Chesterton at Ave Maria

I had the opportunity to visit Ave Maria University's campus yesterday, and wandered over to the book store.

I was impressed by the large number of Chesterton titles they had there. They looked like a distributor for Ignatius Press ;-).

I'm glad this educational institution has seen the wisdom of studying the works of the great GKC.

Another way to reach More Chesterton Audio

From Ryan:
I've posted some links to more Chesterton audio here.

Just thought you'd like to know.

God Bless,
Ryan
Sonitus Sanctus

More Chesterton Audio

Update!!!

GKCleveland now has 11 G.K. Chesterton audio-essay readings up on the net.

They can be downloaded for FREE here.

Nine of these same essays can be found at this site.

Please feel free to link to these sites (or spread the news in some strange manner).

Thank you
Matthew Lewis
GKCleveland

Lent

What does it mean? Will you give up something? Add something to your spiritual routine? How will we prepare for Easter?

On Ash Wednesday, I was paradoxically at a Disney park in Florida. It was an odd day for fasting and abstinence (from meat). Standing in line for a park ride, we observed several people with ashy crosses on their foreheads, and felt a certain sense of communion with them. As we fasted, we noticed that there was food offered everywhere, to satisfy every whim.

But we also noticed that even in a place like that, one truly could fast. And think about fasting, in a different way than in a living room or office devoid of temptations.

As we choose something this lent, let's try to choose something other than what would be healthy for us anyway (no desserts or seconds, giving up chocolate) and think about what we can do that would be a true sacrifice. Many bloggers give up blogging. Sometimes that's about making room for other things, sometimes its about breaking an addiction, sometimes its about taking a breather from it. Maybe it is a true sacrifice for some people.

A true sacrifice. What is that? Let's contemplate that as the Lenten season begins.

And if you haven't read this yes, I do recommend it.

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

A Voyage to Something Wonderful, and Giraffes

"Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed."
[GKC, Introduction to The Defendant]

We have begun Lent, where we remember our mortality, and the strange good news about how a man died. It seems so soon after Christmas, as indeed this year's spring full moon comes very early - so you will not mind my paraphrasing a Christmas story:

Jesus was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The centurion stuck his spear into his side, and Pilate released his body for burial.

Jesus was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Jesus was as dead as a door-nail.

There is no doubt that Jesus was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

Have you ever thought about it that way? Save this for Good Friday and try reading it for three days running. You'll see.

Something wonderful did come of that story. Something called "good news".

And somehow, this attitude - which I have tried to give you a taste of, by mutilating Dickens - is the essence of GKC's great Orthodoxy which we are considering at present. (Note! We are not proceeding into the matter of that Dead Man - not today. We'll get there at the right point.)

But what's this about a voyage? Do you really want to know? It's dangerous, and you may not come back unchanged...
Read more.

As I pointed out previously, we are trying to work through the experience of a certain man - Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a writer who called himself a journalist - and the thoughts of that man as he proceeded to find out that something he had "always" known was actually something fresh, startling, and utterly new.

This is hard to do. GKC himself found it hard to express. He spent quite a lot of time talking about it, and used "parables" - or analogies, or suggestions - to try to get this idea across, conjuring up example after example, ridiculous fantasy upon ridiculous fantasy.... To communicate what? Not the weighty ideas of the Kingdom of God - nothing that sublime, at least not for the present. Just the idea that the world (the kosmos, if we might be so bold and Greek) - yes, with humans, with newspapers, with pens and paper, with telephones and fireplaces, with beer and bacon, babies and burials - all this can be seen as something wonderful. (We need that song from "The King and I" here.) "Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed." What does that mean? It means we can recover our sense of the Truth of All That Is, the splendid freshness of seeing things for the first time, if we will but "change our eyes"...

This is not easy to do. It is not even easy to get this idea across. (Look how much trouble I am having!) The biggest problem is getting people's attention - and then keeping it.

Here's another, earlier, attempt from GKC:

The merely educated can scarcely ever be brought to believe that this world is itself an interesting place. When they look at a work of art, good or bad, they expect to be interested, but when they look at a newspaper advertisement or a group in the street, they do not, properly and literally speaking, expect to be interested. But to common and simple people this world is a work of art, though it is, like many great works of art, anonymous. They look to life for interest with the same kind of cheerful and uneradicable assurance with which we look for interest at a comedy for which we have paid money at the door. To the eyes of the ultimate school of contemporary fastidiousness, the universe is indeed an ill-drawn and over-coloured picture, the scrawlings in circles of a baby upon the slate of night; its starry skies are a vulgar pattern which they would not have for a wallpaper, its flowers and fruits have a cockney brilliancy, like the holiday hat of a flower-girl. Hence, degraded by art to its own level, they have lost altogether that primitive and typical taste of man - the taste for news. By this essential taste for news, I mean the pleasure in hearing the mere fact that a man has died at the age of 110 in South Wales, or that the horses ran away at a funeral in San Francisco. Large masses of the early faiths and politics of the world, numbers of the miracles and heroic anecdotes, are based primarily upon this love of something that has just happened, this divine institution of gossip.

When Christianity was named the good news, it spread rapidly, not only because it was good, but also because it was news. So it is that if any of us have ever spoken to a navvy in a train about the daily paper, we have generally found the navvy interested, not in those struggles of Parliaments and trades unions which sometimes are, and are always supposed to be, for his benefit; but in the fact that an unusually large whale has been washed up on the coast of Orkney, or that some leading millionaire like Mr. Harmsworth is reported to break a hundred pipes a year. The educated classes, cloyed and demoralized with the mere indulgence of art and mood, can no longer understand the idle and splendid disinterestedness of the reader of Pearson's Weekly. He still keeps something of that feeling which should be the birthright of men - the feeling that this planet is like a new house into which we have just moved our baggage. Any detail of it has a value, and, with a truly sportsmanlike instinct, the average man takes most pleasure in the details which are most complicated, irrelevant, and at once difficult and useless to discover. Those parts of the newspaper which announce the giant gooseberry and the raining frogs are really the modern representatives of the popular tendency which produced the hydra and the werewolf and the dog-headed men. Folk in the Middle Ages were not interested in a dragon or a glimpse of the devil because they thought that it was a beautiful prose idyll, but because they thought that it had really just been seen. It was not like so much artistic literature, a refuge indicating the dulness of the world: it was an incident pointedly illustrating the fecund poetry of the world.
[GKC, "A Defence of Useful Information", The Defendant]

Ah - did you stumble over "navvy" there? A navvy is a British term meaning "labourer employed in excavation". Then there was another term people persist in stumbling over - this "dragon" thing, as if there was something wrong in it. They've missed the strange truth GKC is getting at. I hesitate to use this next quote, because it makes me laugh... every time GKC uses this certain word, you almost KNOW he's trying to get our attention - but then that's my purpose too. OK, here you go:

"When first the giraffe was described by travellers it was treated as a lie. Now it is in the Zoological Gardens; but it still looks like a lie.
[GKC ILN Oct. 21, 1911 CW29:176, emphasis added]

But there really areflying dragons, webbed lizards of the genus Draco found in the East Indies, and I have recently learned that another real thing called dragon's blood (which comes from plants, not lizards) has several uses - perhaps as many as twelve - but I'm waiting to hear from a traveller. Hee hee.

Alas. If we are to "change our eyes" we shall most likely look rather odd, even as we find everything else to begin to look odd. But it is worth looking a fool, if we are to recover the splendid vision of the New. (We shall hear more about this strange "looking like a fool" if we ever get to chapter 2.) But how to do this? Go off, like Bilbo, on an adventure? Nasty inconvenient things - we might find dragons! "A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs." [GKC, Heretics CW1:72] Or is it that you'll find it inconvenient? But: "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." [GKC, ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242] Ah, I see, that's what is keeping you. Very well; I can remove all that, if you will just come along... yes, through the screen, that's right. Climb right in. It won't hurt, and although I must, by the rules of my own craft, use magic, I guarantee that I will use nothing more harmful than what you are already using in order to read my words today. Dangerous, to be sure, in the wrong hands - but then that's the magic of the Keys. OK! Here we go...

Let us, then, set off on a voyage of discovery. What shall we take? Let us consult one of the Great Works of Travel - I mean something by Jules Verne, say Journey to the Center of the Earth - so let us collect our handkerchiefs, our provisions, our clothes and bedding, our lights, our climbing gear, our ropes (forgotten by poor Sam Gamgee, but restored to him in Lorien!) and all the scientific equipment we may need - we are hoping to make discoveries, after all. We are off, with GKC - OH WHAT FUN IT SHALL BE! - on a journey to adventure!!!

Having met with Uncle Gilbert at his old digs in Battersea, we get into a boat, set forth down the Thames, and travel, lo, many days, through the mist and fog. Terrible storms rise up, and we lose all sense of direction - but our vessel is seaworthy and we fight through long nights of terror, to a bright sunrise and a clear sky, with our lives and all our stores intact. Bacon and eggs are frying, coffee and tea are ready. Toast has been made, jam is set out, and we break our fast... "Land Ho!" our lookout cries! We are thrilled beyond words, as at 2 AM that October morning in 1492, the great thrill pervaded the crew of three little ships... But as little as they do WE know - we are about to discover something even more wonderful than an entire unknown hemisphere.

Our hardy crew brings us to a safe harbour on an empty beach, amid rocks and sand. We climb out and make our way up above the beach - where something strange meets our eye:

We stare, blinking, in the early sunlight. What is this? A church? A house? Could this be some alien teleportation device? Some recently built set for a soon-to-be-released Hollywood flick? Some seaside getaway for a wealthy recluse? Maybe even a barbaric temple? How curious it is! We are fascinated, and wish to come closer, to study it and admire it.... We might learn so much from it! But - do we have any clue where we are? The storm has taken us so far from home, our compass (as for the Earth-Center journeyers) has been misbehaving for days... But hark! Is that - is that someone - another human? A native of this strange place? He approaches! How might we begin to make ourselves known to him? God only knows what strange tongue he speaks. We begin, with simple hand motions, hoping to convey our friendly harmlessness and our wishes to approach the strange structure we see before us.

His mouth opens and we wonder what this foreign human voice shall say...

"Look 'ere, you crazy lot! Goggling at ol' Brighton Pavilion like you've never seen 'er before? Lot of escaped lunatics, if you arsk me. Gar, I'm thirsty. Stand me a drink?"

We look at each other, our faces twisted with shock. We find we are back in England - on the south coast - at Brighton! That strange building is none other than the Brighton Pavilion built in 1784 and later revised into this oriental palace. This uncouth alien is just a common English navvy (see above) taking some sea air before going to his work.

Dullards? Fools? Escaped lunatics? Nitwits? Time-wasters? Simpletons?

No, we have done something far more important than Columbus, found something more powerful than Newton, Maxwell, or Einstein, experienced a communication from far further than Morse, Bell, or Marconi... One might write a whole chapter about the important work we have just accomplished. [See, e.g., "The Round Road; Or, The Desertion Charge" in Manalive or "The Desert Island" in The Ball and the Cross, or "The Coloured Lands" in The Coloured Lands. But especially CW1:211 and CW2:143]

You and I and GKC - we have discovered England. (From afar we hear someone shout, stop the presses!)

No, we have found Eden again. For one tiny moment, the Divine Voice has spoken: ephpheta - only this time our eyes have been opened. (cf. Mark 7:34)

This is what shall come in the remainder of the book. Your eyes will be opened. You will discover the place where you live, and see it as you saw it that first day; you shall hear the things you know as if you had heard them for the first time. You will find Good News.

Oh my friend! Come! The tide is about to turn! The wind is fresh, the sky clear! Get your gear ready, and set off with us, for the voyage has begun!

--Dr. Thursday

2008 Conference Planning

Sean has conference info on his blog.

At a High School Somewhere in the Midwest....

I got an e-mail recently from a high school teacher who told me that for a break in his logic classes, he was having the students write Triolets and Clerihews.

I think that's pretty cool, don't you?

New Chesterton AudioBook: Heretics

Got this note from Ryan:

I've posted some links to a just-completed audio version of Chesterton's Heretics:

Thanks, Ryan!

Answering Lunacy (or Letters)

There was a letter to the editor in the latest Gilbert magazine which I feel the need to respond to and I'm going to do it here.

The person implied that because the Harry Potter books seemed to her to endorse assisted suicide, she could not see how anyone could find them "Christian" as some people claim of the Harry Potter books.

I should very much like to know what type of fiction this letter writer does like to read.

If she reads mysteries, for example, quite often there is a murder, robbery or some such crime committed. The detective then solves the crime. Since Christians know that murder and robbery go against certain commandments, should they read mysteries?

If she reads the Bible, she must know that there is murder, robbery, adultery, suicide, and a whole host of other crimes and sins committed there. Should a Christian read the Bible?

If she reads novels of any sort, there are usually people who have problems and sin in various ways. Novels generally revolve around someone becoming aware of their sins and repenting, or perhaps being consigned to hell. Should a Christian read novels at all?

The criticism of Harry Potter that it condones assisted suicide is about as silly as criticizing Father Brown for investigating murders. In both cases, it is quite clear that certain behaviors are good, while others lead to a life of ruin, and perhaps even damnation.

I find the criticism that Harry Potter is bad because it contains people sinning is off base. Last time I checked, we all sin, and that's pretty much the human story, in real life, as well as in fictional life.

Sean's Hernia Update

Timothy Jones' Blog: Old World Swine

Mentioned in the Tremendous Trifles column of the latest Gilbert magazine, (although the address didn't work for me, here it the right one), Mr. Jones has a new blog. Mrs. Jones and I (Mrs. Brown) should get together some time and talk about our maiden names. ;-)

Chesterton YouTube

G.K. Chesterton in Sight & Sound

H/T: Stephen F.

Dr. Thursday's Post

I have the slowest internet connection in the world. But here, thanks to Dr. Thursday, is a post!

Expelling False Ideas: Newman's Apologia; GKC's Orthodoxy

"False ideas may be refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled."
[JHN APVS]

Having opened the matter of the great John Henry Newman last week, I find it necessary to comment further. I cast back in my memory, trying to recall whether I had indeed read the book I referred to - that is Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua - and went and pulled it off the shelf and began an exploration (possibly my second, I really don't recall). I rapidly found that it is so important for our study of GKC's Orthodoxy that I must strongly suggest you make the attempt to read it. It does present some difficulties for an American of the early 2000s: it is written in a very high, British, and scholarly style. (There is a big difference between the academic Newman and the newspaper writer Chesterton.) Even more tiring is its meticulous consideration of matters that are small, tedious, and boring, especially since the typical American of the early 2000s will have no clue who Newman is talking to, or about - like the Reverend Charles Kingsley, who was the chief antagonist in a controversy about something Newman had written. Kingsley and Newman's other foes are are all gone, leaving no trace, except as they appear as opponents in Newman's discussion. Oh. That sounds like Heretics, doesn't it? But wait, there's plenty more. You will be surprised.
Read more.
But first... Here is something unexpected, and of delightful interest! In the set-up Newman provides, to explain why he is forced to explain himself, he has something typical blogg-readers will recognise! There is an almost line-by-line critique (I believe the web term often used is "fisking") of a letter from Kingsley. It, and the other back-and-forth discussions in the set-up, give a whole new perception to the so-called rancor, abuse, negativity, misquoting, misattribution... the list of all the rude and trite grade-school snubbing, poking, hitting, and ridicule that our modern "Media" writers and talking-heads and blogg-writers use consistently. The only thing lacking is a "bloggspot.com" address. It is just delightful. Why mention this? Because of its clear Chestertonian link, of course.
Proud owners of CW1 will immediately chant "The Batchford Controversies" - the splendid collection of ping-pong articles of the controversy between Chesterton and Blatchford. Who was that? Robert Blatchford was the editor of the Clarion; he published some articles speaking of Christianity in a negative (if not derogatory) sense - but magnanimously permitted GKC to give lengthy rebuttals. (See CW1:369-395.) This happened in 1904. All of this, of course, parallels (and greatly excels in intellectual prowess and real interest) the whine of the talking-heads, and is of course a bit better at spelling, grammar, and considered thought than the great majority of bloggerdom, both posting and commenting.

An aside: Bloggs, after all, are merely one modern version of a newspaper with a device to provide letters-to-the-editor. Here's GKC, writing in 1925, about bloggs: "...every citizen ought to have a weekly paper of this sort to splash about in ... this kind of scrap book to keep him quiet."
[G.K.'s Weekly April 4, 1925, quoted in Ward's Gilbert Keith Chesterton497]

Whew, where was I? Oh. Newman's Apologia. To resume:
As difficult and yet interesting as that part is - I mean this "set-up" which explains why Newman is writing the book - the meat and main body of the rest of the book is this:

"I will draw out, as far as may be, the history of my mind; I will state the point at which I began, in what external suggestion or accident each opinion had its rise, how far and how they were developed from within, how they grew, were modified, were combined, were in collision with each other, and were changed; again how I conducted myself towards them...
[Newman, "II. True Mode of Meeting Mr. Kingsley", Apologia Pro Vita Sua]

In other words, Apologia is to Newman what Orthodoxy is to Chesterton - or so it appears to me.

Obviously, GKC proceeds in a far less rigorous and far more "slovenly" manner. But his work is no less powerful, and indeed, no less truthful - again, or so it appears to me. Consider, if you will, the next lines of GKC's Preface, especially in light of those lines from Newman I just quoted:

It [This book] deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology.
[GKC Orthdoxy]

GKC intends to examine what HE believes, and (to some extent) how he came to believe it. As we shall hear shortly (maybe even next week), "...I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe." [CW1:211] Remember this, as we go further into the book. GKC is not really trying to convince YOU of something - though much of his writing, especially in this book, tends to have that effect! He is telling us about his own thoughts, and how he convinced himself. GKC concludes his preface by saying that he "regards it [Christianity] as amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence." [Orthodoxy preface] As I have pointed out elsewhere, using the grand "Prefatory Note" from GKC's 1925 book, The Everlasting Man, "this study is not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant. Much of it is devoted to many sorts of Pagans rather than any sort of Christians..." Perhaps here he might have said "it is devoted to many sorts of lunatics rather than any sort of sane men" - though that seems more appropriate a comment for Heretics. But perhaps, as you shall see, if we ever get to the main text, where the form of Heretics tends to be by person, the form of Orthodoxy tends to be by concept. I shall give you a rough sense of what we shall see:

We shall consider, with an echo back to his The Defendant - GKC's introduction called "In Defence of Everything Else". (We must recall that the Latin apologia - which I understand is a Greek borrowing - means "defence".) As I have belaboured for three postings now, GKC began with Newman, and he shall pay him homage in this most suitable manner. (I am still waiting to hear back from any young researcher seeking a dissertation topic...)

Then we visit the mentally disturbed in "The Maniac". On this let us be perfectly clear - as so few are, perhaps because they have not yet read The Poet and the Lunatics. Or heard about how GKC and his wife would entertain themselves:

I remember that we strolled out one day, for a sort of second honeymoon, and went upon a journey into the void, a voyage deliberately objectless. I saw a passing omnibus labelled "Hanwell" and, feeling this to be an appropriate omen, we boarded it and left it somewhere at a stray station, which I entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where the next train went to. He uttered the pedantic reply, "Where do you want to go to?" And I uttered the profound and philosophical rejoinder, "Wherever the next train goes to." It seemed that it went to Slough; which may seem to be singular taste, even in a train. However, we went to Slough, and from there set out walking with even less notion of where we were going.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:202]

Now, both Hanwell and Slough are (were?) sites of lunatic asylums. (I see that I have considered this topic previously) Alert ears who hear Scrooge mention retiring to "Bedlam" or the response "Belleview" to the taxi-driver in "Miracle on 34th Street" can understand how these names touched those who read GKC. GKC understood, in the real sense, the important things about the insane - which is what really makes them insane: it is not the loss of their humanity, but the loss of their reason.

Then, he leaps from one form of insanity to another, and looks at "The Suicide of Thought". Here, he richly and wonderfully anticipates John Paul II's Fides et Ratio with his powerful words:

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
[CW1:236]

We shall perhaps plunge into the ancient sense of argument, and see how these two link in a sort of wave-particle duality... but I must not try to explain everything now.

The fourth chapter, called "The Ethics of Elfland" is perhaps among the most printed of GKC's writing. Part of it, as I have learned from Fr. Jaki's Chesterton a Seer of Science, was reprinted in Great Essays in Science, a title in the Pocket Library: "There was Chesterton in the company of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Henri Fabre, J.R. Oppenheimer, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell, so many giants in mathematics, physics, and natural history. Chesterton was also in the company of such prominent interpreters of science as John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and even T. H. and Julian Huxley." [Jaki, CASOS] Amazing. You will find out why when we get there.

Next is "The Flag of the World" - where we find out why suicide is so bad, and we hear echoes from The Man Who Was Thursday - and, therefore, we also hear about martyrs. We shall get a tiny taste of the God's-eye view of creation, as we hear that "A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has 'thrown off'." - Again, from Jaki I learned a deeper truth here, because the Hebrew bara used for the verb "create" has a sense of hacking or chopping off.

Then comes "The Paradoxes of Christianity" - which begins, oddly enough, with even more about science. (And here you thought it was about theology?) But attend: "When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key." [CW1:287] I know, I know - GKC's not getting into the Petrine Commission... not quite yet. But if you want more on that, you can find it in GKC's The Everlasting Man see CW2:346 et seq. (Also see Jaki's The Keys of the Kingdom for more details.) We shall also see something which provides a striking scene in none other than The Phantom Tollbooth - but I must not spoil it for you. (See if you are able to spot it for yourself!)

The next chapter, "The Eternal Revolution," will provide a presaging of an important Chestertonian motif, brought to a deeper and richer presentation in his 1911 Ballade of the White Horse:

If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post.
[CW1:320]

"The Romance of Orthodoxy" fleshes out something GKC expresses in an earlier chapter, tying in with insanity:

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
[CW1:305]

It will cause all kinds of havoc, speaking of things like miracles and "progress" - just consider this one sentence! "If you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot think it illiberal that they should go there on flying dragons; you can only think it unlikely." But it gets even more powerful, and simultaneously mor3e controversial:

...let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
[CW1:343]

The conclusion, "Authority and the Adventurer," gives an expected summary - which is, of course, full of unexpected things:

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, "For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence.
[CW1:348]

We hear, almost in a kind of an echo, great themes which shall sound in full strength in his 1925 The Everlasting Man such as the literary style of Jesus. [CW2:332] I shall go no further here except to note this is the chapter which gives the ultimate distinction between the good angels and the bad angels:

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. ... solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. [CW1:325-6]

Let us prepare, then to learn - in particular, to learn to be able to take ourselves lightly - that we may not fall by force of gravity. GKC will help us learn.

--Dr. Thursday

FYI: Personal stuff

Please pray for Sean, editor of Gilbert magazine, today. He is having surgery to repair a hernia.

And here is some personal information about my travel schedule over the next two weeks.

C.S. Lewis fans: newsletter

From Robert Trexler, editor of the CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society:

Attached is the latest issue of CSL. In it you will find:

* A feature article by Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia (the speaker for our Feb 8th meeting)
* An annoucement of our 40th Anniversary Weekend conference in August 2009.
* Seven reviews of recent books related to George MacDonald.
* Two monthly meeting reports, including the meeting with Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Wade Center.
* The contents of all our issues published in 2007.

I will forward the (20 page) PDF file to anyone and everyone whom may enjoy it. You can become a subscribing member (in the US) for $10 dollars - - - $20 for foreign members.

Newsletter subscription information:
Email or web-site.

Cheese Poetry Makes another Comeback

Matt has written a little poem about cheese, which you should read.

H/T: Dr. Thursday

Expelled: The Movie

I just watched this trailer and read about the movie. It is very intriguing and makes a good point, a point any thinking person in this country is asking. Why is it PC to believe in Darwinism and forbidden to NOT believe in it? Is Darwinism Dogma in our country? It would seem so.

The movie is being released in February, and I think it would be interesting to see it and discuss it, especially with teens and young adults.

ChesterCast

Sean mentioned in the latest issue of Gilbert Magazine about ChesterCast, and I tried the link he provided in Tremendous Trifles and found I had to dig a little further, so I am linking the ChesterCast to you here.

According to the site, you will find:

"Readings from the public domains writings of Christian Apologist GK Chesterton"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these can be downloaded to your computer, to your iPod or other MP3 type player devices. Then you can listen while you drive to work, take the bus or wait in an elevator.

Preface to Orthodoxy

Just in case you'd like to read about what Dr. Thursday is referring to in his post yesterday, here is the preface to Orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy
by G. K. Chesterton

Dedication
To My Mother

Preface
This book is meant to be a companion to Heretics, and to put the
positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of
the book called Heretics because it merely criticised current
philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is
an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and
therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back
upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing
his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order
to be sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both
cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an
explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of
how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged
upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first
with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then
with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied
by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a
convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated and
surprising coincidence.

Gilbert K. Chesterton.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Last week we began my own very personal and technical and lunatic exploration of GKC's Orthodoxy. I began by examining the very opening - GKC's introductory Preface - and I am sure my lengthy essay gave you the impression that we'd never get out of the Preface - and into the Canon. (A little liturgical humour there, hee hee.) After you read this week's, I am sorry to say that I myself am starting to wonder whether I shall be able to get out of the Preface. It is not very long, and is not even really a part of the main writing, but as all Chestertonians know (let's all say it together!):

The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
[GKC, "The Toy Theatre" in Tremendous Trifles]

In fact, after re-reading last week's LENGTHY essay, I feel a bit like Charlemagne, who when he stopped at a certain monastery for lunch, was served some blue cheese (I don't know if it was Roquefort; I don't think it was Stilton!). He proceeded to start picking out the blue mold, and one of the monks told him: "Sire, that part is the best of all."

You see, in my meticulous study of these few words, I left out one line - a line which I knew would get me into a long and even lengthier exploration of ... of the One Subject. Let me quote it now:

The writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere.
[GKC, Orthodoxy]

Ah. You are wondering why there is no CW1 in that footnote. (I must have been asleep last week.) Indeed! I must amend my larger study and indeed the larger status of the Chesterton domain, and report that my edition of the CW does NOT contain this preface!!! I shall ask Nancy to give it to you in its entirety, so you can print it and wedge it into your CW if your edition also lacks it.

To resume: I did not want to go into this line, in the introductory state I was attempting last week, because the topic of Newman is a large one - in some senses, larger than GKC, in that he was a priest and eventually a cardinal. But in so many senses, a comrade, a co-heir, a co-worker, a master intellect, a bountiful feast, and a great hero and icon of the Coming Restoration of Catholicism in England.

Who? Newman? John Henry Newman. Born 1801, died 1890. Englishman. Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College of Oxford. Anglican. Convert and Priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Created Cardinal in 1879. Writer of a vast number of books, including one of the most pivotal books I have ever read, The Idea of a University. (I mean pivotal in my own personal sense.)

GKC mentions him about 100 times in his own writing, in particular in The Victorian Age in Literature. If I had a connection to a college or university (I mean besides Chesterton University!) I would strongly urge a doctoral student to consider studying the connections and parallels between these two giants. I mention Chesterton University not with tongue in cheek. It is known to those of us who have read the rich dragon-trove of GKC's Illustrated London News essays that GKC himself wanted to found a university:

...perhaps I may leave in my will directions or (what is much more improbable) funds for the founding of a great university...
[GKC, ILN Oct 30 1926 CW34:193]

I know the ellipses make this quote sound a bit - uh - contrived. But if you want to know the context, you know what you must do.

And if you want to know more about the link between GKC and JHN, you must now click the button here.

The book by Newman which Chesterton alludes to in his preface is Apologia Pro Vita Sua That is, "An Apology For His Life" - where "Apology" is used in the classical sense for "Defence". Newman's book is about his own journey, and so is GKC's, as we shall see perhaps if I ever get finished with the Preface.

But there are other connections. There is a strong sense of University in Orthodoxy, despite the variation in the languages. University is "one turning"; Orthodoxy is "right/true opinion/teaching". And "university" is just the Latin for the Greek "catholic". I am not getting into some ecclesial matter here. I am trying to point out (in perhaps a very silly way) the fact that GKC's book tries to cover a very large topic - the All - and he finds he must do it by telling us about himself and his own experience. Which is what Newman also does, though with far greater rigor.

In my as-yet unpublished work on Subsidiarity, I quote Newman to assist in my discussion of a very technical detail, using his work to point to Right Opinion as a technical guide, and to avoid what for many others has been a downfall of - er - let us call it "Modern Management". I did this partly because I was delightfully shocked to find Newman's anticipation of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum - but also because I am a technical person, and like to bring technical matters in association with each other. How else does a work from 1852 about founding a university apply to both a method for efficient satellite transport of television commercials and to the papal writing about workers, socialism, and unions from 1891? Well, Chesterton, being a writer, can be expected to bring literary matters together in unusual and surprising ways - he links Newman with Browning, with Shaw, and with Dickens. Not, perhaps, in a quantity which would lead to large books, or even journal articles - but enough to give a One Turn kind of feel to the vastness of literature being associated with Newman.

For example:

A mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning will not make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the aesthete (or any other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his individuality: men are never individual when alone.
[GKC, introduction, The Victorian Age in Literature]

I was going to quote a very interesting and long paragraph by GKC about Browning into which Newman is injected, but I find I cannot explain it well enough to make it interesting, because I do not know the poem being discussed. If I find it I shall do it another time, the paragraph has a lot to commend study.

And though I do not know any plays by Shaw (I mean I have never seen them, nor even read them) I do know Shaw through GKC, since he was mentioned as a "Heretic" - but remember how GKC explained that! I shall quote it again, though it is not as terse as some of GKC's aphorisms, it deserves to be studied for its moral guidance:

I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic - that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.
[GKC, Heretics CW1:46]

Indeed! Let us learn this well, and keep it in mind whenever we are led to write in disagreement with someone. It will also remind us of our Lord, Who called Herod "that fox" and the Pharisees "whitened sepulchres" and "brood of vipers" yet died for them too.

Perhaps this is a closer approach to an aphorism. What great controversialist of the Media of today, faced with such a question about his chief opponent, would answer as GKC did during a Q&A after a lecture:

[Questioner:] "Is George Bernard Shaw a coming peril?"
[GKC:] "Heavens, no. He is a disappearing pleasure."
[Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 590]

Having quoted these, let us hear GKC give us the dramatic link to Newman:

...there are people who say what they have to say best when they are saying it for themselves, and I am one of them and Mr. Shaw is another. Therefore, I always regard his plays as mere appendices to his thrilling and theatrical prefaces. If I read any vivid pieces of explanation in literature, such as Huxley's explanation of Evolution, or Newman's of Catholicism, I may very likely find some notes at the end of the book, giving special instances of the application. Huxley might add a particular case of a green cockatoo or a mongrel terrier. Newman might add a particular case of a Greek heresiarch or a seventeenth-century sectary. In the same way Mr. Shaw puts at the end of his stimulating treatise some notes, cast in dramatic form, about the particular case of a gentleman called Hotchkiss or a lady named Bridgnorth. But I leave all these notes for later reading. I want to know what Mr. Shaw thinks, not what Mr. Shaw thinks that Mr. Hotchkiss would think. And, to do Mr. Shaw justice, he has never shown any reluctance to let me know.
[GKC, ILN Apr 1, 1911 CW29:64]

Nor has Newman. I have no shame in admitting how little of Newman I have read - there is very much by him to read, and it is intellectually powerful and not always easy as GKC to consume. Moreover, it is not easy to get some of his lesser works. However! you can go here for an on-line collection. Also, our esteemed Chestertonian friend, Father Jaki, has a number of excellent books on Newman - see here if you are interested. (As you may already know, Fr. Jaki also has an excellent study of GKC and science.)

Alas, I find my time very short at the present, so perhaps you are going to be let go without my usual length. I have hardly begun to hint at the richness of Newman - and hardly even touched the link from JHN to GKC. But perhaps I shall have another turn in a week or so.

--Dr. Thursday

PS. Rather than completely forget about the Browning, I have decided to give you the quote, even if it is a bit long. If you know where "Sludge" can be found in the E-cosmos, please let us know. Also, if you are a student of poetry, it would be of real assistance to hear your insights, both into Browning's poem and on GKC's comments. Thanks!

The general idea is that Browning must have intended "Sludge" for an attack on spiritual phenomena, because the medium in that poem is made a vulgar and contemptible mountebank, because his cheats are quite openly confessed, and he himself put into every ignominious situation, detected, exposed, throttled, horsewhipped, and forgiven. To regard this deduction as sound is to misunderstand Browning at the very start of every poem that he ever wrote. There is nothing that the man loved more, nothing that deserves more emphatically to be called a speciality of Browning, than the utterance of large and noble truths by the lips of mean and grotesque human beings. In his poetry praise and wisdom were perfected not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings [Ps 8:3], but out of the mouths of swindlers and snobs. Now what, as a matter of fact, is the outline and development of the poem of "Sludge"? The climax of the poem, considered as a work of art, is so fine that it is quite extraordinary that any one should have missed the point of it, since it is the whole point of the monologue. Sludge the Medium has been caught out in a piece of unquestionable trickery, a piece of trickery for which there is no conceivable explanation or palliation which will leave his moral character intact. He is therefore seized with a sudden resolution, partly angry, partly frightened, and partly humorous, to become absolutely frank, and to tell the whole truth about himself for the first time not only to his dupe, but to himself. He excuses himself for the earlier stages of the trickster's life by a survey of the border-land between truth and fiction, not by any means a piece of sophistry or cynicism, but a perfectly fair statement of an ethical difficulty which does exist. There are some people who think that it must be immoral to admit that there are any doubtful cases of morality, as if a man should refrain from discussing the precise boundary at the upper end of the Isthmus of Panama, for fear the inquiry should shake his belief in the existence of North America. People of this kind quite consistently think Sludge to be merely a scoundrel talking nonsense. It may be remembered that they thought the same thing of Newman. It is actually supposed, apparently in the current use of words, that casuistry is the name of a crime; it does not appear to occur to people that casuistry is a science, and about as much a crime as botany. This tendency to casuistry in Browning's monologues has done much towards establishing for him that reputation for pure intellectualism which has done him so much harm. But casuistry in this sense is not a cold and analytical thing, but a very warm and sympathetic thing. To know what combinations of excuse might justify a man in manslaughter or bigamy, is not to have a callous indifference to virtue; it is rather to have so ardent an admiration for virtue as to seek it in the remotest desert and the darkest incognito.

This is emphatically the case with the question of truth and falsehood raised in "Sludge the Medium."
[GKC, Browning]