The Bohemian Catholic Likes our Latest Gilbert

You can read her post here and comment if you wish. I'm taking my Gilbert on the road with me today and hope to devour it while passing the pastoral scenes of southeastern Wisconsin on our way to Madison to put up a relative's tree.

Happy Tuesday! One week till Christmas!

O Antiphons Begin Today

O Sapientia: “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.” Isaiah had prophesied, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.” (11:2-3), and “Wonderful is His counsel and great is His wisdom.” (28:29).

This week in Chestertonian excitement

I have a date for Friday night.

It's in front of my computer.

The date is with my daughter.

We're planning on watching Chesterton's play "The Surprise" on EWTN.

It's on at 9pm CST.

I hope you will make a date for Friday night, too!

You can watch it Thursday, but in Central time, it's on at 4am. I don't plan to be up. ;-)

Welcome Italia!

The Italian Chesterton Society Blog is here. If you know Italian, you're good. If not, you'll need a translation page.

Health

Health is a topic not often found on this blog.

Despite the fact that I am a Registered Nurse and quite interested in health, I also feel about it as Chesterton once wrote:

The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do it without destroying the health of the mind. Health is the most unhealthy of topics. GKC ILN, 8-10-1929

And being a nurse, I've seen it happen sometimes when someone has a health crisis, that they suddenly begin to focus unnaturally upon their own body and it does become, as Chesterton said, unhealthy. But, because a hospital stay encourages a person to focus on their body, it can sometimes, by its very nature as a health-inducing event, become an unhealthy (mind-wise) event. It takes real determination and force of will for the healthy (mind-wise) patient to re-balance after a health crisis back to a more unthinking habit of mind about health.

I hope I've made myself perfectly clear. I like health. I just don't want to talk about it. ;-)

My Gilbert arrived!

I have to admit, I haven't had an afternoon free yet to just sit down and read right through it.

I really like the cover. As you can see, it is the marvelous image of Gilbert gazing up at a star, perhaps he is meditating on the Star of Bethlehem. Anyway, because it's Christmas time, that's what I imagine. And swirling around the star, or emanating from it, are all these papers and letters, as if inspiration is coming to him just from gazing at the star.

The other way I see it is the letters and papers coming from Gilbert's head, going up to the star. Almost as if he is giving his writing to the Christ Child, and standing there free and child-like, emptying himself and offering everything to God, letting it all go.

I like that image because, as a writer too, I often get caught up in things that need doing, words that need writing, and forget To Whom I am Offering Everything. And sometimes, I am so busy staring at the papers (or the computer screen) that I forget to look up and see the Star.

This Christmas, my hope is that we will each take a little time to stare at the stars, and open our hearts to the coming of Christ. Let Him into your heart this Christmas, to be the Word, the strength, the whatever-it-is-you-need, to be the Love that you love with, the Faith that you believe with, the Hope that you hope in.

Only a few days remain, have a Blessed Advent.

Thursday's Dr. Thursday

Three Thursdays of Advent - a Trinity of Christmas Truths:
2. The Other King Who Warred Upon the Children

Today's posting requires a subtitle:

Its Own Enemies Have Made It More Illustrious

This is, perhaps, not the kind of essay you would naturally read to children. Nor does it make good bedtime reading for Advent. It is quite a bit more horrifying than Marley's Ghost - or than pre-haunted Scrooge. Far worse than the Abominable Snow Monster of the North, more insidious than the pre-dawn Grinch.

But it is part of Christmas, and we avoid it to our dismay.

In order for me to talk about it, then, you will have to bear with a somewhat long-winded (who me?) and allusive manner of discourse. I have a lot to say about this topic, and it comes at an auspicious moment. But I do warn you - though I will NOT be explicit about all the details it will not be pleasant. But it is important.

In order to get to the matter at hand, let us begin with something exciting and happy - Advent's great Countdown to Christmas. There are two remarkable facts to note here.

The word "countdown" became popular with Man's venture into space, as the rocket-people measured the time until launch. But the very first countdown was actually a count-UP. It occurs in the exceedingly famous and prescient From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, and measured the seconds until 22:46:40 - that is, 13 minutes and 20 seconds before 11PM on December 1 - the moment when the great cannon in Florida was fired, sending its capsule-shaped projectile towards the Moon!!!

Yes, the first count-UP ended not at zero, but at forty - a famous Biblical number. (Hmm.) However, long before Barbicane and J. T. Maston's computations. there was another form of countdown in use. In fact, the whole calendar of a whole great people was founded on a continual looking forward to... something. Strange to say, the moon played a role in it.

No it was NOT the Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews.
Read more.

Every so often in a village by a river in Italy, the king woke up in the morning and performed some unknown calculation, establishing how many days remained until the next full moon. He then called out the result of the computation, which probably had the effect of "Hey everybody! Our next big bash will come in 13 days!" (or whatever his calculations indicated). They liked parties, you see, and a full moon was as good a reason as any to have one.

As the little village became a great city, and the kingship gave way to a republic and other variations of governance, this "calling" of dates continued. The kingly chore of feast-announcing was maintained by a "priest", who announced the "Kalends" - the schedule of feasts which gives us our word "calendar". And though the Romans had months we can recognize, their days were numbered downwards: like children before Christmas, they were always looking forward to a future feast.

Alas. Now we have all the components - Rome, children, and Christmas - and we must attend, as GKC did for most of two chapters, to a dark and sad aspect of history, which has its continuance even today. I mean Carthage, child sacrifice, and Herod. I shall not summarize this here. You know quite well (or can read elsewhere) what happened in Carthage, and how Rome fought a losing battle to finally win - and the debate of WHY the Punic Wars happened (like why the American Civil War Between the States happened) will go on as long as Man has a history. GKC has been called wrong on this, as on other matters, and I shall not delve into that now. But he is right on its relation to the bigger picture - especially as it touches on the Christmas Story.

Last week we talked about the Magi, and the translation of that word. This week, we shall examine a far more mystical word. It is a word first heard from angels: "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Sabaoth." [Isaias 6:3] This Hebrew word Sabaoth is translated in one edition of the Vulgate as "exercituum" - which gives us "Holy holy, holy, Lord of the armies".

At first this may seem irrelevant, but we must understand what is going on here, and run our mental focussing lenses all the way out, to give us the wide-screen view. Perhaps Chesterton can assist:

It is often said with a sneer that the God of Israel was only a God of Battles, “a mere barbaric Lord of Hosts” pitted in rivalry against other gods only as their envious foe. Well it is for the world that he was a God of Battles. Well it is for us that he was to all the rest only a rival and a foe. [Cf. Lk 2:34 and and Mt 10:34] In the ordinary way, it would have been only too easy for them to have achieved the desolate disaster of conceiving him as a friend.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:228]

You see, there was a war going on, and God had already decided to fight on the losing side. (If you think I've missed something here, you'll have to read GKC's The Ball and the Cross: "The Cross cannot be defeated, for it is Defeat.")

Indeed! At Christmas God Himself took on aspects of the warrior. First, He took on our human form (as St. Paul sings so gloriously in Gal 4:4) - that is, a form capable of suffering and dying. (See more on this in Hebrews 10.) Life, as GKC might have said, is worth dying for.

Secondly, and far more relevant, He came as a scout, or an advance-guard, coming in secretly and subtly, to keep the Enemy from knowing what was going on:

By the very nature of the [Christmas] story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw's den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might in that sense have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:313]

Doesn't this ring a bell? Perhaps you might recall a scene in Rivendell and Gandalf addressing the Hobbits: “This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great.” [JRRT The Lord of the Rings II:2, 288]

And indeed that is exactly what happened. But at the same time, the Enemy was still hard at work - in a word, it was witchcraft, not that of Oz, Merlin, or Hogwarts, not of the Istari or of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, but real witchcraft, which is about attaining a godlike power over life: "People would understand better the popular fury against the witches, if they remembered that the malice most commonly attributed to them was preventing the birth of children." [GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:254]

That is what happened in Carthage, the "New Town" of the Phoenicians. That is what, somehow, was stuck in the mind of the Idumean king Herod the Great - who rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem. When the Magi came asking that puzzling riddle about the newborn King, Herod saw, in truth, how a baby could be a threat. And so he took action.

You can read about the next scene in St. Matthew, 2:16-18. It cannot be sanitized for the young. It ought not be sanitized for the young. There ARE enemies out there. They are deadly foes. They hate life, they hate light, and they especially hate children, and those who engender them, teach them, guard them and defend them. Let no one misunderstand that we are talking about a fairy tale here, even while I quote GKC about them: "The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." [GKC, "The Red Angel" in Tremendous Trifles]

You see, every attempt by our enemies, full of hate, bitter, and dark as they are, only goes to demonstrate the truth of the power of God better and better. At this very moment, there is a great whine going around the E-cosmos about somebody's dark compasses. But even a broken compass points north twice a day! (hee hee) Aristotle wrote a lot of nonsense (I will not explore it here) but in the hand of Aquinas the reasoning power of ancient Greece "bowed low in adoration" and in essence witnessed the truth of the Sacraments. Today's broken compass, spinning its never-ending orbit, stops and points to the True Pole: it exalts the Chair of Peter, advancing John Paul II's request in Ut Unum Sint better than a whole college of theologians.

Why bring that up here? Well - why is Herod a part of Christmas?

Herod recognised the danger of a child, and sent soldiers against the dangerous infant - he killed a lot of babies, but failed to achieve his intentions. The same has happened to tyrants and such throughout the centuries. Long ago Tertullian wrote: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." Yes. That is the point. The Holy Innocents, whose feast comes on December 28, were martyrs - witnesses to Truth. And truth has an Enemy, the "ancient dragon" or serpent [Rv 12:9] who has been a liar, and a hater, from the beginning. Those of us who choose the light thereby oppose the dark, the lie, the hate - and so put ourselves at risk, along with the Baby of Bethlehem. And how can it be otherwise, as long as we continue to call upon the Thrice-Holy, the God of Battles?

With a strange rapidity, like the changes of a dream, the proportions of things seemed to change in their presence. Before most men knew what had happened, these few men were palpably present. They were important enough to be ignored. People became suddenly silent about them and walked stiffly past them. We see a new scene, in which the world has drawn its skirts away from these men and women and they stand in the centre of a great space like lepers. The scene changes again and the great space where they stand is overhung on every side with a cloud of witnesses [cf. Heb 12:1], interminable terraces full of faces looking down towards them intently; for strange things are happening to them. New tortures have been invented for the madmen who have brought good news. [cf. Is 52:7] That sad and weary society seems almost to find a new energy in establishing its first religious persecution. Nobody yet knows very clearly why that level world has thus lost its balance about the people in its midst; but they stand unnaturally still while the arena and the world seem to revolve round them. And there shone on them in that dark hour a light that has never been darkened; a white fire clinging to that group like an unearthly phosphorescence, blazing its track through the twilights of history and confounding every effort to confound it with the mists of mythology and theory; that shaft of light or lightning by which the world itself has struck and isolated and crowned it; by which its own enemies have made it more illustrious and its own critics have made it more inexplicable; the halo of hatred around the Church of God.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:296-7]

Remember! "The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side." [GKC, on his deathbed. in Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650]

Next week, we shall see another aspect of Rome - and of Israel - as we count down to the Great Feast of Christmas.

--Dr. Thursday

Current Gilbert cover now on eBay

Gilbert's cover artist, Ben Hatke, has put the original art work from the cover of this month's Gilbert magazine up on eBay! If you liked this month's cover (and I've heard from many who do) you may want to help support a Gilbert artist and own a piece of beautiful artwork as well. Suitable for framing.

And if you love Ben's work, there are two more for sale which you can see on the Gilbert cover page, as well as these here.

For the Love of Literature

Today, my mail included Maureen's newest book, For the Love of Literature: Teaching Core Subjects with Literature. I am very excited to finally be able to hold this book in my hand.

Truth in advertising: I helped on this book. As Maureen states in her acknowledgements, I wrote some of the book descriptions, edited and helped in various other support roles (does coffee and hugs count? I think so.) on this book. However, it is still a book in which I wholeheartedly recommend, and I would even if I hadn't worked on it.

The reason is this book is so extremely practical and helpful to homeschoolers! And there is something I never knew in my previous readings of the book: how reader-friendly, and busy-mom-friendly it is. Because running down the side of the pages are shaded areas which announce the subject matter of that section. So, if you want math books, for example, you don't even need the Table of Contents. You can just thumb right to the "Math" section and quickly find a list of books.

I can't wait to take this book to my library. I want to start using it today. There are so many good book suggestions. Obviously, some of them you'll already know about, but I guarantee you there are books in there you've never heard of, and they are terrific books. And isn't that a wonderful thing, finding new terrific books?

Speaking of books, For the Love of Literature does something else that's wonderful: because it's written by a Catholic Homeschooling Mother (of Seven!), the Oldest of Whom is Almost Ready for College (read: experienced!), you can feel assured that this list only contains GOOD books. Books you will feel safe giving your children to read.

Now, if you don't have your Christmas list made out for yourself (and you really should, otherwise you know you're just going to get another pair of fuzzy slippers again for Christmas this year) add For the Love of Literature to your list and let your family know where to buy it: here. Do it quickly, Christmas is almost here.

At $12.95, it is a real bargain (it's thick!--255 pages of books, books, books!) for the amount of helpful information it contains. Tell the family to get priority shipping so it will come in time to get it under the tree. Merry Reading!

Fun and Games--Happy 2nd Anniversary ACS Blog!

Our second anniversary was on Saturday, December 8th, but, being the busy mother that I am, I forgot until today.

If you are interested in seeing our first post, read here. And our 1st anniversary post is here.

For our 2nd anniversary, I propose some fun and games. Prizes will be awarded when we can think of a good prize.

1. Create a good clerihew of either:
a) Father Brown
b) Gabriel Syme
c) Innocent Smith
d) Hudge and Gudge
e) Monsier Flambeau
or
f) Chesterton himself
g) Frances Blogg
h) Dale Ahlquist

Any and all clerihews/triolets/ballads may or may not be submitted to Gilbert magazine, depending on their ability to make us laugh.

2. Compose an anniversary triolet

3. Compose a Ballad of the 2nd Anniversary

4. Make sure to have a picnic on the floor or lunch on the roof, depending on the climate where you live. And even though the anniversary is officially past, you may have the picnic in honor of us anyway. Do it today!

5. Has there been a memorable post here that you easily recall, that had some sort of impact on you (good or bad)? Something particularly meaningful, or particularly funny? Let us know about it.

6. Who can name the two bits of produce that Chesterton's likeness has been reproduced on and reported on here on this blog?

Happy Anniversary!

Update to Prayer Request

Thanks for the continued prayers. The individual in question has told us that the interview yesterday went well, though for the present must await further indications, but is also most grateful for our prayers and suggestions.

Chestertonian Literary Type Question

A Chestertonian student asks the following question:

In the essay "A Drama of Dolls" in GKC's Alarms and Discursions,
GKC talks about a certain old puppet-play he saw, supposedly the
original tale of Faust, translated into English.
Question: Does anyone know the title of this play, and whether it can be
found, in paper or electronic form?
(Note this apparently is NOT the version by Goethe.)

If anyone knows the answer, please e-mail me (Nancy). Thanks.

Dr Thursday's First Thursday in Advent Post

Three Thursdays of Advent - a Trinity of Christmas Truths: 1. The Kings

Since in 2007 Advent is arranged so as to provide us with only three Thursdays, I have decided to take the ultimate GKC Christmas reference work - "The God in the Cave" from The Everlasting Man - and consider what GKC called "the trinity of truths symbolised here by the three types in the old Christmas story: the shepherds and the kings and that other king who warred upon the children." [CW2:316] Of course there are other ways of examining Christmas - there are countless ways - and while none of them shall really plunge to the depths of what really happened that night some 2000 years ago, it is part of the feast's true universality, not simply in its Chestertonian sense, that ALL of them happen to be true. The light, I mean the Light, pouring forth and radiating as from a great gemstone, is not lost in its fracturing - it is one of Dante's intangibles, and so is augmented. And each of us who take up the topic in our "hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons" [ibid CW2:301-2] by which that impossible "contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy" is "repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasised, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled" - each of us may have the satisfaction of being musicians in the Great Symphony of Christmas, where all who dare to play can give forth no dissonance.

And so, let us consider the Kings. (I must do them first as I can by no means treat Herod first, and I think it best to take Shepherds at the date closest to the Feast.)
Read more.

Who are these guys anyway? St. Matthew (chapter 2) calls them the "Magi". Most people, like GKC, call them "kings" or "Wise Men"; one modern translation calls them "astrologers". If we need to be modern, it would be far better to call them "scientists": the Bible text says very clearly "We observed his star in oriente". (The Greek and Latin term can be translated either "in the east" or "in rising".) Observed!!! Hmmm... astrologers concerned with the REAL sky? They are too busy with money, I mean charging people to tell about the future, crediting or blaming the poor wandering planets and the imaginary lines of the Zodiac. Never mind that no one is said to be born under the sign of Ophiuchus, though the sun definitely can be in that constellation, or that the twelve Zodiac constellations are hardly distributed evenly across the ecliptic, as reported in standard horoscopes. Never mind that the sun is still in Pisces at the Vernal Equinox - there are still some tie-dyed hippies with gray hair, swaying to the "Age of Aquarius" which is still over a century away. But people who actually look at the sky? Well, those of course have to be scientists, who are attentive to something real. If some of sky-watchers later went off and wrote silly predictions based on what they saw - who cares, whole reams of astronomers did that. (Another time we may explore this matter, as the history of science is most curious - think "phlogiston"!)

But why are they called "kings"? This is perhaps inferred from the fact that they brought royal treasures: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Also possibly from the fact that they had a rapport of dignity with King Herod. (Common folk strutting into the palace to ask riddles of the King? Ha!) But even more likely, from the "Epiphany psalm", 71 in the Vulgate, 72 in the Hebrew numbering:

"The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts."

And there is also this prediction:

Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thy eyes round about, and see: all these are gathered together, they are come to thee: thy sons shall come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at thy side. Then shalt thou see, and abound, and thy heart shall wonder and be enlarged, when the multitude of the sea shall be converted to thee, the strength of the Gentiles shall come to thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Madian and Epha: all they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and shewing forth praise to the Lord.
[Is 60, emphasis added. Note that the bit about the heart being enlarged comes up in the "Grinch" story, whose heart grew three sizes on Christmas Day.]

That quote even has something about observation: "Lift up thy eyes round about, and see"! Perhaps that is the best (and oldest) explanation of the use of "kings". The number "three" has all the numerological hints of mystery and reality, from the trisagion of Isaias 6:3 ("Holy holy holy") which we sing at Holy Mass to the triple-consonant roots of the Semitic languages, from the Trinity to the 64 entries in the Watson-Crick code by which DNA/RNA is translated into amino acids. But commentators explain it simply because St. Matthew names three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But if they are not (necessarily) kings, and are correctly called neither astrologers nor astronomers, what word should we use?

The Greek of St. Matthew uses the term "Magi" - the ancient word from Old Persian which also gives us "magic" - that is simply the "study" or discipline of the Magi. So perhaps we might say (with a bang on the table) that settles the Harry Potter debate. (hee hee) But really, the problem is simpler than that, though somehow connected. For the magic of the Magi was most likely neither sleight-of-hand (like a stage-magician) nor formal demonic invocation (which evil we give no references for). Neither was it simply a collection of superstitions, nor yet a compendium of science - but most likely an early hodge-podge of both, rather unfortunately hashed up and left unedited, since they had not yet had a true authority - an advisor, indeed a legal Advocate (or Paraclete, in the Greek) to come and assist them in their work.

Here I shall mention another word, sometimes scary in its use, but of no evil import in itself: the word "occult" - which simply means "hidden" (from claudere = to close or shut). Do not get mixed up here; this is not related to the word "cult" - another word with mixed senses - which comes from the root "to grow". When in the late 1600s Gilbert (I mean William Gilbert, not GKC!) wrote about the strange properties of amber (!) and of the strange stone of Magnesia, these things were considered occult. They, like Harry Potter's accio (Latin "I summon") caused the motion of things distant from themselves. Their forces were HIDDEN. No one knew how or why they worked. We now know somewhat more about them, though as our own Gilbert says, "we have to go on using the Greek name of amber as the only name of electricity because we have no notion what is the real name or nature of electricity." [The Common Man 170] You see, something "occult" is simply that - hidden. We use another Greek word, "mystery", which the Early Church used as we use "Sacrament" or "Eucharist" or even "Holy Mass" - to suggest something of a similar nature, and the word "mystery" can be just as liable to misunderstanding as "occult" can be. It is that sense of reversing that covering or hiding which gives us the opposite word, "detect" - with its derivatives "detection" and "detective" - and here we may possibly have the beginnings of a clue (sorry no pun intended) as to what the Magi were actually doing - though we must, at the same time, remember that there are things which are going to remain mysterious even when uncovered:

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. ... The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:230-231]

OK, we've seen this important passage before, but how does this apply to the Magi and the Star? I will attempt to uncover a bit of the mystery.

People talk about this "Star of Bethlehem" as if it were something quite dramatic, something awesome, something utterly refulgent (fulgur=lightning) - a nova, a supernova, a rare conjunction of planets or of planets with bright stars. Perhaps. But it seems far more in keeping with the other parts of the Story to ponder a very different variation of quality.

Perhaps the dramatic truth of the Star was not its brilliance, but simply its location - its new appearance in that place! Perhaps it was, like the birth it heralded, something rather subtle. One had to be paying VERY CLOSE attention to the many stars of the ancient heavens in order to know whether they were the same from one night to the next - remember there was no amber-power - I mean electricity - and it was DARK at night. (Cf. the quote from Isaias above!) Obviously the common people knew, unlike we moderns, how there were some stars which "wandered" among the others, and so we still call them the Wanderers, though we say it in whittled-down Greek as "planets". But careful observers (the scientists, the wise, the Uncoverers?) might have seen something different - something NEW - that the Common Man might not have noticed.

Nor does this subtle, quiet, barely noticed astronomy become any less dramatic for the true scientist. There are so many examples of tiny, barely detected (note that word!) variations - which are no less important for being subtle: the proper motion of stars, the parallax of the "fixed stars", sunspots, the dark (or bright) lines in spectra... the list goes on and on. Indeed, with this idea, this part of the Gospel becomes a little more understandable. The scene of Herod's audience with the Magi changes to a much more human character. He asks for the "exact time of the star's appearance" - as if he's really saying, "Star? What star? (These Wise Guys say they saw a "new" star... yeah, sure.) Any of you see a new star? What star are they chattering on about? But just in case these Wise Guys are on to something, I'd better take steps..." Really - if there was something, star or planet or meteor - something obvious - out there to be seen, he would not have had to ask the Magi - he could have asked anyone. But perhaps, what the Magi saw was something subtle - something which only THEY saw, and only THEY interpreted. Something which spoke to them directly. But as true scientists, they acted on their discovery: they took almost incredibly expensive gifts and set off on an almost incredibly doubtful journey.

The thing we must remember is that their "research" found their desired result: they found the new-born king. He, like the star, was something subtle, something unexpected, something SMALL and NOT VERY SHINY, appearing in a place just about everyone else paid no attention to. But it was not at Herod's palace that they presented their gifts - outrageous gifts, symbolic gifts, gifts which may have meant the cessation of their own lifes, their research... gifts given to an Infant, asleep on His mother's lap! Later that Child would say to another, "Sell what you have and give it to the poor, then come and follow Me." They received a different order, to go back home another way. We know they did so, but we don't know anything more. Some stories tell that they were indeed Christians and went on to do the work of their Lord - their feast day is given in Butler's Lives of the Saints as July 23, and their bones are said to rest in the cathedral of Cologne, but no one can say more for certain.

What do the Magi and their work tell us today? How does such work apply to us living in a high-tech world 2000 years later? GKC tells us:

...they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names: Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. [cf. Jn 7:37] But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete. Such learned men would doubtless have come, as these learned men did come, to find themselves confirmed in much that was true in their own traditions and right in their own reasoning. Confucius would have found a new foundation for the family in the very reversal of the Holy Family; Buddha would have looked upon a new renunciation, of stars rather than jewels and divinity than royalty. These learned men would still have the right to say, or rather a new right to say, that there was truth in their old teaching. But, after all, these learned men would have come to learn. They would have come to complete their conceptions with something they had not yet conceived; even to balance their imperfect universe with something they might once have contradicted. Buddha would have come from his impersonal paradise to worship a person. Confucius would have come from his temples of ancestor-worship to worship a child. ... Here it is the important point that the Magi, who stand for mysticism and philosophy, are truly conceived as seeking something new and even as finding something unexpected. That tense sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story, and even in every Christmas celebration, accentuates the idea of a search and a discovery. The discovery is, in this case, truly a scientific discovery. For the other mystical figures in the miracle play, for the angel and the mother, the shepherds and the soldiers of Herod, there may be aspects both simpler and more supernatural, more elemental or more emotional. But the Wise Men must be seeking wisdom; and for them there must be a light also in the intellect. And this is the light: that the Catholic creed is catholic and that nothing else is catholic. [note: The Greek word “catholic” means “universal”] The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal. Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal. It is far from certain, indeed, that they did not know it already. Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search. It is the realisation of this truth that gives its traditional majesty and mystery to the figures of the Three Kings; the discovery that religion is broader than philosophy and that this is the broadest of religions, contained within this narrow space. The Magicians were gazing at the strange pentacle with the human triangle reversed; and they have never come to the end of their calculations about it. For it is the paradox of that group in the cave, that while our emotions about it are of childish simplicity, our thoughts about it can branch with a never-ending complexity. And we can never reach the end even of our own ideas about the child who was a father and the mother who was a child.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:308-9, 310-311]

The pentacle, or five-pointed star, is an old symbol of magic - but, as J. R. R. Tolkien explains in his book on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it was ALSO a symbol of the five wounds of Christ, the five Joyful mysteries, and other fives of Christian lore. It is also to be noted that the pentacle here described had not five, but six points, formed of two equilateral triangles, one inverted - also called the "Star of David"; GKC has more on this earlier in the same book [CW2:186-7]. You may recall that we ourselves have previously seen that same symbol in our discussion on fractals, which also "branch with a never-ending complexity". Yes, for even mathematics has its place at Christmas, in order that every topic "from pork to pyrotechnics" will illustrate "the truth of the only true philosophy". [GKC The Thing CW3:189]

Next week we shall see about the "steps" Herod took as a reaction to the stellar discovery (whatever it really was) of the Magi.

--Dr. Thursday

Prayers working

Thanks to all of you praying for a blog reader who lost his job. He has an interview on Friday, so let's pray that it will work out if it should work out. I do find it amazing how quickly this has happened, and thank you to the people who wrote me and had ideas for this Chestertonian, it is much appreciated.

Love and Fables

In the most recent issue of Gilbert (the most recent which *I* have had delivered, --if only I could catch that Chestertonian mailman!-- which is the anniversary issue, all covered in silver) there is an essay entitled Love and Fables, which I enjoyed but considered it too short. I felt something was missing. So, as it read Illustrated London News, July 2, 1910, I decided to look it up and see if I could put the whole thing here for your consideration. Here it is:

I pointed out last week that our makers of ultramodern moralities (and

immoralities) do not really grasp how problematical a problem is.

They are not specially the people who see the difficulties of modern

life; rather, they are the people who do not see the difficulties. These

innovators make life insanely simple; making freedom or knowledge a

universal pill. I remarked it in connection with a clever book by Miss

Florence Farr, and took as an instance the proposition (which she

seemed to support) that marriage is good for the common herd, but

can be advantageously violated by special "experimenters" and

pioneers. Now, the weakness of this position is that it takes no

account of the problem of the disease of pride. It is easy enough to

say that weaker souls had better be guarded, but that we must give

freedom to Georges Sand or make exceptions for George Eliot. The

practical puzzle is this: that it is precisely the weakest sort of lady

novelist who thinks she is Georges Sand; it is precisely the silliest

woman who is sure she is George Eliot. It is the small soul that

is sure it is an exception; the large soul is only too proud to be the

rule. To advertise for exceptional people is to collect all the sulks and

sick fancies and futile ambitions of the earth. The good artist is he

who can be understood; it is the bad artist who is always

"misunderstood." In short, the great man is a man; it is always the

tenth-rate man who is the Superman. Read more.

But in Miss Farr's entertaining pages there was another instance of

the same thing which I had no space to mention last week. The writer

disposes of the difficult question of vows and bonds in love by

leaving out altogether the one extraordinary fact of experience on

which the whole matter turns. She again solves the problem by

assuming that it is not a problem. Concerning oaths of fidelity, etc.,

she writes: "We cannot trust ourselves to make a real love-knot unless

money or custom forces us to 'bear and forbear.' There is always the

lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep faith unless we swear

upon the Book. This is, of course, not true of young lovers. Every

first love is born free of tradition; indeed, not only is first love

innocent and valiant, but it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been

taught, and burns away experience in its own light. The revelation is

so extraordinary, so unlike anything told by the poets, so absorbing,

that it is impossible to believe that the feeling can die out."

Now this is exactly as if some old naturalist settled the bat's place in

nature by saying boldly, "Bats do not fly." It is as if he solved the

problem of whales by bluntly declaring that whales live on land.

There is a problem of vows, as of bats and whales. What Miss Farr

says about it is quite lucid and explanatory; it simply happens to be

flatly untrue. It is not the fact that young lovers have no desire to

swear on the Book. They are always at it. It is not the fact that every

young love is born free of traditions about binding and promising,

about bonds and signatures and seals. On the contrary, lovers wallow

in the wildest pedantry and precision about these matters. They do the

craziest things to make their love legal and irrevocable. They tattoo

each other with promises; they cut into rocks and oaks with their

names and vows; they bury ridiculous things in ridiculous

places to be a witness against them; they bind each other with rings,

and inscribe each other in Bibles; if they are raving lunatics (which is

not untenable), they are mad solely on this idea of binding and on

nothing else. It is quite true that the tradition of their fathers and

mothers is in favour of fidelity; but it is emphatically not true that the

lovers merely follow it; they invent it anew. It is quite true that the

lovers feel their love eternal, and independent of oaths; but it is

emphatically not true that they do not desire to take the oaths. They

have a ravening thirst to take as many oaths as possible. Now this is

the paradox; this is the whole problem. It is not true, as Miss Farr

would have it, that young people feel free of vows, being confident of

constancy; while old people invent vows, having lost that confidence.

That would be much too simple; if that were so there would be no

problem at all. The startling but quite solid fact is that young people

are especially fierce in making fetters and final ties at the very

moment when they think them unnecessary. The time when they want

the vow is exactly the time when they do not need it. That is worth

thinking about.

Nearly all the fundamental facts of mankind are to be found in its

fables. And there is a singularly sane truth in all the old stories of the

monsters - such as centaurs, mermaids, sphinxes, and the rest. It will

be noted that in each of these the humanity, though imperfect in its

extent, is perfect in its quality. The mermaid is half a lady and half a

fish; but there is nothing fishy about the lady. A centaur is half a

gentleman and half a horse. But there is nothing horsey about the

gentleman. The centaur is a manly sort of man - up to a certain point.

The mermaid is a womanly woman - so far as she goes. The human

parts of the monsters are handsome, like heroes, or lovely, like

nymphs; their bestial appendages do not affect the full perfection of

their humanity - what there is of it. There is nothing humanly wrong

with the centaur, except that he rides a horse without a head. There is

nothing humanly wrong with the mermaid; Hood put a good comic

motto to his picture of a mermaid: "All's well that ends well." It

is, perhaps, quite true; it all depends which end. Those old wild

images included a crucial truth. Man is a monster. And he is all the

more a monster because one part of him is perfect. It is not true, as

the evolutionists say, that man moves perpetually up a slope from

imperfection to perfection, changing ceaselessly, so as to be suitable.

The immortal part of a man and the deadly part are jarringly distinct

and have always been. And the best proof of this is in such a case as

we have, considered - the case of the oaths of love.

A man's soul is as full of voices as a forest; there are ten thousand

tongues there like all the tongues of the trees: fancies, follies,

memories, madnesses, mysterious fears, and more mysterious hopes.

All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to

the conclusion that some of those voices have authority and others

not. You may have an impulse to fight your enemy or an impulse to

run away from him; a reason to serve your country or a reason to

betray it; a good idea for making sweets or a better idea for poisoning

them. The only test I know by which to judge one argument or

inspiration from another is ultimately this: that all the noble

necessities of man talk the language of eternity. When man is doing

the three or four things that he was sent on this earth to do, then he

speaks like one who shall live for ever. A man dying for his country

does not talk as if local preferences could change. Leonidas does not

say, "In my present mood, I prefer Sparta to Persia." William Tell

does not remark, "The Swiss civilisation, so far as I can yet see, is

superior to the Austrian." When men are making commonwealths,

they talk in terms of the absolute, and so they do when they are

making (however unconsciously) those smaller commonwealths which

are called families. There are in life certain immortal moments,

moments that have authority. Lovers are right to tattoo each other's

skins and cut each other's names about the world; they do belong to

each other in a more awful sense than they know.

Cover Art from the Father Brown Reader for sale on E-bay!

Help support a Chestertonian family and get a one-of-a-kind piece of art to boot!

Reagan and Chesterton

I've just heard that Reagan quoted Chesterton in his Christmas at the Whitehouse talk in 1981. He was heard to quote:

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.

A good reminder to us during this Advent time of year.

Random Chestertonian Quote

"All habits are bad habits," said Michael, with deadly calm. "Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. You went mad about money, because you're an heiress."

"It's a lie," cried Rosamund furiously. "I never was mean about money."

"You were worse," said Michael, in a low voice, and yet violently. "You thought that other people were. You thought every man who came near you must be a fortune-hunter; you would not let yourself go and be sane; and now you're mad, and I'm mad; and serve us right."
Manalive, Chpater 3, G.K. Chesterton.

Chesterton and Christmas

Well, I got my wish, and am now the proud owner of Advent and Christmas Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton. I liked the back cover:

People are losing the power to enjoy Christmas through identifying it with enjoyment. When once they lose sight of the old suggestion that it is all about something, they naturally fall into blank pauses of wondering what it is all about. To be told to rejoice on Christmas Day is reasonable and intelligible, if you understand the name, or even look at the word. To be told to rejoice on the twenty-fifth of December is like being told to rejoice at quarter-past eleven on Thursday week. You cannot suddenly be frivolous unless you believe there is a serious reason for being frivolous. G.K Chesterton, "The New War on Christmas," December 26, 1925

This Advent, let us join G.K. Chesterton as he approaches the child Jesus. "You will come to find, as others before you, that Gilbert Keith Chesterton has walked into your life to make you laugh and think, to serve as your friend and mentor" (From the Introduction).

Dr. Thursday's Post

Argument and Truth

Nancy Brown, our dutiful bloggmistress, has recently posted excerpts from a comment made on one of my postings from last year. I must say it is quite gratifying to see my writing causing discussion. Addition, set theory, poetry and mathematics and the pursuit of truth... so many topics for exploration. At present I am extremely busy, but there are days when I sit here and wonder how to select the topic to write about... It reminds me of this little passage:

"He was restless just then and drafted about into the commonest crowds. He did no work lately; sometimes sat and stared at a blank sheet of paper as if he had no ideas."
"Or as if he had too many," said Gabriel Gale.
[GKC, "The Purple Jewel" in The Poet and the Lunatics, emphasis added]

It is a good book for many reasons; among others, these words of Gabriel Gale, two of my favourite lines in all of GKC:

"Were you ever an isosceles triangle?"

and

"I often stare at windows."

So do I, GG; so do I. But this book is even more important because it, like every other one of Chesterton's books, is really a slovenly autobiography, part of which is an even more slovenly, and half-poetic, attempt to get at truth, and distinguish the truth from things which are nothing more than appearance.

Which has been a matter of real contention in some bloggs and other forms of media. Nancy Brown has begun to explore this on her own blogg, here and here and here. Some matters seem clearly to be about truth: "This is true, we MUST accept it, even if uncomfortable or annoying." Some others, just as clearly, seem to be matters of taste: "I like this; though I approve of it and enjoy it; but it is of no concern that you do not find it so."

How to handle such cases? How to discern truth from taste? And how to let someone know about what MAY be a serious matter? Is this mushroom edible or deadly poison? Are you a mycophile gourmet? Or perhaps you are allergic to them? Or do you have some philosophical reason against eating fungi?

In exasperation, one might wish to see what the Bible has to say. But alas - there is the tradition of the last 500 years for each to interpret the Bible for one's self - this a most unsteady foundation. Excuse me - that is not the right way to go, for my topic today as GKC said, is "not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant." [prefatory note to The Everlasting Man] It is not even concerned with the differences between Christians and varieties of Pagans. It is merely my attempt to get a little further into the idea of difference - which I thought would make a welcome change from my discussion on addition. Hee hee.

Also it is well to consider this matter now, at the tail end of the Church Year, when we ponder the "Return of the King" and the promised final division of sheep and goats, all mysteries solved and all questions answered.
Read more.

It is significant that we can show biblical evidence to begin our exploration. For example:

On the one hand: St. Paul talks about how, when he was a child he talked and acted like a child - but he grew up and put childish ways aside.
But on the other hand: Jesus says "unless you change and become like little children, you shall by no means enter the kingdom."

On the one hand: Jesus said in praying one should not repeat one's words.
On the other hand: In Gethsemani, he prayed "using the same words as before".

But we are not here to sift these biblical matters. The important point, of course, in these, and every other such case, is the need to discriminate, to discern, to tell apart one thing or idea or word from another - that is, to divide - or (to crash our math symbols together) to find the difference. (But then division is really a form of repeated subtraction, just as multiplication is a form of repeated addition.)

People, even in the Catholic Church, have decided that the techniques of the Middle Ages are mostly boring, dull, and useless. It's especially funny to hear this from university people. But Chesterton knew quite well that those methods were not only amazingly interesting, but powerfully useful:

I revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done.
[GKC, Heretics CW1:46]

Yes, at that famous little cable TV place that I used to work at, people knew that the system was founded upon "Thirteenth Century Metaphysics" - simply because it was founded on reason. And as Father Brown points out (let us say it now in chorus): "You attacked reason, it's bad theology."

To proceed. The word "argument" comes up in such discussions. Someone is "arguing" over whatever matter is at hand. But how did those people of long ago argue? What REALLY happened? Does anyone know?

(Please don't bring up the "angels on the head of a pin" for now; we can do that one some other time.)

Well, first of all, the "disputation" was a very important part of education. The only remnant I know of is the "proofs" still introduced in high school geometry and seen in other branches of math. But it was an important idea in the Middle Ages, and good exercise, not just for future priests, lawyers, and physicians, but for anyone who wanted to use his brain to deal with reality. Moreover, it was done by very serious people, not for anger or malice or "humour" (what can that mean?) or even to convince the doubtful - no, it was used by people (often very friendly people) who were in deep, complete, and utterly full agreement with each other.

Are you amazed? You should be. If I had time, I would give you samples from some fascinating books on that era. One in particular which is quite amazing to examine is Gratian's The Treatise on the Laws (with) The Ordinary Gloss, a work dating as far back as 1170. But I can give a far more recent example, which is both instructive and amusing:

My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end; for I am sure that he argued energetically with the soldiers among whom he died, in the last glory of the Great War. It is reported of me that when I was told that I possessed a brother, my first thought went to my own interminable taste for reciting verses, and that I said, "That's all right; now I shall always have an audience." if I did say this, I was in error. My brother was by no means disposed to be merely an audience; and frequently forced the function of an audience upon me. More frequently still, perhaps, it was a case of there being simultaneously two orators and no audience. We argued throughout our boyhood and youth until we became the pest of our whole social circle. We shouted at each other across the table, on the subject of Parnell or Puritanism or Charles the First's head, until our nearest and dearest fled at our approach, and we had a desert around us. And though it is not a matter of undiluted pleasure to recall having been so horrible a nuisance, I am rather glad in other ways that we did so early thrash out our own thoughts on almost all the subjects in the world. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarrelled.
[GKC, Autobiography CW16:187, emphasis added]

As you can see, these beloved brothers knew the DIFFERENCE. But then what is an argument? Why have a disputation?

Ever hear a smarmy educator burble on about teaching "problem-solving" in school?

Any clue what that might possibly mean? (Ask me about recursion another time; they do NOT mean recursion.)

Argument is a CLASSICAL form of "problem-solving". It is NOT about "convincing". It is not a form of "verbal fighting". It is NOT an expression of anger or of ME being right and YOU being wrong.

It is simply a very clever technique of GETTING TO THE TRUTH.

But of course, I have transgressed. I have mentioned religious things, and the horrid Middle Ages - and that boring detective-story-writing journalist and his nasty brother who was even convicted of libel. (A long story for another time.)

Ah - despite all this, perhaps there are still some readers left to me. They want to know more.

I have already used up quite a bit of my posting-space allotment for today, so I can barely summarise the technique here. Basically, there is a thing called the "circle" - which is an odd term, considering there are really only two players in the game. But it means that the two alternate in their turns to speak. (I here refer to the description in Shallo's Scholastic Philosophy.)

First move: The Defendant states a claim on a matter. It may be something perfectly obvious, or something deeply abstruse. But the Defendant must give any necessary details on the meaning of the claim, and give "short, solid arguments" (formal explanations using logic) proving the parts of the claim.

Second move: the Objector may attack either the claim directly, or the arguments (formal logic explanations) by which it was proved.

The situation then reverses, and now the Defendant may attack the various elements of the Objector's work.

And so on. Until there is a resolution, or they discover a lack of sufficient information, or (perhaps) it is dinnertime, or bedtime, or something else intrudes. (In Socrates' case it was the hemlock.)

One of the most important of the possible moves in the attack is announced by the word distinguo. (No this is NOT a Hogwarts spell, though it is a Latin verb in the first-person singular indicative!) This word means "I distinguish, separate, divide in parts". In argument it is used to break apart something (say a word) which may have been used in a general sense, and show that its various separate specific meanings apply in different ways - for the original claim may apply in some senses, but not in others - as it is required to find the truth, each of the various cases must be examined.

Yes, at the end of time, all our arguments, and all our searches shall be terminated, and the final DISTINGUO shall be pronounced: "For there is not any thing secret that shall not be made manifest, nor hidden that shall not be known and come abroad." [Luke 8:17] Then we'll get our papers back and see where our mistakes were.

But for now, as we work in joyful hope, let us distinguish something very important. We can never tolerate error. Error is error, whether it be mathematical or logical, or historical or theological. But that does not mean we must ourselves COMMIT ERROR by pointing out error: "And why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye: but the beam that is in thy own eye thou considerest not?" [Luke 6:41] We must always bear love in mind - love is "willing the good of the other" - and so must practise fraternal correction in love. It is again that matter of distinction, of telling apart:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious.
[GKC, The Thing CW3:157]

I have rambled on for quite some time, but perhaps you have begun to see something here. Let us argue in charity, with love, with our eyes seeking truth and not our own "winning" or glory. Truth is not a game score, and, since it is intangible, has the property Dante remarks on (in Purgatorio) that its DIVISION actually INCREASES its possession. Anna Leonowens put the same idea in rhyme:

It's a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought:
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you'll be taught."
[Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I"]

Or, to use the modern words, it's a "win-win" scenario.

But let us always argue (and read, write, learn, teach, blogg) - in love, that is (as GKC said) with our BROTHER.

--Dr. Thursday.