2 Chances to Win The Father Brown Reader: Stories from Chesterton

Love2Learn is celebrating it's 10th anniversary as a Catholic Homeschooling Resource website by giving away tons of books. This week, you have a chance to win my adaptation of the Father Brown stories, among many other books you could win. Entering the contest is so easy, just leave a comment in the comments box here (not here on this blog--sorry for the confusion).

Seton Hall University sponsors a very interesting set of talks

If you live in the New Jersey/New York area, you could get to these lectures.

How have different authors depicted Catholic life in their literature?

Seton Hall University will explore this question through “Saints and Sleuths II: Catholic Life in Literature.” The event, which spans two weekends in January, will feature dramatic readings of four literary works, along with commentary on each. Free and open to the public, it will be held at Theatre-in-the-Round in the Bishop Dougherty University Center. For more information, please call (973) 275-2431.

The event will include the following programs:

* January 18, 8 p.m. – Dramatic reading of The Chesterbelloc, by James P. McGlone. Commentary by Dr. John McCarthy.
* January 19, 8 p.m. – Dramatic reading of The Fallen Idols of Father Brown, adapted by John Dandona. Commentary by Reverend Ian Boyd, C.S.B., and Dr. Dermot Quinn.
* January 20, 2 p.m. – Dramatic reading of Newman’s The Parting of Friends, arranged by James P. McGlone. Commentary by Monsignor Thomas Ivory and Monsignor Richard Liddy.
* January 25, 8 p.m. – Dramatic reading of Canon Sheehan’s My New Curate, adapted by John Dandola. Commentary by Dr. Dermot Quinn and Monsignor Robert Emery.
* January 26, 8 p.m. – Repeat performance of My New Curate. Commentary by Monsignor Brendan Madden and Monsignor Kevin Flanigan.


“Saints and Sleuths II: Catholic Life in Literature” is sponsored by Seton Hall University’s Center for Vocation and Servant Leadership, G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture, Center for Catholic Studies and Celtic Theatre Company.

The Surprise on DVD

I was just notified by EWTN that my order for The Surprise on DVD has shipped! Our family can't wait to see it again.

Our Man Chris Chan gets a mention

Chris's article criticizing the adaptations of Agatha Christie was noticed here.

How to Be a Dunce--Part Two

I was thinking a little more about this post, and the comments people added, and I realized something I think is important that none of us mentioned.

I think Chesterton turned out OK because he had parents at home who loved him and stimulated his mind. So that even if he wasn't getting that at school, even if they all thought he was a dunce there in the school environment, at least at home, he was shining. He was brilliant. His parents treated him as if he had a good mind. They carried on nightly dinner table discussions. Gilbert and Cecil carried on lengthy debates and discussions. Mr. Chesterton read to them, did puppet theater with them, and, with his ever curious mind, was always tinkering with some new project of his own: Edward Chesterton wrote books, illustrated them, did photography (think: back then, photography wasn't the hobby it is today! He had a darkroom at home and everything), and his office was filled with every kind of invention.

Chesterton's mother adored him, and, like Edison's mother, believed in him even when the school didn't recognize his genius.

I think this home life is what saved Chesterton during his school years. And that, I believe is the difference between then and now. Now, if you have a child like Chesterton come through the school system, will he survive? There are precious few parents who engage with the children at home anymore. It's almost a relic of the past.

However, some children still manage. They discover, on their own, great writers or inventors or come upon something or someone that makes a difference in their lives.

Anyway, I just wanted to discuss the "home factor" in Chesterton's education.

Another Chestertonian Health Update

Sean is doing much better, but keep those prayers coming. He is recovering from the infection, but must get a little better in order to have the surgery he needs to have. If he improves, he may have the surgery as soon as next week, so let's all keep him in our prayers for a speedy recovery from the infection. Thanks for asking about him.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Special Report - Boys' Adventures and a Second Christmas

I dedicate this essay to the memory of a truly great writer and adventurer, Bertrand R. Brinley.

In gratitude,
--Dr. Thursday

While I ought to continue the prolongation of Christmas by a special commentary on the upcoming (new-style) Baptism of the Lord, which is concurrently celebrated with the old-style Holy Family (First Sunday after Epiphany), I have had an interesting kind of Second Christmas, which, as you may see, might even play into the present liturgical scheme.

Just before the end of the year, I had to investigate something-or-other, and as all Chestertonians know about encyclopedias (TCM 240), one thing led to another. (Hmm, I think there is a rock song called that.) Yes, for me, it is as Bunny Watson (Katherine Hepburn) remarked to Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracey) in "Desk Set": "I associate many things with many things."

Ahem. This was somehow motivated by the discussion over in our bloggmistress's own blogg about children's literature, or (as GKC calls it) "Books for Boys". GKC's essay in The Common Man is very important to our topic - here is just a short excerpt:

The mental digestion of boys is as strong as their physical digestion. They do not heed the cookery of art any more than the art of cookery. They can eat the apples of the tree of knowledge, and they can eat them raw. It is a great mistake to suppose that boys only read boyish books. Not only do they privately revel in their sisters' most sentimental novels, but they absorb cartloads of useless information. One boy in particular, with whose career from an early age we have the best reasons for being familiar, used to read whole volumes of Chamber's Encyclopaedia, and of a very musty and unreliable History of English Trade. The thing was a mere brute pleasure of reading, a pleasure in leisurely and mechanical receptiveness. It was the sort of pleasure that a cow must have in grazing all day long. But when all allowance has been made for the omnivorousness of youth, we incline to think that there is probably a considerable amount of truth in the idea that boys' books have to some extent degenerated. They have degenerated probably for the reason that all forms of art degenerate, because they are despised. Probably they were less despised in the days when they still had upon them, as it were, the glamour of the great masters of historical romance. The spirit of Scott and Ainsworth and Fenimore Cooper remained in them even if it was only the reflection of a hundred reflections and each in a distorting mirror. No one will ever understand the spirit at the back of popular and juvenile literature until he realises one fact, that a large amount of it is the result of that enthusiasm of the young reader which makes him wish to hear more and more about certain heroes, and read more and more of certain types of books. He dowers the creatures of fiction with a kind of boyish immortality. He is not surprised if Dick Deadshot or Jack Harkaway renews his youth through a series of volumes which reaches further than the length of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. These books have the vital philosophy of youth, a philosophy in which death does not exist, except, indeed, as an external and picturesque incident which happens to villains.
[GKC, The Common Man 228-9]

Clearly, GKC liked and appreciated Books for Boys. In his other foundation-essay of this topic, he illuminates us further: "The essence of adventure stories, as Stevenson pointed out, is that the reader is himself the adventurer. He imagines himself sharing the combat and the comradeship..." [GKC, ILN Sept 23, 1922 CW32:450] These two elements, the seeming perpetual life, and the reader's sharing in the participation, stand at the foundation to this matter, and deserve some deep study - which I hope to return to. But for today I wish to go into another aspect of "Boy's Adventures".

Read more.

I claim that anyone - boy or girl - and this means readers of any age - can, should, and will delight in such stories. Rather than a sign of some distorted refusal to grow up, delight in "Boys' Stories" is far more a definite indication of authentic maturity. (Remember, "unless you change, and become LIKE little children..." - we can delve into THAT also another day!) Such books, when they are good, provoke a sharp, insistent interest. They motivate far better than those smarmy "Power" management posters one sees hung up in company lunchrooms. They display exemplars of honesty, confidence, chivalry, steadfastness, friendship - all the manly, Christian virtues - remember virtue derives from Latin vir = Man-the-male! Even a boy can "Be a man." (It is part of the paradox that a woman can be so without losing any of her innate femininity.) They hold up a mirror far more magical than Harry Potter's "Erised" or than that of the witch in Snow White - for this mirror shows a stark image of the Good Man, the Trusted Friend, the Honest Worker - all the virtuous and veiled heroes of the Heavenly Hall - and commands us to compare ourselves to them: how do we rank? It is a grave danger - but ought not be avoided, since its comparison is the safest path to improvement. (This "mirror" is nothing more than an examination of conscience in story-form.)

Not that such books are handbooks of Moral Theology! They are fiction, not scholarly texts. But then so are the parables of our Lord! Often there are unpunished crimes (the thieves in the Good Samaritan) unresolved threads (what the older brother of the Prodigal Son does) or other distasteful characters (the bad judge pestered by the widow)... But I am not here to argue the goodness of "Story" - whether given from divine or from human pens. I am simply trying to call attention to such things.

Nor ought the apparent bias of Boys (as distinct from Girls) be of concern. This is not that kind of matter. That particular subject which GKC considered one of the Great Secrets of All Humanity, because we ALL know about it, and yet do not ordinarily talk about its details in public (see ILN August 10, 1907 CW27:523 et seq for the whole discussion) is, by definition, out of bounds for such stories, except in the most distant, and always the most chivalrous, manner. Again, in our present day, there is far too much of this secret not being properly kept - and I need not mention it further. Which is one reason why such Literature is so good.

Another reason is the rightful placing of the "hard" matter of science and morality (yes, as Dorothy Sayers noted, there ARE six other deadly sins besides the one that has "adult" in its name!) Here's how GKC explains it:

...it was a mark of the old English school of boys' literature that the authors were full of scientific hobbies. Where they differed from the scientific futurists of to-day is that they never were tormented with the sceptical fancy that material changes must be accompanied by moral changes. The morality they expressed - or rather, assumed - was the sane and simple morality which is the soul of all adventures. Adventure involves loyalty because it involves purpose; it involves courage because it involves peril; it involves a certain receptiveness and readiness to be easily pleased because it involves making the best of anything. The modern story-teller is disturbed with a vague evolutionary notion that this morality can change. We can only say that, if it does change, there will be no adventure stories, and probably no adventures. Thus a real adventure story cannot be made on a certain moral or immoral model not uncommon in modern books. I mean the sort of story in which the hero is the villain. The hero need not be directly dealing in morality, but his own moral position must be by implication secure and satisfying; for it is the whole meaning of adventure that his soul is the fixed point in a wildly agitated world.
[GKC, ILN Sept 23, 1922 CW32:453]

Wow. But I seem to be drifting into a discussion of such Stories in general, and today I want to talk about some very specific stories. Specifically, the short stories by Bertrand R. Brinley, written in the early 1960s and first appearing in Boys' Life, about the Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls.

These stories have been among my very favourites for decades. They were an important milestone along my path into science. Not that I haunted a house, or built a flying saucer, or dug up a dinosaur egg! But because they joined, in a very Chestertonian way, two ideas which would otherwise be seen as quite disjoint: the idea of science, and the idea of humor - or, even more general, the idea of having a Good Time with science. At first, you would expect that Chesterton, having died in 1936, could by no means have written anything at all on a story which first appeared in 1964 or so. But then, knowing our Mr. Chesterton as you should by now, you ought to expect that he did just about everything but name the book and its main characters. And behold: you would be right!

Some solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial people are solemn) have declared that the fairy-tales are immoral; they base this upon some accidental circumstances or regrettable incidents in the war between giants and boys, some cases in which the latter indulged in unsympathetic deceptions or even in practical jokes. The objection, however, is not only false, but very much the reverse of the facts. The fairy-tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being innocent, but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense of being moralising. It is all very well to talk of the freedom of fairyland, but there was precious little freedom in fairyland by the best official accounts.
[GKC ILN Feb 29, 1908 CW28:53]

For, I regret to inform my friends who live in the Midwest area near the southwest end of Lake Michigan, Mammoth Falls is NOT in Illinois, or Wisconsin. it is in Fairy Land, and the boys battle the usual giants, sometimes with unsympathetic deceptions, and sometimes with practical jokes. But the point, as GKC lectures at length in his Orthodoxy, is that the Science (often termed "magic") of that land provides very little freedom. Perhaps this is why these scientists are "mad"...

It would be all too easy to construct parallels between the Seven Mad Scientists and their once-friend and arch foe, and GKC's Seven Members of the Council of the Days, and their opponent... but that is not the point here. Let the bible scholars sort this, as Ronald Knox sorted Holmes and the mystery of the variant Watsons. No, I am not trying that kind of literary exploration. It would be all too easy to critique the "science", the practicality, or the legality, of the antics of these young men. But that would be like trying to bring the Prodigal Son to the Sanhedrin for judgement... a silly and useless exercise, even for the moot of it. It would be all too easy to condemn, with all the fires of dragons, the explanations of how certain - er - technical tricks can be done - but any typical television show or movie provides far easier, and far more dangerous temptations.

No, I come not to critique, but to announce. I come with news of great joy. I am quite late at this, since it was old news even some years ago, but in this case, it is better late than never.

For me, 2007 was not only the year in which I read the final Harry Potter mystery, and learned the revelations akin to those of the Road to Emmaus (which I understand is JKR's favourite painting). It was also the year I learned that there were MORE stories about the Mad Scientists - more than the two books of short stories which I read long ago and keep happily on my Important Books shelf.

I said something about a second Christmas - it came last week, when I obtained the TWO OTHER BOOKS about the Mad Scientists - and they are full-length novels! The first is called The Big Kerplop! (referring to something which falls into Strawberry Lake from an Air Force jet). It is important because it gives the foundation of the Club, and many important details about the members, including the "casting out" of the enemy. The second is called The Big Chunk of Ice, and it has such a feel of Manalive and other Chesterton stories, it is hilarious as well as different - I can't easily give a good summary, nor do I want to, as that might spoil it.

Note - I am not connected with Purple House Press, the Brinleys, or anything related to these books - except as a reader and as one who delights in a friendship with the seven Mad Scientists. I would strongly urge you, whether you are a boy, have a boy brother, son, grandson, nephew, or neighbour, or have been a boy, or have known a boy - get these books, and read them. You do NOT have to be a scientist to like them, as you do not have to be a priest to like Father Brown, or a English journalist to like Chesterton. I think you will enjoy them - I hope you do. I did, and still do.

I said at the beginning of this ridiculously incoherent ramble that this topic of boy's books is connected to the liturgical epoch we are in. Well, that's a real stretch - or maybe it isn't. It sometimes seems quite misleading, as some may guess that Christ was baptised as an infant - but really! He was "about 30" at that time, and except for the glimpse at the Finding in the Temple, there is a good 18, if not 28 to 30 years about which we know nothing - or next to nothing. Hear again GKC on this, from his master reference to our Lord:

There are a great many things about it [the Gospel] which nobody would have invented, for they are things that nobody has ever made any particular use of; things which if they were remarked at all have remained rather as puzzles. For instance, there is that long stretch of silence in the life of Christ up to the age of thirty. It is of all silences the most immense and imaginatively impressive. But it is not the sort of thing that anybody is particularly likely to invent in order to prove something; and nobody so far as I know has ever tried to prove anything in particular from it. It is impressive, but it is only impressive as a fact; there is nothing particularly popular or obvious about it as a fable. The ordinary trend of hero-worship and myth-making is much more likely to say the precise opposite.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:321]

It may be, as I have pointed out somewhere, that this was because He wished to be "full-grown" since the epiphyses of the clavicle do not fuse until then - the collarbone is the last of the long bones to "finish" being put together. Or it may be, as GKC continues in the above-quoted text, that "there is indeed something strange in the thought that the who of all humanity needed least preparation seems to have had most. Whether it was some mode of the divine humility, or some truth of which we see the shadow in the longer domestic tutelage of the higher creatures of the earth, I do not propose to speculate; I mention it simply as an example of the sort of thing that does in any case give rise to speculations, quite apart from recognised religious speculations." [Ibid CW2:321-2]

But the reason could be simpler. What was He doing? Well! As an embryo, a fetus, an infant, a toddler, a lad, He grew - and He learned. He was busy. And after he grew and learned, He was working - as we all do. He was with His family, doing the family things. And in the end, He like the Mad Scientists, went and "battled giants", sometimes with "unsympathetic deceptions" and sometimes with what were nearly "practical jokes". Yes, there are still giants to fight. Sometimes, laughter is the best weapon: "The child or the boy is quite right in believing that there really is a dragon somewhere, and that the harder he is hit the better." [GKC ILN Sept 23 1922 CW32:454]

Chesterton Monologue to Watch

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=dc2a6340e258630febd5
I tried to get the video embedded, but I just couldn't do it. So, to see it, click on the above link.

How to Be a Dunce

Chesterton's case showed how he slunk through the educational system without much notice. One teacher claimed that under his skull was a big white lump of fat. And Gilbert seemed to make some effort at trying to hide his brilliance, trying to stay out of the range of official attention.

I wonder how many kids today are attempting this same path through our educational system.

What happens if they shine? They get put in "Superior Ability" classes and given more work. So why shine?

What happens if they're "getting it"? They are made to tutor other kids or do examples in front of everyone. So why admit you get it?

What happens if they're a good kid? They get made into a "mentor" for a not-so-good kid and have to hang with that person who doesn't want them to be with them. So why be visibly good?

What do teachers do with a student like Chesterton? What could they do? What should they do? Would Chesterton's life turned out better if the educational system had been different? Or, was it ok that he slunk through those years with his face hidden from the English teacher, who might discover his love of words and sounds?

Karen Edmisten: Recent Reading: The Father Brown Reader

Karen has a lovely review of the Father Brown Reader, thanks so much Karen, I'm glad you and the children enjoyed them!

Mixed Media

In general, the media tows the PC line, so it wouldn't be surprising that they would be in favor of a Democratic candidate. This year they have a double chance to be even more PC because they have the chance to support both a minority and another minority. They should be in their glory.

And so I find it curious that the story they want is that Hillary cries or shows emotion. Do they find that so amazing, that she's a woman and a person to boot? I mean, headlines because her voice quavers? Give me a break! Would they do this to a man?

So, they want her, but they don't want her to show her feelings. They want her to act like a man because she's tough. Sure she's tough, but think of the pressure she's under. Most of us would crack. I would. Of course, I'd be running for the other side.

Dallas Optimistic about Mr. Huckabee and Iowa

Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee both have the potential to bring about a clean break with the hyper-partisan politics of the recent past. You could see this in their gracious, hopeful victory speeches. Quoting the English writer G.K. Chesterton, Mr. Huckabee said, "A true soldier fights not because he hates those who are in front of him, but because he loves those who are behind him." Mr. Obama's remarks were in the same generous spirit. It's thrilling to see two happy warriors prevail in such an important battle.

The presidential primary races are far from over, of course. But come what may, it's hard to shake the sense that a new era in American political history has begun. Dallas Morning News, 01/-5/08

Chesterton Getting a Lot of Press Today

Mike Huckabee quoted G.K. Chesterton last night in his victory speech, and so everyone today is talking about Chesterton. They may even be wandering over here to see what we think of it.

We think it is great that Chesterton is quoted and even better if the quote is understood, and even better if it leads to people reading more than just one quote of Chesterton's.

So, if you're here because of Mr. Huckabee, welcome! Sit down, grab a cup of coffee, and peruse the site. Take a look at our mother-site, the American Chesterton Society, and especially the quotes and extras. Buy a book, tape or make a donation. Thanks!

UPDATE: Well, I heard from reliable sources that my source wasn't reliable, so I'm glad to know that wasn't how he really sounded last night.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Revealing Things: Tam Antiqua, tam nova: So Old and So New

In considering my topic for today, so horribly delayed for a very special reason, as you shall hear, I was inhibited at first because I recalled that I had written very recently AND at length about the Three Scientists who came bringing gifts to the Christ Child. Er, you know I mean the Three Kings, but most fittingly left in the ancient form as "The Magi" of unspecified number. Remember, they observed the Star - that sounds just about as scientific as one can get!

The feast for this Sunday, January 6, is called "epiphany" because it is a "showing" - a revealing. The Greek root "phain" means "show", or even "to give light". While we remember that God the Son, incarnate as Jesus the Everlasting Man, was already visible to Mary and Joseph, to the local shepherds, to (it may be postulated) the Roman Census-takers, to the Jewish authority in the person of Simeon, and to others in the Temple, here, on this special day, we recall that He was also made visible to certain "representatives" of the Whole Human Family. It is this truth which shows up in the relatively recent tradition that the three Magi were of the three "branches" or races of Man: white, yellow, black, or the three sons of Noah who are said to represent the progenitors of these races. That is effective in many ways, even if it be nothing more than a story with a moral. It is not so much that there be three, or that they be - er - anthropologically "representative" of cultures or physiological characteristics. It is the idea which Aquinas explained in his Summa (III Q36 A3,5,6) that they represent The Pagans, as distinct from the Jews: the Whole Family must know. After all, the angel told the shepherds: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people." [Lk 2:10, emphasis added]

As I said, we have considered some of this previously. But I have something more to tell you, brought about by my experience this morning, which explains my hasty rambling tone and tardiness.
Read more.

This morning, I attended the funeral of the father of a good friend. It was remarkable for it was the first time I experienced the rituals of Greek Orthodoxy. It was awesome. It was ornate. It was moving - not only because of the friendship and compassion - but because of the chant, the incense, the candles, the lovely icons, the reverence, and a rich harmony with my own faith. And, I must say, I had a certain strange sense of separation - and for me an even stronger longing for unity. I know very little Greek, but every so often a word leapt out. Most striking was the grand ritual announcement preceding the readings:

Sophia! Wisdom!

which one can take to mean "listen up, you'll learn something" or "Come, O Wisdom, and enlighten me as I read/hear" or even "Behold, in what you shall now hear lives the Very Truth of the Divine Intellect."

But after the statement of the reading's source, they actually then say something like "Attention"... again, "Sit up and take notice!"

As the various prayers and responses were chanted, I sat in awe, thinking that these very sounds were common, even more so than Latin, in the streets and markets of Jerusalem, of Antioch, and even of Rome. And for me there was a feeling of a common possession - which we should have with Latin, but should have also with Greek. Even now, the Roman ritual calls for the opening litany "Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy" to be in its most ancient Greek form: "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison." Oh God! May the day be not far off that this division be healed!

But there is another reason, an even more profound one, which I must mention that I learned from a brief glance at the book for the "Divine Liturgy".

One of the numerous "bidding" or petitioning prayers (akin to the "Prayers of the Faithful" of the Novus Ordo, or like those of the Good Friday ritual) was a prayer for peace in the world. But! (And if you've heard me on this before, keep reading anyway. It's worth thinking about this deeply.) You must remember that the Greek word which comes out "world" in English does NOT mean "Earth".

The Greek word for "world" is KOSMOS.

This is not to be taken as a demonstration of the existence of alien beings from other planets. But it IS a demonstration of the universally pervading power and authority of God. Do you recall that first Father Brown story? "Reason and justice grip the remotest and the loneliest star."

We - and I see no reason to abstain from such a prayer, regardless of one's Christian connection - attest to a belief in God the Father almighty. All galaxies, all planets are subject to His law, to His guidance, to His love - and to His salvation. We ought to pray for peace throughout the Kosmos - starting with ourselves, but extending to the most alien life-form known: our neighbor. The rock group "Rush" has a song which hints of this:

We are planets to each other,
Drifting in our orbits to a brief eclipse,
Each of us a world apart
Alone and yet together like two passing ships.
[Rush, "Entre Nous"]

But they may not go far enough. For every two humans are separated by a chasm far more vast than simple astronomical distance - and so a prayer for peace throughout the Kosmos makes a lot of sense.

Why do I mention this? Omitting Orlando Furioso's flight to the moon, or Barbicane's lunar cannon-shot, it is only in new stories, written in comparatively recent time, that we have begun to even imagine crossing the vast distances to other planets. But here, in an ancient tongue, can still be heard the faith that called to St. Augustine, to which he responded "Late have I loved Thee, oh Beauty ever ancient, ever new!"

And why today? Because the revelation of Epiphany, of the Showing of the King, is for all times and all places. The axes of space and time cross at one place - on the Hill of Calvary. In this sense, then, Orthodox are most Catholic - in the Greek sense. May God speed our unity!

And there is one other reason - a Chestertonian one. It is because of the remarkable quote with which I conclude - the only place which AMBER tells me contains the word "Epiphany". But read it for yourself, and remember I found it AFTER I had thought on all this earlier today...

May the soul of Spiros, and of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

And may the Peace of God pervade the Kosmos! Amen.

--Dr. Thursday

What is called the Seville procession ... exists in many different places besides Seville. But as it is done in many different places, so it is done in many different ways. There are often elements that are in their nature new, that are unexpected in the sense that nobody could possibly expect them. I have heard it said that, sometimes, a man will rush out into the path of the procession and pour out a stream of absurdly spontaneous poetry, like an improvisation on a musical instrument; and that sometimes somebody else (also rather abruptly moved by the Muse) will answer him from a window, with appropriate poetical repartees. But the point is that the old framework allows of these new things; just as the old orchard bears fresh fruit or the old garden fresh flowers. These old civilisations give us the sensation of being always at the beginning of things; whereas mere modern innovation gives us the sensation, even in its novelty, of drawing nearer and nearer to the end.

There is one custom in Spain, and probably in other southern countries, which might be a model of the popular instinct for poetry in action. It is what corresponds to our idea of Santa Claus; who is, of course, St. Nicolas, and in the North the patron of children and the giver of gifts at Christmas. In the South this function is performed by the Three Kings, and the gifts are given at the Epiphany. It is in a sense more logical, which, perhaps, is why it is common among the Latins. The Wise Men are in any case bringing gifts to the Holy Child, and they bring them at the same time to the human children. But there is in connection with it an excellent example of how people who retain this popular instinct can actually act a poem.

The mysterious Kings arrive at the end of the holiday; which again is really very reasonable. It is much better that the games and dances and dramas, which are fugitive, should come first, and the children be left with the presents, or permanent possessions, at the end. But it is also the occasion of a process very mystical and moving to the imagination. The Kings are conceived as coming nearer and nearer every day; and, if there are images of these sacred figures, they are moved from place to place, every night. That alone is strangely thrilling, either considered as a child's game or as a mystic's meditation on the mysteries of time and space. On the last night of all, when the strange travellers through time are supposed to arrive, the children carefully put out water and green stuff for the camels and the horses of that superhuman cavalcade out of the depths of the East. Even the touch of putting water, so necessary to purely Eastern animals, is enough to suggest that reach of the imagination to the ends of the earth.
[GKC ILN June 26, 1926 CW34:116-7]

Happy New Year

New Year's Resolution Number One: Plan to attend ChesterCon08--June 12-14.

Resolution Number Two: Don't make any new Year's Resolutions. Instead: Plan to make everyday a new day, every day a resolution, every day, get a little closer to Jesus.

Update on ordering The Surprise DVD

From the Combox (thanks Carol!):

The "Surprise" DVD is not currently instock or shown on our website, however, you may put an order in for it now if you like. When stock comes in, we will ship immediately. The item code is “HDS”—It is a DVD and sells for $20 plus $5 shipping/handling. You may order online or by calling me at 205-271-2990.

Thanks for your support of EWTN, LeAnn, Customer Service

Update on Sean

Sean thanks you for your prayers for him. Please continue. He is recovering well from an infection, then will be sent home on medication for a few weeks and return for surgery. Keep praying! Thanks.

Happy New Year's Eve!

Dropping the ball - two kinds

A short and very curious pair of quotes, relative to tonight's activity. One from Chesterton and one from 155 years ago. Let this simple synchronization of our world's clocks not obscure the name-day of our Lord and the solemn feast of Mary's maternity.

Thanks for taking time to be Chestertonian during 2007. Let us all strive to follow our Aunt Frances and Uncle Gilbert more closely, as they lead us on to Jesus Christ, the Everlasting Man.

I shall leave you with a quote from the Paschal Vigil, a fitting prayer to mark off the boundaries of time:

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

Christ yesterday and today,
The Beginning and the End,
The Alpha and the Omega,
His are the times and the ages,
To Him be glory and dominion
Through the universe of unending ages.
Amen.

--Dr. Thursday

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be
perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do
not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was
the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on
which you could at any moment do and which, very
often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is
that to me this did not seem unjust. ... If Cinderella says, "How
is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?" her godmother might answer,
"How is it that you are going there till twelve?"
[GKC, Orthodoxy CW1:260]


One of the latest applications of the electric telegraph is at once
useful and beautiful. It is a plan for distributing and correcting mean
Greenwich time in London and over the country every day at noon. Every
holiday-maker knows the ball which surmounts the Royal Observatory, and has watched with interest its descent as the clock gave the first stroke
of noon, thereby telling the sea-going men in the river the exact state
of the chronometers to which they have to trust over the pathless
waters. Such a ball has been raised on a pole on the Telegraph Office,
near Charing Cross, and at noon each day is to drop by electric action
simultaneously with that of Greenwich, and falling on a cushion at the
base of the pole, is to communicate standard time along all the
telegraphic wires of the country. At the same instant the exact period
of noon will be known at the most distant as well as the less remote
places in the country; and it is said that all the Railway Companies
have agreed to avail themselves of these means of obtaining an exact
uniformity of time.
[Our Iron Roads by Frederick S. Williams (This history of the
development and status of Britain's railroads was published in 1852.)]

Thank you Dr. Thursday, for this and all your "Thursday" posts in 2007.

Gilbert Editor Update

Sean is improving, thanks for the prayers, and please continue, as he has surgery yet to look forward to.

Information on obtaining "The Surprise" (EWTN edition) on DVD

I don’t know too many details, but I do know that “The Surprise” will be available on DVD from the EWTN Religious Catalogue at some point in the near future. You will be able to order it by visiting the website: http://www.ewtnreligiouscatalogue.com/ or by calling toll free: 1-800-854-6316.

This information from Emily, who works at EWTN. Thanks, Emily!

Whoever notices first that the DVD is available, please let everyone know!

Attention Poets: Blog Poetry Contest

Sheila, at My Enchiridion, is conducting a poetry contest in honor of Christmas.

She, like Chesterton, prefers poems that rhyme. Although she doesn't mind free verse as long as it isn't completely random.

You may submit up to three poems.

Sheila The Famous, is also known for her Triolet Contest last year, which resulted in many good and popular triolets. Some of which received the honor of publication in Gilbert Magazine, after being published on My Enchiridion.

Now, let's get those creative juices going and make some Christmas poetry!

Please Pray for Sean

The editor of Gilbert Magazine, Sean Dailey, was unexpectedly and suddenly admitted to the hospital today for an infection which needed immediate treatment. Please join us in praying for his speedy recovery.

Thank you.

Merry Christmas from Dr. Thursday

Celebrating Christmas - and the Year-Boundary

Today, the Third day of Christmas, is also the feast of St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist. It was amazing this morning at Holy Mass to hear the gospel, which is about as far from shepherds, Magi, and the infant in the manger as one might find: "Early in the morning of the first the day of the week... Peter ran to the tomb, but the Disciple-Whom-Jesus-Loved ran faster... he saw, and believed." (see John 20; my paraphrase) I wish to say something, but I shall first preface it with a Chesterton quote to attempt to indicate something about my tone here:

"I'm very fond of strong Protestants," said Father Brown. "I came to you because I was sure you would tell the truth."
[GKC, "The Chief Mourner of Marne" in The Secret Of Father Brown

It is unfortunate that we who love Jesus should find a division here, but it is a real division, and needs to be acknowledged - if we ever hope to abolish it (cf. GKC on fences in The Thing CW3:157) - and this will require all interested Christians to tell the truth. Which I shall here strive to do, with God's help. Read more.

The simple thing is that at Christmas, as on every other day of the year, Catholics are always bringing the stark reality of the Cross into bold uncompromising view - by the simple celebration of Holy Mass, the centerpiece of which begins "On the day before He suffered, He took bread..." It is not simply doing what St. Paul restricts himself to do "I determined when I was with you I would speak of nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." [see 1Cor2:2] This may be "absurdity to Greeks and stumbling block for Jews" [1Cor1:23] - and something forbidden by tradition for some others. But it happens to be what Jesus told the Apostles to do "Do this in remembrance of Me." and "Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." [Lk 22:19, Mt 28:20]

But I know I am saying this very poorly. Really it is not my intention to "argue" (in any sense) nor to ride rough-shod over other religions. It is rather my attempt to observe the curious truth that GKC pointed out and which we examined in our previous studies:

Herod had his place, therefore, in the miracle play of Bethlehem because he is the menace to the Church Militant and shows it from the first as under persecution and fighting for its life. For those who think this a discord, it is a discord that sounds simultaneously with the Christmas bells. For those who think the idea of the Crusade is one that spoils the idea of the Cross, we can only say that for them the idea of the Cross is spoiled; the idea of the Cross is spoiled quite literally in the Cradle.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:314]

Let me try again - and again I preface it with my respect for those who differ from me in their heritage: A Catholic (by virtue of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - which is why we call it Christ-MASS) is forced to approach the Christmas Cradle full of the awareness that this Baby was born in order to DIE:

...the life of Jesus went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt. It was above all things dramatic; it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It emphatically would not have been done if Jesus had walked about the world for ever doing nothing except tell the truth. And even the external movement of it must not be described as a wandering in the sense of forgetting that it was a journey. This is where it was a fulfilment of the myths rather than of the philosophies; it is a journey with a goal and an object, like Jason going to find the Golden Fleece, or Hercules the golden apples of the Hesperides. The gold that he was seeking was death. The primary thing that he was going to do was to die. [see Mt 16:21, Lk 12:49-50] He was going to do other things equally definite and objective; we might almost say equally external and material. But from first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:339]

Hence, Christmas is celebrated with His own death in stark view - we celebrate the Birth first and foremost by the ritual commemoration of the Death. This is not an argument for a "better" or a "worse" method. It is a comment on a strange reality.

Because, as most all Christians know, God's "secret plan" [cf. Rom 16:25-6] was for God to become Man in order to die - and by dying, destroy death. St Paul lectured on this: "Know you not that all we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into death: that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." [Romans 6:3-5] And it's even in that carol: "Mild He lays His glory by, born that Man no more may die." Let all Christians here find an even greater cause to rejoice at Christmas - and paraphrase St. Paul: if Christ be not born, our faith is in vain.

But let us recall, as GKC recalls very strongly in his preface to our reference text, that the consideration of Jesus Christ the Everlasting Man is not intended to pick at conflicts between various forms of Christians, but to reveal the stark division between Christianity and "the world" of pagans. You can see CW2:141 for details, but let me (just for a change) quote something else, because I have some more to say, and this will lead us into the topic:

There is nothing really wrong with the whole modern world except that it does not fit in with Christmas. The modern world will have to fit in with Christmas or die. Those who will not rejoice in the end of the year must be condemned to lament it. We must accept the New Year as a new fact; we must be born again. No kind of culture or literary experience can save him who entirely refuses this cold bath of winter ecstasy. No poetry can be appreciated by him who cannot appreciate the mottoes in the crackers. No log-rolling can rescue him who will not roll the Yule log. Christmas is like death and child-birth - a test of our simple virtue; and there is no other such test left in this land to-day.
[GKC ILN Jan 9 1909 CW28:251]

Yes - death, division, Christmas - and rebirth and the New Year - which just happens to also be the Octave-day of Christmas, and the day on which Jesus was given His most holy name. [see Luke 2:21, cf. Lev 12:3-8]

Over on her own blogg, our esteemed bloggmistress Nancy Brown points out two important facts:

1. "...we keep on celebrating..."

This is important. This year, even areas which transfer Epiphany to Sunday shall celebrate Epiphany on January 6. Therefore, we shall have a precise Twelve Days of Christmas. Perhaps we can call it "Extraordinary" time, hee hee.

2. "...the thing that's brought us all together, whether anyone wants to admit it or not, is the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago..."

This is even more important. No one - whether Christian or not, whether recognizing Christ as historical or not, whether celebrating birthdays or not - indeed, no one, regardless of religious or philosophical inclination, can escape this simple fact of calendar. The very years are numbered and fixed upon Christmas. (NOT on Easter, as curious as that is. Though perhaps another time we shall consider the possibility that Good Friday fell on March 25...)

Yes, fixed upon Christmas. Perhaps we could call that milestone, or marking point in time, a "virtual" or (more properly) a reference Christmas, somewhat like the reference circles like the Equator, or the Greenwich Meridian, or (even more exotic) like the Aries Point when the Sun crosses the celestial equator and begins Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Few people live ON the equator, and those who do cannot really see it. And yet it is still there. People buy and sell two-by-fours, even though those are not the precise dimensions of that piece of lumber.

In the same way few at that time actually knew of Christ's birth (despite the efforts, as we saw last week, of the Heavenly Host, and some talkative shepherds!) Then, somehow along the way, the year-count got just slightly garbled early on, and it seems certain that Jesus was actually born a few years B.C. (Before Christ!) But that birth was a known date, and one which was "not all that long ago". It wasn't some long-past half-myth, like "the year of the Founding of the City" (A.U.C.) for the ancient Romans. It was a known moment in time. It has been ignored, has been forgotten, and even now is being denied. And yet for all of us, regardless of belief, the very Earth Time itself is measured based on this singular reference mark: the Birth of Jesus in the Cave of Bethlehem.

If there was any doubt of this, there would have been some radical change arising from the fears voiced as if by the whiney tone of the Cold One (algor is Latin for cold), back in the late 1990s. Yes, back then, Total Doom for the technical world was forecast when the cosmic odometer rolled over as 23:59:59 on December 31, 1999 became 00:00:00 on January 1, 2000. Some of us techies had some good laughs reading about how vacuum cleaners, and toasters would malfunction, and door hinges would no longer rotate, and glue and nails would lose their grip, and so on. Ah, it was funny.

Of course, as you may already know, the Total Doom was warded off. I had a whole bulb of garlic on my computer, and by the MAGIC of the INTERNET, the goodness of garlic seeped out, and so the comet Y2K, also called Eetook, was kept away from us. If you need more information, or are worried about another form of imminent disaster, see here for all the details. Recipes are not included.

So, whether you eat garlic or sit it on your computers, I do hope you will continue to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas properly. We get the authentic 12 this year - take advantage of it! Keep celebrating!

The next Thursday we shall meet (God willing) will be in 2008. So let us conclude with another remark from Uncle Gilbert:

Civilisation is simply that self-command by which man can revert to the normal. Anarchy is not uproar; uproar is all right in its place. Anarchy is not plunging; anarchy is not being able to stop. It is not anarchy in a house if people sit up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in a house if this makes them sit up later and later every night afterwards. It is not anarchy in the State if men under extreme misgovernment drag down their existing rulers, and substitute other rulers and obey them. It is anarchy in a State if people come to think that all things, small and great, may, in varying degrees, be so resisted; that whenever the postal service annoys me, I may break the rules of the post-office. Civilisation does permit outbreak; it does not permit anarchy...
[GKC ILN Nov 23 1912 CW29:394]

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

--Dr. Thursday

PS. Here is an amazing, and timely poem which I posted back in my own blogging days. It is one of my favourites.

Another PS. It is well-known that our current time is labelled A.D., standing for Anno Domini, Latin for "Year of the Lord". And we English speakers write "B.C." the initials of "Before Christ" meaning the other side of the time axis. But I wondered how - say - Aquinas, or a Papal encyclical - would refer to "B.C." Do you know? After some exploration I found out. The Latin for "Before Christ" is Ante Christum, hence the abbreviation is "A.C." If you know of a good joke - or even better, a good mystery - connected with this, please let me know.

A Message to the ACS from EWTN re: The Surprise

Hello to all at the American Chesterton Society!

I work at EWTN and was counting the days until we aired “The Surprise!” My whole family watched the movie on Friday night, then again on Christmas Eve. (We switched the TV on to let my five year old brother see some Christmas programming, but he said “No! I want to see ‘The Surprise’ again;” wouldn’t G.K. be proud?) Chesterton is such an amazing author, the dialogue was so wonderful and thought provoking- I’m sure I will catch something new every time I see it! The play was brought to life by such wonderful acting talent as well! A standing ovation to Kevin O’Brien, Miss. Ahlquist and “the author” especially- though everyone’s performance deserves a big round of applause! How appropriate for Christmas too, with the amazing line “What have you done with my play- I’m coming down!” It truly brought the message of the Incarnation to my mind, and helped me realize that God came down to this earth to save us.

I want to thank everyone for the hard work they did to bring this story to life! We all had a wonderful surprise this Christmas in “The Surprise!”


Many Blessings,

Emily Lunsford
EWTN Media Missionaries Support Assistant

UPDATE: Just to clarify, Emily wrote on behalf of herself and her family. She happens to work at EWTN. ;-)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

God bless us everyone!

The Surprise

Did you see it? Want to talk about it? The combox is awaiting for you!

I saw it and loved it. It brought back many good memories of the conference where it was performed. There were some new touches, especially the scenery; but also Dale's cockney accent seemed new.

I also noted some dubbing, and I wondered what that was all about. Especially at the end of Act One where the Poet, Oliver, says "My God! The Surprise!"--we noticed it was dubbed "Oh Yes! The Surprise!" or perhaps just "Yes! The Surprise!"

Dale and Mark were great as the guards, Dale's drunken performance was spot on with that gorgonzola cheese remark. Kevin O'Brien's performance was great, very believeable and natural, his acting abilities shine. Similarly, the Author, Jeremy? I think...gave a great performance.

The two lovely ladies, Ashley and Catherine, gave wonderfully good performances as the Princess and her lady in waiting, Donna Maria Margareta. And the prince, Julian, was regally handsome and swashbuckling in his swordplay.

What fun! I hope the person who agreed to tape it for me did tape it. But if you want to see it again (or missed it last night) it will be on EWTN again on Monday afternoon, Christmas Eve.
1PM EST
12PM CST
11AM Rocky
10AM Pacific

O Antiphons (con't)

O Radiant Dawn,
splendor of eternal light,
sun of justice:
come, shine on those who dwell
in darkness and the shadow of death.

Award for this Blog!

This blog is a runner up for the Catholic Blog Awards 2007-Best Group Blog award!

I guess the group is me and Dr. Thursday and YOU!

Congratulations Everyone!

The Surprise on EWTN tonight!

10 EST
9 CST
8 Rocky
7 Pacific
If you don't have cable, you can get it streaming live on EWTN, whether you have cable, broadband or the old fashioned dial-up.

Enjoy the show!

O Antiphons (con't)

O Key of David,
O royal Power of Israel
controlling at your will the gate of heaven:
come, break down the prison walls of death
for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death;
and lead your captive people into freedom.

Thank you, Dr. Thursday.

Dr Thursday's Third Thursday in Advent Post

Three Thursdays of Advent - a Trinity of Christmas Truths:
3. The Shepherds (and the Angels)

again with a subtitle:

News - and not N's

That last character is not an English N, but the capital Greek "nu". For we shall start with a bit of language lesson today:

Angel, ankle, anchor, sphinx
Are joined by Chestertonian links
There, gamma gives us nu's effects
Preceding G, K, C, or X.

Of course the person who wrote that is not very Greek-literate, or he would have written the last line differently. It ought to say "preceding gamma, kappa, chi, or xi". But then he would have had to change the rhyme, and the rhythm... well, it does not pay to criticise a poet. Besides, it's fun to see that G, K, C there. Uh-oh.

Eee-oo, Eee-oo.
"Yes, ossifer, I was rhyming without a license again..."
"Pay your bail,
Or it's off to jail."

Ahem. (Sorry, I got carried away. Christmas, Greek, and so forth...) Yes, in Greek, a gamma before these four letters (gamma, kappa, chi, xi) has the effect of a nu, or at least a nasalizing. Ask your neighbourhood Greek scholar if you want to know more.

I bring up this odd little effect of the Greek gamma, because I hunted up the word "angel" in my splendid GIGANTIC copy of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It weighs maybe 10 pounds, and is over 3.5 inches thick... whew! But as Greek scholars will point out, you will NOT find "angel" (OK, actually "angelos") if you hunt under alpha, nu, gamma... that's not how it's spelled. It's spelled aggeloV - that is, alpha, gamma, gamma, epsilon, lambda, omicron, sigma. Two gammas, but but it still sounds like angelos. It means, simply, "messenger" or "envoy". The related word angelia means "message", whether the substance (the information) or the conveyance (the media).

Why am I bothering about some abstruse detail about the word "angel" when I am supposed to be talking about the SHEPHERDS?

Well, partly because of what GKC pointed out about this matter. All too often, there is a loss of perspective in the matter of shepherds - especially when considered next to angels, which is where we really need to consider them:

...the more the artists learned of realism and perspective, the less they could depict at once the angels in the heavens and the shepherds on the hills, and the glory in the darkness that was under the hills.[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:305]

Hence, if we really want to know more about the shepherds, we have to know more about the angels, and what it was that was happening, there in the fields, during the night shift. (No we are NOT going to see them dancing on the pinheads. Not today. There's a form to be filled out if you want that.)
Read more.
First, and it bears repeating - an "angel" is NOT simply a "kind" of being - it is a being who is holding, or carrying out an office - specifically a messenger. The correct term for them is "Spirit" - specifically Good Spirit, to distinguish from those we glimpsed last week. Even though we have some hints, we don't quite know how else they occupy themselves - it seems every time we see them they are delivering a message to somebody. Kind of God's FedEx. One place where it seems we catch them out-of-uniform was in the vision of Isaias:

And they [angels] cried one to another, and said: "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory." [Is 6:3]

Uh, oh. Nope. Read it again. It says they cried ONE TO ANOTHER. They're such perfect messengers when they're not busy, they keep in practice sending the same message over and over again to each other! And why not? The statement "The Lord God of hosts is holy, holy, holy" is perhaps the most sublime of all truths. It ought to be repeated. If we understood it - and angels, not having to bother with school and study and research and forgetting, and all that, certainly understand it. As I was saying, if we understood it, we would know it is not just a simple quibble like "2+2=4" or "the sun rises in the east" or whatever. For in this statement is contained infinite depth of truth which only God himself knows completely. Hence the angels, as they stand before him, gaze into this infinity and see more and more, and are moved to say it again and again, in utter and total joy. And there is no joy like the joy of satisfaction of grasping a truth!

Now, where do the shepherds come in?

Well. You see, there was this Roman poet Virgil. He wrote about shepherds, and country scenes. People had gotten citified with all that Roman stuff, and forgotten their roots: a simple people who worried about keeping their kitchen fire burning, their crops growing, their livestock increasing... Ah (you can imagine them sighing) back then we were HAPPY. Curious. The Latin word "felix" usually translated "happy" is derived from "fecund" - a crop-growing word - it first meant "fruitful". (It may be a shock to learn that fetus and female and related words come from the same root.) Virgil, as you may know, wrote a sequel to Homer (yeah, it's been happening for over 2000 years) called "The Aeneid". He also wrote a bunch of poems called the Bucolics, or Eclogues. (I always mix up if there are two sets or just two names.) One of these, the Fourth Eclogue, is perhaps the most famous poem in the world. I wrote about it previously, and GKC talks about it in our main reference (CW2:292, 307-8) But here I mention it not to explore it, but just to point out that the other big piece of the puzzle - the one not among our three present topics of study, which is Rome - was quite aware of a certain importance of shepherds - not just as the lowly people necessary if one wants wool and lambchops, but as forming an important element, and a simple (and HAPPY=felix) one, as part of the Roman thing.

There was also a Hebrew poet who we first hear about watching his sheep. He ended up getting another job - hard to say if it was a promotion, but he kept on writing poems in any case. One of the most famous of his poems is often quoted as a great prayer for peace, in which case either the quoter hasn't really read it, or he doesn't know much about life as a shepherd. I mean, of course, David, who later became King of Israel, and his psalm about how the Lord is his shepherd. It contains one of the most militant phrases in all the psalms: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me." [PS 22(23):4] And this provides the critical link to our topic of last week: How on earth can a shepherd guarantee peace to his flock if he is unarmed? But our Lord is the Lord of Armies, the God of Battles. David fought with God's help, attained victory over the enemies of Israel (remember Goliath? There was a lot more after that) and established peace. He knew what being a shepherd required.

Now that we've reviewed these two items, we come to the shepherds who "were in the same country, keeping night watch" that night when Jesus was born. Here we could get into the discussion of how that means it wasn't winter, or how there could not be snow, etc., etc. I am not going to go there, except to mention how it snowed when Gilbert and Frances visited Jerusalem in 1919. [See The New Jerusalem CW20:238]

Recalling that GKC had actually been to the Holy Land, then, let us now hear how GKC considered the shepherds. He gets to the matter in one of his penetrating insights, which is tied in to our discussion previously about how Christmas is the "invasion" from Heaven. And, like the Hobbits, there's a riddle involved:

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

There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves. There could be and were people bearing that legal title until the Church was strong enough to weed them out, but there could be no more of the pagan repose in the mere advantage to the state of keeping it a servile state. Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means to an end, at any rate to any other man's end. All this popular and fraternal element in the story has been rightly attached by tradition to the episode of the Shepherds; the hinds who found themselves talking face to face with the princes of heaven. But there is another aspect of the popular element as represented by the shepherds which has not perhaps been so fully developed; and which is more directly relevant here. Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. It was they who had felt most directly, with least check or chill from philosophy or the corrupt cults of civilisation, the need we have already considered; the images that were adventures of the imagination; the mythology that was a sort of search; the tempting and tantalising hints of something half-human in nature; the dumb significance of seasons and special places. They had best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story and the soul of a story is a personality. But rationalism had already begun to rot away these really irrational though imaginative treasures of the peasant; even as systematic slavery had eaten the peasant out of house and home. Upon all such peasantries everywhere there was descending a dusk and twilight of disappointment, in the hour when these few men discovered what they sought. Everywhere else Arcadia was fading from the forest. Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep. And though no man knew it, the hour was near which was to end and to fulfil all things; and though no man heard it, there was one far-off cry in an unknown tongue upon the heaving wilderness of the mountains. The shepherds had found their Shepherd.

And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space. And the barbarian who conceived the crudest fancy about the sun being stolen and hidden in a box, or the wildest myth about the god being rescued and his enemy deceived with a stone, was nearer to the secret of the cave and knew more about the crisis of the world than all those in the circle of cities round the Mediterranean who had become content with cold abstractions or cosmopolitan generalisations; than all those who were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the transcendentalism of Plato or the orientalism of Pythagoras. The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search. We all know that the popular presentation of this popular story, in so many miracle plays and carols, has given to the shepherds the costume, the language, and the landscape of the separate English and European countrysides. We all know that one shepherd will talk in a Somerset dialect or another talk of driving his sheep from Conway towards the Clyde. Most of us know by this time how true is that error, how wise, how artistic, how intensely Christian and Catholic is that anachronism. [GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:305-7, emphasis added]

There is so much meat here I would be at it for several more pages, going further and further into all kinds of interesting matters, and yet still not talking about the one which motivated me in the beginning. That is, the one which links shepherds with angels and Nu's, I mean News.

And you may delight because of it, because you'll get to hear just a tiny bit about Subsidiarity, which I still hope to get completed.

You see, God himself did what he told us at the Last Supper when he washed the feet of the apostles, as he told his apostles: the Son of Man did not come to BE SERVED but TO SERVE.... [Mt 20:28]

And that means THERE MUST BE AN INVERSION OF THE GREAT HIERARCHY OF BEING.

At Christmas, the great secret - the most marvellous of all secrets, the secret of new life which is known only to pregnant women, God's own secret that "the Word is made flesh" is suddenly made known by direct view. Mary sees her newborn. Standing vigil at the cave-mouth, Joseph hears the infant cry and comes in when Mary calls him - he sees, and now he also knows.

BUT THIS IS GOOD NEWS - IT MUST BE MADE KNOWN.

The great sea-going writer, Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, wrote one of the most priceless and most dramatic lines I have ever read in his book on Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Speaking of that incredible night from October 11 to 12 in 1492, he wrote:

Not since the birth of Christ has there been a night so full of meaning for the human race.

Elsewhere, he tells of how Columbus, struck by a storm during the return journey, was in agony, copying out his logs and sealing them in casks, anxious that his news be spread even if he be lost... For the first rule of discovery is to LET SOMEONE KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DISCOVERED.

Likewise, the fundamental law of ALL science: it is not science until it is "published" - somehow it must be told to others.

So what did God do?

Immediately, the full armies of heaven are dispatched, songbooks in hand, to the fields near Bethlehem. Why? Hard to find someone lower than a tired, stinky, hungry, poor, bored, sleepy shepherd on a hillside of a little town.

But God knew where they were. And what does God do? He sent the whole army - a "great multitude of the heavenly host" - here "host" means army. And you don't send armies around unless they have orders.

Remember - no need to keep things secret any more. The plan has begun. So, (as said in another story of a Close Encounter) the Son came out at night and they sang to Him. (hee hee! Ahem.)

As usual the angels (being angelic, in the Greek sense!) had a message. Here it is:

"Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people: for, this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger." [Lk 2:10-12]

If the great joy is for all people, the only way that can happen is for them to be TOLD about it.

Now, the shepherds, not being fools, saw that this news story could easily be checked. All they had to do was go over to the town mangers (in the cave, you know, everybody knows where that is) and see if there was a newborn baby boy there...

But the critical line, you see, comes a little further down: "And all that heard wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds." [Lk 2:18, emphasis added] Just a line further on, the Latin has the verb reversi sunt (they returned) - this provides a clue. It's as if the shepherds were REVERSED - in a manner of speaking, they had been promoted. The lowest are now doing the work of the highest. (Inversion of the hierarchy, you see.) They were now performing the office of messenger. Exalted above even the principalities and powers, these poor folk were now the angels, and their feet are beautiful on the mountains [Is. 52:7] bringing the Good News: a Baby is born in Bethlehem.

It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that is there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity. [GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:317]

Let us hasten to the cavern, pray there, then take on our duty to proclaim this good news, singing like the angels, singing the joy of good news over and over, again and again:

Doxa in `uyistoiV Qeon kai epi ghV eirhnh en anqrwpois eudokiaV.

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

That is, "Glory in the highest to God and on Earth peace to men of good will."

A holy, merry, Chestertonian Christmas to all!

--Dr. Thursday


PS It strikes me, having read this over again, that there is a paradox between the Hobbit-like secret invasion and its news-flash reporting by angelic choir. Of course there's a paradox - we're talking about God-made-man here, what would you expect? Chesterton doesn't have a copyright on paradox, little buddy. God was quite aware of the leak, having lit up the star (whatever it really was!) as we saw previously - he knew he was drawing a line in the sand - or perhaps I should say on the Hill - and at the right time he would cross it. It was even so prophesied: "This child shall be a sign of contradiction..." [Lk 2:34] More on this some other time. But don't forget that Christmas is first and foremost a Mass - that is, a sacrifice. -- Dr. T.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Flower of Jesse's stem,
you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples;
kings stand silent in your presence;
the nations bow down in worship before you.
Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.

Nov/Dec Gilbert Magazine

I had a chance to peruse the latest Gilbert today, and I enjoyed so many of the great articles I found there.

First, I have to say the opening editorial was great. But then, I was consulted on it (as the author of a book on Harry Potter, which included plenty of Chestertonian references). I was immediately drawn to the Aidan Mackey defense of Harry Potter, which I was pleased to read. Every time I read of another Chestertonian who understands the Potter books, I feel more reassured about writing my book. Aidan's article, "Plain Without a Sledgehammer", was something I could have written. My sentiments exactly.

I then looked at The Wise Men, an illustrated work by Beatrice Wilczynski. I enjoyed this work. I also noticed that sprinkled throughout the magazine, there were many little "The Three Wise Men" trivia bits, which I enjoyed reading and finding.

Next, I read Nick Milne's Harry Potter article, as I enjoy his work on line and since he's a previous Gilbert and Frances Scholarship winner, I knew he'd have something fascinating to say. And again, I felt I could say, my sentiments exactly. Another great article.

Then, since I've enjoyed James G. ("Gerry") Bruen, Jr.'s stories in the past, I skipped over to his "Terrific Tots" and found, once again, a modern Chestertonian article with a great punch line. This story idea is one I've actually had myself but never wrote, so I was glad to see Gerry do a great job of it. He actually made me feel sorry for Saundra's kids. Can I adopt them?!

Then, just because I always forget what I wrote, I read my review of Regina Doman's book, Waking Rose. I don't remember writing it that well, so I think some editor really improved it. ;-)

After that, because I am really a fan of Edward Chesterton's (partly because he was an amateur photographer, and I happen to like photographers, and partly because he was the father of someone I love), I enjoyed reading Dale Ahlquist's short article on Mr. Chesterton. I also had the idea while reading it that those scrap books could probably be found in some landfill in England somewhere, and someone should be looking for them. Someone should have run after the trash man, too. Yes, it is frustrating that Gilbert threw all those things away.

I forgot to mention that somewhere in there I read News with Views, because I always enjoy that feature.

More tomorrow.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest to him the Law on Sinai: COME and redeem us by Thy outstretched arm.

Thanks to Dr. Thursday.

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.