann. Her sense of mirthful awe, wonder, and piety pointed to the charitable Catholic approach to God, and all who knew her felt the persuasion of her faith. Mr. and Mrs. Petta were appreciated in the Chesterton circles for their "Petta wine" made from grapes picked near their cottage in Michigan. No Chesterton gathering was complete without that delicious, if mysterious, basement fermentation. A large group of nieces, nephews and cousins with surnames of Stull, MauIler, Hilliard, Brown, Hobold, Taylor, Diehl and others, survive Mrs. Petta. She also held dear her large group of friends from all areas of her life. She was preceded in death by Frank Petta, her husband of seven years. Memorial donations may be made to Human Life International, National Right to Life, any Pro-Life organization, and to The American Chesterton Society. For information, 847-741-8800.

Published in the Chicago Suburban Daily Herald from 3/10/2009 - 3/11/2009

Please Join us in Prayer for Frank Petta

Please pray for Frank Petta. His wife Ann tells us he is "very sick".

Frank is one of the original 25 people who started this Chesterton Group 27+ years ago.

He founded the Chicago Chesterton Society. It added Milwaukee and became the Midwest Chesterton Society with annual conferences. Then it became the American Chesterton Society with headquarters in the Twin Cities.

Thanks for the prayers, God's will be done.

Frank Petta Jokes

One reason to subscribe to Gilbert is for the monthly dose of a Frank Petta joke. If you come to the conference, you'll hear more.

Frank is a long time friend of the American Chesterton Society, and always has a pocket full of jokes.

Here's his latest:

An accountant answered an advertisement for a top job with a large firm. At the end of the interview, the chairman said, "One last question--what is three times seven?"

The accountant thought for a moment and replied, "Twenty-two."

Outside, he checked himself on his calculator and concluded he had lost the job. But two weeks later he was offered the post.

He asked the chairman why he had been appointed when he had given the wrong answer.

"You were closest," the chairman replied.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Forward For Frank to the Circle and the Cross

Because of the passing of dear Frank Petta, it might be urged on me that I should forgo my usual Thursday speculations. (I note the Latin root of "speculation" means the same as the Greek root of the mystic Theoria... seeing and sight; recall the blind man in last Sunday's gospel!)

However, it would be a stronger wine than ever Frank brewed, and a better joke than ever Frank told, for me to do the One Thing which Frank delighted in - read GKC, ponder GKC, and urge GKC to others... so I shall, with a fond delight, and hoping for YOUR accompaniment, proceed to explore the next fragments of our centennial masterwork, Orthodoxy.

Note: today's post finishes Chapter II: "The Maniac", and so is a bit long, so I have kept my introduction short. Some of the richest bits are in these concluding paragraphs, so grab your knapsack, some water and a snack or two for the journey, and let's go! Click to proceed.

Recall that we have just considered the very complex matter of a type of lunatic - one who is crazy about determinism, or about materialism, to the utter abandonment of any other possibility. But he, like the simple madman of Hanwell or your own local asylum, has lost the universe in clinging to a singular truth. No horror grips the casual reader than these strange words from GKC's pen:

...you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to praise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank you" for the mustard.
[CW1:228, emphasis added]

I am sorry, there are quite a number of things which are very clearly "determined" - that is, where simple physical causation explains the action. It may be as simple as a bowling ball hitting the pins for a strike, or as complex as the photons striking the chlorophyll in a green plant to produce wood or apples or wheat or grapes... BUT. I should be insane if my delight in these clearly explicable things (which incidentally permit me to write English, type it, and have it come to you elsewhere in the E-cosmos) would somehow lead me to lose the ability "to say 'thank you' for the mustard." That would be insane.

This error gives rise to a variety of related ones. GKC mentions just one - which is likewise horrifying since it is so prevalent in this time. I shall not examine it at length, but just mention that it is the strange view that somehow "crime" is a kind of "disease" to be remedied by change in the environment. But you ought to ponder that paragraph for yourself; it deserves far more than a paragraph of examination.

But we must proceed. The next case GKC takes up is the exact opposite of the materialist lunatic "who believes that everything began in matter" It is the man "who believes that everything began in himself":

He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother.
[CW1:229]

This is even more horrifying. That poor fellow "is alone in his own nightmare", for him,

The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother's face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, "He believes in himself."

Perhaps, since that is quite bothersome, you ought to hear GKC's response to the man who believes:

that he is always in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter.
[CW1:229]

Yes. Now, we have taken up two extremes, opposite forms of lunacy - Why?

...this panegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in practice. ... The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable...
[CW1:229-30]

Ah. Do you recall our little geometric conundrum about the circle, and another about infinity? We must now go deeper - far deeper - and up onto a much higher peak. We shall start to see something.

...there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.
[CW1:230]

GKC has led us through a very complex and torturous (that word means "twisted", not "painful") journey through a very unpleasant place - but we have been able to see some marvels, and we are about to be given our next tool. This is a very startling one. It is rather like the one we are already carrying, which tells us to have extremes conjoined - and we saw what happens when one chooses the one or the other of the extremes! But we are going to have a powerful result, in a more precise form, and it is by use of reason.

This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end.
[CW1:230]

In order to use reason we need proper first principles, just as in geometry there are things we take as given, and which we do not prove. Once we take the right starting points, we can do many useful things - even discover England. But we need that starting point!

Do you mean, Doctor, that this is just another attempt by GKC to start a discussion?

Not quite. Just as in The Phantom Tollbooth Milo stops thinking and lands in the Doldrums, and is rescued by the Watchdog who forces him to Think, we need to be startled by the dead ends of insanity.

(Remember, we are not making some sarcastic snippy quip about those who have pathological diseases of the mind; we are talking about the strange parallel between such failures and those who, though mentally capable, have chosen not to start thinking at all.)


Yes, GKC's next words do seem to hint that we are just beginning, perhaps because he wants us to consider just what it kind of a journey we are on:

And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is
it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. [CW1:230]

I must here make an aside, but it is rather just a comment about our situation. GKC did write mysteries, but in one of the most profound essays ever written about detective stories, he said:

...we cannot really get at the psychology and philosophy, the morals and the religion, of the thing until we have read the last chapter. Therefore, I think it is best of all when the first chapter is also the last chapter. The length of a short story is about the legitimate length for this particular drama of the mere misunderstanding of fact.
[GKC ILN Aug 19 1922 CW32:432]

Indeed - and right here in Orthodoxy he demonstrates this principle. Rather than try to hide his solution, he immediately gives it away:

But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.
[CW1:230-1]

I have pointed out this business of sight several times; now we see, rather dramatically, the mystery of the Man With Two Eyes. (There's key phrase in GKC's Manalive: "Man found alive with two legs".) This is the dramatic restatement, like a musical theme now played by full orchestra, of the idea of keeping both extremes. This can only by done mystically - but it must be done in order to be sane.

What happens when one REFUSES this? Well, you've heard the answer enough in this chapter. Hanwell. But in practicality, what it means is the complete loss of reason.

Insanity: "The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious."

Sanity: "The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid."

Insanity: "The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say 'if you please' to the housemaid."

Sanity: "The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health." [all from CW1:231]


And now. The seal. The geometric matter which is described at length in GKC's The Ball and the Cross is here stated in - let us say - Euclidean precision:

As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
[CW1:231]

You may wonder at the reference to Buddhism; I must defer that for the present. But the geometric aptness of the symbols is not really a matter of debate... they may only go so far anyway, as GKC proceeds to note:

Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility.
[CW1:231]

There you see a repeat, even more powerfully, of the line above: "He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health." But there are other echoes from other places. Perhaps I have quoted this before, but it is the perfect matching jewel to this word-nexus. As usual, it is the fictional variant of a non-fictional exposition:

"The greenness, that I walked like one in a dream, stretched away on all sides to the edges of the sky. Sleepily, I let my eyes fall and woke, with a stunning thrill, to clearness. I stood shrunken with the shock, clutching myself in the smallest compass.

"Every inch of the green place was a living thing, a spire or tongue, rooted in the ground, but alive. Away to the skyline I could not see the ground for those fantastic armies. The silence deafened me with a sense of busy eating, working, and breeding. I thought of that multitudinous life, and my brain reeled.

"Treading fearfully amid the growing fingers of the earth, I raised my eyes, and at the next moment shut them, as at a blow. High in the empty air blazed and streamed a great fire, which burnt and blinded me every time I raised my eyes to it. I have lived many years now under this meteor of a fixed Apocalypse, but I have never survived the feelings of that moment. Men eat and drink, buy and sell, marry, are given in marriage, and all the time there is something in the sky at which they cannot look. They must be very brave.
["A Crazy Tale" in CW14:70]

Now, for something Far More Amazing. This idea is not original to GKC! Consider this:

"If I fail to see this light (of God) it is simply because it is too bright for me. Still, it is by this light that I do see all that I can, even as weak eyes, unable to look straight at the sun, see all that they can by the sun's light."
[The Proslogion of St. Anselm, quoted in the Office of Readings for April 21]

Remember, we have been talking about sight... Sight, or its weakness, or its lack, is the conclusion of this chapter:

Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.
[CW1:231-2]

For background you might wish to read "The Eye of Apollo" in The Innocence of Father Brown. And you may need to know a bit of Latin: luna means "moon".

But for now, we have completed a very important and difficult phase (no pun intended) of the journey. As we think on this, and on the risks and obligations we have considered, may we pause for a time in prayer to thank God for our vision - but also ask, as the blind man did: "Lord, that I may see." [Luke 18:41]

--Dr. Thursday.

Merry Christmas--last of the game

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

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

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

Celebrating Christmas on December 25 - which is a tradition.

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

17. What tops your tree?

The house Frances and I live in:

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

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

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

18. Which do you prefer - giving or receiving?

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

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

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

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

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?

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

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

20. Candy canes?

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

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

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

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

[The Everlasting Man CW2:305]

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

Please Pray

One of the American Chesterton Society's founding members, Mrs. Ann Stull Petta is ill. Please pray for her. Her husband, another founding member, Frank Petta, died last year. This is a note from her niece:

My Aunt, Mrs. Ann Petta, is currently in hospital. She was taken there for rehab, physical and occupational therapy to make her stronger as she is finding it difficult to live by herself... If anyone in the Society would like to send her a card or give her a call she would appreciate it. She should be in rehab for two to three weeks. Please pray for her.

If anyone needs the address, please email me and I'll send it to you immediately. Thanks for your prayers.

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!

Ann (Stull) Petta, RIP

It is with a sad heart that I inform everyone of the passing of a person who loved Gilbert, Ann Petta. From Dale:

Ann died this evening [March 8]. Her nephew just called me with the sad news.

Today’s Psalm at Mass was “How precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.” It could not have been more appropriate.

We lost a shining light in the Chesterton community today.

The funeral will be Thursday.

When I get the time and place, I'll let you know.

Her husband Frank [scroll down to see all the articles about Frank] died almost exactly one year ago. These two shining beacons of love, friendship, joy, humor, laughter, and faith touched the lives of most of the Chestertonians I know here in America. Frank and Ann were part of that first meeting in Milwaukee about 27 years ago, and they were also the premier Chestertonian lovers: falling in love over a common interest in Chesterton, and celebrating a Chestertonian wedding not all that long ago.

Ann was sweet, always took time to talk with me, and I felt a close connection because she once told me that what made her like Chesterton was not his writings, although she loved them too, but she loved his person. She said she fell in love with him as a person: his kindness, caring, love, listening ability, etc. And when she said that, I felt I'd met a kindred soul, because that was exactly how I came to love Chesterton: reading his biography and finding out what a wonderful person he was.

May Ann rest in peace, reunited with Frank, and joining Gilbert and Frances for a party in heaven.

Funeral Arrangements for Frank Petta

Frank's funeral will be Friday 10:00 am at St. Thomas More in Elgin IL and the wake is Thursday evening from 4-8:00 pm at the Laird Funeral Home in Elgin.

Some memories of Frank Petta

Here are some remembrances of Frank. If you have any stories you'd like to share, let's do it here. I think this is a fitting place to remember a man devoted to Chesterton.

The Last Surprise

Twice before I had to post my lengthy wanderings on GKC's Orthodoxy when I and the Chesterton community were in mourning at the departure of dear friends - and today, on this Holy Thursday, as we stand at the end of our journey through this great book, I find we must again pause as we think of Father Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, one of the greatest of Chestertonians, who has now gone to the Inn at the End of the World...

But again, as in the case of Frank Petta, and his dear wife Ann Stull Petta, I find Father urging me on. I think of his revelation in Chesterton a Seer of Science that Martin Gardner chose an excerpt from Orthodoxy to appear in his 1957 volume Great Essays in Science! And many times over this past year you have heard me drag in references to Jaki as we considered certain issues in our study.

Then, it might be urged on me that (due to the surprise which is coming) I ought to "carry over" this posting until next week, and so somehow preserve the holiness and quiet of this day. And so I had planned.

But I thought some more... and I think there is a good reason to complete the study today - as you shall see.

(( but first you have to click here... ))

There is one more thing to be said. One more strange paradox, the most strange of all. And again, we are given a tiny summary, a verbal equivalent of the musical recapitulations and reprises of the great themes of our text...

But 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. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?" I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer with complete sincerity, "That whatever I am, I am not myself." This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves. And there is really no test of this except the merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test of the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea of joy.
[CW1:363]

Now, there's another line that has often gotten overlooked - a line which really explains the whole attitude of Christianity. Let us see it all by itself and think about it:

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.

This is no unreasoning Tao, the sheer juxtaposition of meaningless words to give even less meaning to life and being. This is an insight into the unrest that even the Tao - yes, even the Buddhist in the last throes of his forsaking of reality - must still feel, even if he refuses to admit it: the normal itself is an abnormality. For we live our lives here, and are not at home - yet.

Next we have this charming summary of Chestertonian anthropology, which I shall re-format for ease in presentation:

Q: What are you?
A: God knows.
Q: What is meant by the Fall?
A: That whatever I am, I am not myself.

Please memorize and be ready to recite for next week. Ahem.

Then we have that little allusion to the Madman - the theme of that chapter we saw so long ago: "It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation." This line will be heard in its proper key (no pun intended) when he will write (in 1927): "To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think." [GKC The Catholic Church and Conversion CW3:106] But we must not go into that today. For GKC has just set up the modulation to go into his final cadence - which, of course, introduces a totally new theme:

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say "enlightened" they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything - they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything - they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.
[CW1:363-4]

This would be a very appropriate time for me to drag in Jaki - but I shall do so as a cook might wield a garlic clove, with the most delicate use of a great power. For all I need is four words, not even in a lengthy sentence, but simply the title of a chapter in his book on Chesterton: "Champion of the Universe". You see, the moderns really are "miserable about existence, about everything". Oh, they enjoy their fast food, their cable TV, their rock and their... well. You know as well as I do. But they do not ever want to go further. They are in the padded cell.

But the medievals were happy about everything. Jaki has countless pages full of the citations if you wish to learn more - and have not yet believed Chesterton.

An aside. I am struck by the applicability of a paradox voiced by Jesus about this. You can read the original in Matthew 11:17-19., and now I will paraphrase. It is not addressed to you, dear follower of Uncle Gilbert, but to - ah - let us say, Certain Academics and Media Persons: Chesterton came, married and laughing and quoting without footnotes, and you said he is making it up. Jaki came, celibate and laughing and giving countless footnotes, and you said he was boring and unreadable. Actually you ignore them both. Which is terrible.

Ahem. But let us resume. The point is about joy - about happiness - about gaiety. (Please do not veer off because of an shift in meaning due to contemporary politics.) GKC gave us the introductory setting and we shall now hear the final theme by which he shall conclude:

The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
[CW1:364-5]

Ah - HA!!! Let's hear just the brass proclaim that theme again:

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

Notify the anthropologists and the lawyers! Let the physicists quit their reactors and the biologists abandon their microscopes! Let the mathematicians cease their calculating and the literati drop their pens! Let the theologians and the philosophers hurry to listen! We men have something more - for "joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live"!!!

Recall too, the famous "toucan" line [CW1:325] about the angels who can take themselves lightly? Now we hear it rightly: it is just the descant line to this theme! The laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear. Oh my!

"the frantic energy of divine things"... is this not Chesterton and his verbal fireworks? Is it not Jaki and his countless footnotes, tracking through piles upon piles, shelves upon shelves of works, linking them into one? Do they not reveal some small portion of the "tremendous levity of the angels"?

(Note: If you reply "NO", you have not read any of these works, and you have not been paying attention. Go back and start over.)

And now, my final words. On this Holy Thursday, when the Twelve (less one) heard the great revelations in the Upper Room, the depths of love and the anticipation of the victory, we shall hear the final surprise. This book - called a book on Christianity, but which seems to so rarely mention Christ - concludes with a most profound query - something perhaps no theologian would ever dare to speculate on, even the most heretical. It is well that Chesterton concludes with a paradox, and yet I remind you neither is this one of his invention - he has merely called our attention to it.

I shall not give any further notes, because it is fitting that Chesterton sound the last chords, strange and mystical and triumphant, and fitting as we enter this most sacred time. God bless you all, and thanks for your attention over this past year!

--Dr. Thursday

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. [Lk 19:41] Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, [Mt 21:12] and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. [Mt 23:33] Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
[CW1:365-6]

If you like "Thursday"...

If you liked GKC's The Man Who Was Thursday, I think you might like Agatha Christie's The Seven Dials Mystery. I just finished it last night. I won't say more about the relation between these two stories, because it is best that you be surprised - which is what detective fiction is all about. As is Christianity.

Here's a bit of GKC on AC:

...Miss Marple, quite as meek and spinsterish as Miss Mitford, actually is a creation of modern detective fiction; a modest maiden lady who plays the demure detective in some excellent stories by Agatha Christie...
[GKC ILN May 23 1936; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

(Note, the Seven Dials story is not one with Miss Marple in it.)

Dr. Thursday's Thursday Post

Practical White Magic: Climbing to Step One-and-a-Fraction

...in all the wild rites and the savage myths, there is at least that twilight which suggests to itself, and by itself, that it might be more enlightened than it is. There is something in the grossest idolatry or the craziest mythology that has a quality of groping and adumbration. There is more in life than we understand; some have told that if we ate a scorpion or worshipped a green monkey we might understand it better. But the evolutionary educator, having never since his birth been in anything but the dark, naturally believes that he is in the daylight. His very notion of daylight is something which is so blank as to be merely blind. There are no depths in it, either of light or darkness. There are no dimensions in it; not only no fourth, but no third, no second, and hardly a first; certainly no dimensions in which the mind can move. Therefore the mind remains fixed, in a posture that is called progressive. It never looks back, even for remembrance; it never looks the other way, even for experiment; it never looks at the other side, even for an adventure; it never winks the other eye. It simply knows all there is; and there does not seem to be much to know. [GKC ILN Aug 6 1932; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

The first time I went to the Twin Cities to visit Dale Ahlquist, we went to that large shopping town near him - for some reason they call it a "mall". There seemed to be an amusement park inside the mall - which was already so gigantic it was hard to believe we were "inside" - one might have thought we were in a space station halfway between... er, sorry I can't go into that here.

Anyway, we stopped on our way to our noonday meal, and looked at the dozens of poor frightened young children being strapped into some gigantic mechanical thing. Then it started to move, in four or six directions at once, accompanied by screams of terror. I said to Dale how they used to train astronauts in those things, now kids pay money to scream their heads off...

Dale, being a polite Chestertonian, did NOT comment: "Yes, and their parents scream their heads off at how much it costs - once to buy lunch, and once to lose it." But then so much happened that day, perhaps I forgot. (No I did NOT take a ride.)

Now that we've set the appropriate degree of horror:

Please have your ticket ready, fasten your seat belts, tighten your rider-protection equipment. You are going to be displaced into a fractional dimension, courtesy of the American Chesterton Society. Warning: you should have abstained from food and drink for at least the last .03 minutes; in any case, your entrance fee is NOT refundable, and the management assumes no risks to your health or property. You may, however, retain the results of your journey as they will be useful for decorative purposes as we near Winter Tide.

Ahem. (Yes, I do get carried away, it's just such fun to play with these pleasant English word-things after fussing with the brackets, braces, asterisks and semicolons I have to write for work.)

So, here we are, finally ready to follow a very strange path: through the Tollbooth, down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, by the Straight Road to the Furthest West, over the Mountains of the Dawn, via Platform Nine and Three Quarters... well, actually, on the nearest staircase of your home or office, to that strange step which is just past the first, but not quite the second.

I am going to tell you just a little bit about a strange little branch of mathematics, in which we take the recursion we examined last week and apply it to good old geometry. I can only tell you a little bit about it - as a computer scientist I spend (have spent!) a lot of time wandering along the various halls of the University, and have heard a smidgen here, a drop there... Often these crumbs get wedged into the computer in interesting ways, and they can be fun, and even useful. (I used this one to help a friend design planets... oops, I'm not supposed to talk about that either.) But this one is easy, and it turns out to make a very nice design, providing one remembers the "terminating condition" we talked about last week. Remember, the smallest doll that has no seam? (And what if it didn't?)

This is very much of an audience participation project, and it will be lots of fun to try. You may get tired after a little, and that's OK, because you can always print out our pictures - and if they aren't very nice on your printer, we will look into ways of getting good copies for you, if you ask. But even if all you have is a scrap of paper, a ruler, a pencil, and an eraser - that will be enough. (To do the whole thing, you ought to have a compass, the circle-drawing kind, but that's optional).

OK, ready? Hey, Joe, power up der machine! *CLICK* hummmm...

And when you're ready for the drop, CLICK HERE... (hee hee)

First, I will teach you the "rule". Then we will apply it. This is just a scrap-paper trial, so please play along. It won't hurt at all, and will take just a minute or so. You need a piece of paper, a ruler, a pencil, and an eraser.

The Rule. To do the Rule we are given a line segment.
(Draw a nice handy line maybe about three inches long, from left to right.)



Rule Step 1. Divide the given line segment into thirds.
(Take your pencil and lightly mark the point one third of the distance, and two thirds of the distance. Use a ruler, or just approximate.)



Rule Step 2. Draw an equilateral triangle on the center portion of the line segment.
(Again use your ruler and pencil. Make each side the same length. The picture will now look like a witch's hat - but that's NOT where the magic comes in, hee hee. That's later.)


Rule Step 3. Erase the central portion of the line segment, which is the base of the triangle.
(That's why you need the eraser. It's an important lesson in mystical reality - not every erasing is a mistake! You will now have a kind of V shape with long arms.)



Excellent. That's all the Rule is. (Whew.)

How about a short break for a little Chesterton?

...a hard black outline on a blank sheet of paper, an arbitrary line drawing such as I could make myself with a pen and ink on the paper in front of me - that this thing should come to life was and is a shock to the eye and brain having all the effect of a miracle. That something like a geometrical diagram should take on a personality, should shoot over the page by its own inky vitality, should run races and turn somersaults in its own flat country of two dimensions - this does still startle or stun me like a shot going past my head.
[GKC ILN Mar 19 1927 CW34:274]

He was talking about cartoons, yes indeed. But this is just a curious little pattern.

Now let us add the powerful magic of recursion!

Stage TWO. Take your result, and apply the Rule to each of the four NEW line segments you have.

After step 1, applied to all segments:


After step 2, applied to all segments:


After step 3, applied to all segments:


Very nice. You see - now, each of the four new pieces in your first result now looks like that result - just smaller? We've opened our first doll, and found another one inside, just the same.

OH, WOW. you are saying. Now, we do it again...

That is, STAGE THREE, STAGE FOUR, and so on.

Exactly.

But let us be a bit more artistic (if the word be permitted of such bland black-and-white efforts). Let us take a slightly more interesting shape, and apply the Rule in successive stages. Let us, in the name of the Triune God, or the three dimensions if you like, take an equilateral triangle as our start.

You can do this on a nice big sheet of paper if you want, and work carefully, as you will be delighted by the final product - but it will take some work. Just be patient, go all the way around at one level before getting smaller, and stop when things get too small to draw.

Stage One. Here's our starting triangle:

Stage Two. Now apply our Rule to each of the three sides:


Stage Three. And again...


Stage Four. And again...


Stage Five. And again...


Stage Six. And again...
At this point, the changes are too small for the computer to display, so I will quit here.

Now, this is the real-world kind of recursion. We have gone down to the smallest doll, to the pixel-level of the graphics, to the atomic level (Atom in the Greek sense - you cannot cut it any finer!)

But, as we hinted last week - what if there was no terminating condition?

Here again we must pause for a brief comment from a mathematician. We are going to talk (very informally) about a limit. That is, something that is a "final result" of a series of stages, the number of which may increase without bounds. Note that (contrary to the Eagles) we are not "taking it to the limit" by counting to infinity. I really do not have the time or space to explain "limit" now - except that Zeno was wrong. Simply because you can move, you can walk through an infinite number of halfway points from here to there. And the reason is because (as we mnath guys say) the limit of the infinite series is finite. You can add 1/2 and 1/4 and 1/8 and 1/16 and 1/32 and 1/64... and all the infinite fractions which are the reciprocals of the powers of two - and you will get ONE. No more, no less. (the Word, as GKC and St. John say, is One.)

Now, what happens when we apply our Rule along the infinite series of line segments?

Only about 40 years ago, a mathematician named Benoît Mandelbrot was studying the coastline of Britain. Noticing how there seemed to be a similarity of shapes depending on the degree of resolution, he developed the mathematics of such things as we have just considered and found that the result is finite in one sense, though infinite in another... After careful study, he found that somehow the final result is something MORE than a line (which has ONE dimension) but definitely LESS than a planar curve (which has TWO dimensions). He called these things of FRACTionAL dimension fractals.

Remembering that real things do NOT recede to infinity - they stop at some terminating condition, be it pixels, cells, or atoms - it is clear that some things have fractal-like character: tree branches, lightning bolts...

Snowflakes.

Hence, as I said in my title, White Magic. Well, actually it was Father Brown:

When the priest went forth again and set his face homeward, the cold had grown more intense and yet was somehow intoxicating. The trees stood up like silver candelabra of some incredibly cold Candlemas of purification. It was a piercing cold, like that silver sword of pure pain that once pierced the very heart of purity. But it was not a killing cold, save in the sense of seeming to kill all the mortal obstructions to our immortal and immeasurable vitality. The pale green sky of twilight, with one star like the star of Bethlehem, seemed by some strange contradiction to be a cavern of clarity. It was as if there could be a green furnace of cold which wakened all things to lifelike warmth, and that the deeper they went into those cold crystalline colours the more were they light like winged creatures and clear like coloured glass. It tingled with truth and it divided truth from error with a blade like ice; but all that was left had never felt so much alive. It was as if all joy were a jewel in the heart of an iceberg. The priest hardly understood his own mood as he advanced deeper and deeper into the green gloaming, drinking deeper and deeper draughts of that virginal vivacity of the air. Some forgotten muddle and morbidity seemed to be left behind, or wiped out as the snow had painted out the footprints of the man of blood. As he shuffled homewards through the snow, he muttered to himself: "And yet he is right enough about there being a white magic, if he only knows where to look for it."
[GKC "The Dagger With Wings" in The Incredulity of Father Brown]

There are lots of other tricks one can play - it is lots easier to do on computers, which don't mind the boring parts and are usually quite neat at inking and erasing and all that. In any case, this concludes our little ride - I hope you aren't queasy - if you have any questions please submit them in writing.

A final note: as disorienting as they may have been, your experiences today CANNOT be used in order to get a ride on the Space Shuttle. You'll have to go to that place in Minnesota for that kind of training - why not do it next June when you come for the Conference?

--Dr. Thursday

1500 Years of Light from Death Row

In the picture for this post, you see our hero, Dale Ahlquist, between two great English writers - er - between actors portraying two great English writers. Even I - no lit'ry guy - know who they are. I hope you know too.

Today, as I peruse the amazing treasure-house of Dover Publications, in awe of its strong resonance with the works of G. K. Chesterton, I would like to tell you about a book not by Chesterton - but which is mentioned by Chesterton. GKC's Chaucer links not two great writers (like Dale in the picture!) but three - Alfred the Great, (849-899) the King of Wessex; Jeff (aka Geoffrey) Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400); and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, executed for treason (?) in 524 A.D.

I mention the full name of the third author in order to avoid the confusion GKC fell into:

I wrote in these columns some reference to Alfred the Great translating Boethius. [See August 27, 1910 CW 28:588; July 26, 1927 CW 34:343, or October 19, 1935] When this was mentioned. in the hotel then my home, I naturally supposed it was an interest in Alfred the Great. I found everybody indifferent to that glory of Wessex and the world, but full of a most commendable cultural curiosity about Boethius. One four-square Yorkshire merchant faced me firmly and said, "Who was Boethius?" I told him the very little I know about that sage of the Dark Ages; how he made a digest of the old pagan philosophy for the use of Christians, and was a popular authority throughout the Middle Ages; how he was killed by Theodoric; see any encyclopaedia. A moment after, a lady shot up to me, shrill with congratulations, and cried, "Oh, Mr. Chesterton, I'm so glad you mentioned Boethius." I was bemused. I went out into the night. In the front of the hotel I found the porter - and the portent. For the porter also pronounced the name of Boethius, though he pronounced it in a curious way. Also, he went into fits of laughter. I then found that Boethius was the name of a horse, running in a race of enormous national importance. ... it is much more exciting that Alfred translated Boethius than that he did or did not burn cakes. For those who can appreciate a fight, when it is a fight for anything worth fighting for, the career of Alfred of Wessex is much more thrilling than a horse-race. Nor is it irrelevant, in the matter of the race between rival ideas in history. Alfred in translating Boethius had certainly picked a winner. It is all part of one very dramatic story, which stars with Boethius being murdered by a barbarian chief, and ends with Alfred being victorious over the barbarian chiefs. The relation between the Saxon king and the Roman philosopher stands for that relation between England and Europe, which was actually in some ways more intimate and international in the rude conditions of the Dark Ages than in the more refined conditions of the modern age.
[GKC ILN Feb 8, 1936; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

Yes, King Alfred the Great (the hero in GKC's "Ballad of the White Horse" - no pun intended!) did indeed translate Boethius.

But so did Chaucer.

If you want to read more about Boethius and his book, and how this relates to Chaucer, order CW18 from The American Chesterton Society.

Or click here for an excerpt...
Here's an excerpt from GKC's Chaucer:

The business of the translation of Boethius touches a general truth, even at the beginning, which will become more apparent and important towards the end. The relation of medieval men to philosophy, and enlightenment in general, was rather curious; and is not covered by the natural metaphors employed. We used to talk of the Dark Ages; most of us know by now that the true Dark Ages came before the true Middle Ages; and that in many ways the Middle Ages were far from dark. But, following the figure of an age of darkness, we are apt to think of an age of twilight; or perhaps, of grey morning light. But the metaphor itself is misleading. Twilight means an equally diffused light; and the difficulty of medievalism was the difficulty of diffusion. It would be truer to compare even the Dark Ages to a dark room, with certain chinks in the shutters through which particular rays of light could pierce. But the light was daylight, what there was of it; and not even a dull or troubled daylight. It was broad daylight that came through a narrow hole. Or it was like some long narrow ray of a searchlight sent out from a great city and falling like a spotlight on a remote village or a lonely man. And just as any man, however much in darkness, if he looks right down the searchlight, looks into a furnace of white-hot radiance, so any medieval man, who had the luck to hear the right lectures or look at the right manuscript, did not merely 'follow a gleam', a grey glimmer in a mystical forest; but looked straight down the ages into the radiant mind of Aristotle. There was indeed, as I have said, any amount of indirect transmission of light; any amount of reflection - in every sense. But I am not talking of the quantity, but of the quality of the light. Such light as they had came, not only from the broad daylight, but from the brilliant daylight; it was the buried sunlight of the Mediterranean. These men seem to be, and in some ways were, men simple or primitive. But their philosophy was not merely simple or primitive. In some cases it came from a ripe and rounded civilization; in some cases even from an over-ripe, from an autumnal civilization; from an over-civilized civilization. We might compare them to children in some cold and gloomy March, looking at the barns filled with the grain garnered by dead men in a forgotten autumn; but anyhow they fed their wild boyhood on things that were mature, and sometimes more than mature. Hence we have the paradox that a rude and primitive society, in some sense starting afresh, yet had so often for its guides, not merely the writers of the old world, but the writers of the world when it was growing old. All such paradoxes work back to the paradox: that the further we go back to first ages of the modern world, the nearer we are to the last ages of the ancient world: as King Arthur stands in Britain at once as the first of the Britons and last of the Romans. Thus a primitive poem, like Abbo's 'Siege of Paris', stops amid the storm of northern arrows rattling on rude roofs and walls, to make mythological conceits that had been copied from the copyists of Ovid or Virgil for five hundred years. But Ovid and Virgil are not the less civilized poets because barbarians continued to copy them. The men of a new civilization were not the less able to understand the civilized poets, because they had been continually copied. In a word, medieval men were not in the twilight; what they knew they knew. They had not read Homer at all; and (strange as it seems in a literate and enlightened age) did not despise him because they had not read him. They had read Virgil much more fully and thoroughly than we have. Anyone who doubts it may make the experiment of quoting beautiful Virgilian lines in a first-class railway carriage, full of politicians and captains of industry. In a word, though their knowledge of civilized antiquity was in a sense scrappy, though the scraps were not only old scraps but sometimes stale scraps, they had enough of them to understand what the great ancients had meant by wisdom; and, unlike some others, they had the great wisdom truly to try to be wise.

The case of Boethius illustrates specially the second truth; that the spring of medievalism had fed on the autumn of classicism. Boethius was a man who lived very late in the break-up of the Empire, under Theodoric. The period, with its power of amalgating [sic] old and new, has been much underrated. Boethius hands on the Stoic memories; but it is not really necessary to deny that he was a Christian or assert that he was a nominal Christian. Many pagan philosophers were converted by Christian philosophy. His work was a sort of distillation of all that had been best in Paganism; small in quantity but good in quality. Thus he served very truly as a guide, philosopher and friend to many Christians; precisely because, while his own times were corrupt, his own culture was complete. Generally speaking, the cultured Mediterranean man had come to play this part towards northern men. His disciples had not read Homer, but he had; they did not remember one kingdom acknowledged from Scotland to Syria, but he did; they did not know in detail what fine shades of feeling or criticism had come with Catullus or Lucian, but he did. Thus (in the special case of Boethius) we find this mirror of maturity still reflecting a lost daylight in the darkest age; and playing a unique part, especially in the development of the English. Boethius, who had been martyred for justice by his barbarian master, wrote in prison a book called 'The Consolations of Philosophy'; in which he summed up all the truth and tradition of antiquity. Alfred of Wessex, the first great man of our own island story, wishing to educate his half-savage Saxons, assumes at once that it can be done best by translating Boethius. He also, like those who followed him, put a great deal into Boethius that is not in Boethius. He may be said to have completed the old Stoic's conversion to Christianity after his death. Chaucer, perhaps the last great Englishman of the same united Christendom, feeling the same need of portable philosophy, instantly turned to the same idea of a translation of Boethius. He also quotes from Boethius, consciously and unconsciously, in any number of his ordinary poems. Boethius was a point of view; it was a calm and cultured and well-balanced point of view; and the essential thing to realize is that a medieval man could have it as a common and normal point of view; and take it quite easily, like Chaucer.
[GKC, Chaucer, CW18:242-5]

Translations of this book, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, are still available, and can still have an effect. It affected me when I first heard about it in (of all places) a fraternity magazine! Though I have read it, I shall not attempt a review - I would make a far worse mess than the legend tells King Alfred made with the cakes. But it begins with Boethius in prison, and the mystic appearance of Philosophy as a beautiful woman with her robe (made by her own hands) bordered over and over with the great Q above the P yet connected by stairs - stirring and profound symbols teaching the resolution of the great conflict of the "liberal" versus the "technical" arts, and yet ignored by so many... the great prayer for wisdom she makes to God, for the enlightenment of Boethius... the explanation, settling forever the concept of "fortune" or "chance" versus the Divine Will... An amazing book read by people for more than a millennium, and still enlightening today.